The Violent Encounter

January 10th, 2008 Posted in Asymmetrical Relationship, Violence

A transitive action: One person or side acts violently against another. Then what does alter do? This is the initial phase of Parson’s unit act–the beginning of interaction. So violence is a particular kind of verb, a doing of a certain kind containing a probability of physical or psychological injury as consequence.

The act could have been erotic (a kiss) or commercial (an offer of trade) or cooperative (an offer of assistance) or solidarity (supportive recognition) or a fraud (a false promise) and so on. So violence is simply another form of relationship–an interaction contingency, another kind of act in a sequence of acts.

Each violent concrete (real) encounter is unique. They are like fingerprints. But we can find ways to the general by identifying elements of specific similarity and difference–we can define classes. This is an essential step in any analysis. Here let us start with the question of the relative skill and preparedness for the encounter by the two sides–a measure of symmetry.

The Duel. I use this term generically to identify violent encounters where each side has the same chance of overcoming the other. Ideally there is a symmetry of preparation, equipment, and skill and the protagonists engage face-to-face. The duel is mannered (rule and culture based) expression of lethal action. In order to destroy the enemy (the hated or threatening or recalcitrant other), the protagonists offer themselves up equally to the same possible alternative up or down outcomes which can reach the level of life or death. Statuses exactly equal, the outcome is pure chance. It combines bravery and heart with vengeance and preservation of social life and assures personal honor even at the cost of one’s life.

The form of symmetrical violence can be found in different cultural-historical settings. In the ancient world we find instances of tribal warfare where the contending parties line up facing each other and then champions advance and meet in the space between for single combat–like the honored couple in a formal affair start the dancing and incite others to join. The waring sides venture out after the champs and eventually engage in a general melee.

Gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome took a similar form. These games started as funeral rites and appeared to function as a symbolic philosophical statement on death but they also were a public display of wealth and power for the sponsor who accepted the cost. Over the centuries the sponsorship tended to become the sole prerogative of the Emperor and the entertainment value of these games ballooned and the fighting became part of a circus atmosphere. The Roman dehumanizing of the other became a topic for the Christian critique.

In the medieval setting the duel took two forms, the joust, or military exercise, between two men of noble rank, and the judicial trial where two armed gentlemen, representing prosecution and defense, fight it out. The theory being that the deity will favor the innocent and so the outcome will represent divine justice. Non-warriors, like women, could request a champion to represent their side. El Cid, the famous Spanish hero, is reported in literature to have fought in such an encounter. The ultimate human arbiter of these duels was the sovereign.

The American formal dueling system, an attempt to replicate the European usages, was popular in the colonial era and after. Probably the most famous American duelist was Andrew Jackson who in a later stage of his career served as president of the United States. He reputedly fought several duels, killing at least one opponent. The most reported duel in American experience was that between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in which Hamilton was killed. Numerous other incidents. Each event can be seen as an organized expression of the institution. Included in the nexus were established roles for the participants: the duelists, their seconds, a referee, an attending doctor or medic. There were rules of behavior. There were instructors and manuals, and types of weapons. The duel was designed to allow direct redress of a perceived insult or other grievance. The sequence: a public or even private statement or act followed by a demand for an apology which, if refused, is followed by a challenge. A date, time and place for the encounter is set which usually is in an isolated rural place since early on the government discouraged this kind of encounter. A further discussion of rules and options, further attempts to negotiate a peaceful resolution followed by the duel itself. Weapons used were the sword or epee, but more likely, in America, the muzzle loaded pistol.

At issue in the American setting was the notion of honor, reputation and public esteem. Honor was thought of as a personal quality that could be degraded, besmirched, lost. The threat of this loss was so devastating that death was preferable. Without honor and power active social participation is endangered. The slogan death before dishonor was taken seriously. Women were involved in the system in terms of their sexual purity. Any expressed doubt about her would be a grievous insult to not only her but to her kinship group, especially her father and brothers, and to her husband. Doubts about her fidelity would mean doubts about the genetic validity of the masculine line of inheritance. It was through masculine inheritance that property and social rank descended. And rank, especially in the medieval estate system, established one as noble and so eligible to participate in the upper reaches of that world. The nobles carried the coloration of the warrior, the monopoly of military power traditionally belonging to them. The lower ranks: the peasants and the bourgeoisie could not claim honor and were not permitted to duel within the medieval system. So the duel is tied in with machismo, a masculine pride, with militarism, with property, and with a high-ranking status.

But in the American scene circa early 19th century the medieval estate system was well on its way out. With the establishment of the republic the titles of nobility, which continue to persist in England, were disestablished. The higher ranks were now the bourgeoisie of wealth themselves and the plantation owners of the South. The duel it would seem no longer made sense and during this period it was gradually fading. Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were against the practice and eventually the states outlawed it.

In truth the required symmetrical equivalence could not be guaranteed. Some skillful shots made careers out of legalized murder. Cheating within the actual duel was not rare and the claim of gentlemanly virtue was finally seen as a cover for base thuggery.

The Mugging. There is a second set of situations that are characteristically asymmetrical. The prime example for me is the street robbery, sometimes called mugging. At one time mugging had a specific meaning, namely a particular form of street robbery in 18th and 19th century England where the actor-initiator approaches alter-victim from the rear and using his arm around the throat of alter-victim chokes him senseless and then takes his valuables. In the American usage in the recent past this term has been applied to all street robberies.

I witnessed a situation where the perpetrator in attempting to escape after a street robbery was tackled by a passing motorist who stopped his car and then grabbed the fleeing man. The motorist was a physical culture freak with great bulging weight lifter muscles who overpowered the holdupnick by keeping the man prone, face down, on the ground. The felon had an expression of total confusion on his face. He who was supposed to dominate was, to the deep satisfaction of this observer at least, himself reduced to a quivering jelly.

In these actions ego either attacks alter directly or threatens to do so if alter doesn’t give up the loot, however defined. There is no pretense of symmetry of chance, just the opposite. The aim, the rule governing ego’s behavior, is by surprise, by overpowering force, by terrorizing the other to gain a local ascendancy and to take then the other’s boodle. Ego uses force in a situation of his own contriving where the danger of a return force against him is minimal. This kind of action is not always overtly violent but the threat of violence is a constant. The objective of direct robbery can change but the model does not. Bullying behavior, pushing ahead in line, insulting and humiliating another, and silencing the other are alternate actions where the danger to self is consciously minimized.

So we have two types of confrontation based on the models of the duel and the robbery.

CONFRONTATION

DUEL–Equivalence of chance, Symmetry, Test, Game, Public event and entertainment, Honor

ROBBERY–Advantage to one side. Asymmetry, Certainty, Private, Hidden, Isolated, Profit, Exploitation.

The symmetrical encounter is carried to our own time in sports encounters. Rules of the game attempt to restrict and limit physical injury but the play is usually physical and the intent is to overcome a supposedly equivalent other.

The asymmetrical model fits the actions of the police and the military. They are benign until the other transgresses and then they act with all means necessary that they can muster. In their professional discipline they are supposed to limit this escalation to only the amount necessary.

In the robbery mode where, by stretching violence and force to include its threat as in extortion, and with the addition of its companion actions of fraud and guile, we see that violence fits into a broader pattern. Bullying behavior, lies and prevarication, misdirection, controlling information, hiding information, destructive jokes, bias and so on all have the character of gaining advantage with minimum cost and danger to self. So again asymmetry includes violence but also tapers off to more benign, though no less selfish and aggrandizing and, from the viewpoint of symmetry, cowardly acts.

LIMITS TO ALTERNATIVES
There are well known alternatives to violent confrontation; why wouldn’t they be universally used instead? For example: discussion and negotiation that include argument, compromise, scientific test and appeals to consensus, logic, authority, public opinion, or shared humanity.

They are used successfully in many cases but they founder for two reasons, one for each type, game or crime. If the game is foregone, the test of oneself or one’s group that requires the confrontation is gone. The test is a value in itself for which there is no substitution. That equal chance may surreptitiously be negated is the main argument against the duel. One is always stronger and better trained. From the view of the larger community the loss of healthy men in the years of prime responsibility is irreparable and hardly worth the modest psychic gains of the winners.

For crime the thing lost is the certainty of the reward from the encounter. Discussion that doesn’t include extortion and threat loses this advantage. The situation shifts toward questionable outcome rather than the certainty sought. If the victim could resist with some hope of prevailing or at the least injuring, discomfiting, or increasing the chance that the aggressor will be captured and held to account negotiation becomes more attractive. If all potential alter-victims are so strong and alert that the criminal egos can never find the advantage, violence may be reduced drastically unless alter himself discovers a criminal project or profession.

The strategy of non-violence is a proactive response by alter as victim, to reveal the bestial, unreasonable quality of the aggressive and oppressive actor and it calls attention to the asymmetrical quality of his behavior. It’s a way of fighting back, attempting to get a nonviolent symmetrical field. It depends upon a shared moral system by all parties. And it is most successful where the third party, the audience, if mobilized, will apply counter force of shame to the oppressive other. Physical and moral power contend.

In myth and fiction the weak, passive target, the victim to be, is somehow goaded to train up and then lash out like an aroused Ferdinand the Bull against his abusers.

Violent action is governed by legal and cultural rules. In these actions the aggressor has a choice, to use violence or not, and the key to reducing the incidence of violence is a change in active legal and cultural values and a heavier weight on down side consequence.

Readings on some violent situations and incidents

A fair balanced short account of a subway vigilante, http://www.heroism.org/class/1980/goetz.htm

For gladiators see Michael Grant book “Gladiators” and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator#History_of_gladiatorial_combatsOn

Dueling in America. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/duel/sfeature/dueling.html

Google “Alternatives to Violence” to find sites emphasizing practical ways to live less violently.