Wild Versus Tame

January 13th, 2008 Posted in Violence

Our rules contradict our animal energetic. To be cultivated and cultured is to be under control. Before we could domesticate animals and plants we had to tame ourselves. The attempted dominance of a moral self over animal nature is universal among us though with unequal success. What we can not suppress we hide or cover. Our potential for destructive physical aggression fits here. The rules that govern us have two loci–the social (consisting of culture, law and social order) and the internalized (called variously super-ego, conscience, and moral sense.) These two rule sets overlap but they do not exactly match. When the energetic is expressed it is usually through acceptable channels defined by place, time and setting involving privacy, correct formula, context. There are psychological shunts through which the energetic can find partial expression like dreams, fantasies, jokes, stories, and psychological defenses like sublimation, projection.

In Freud’s pleasure principle there is the implication of letting-go, permitting oneself the uncontrolled (to some approximation) expression of what is usually dampened and banked. The energetic can be revealed explosively at an inappropriate time and place. We can describe it as the wild action. The effect is well beyond the faux pas. At that moment the rules and reality be damned. These expressions of the energetic are accompanied by strong (even overpowering) feelings and emotions.

Road rage. We are all grateful that it is rare. Driving an automobile calls for strong discipline–an attending to the physical-mechanical actions of the car, an awareness of the situation (traffic pattern) and of the rules of the road. Sometimes the combination of blocked and congested roads, the errors and failures in courtesy of others, the implicit power of the engine combine into an unbearable frustration and someone looses-it, gives way to rage and begins to break objects and even attack other people.

Night-club rage. Loud music with a provocative beat, dizzy from alcohol and the motion-commotion, the room darkened and crowded, flashing strobe-lights. Any trigger–a slight bump, a misunderstood word–and one looses-it again. A hitting out, a shouting, agitation, confusion.

Wildness also surfaces at sporting events. If you are not present you might witness this kind of event via TV or a video. In basketball it is rare and particularly shocking. A giant, strong man who characteristically is placid and even-tempered goes berserk and attacks the massed spectators. It is an awesome sight.

In these cases the wild becomes paramount and instantly changes the social order that had been in place. A new and transient order focused on the wild one emerges. Some of the on-lookers move away, some converge and attempt to control or divert the wild one. They are the police function representing the cultural convention. If a professional is on duty–a bouncer, a cop, a marshal–he acts. Otherwise the manager (or any leader) if present acts or in the final fall-back the ad hoc formation of those present and willing to enter the fray responds.

Sometimes the wild one can be talked down, calmed. Sometimes he is restrained. Order is restored, the status quo ante upheld. Eventually we all return to normal, including the one who was temporarily fell out of the ordinary way.

(The violent mob is one of the group forms this acting out rage can take. Historically it is the devil’s own troublemaker. The American story of the violent mob is a sorry one. We find it in the news from abroad now–most recently in Kenya. Its actions are stupid, meanly vindictive, involve stereotyped logic. Its social organization is primitive. It fails to police itself. And if there is no effective policing counter, it can be as destructive as a horde of locusts.)

But even where culture is unchallenged we have violence. Paradoxically the very quality of being cultured and tame may compel us to inflict damage on another. In its most extreme form we have the sanctioned execution. It is like a strict ritual, all actions are prescribed and the range of permitted (and acknowledged) feeling and emotions defined. It is formal, sedate, cool yet a person is killed. In our system vindictiveness and revenge are held in check. Kin and friends of the prior victim (if there had been one) may be present and witness the attempt at justice and the restoration of social balance but the executioners are supposed to strive to be strictly professional.

In other societies and times this sanctioned killing takes a triumphal twist. Pain and humiliation are heaped on the other. It seems atavistic and primitive to us moderns but it is part of the ritual for others.

The permitted expression of ordinarily repressed action and feeling is a cultural respite. A social time and place when some restraints are lessened. It occurs more frequently in the areas of love, affection and good feelings than in the destructive direction. The Mardi Gras, the bacchanal, convivial parties, festivals, all, to some extent, have this loosening of the cultural negation. For violence we have the limited and fun-filled riot (young people with high spirits breaking loose), the free for all melee with the rough house there but still limited like with kittens and puppies, celebratory bonfires and such.

The police function and the military function are established cultural institutions where we organize to act violently for a sanctioned purpose. As members of the assigned aggressive group we commit violent acts we would in our regular lives avoid. The sense of guilt many of us experience after we participate in such acts is countered by ideological reason which rationalizes the act’s necessity, the symmetrical quality of the encounter with the risk of a similar outcome for self, and for some cultures (like the Zulu in 19th century South Africa I believe) a ritual purification rite.

Between the two poles of wild and tame violence range a spectrum of other violent acts and situations where both qualities mix in varying portions. Giving self up to feeling and energetic and submitting to cultural rule and the governing social order are not mutually exclusive absolutes.

There is a cross-cutting element at work in violence that the analyst can sometimes discern, we’ll call it purpose. It overlaps in part with the wild-tame distinction. The violent action is in the service of a goal, a future state (whether the next instance or the next millennium) that the violent actor aims to bring about. It is motive and it is not easily accessible even, sometimes, to the actor himself. It is easier to see it as consequence (the functioning outcome of the act). If we grant ourselves the luxury of the act as an instrument of purpose we have the possibility of an organized violent act that is contrary to the legal and cultural norms but that is still not fully based on the momentarily uncontrolled energetic.

The professional street criminal (the mugger) is an anomaly from our wild-tame perspective. His act is not wild yet he goes against the law and order. But this dodging of law and culture does not seek to overturn or replace it. For the convenience of his own career he needs the dominant order to continue. The best defense against the bank robber is to close all the banks, but that would end his opportunity for this form of nefarious gain. His act is goal oriented, purposeful and rational, and appears to be within Freud’s reality principle. It is not a energetic break-out. I would describe his violence as parasitic–an act against the host that depends upon the continued existence and relative well-being of the host.

Since culture is not always absolute and precisely measured (there is even wiggle room on occasion within law, religion, ethics) it is possible to act instrumentally, in an ever changing normative environment, and not be characterized as criminal. This gives us the notion of unconventional violence that is excused, rationalized, ignored but that is not clearly sanctioned by convention.

Another intermediary type: the person who acts against the dominant normative system in place but acts within another ideological, cultural order. He is the revolutionary and terrorist. So the bank robbery can be governed by two different motives–an act against the prevailing system or an act of self-aggrandizement. They look the same and sometimes the claims of the actors themselves can increase the confusion.

So I have slipped unaware into Robert K. Merton’s famous means-end paradigm, now adjusted to fit the violent act.

We approximate a typology of violent acts–based on the variable characteristics of (a) conformity to rule and law, (b) degree of unconscious energetic acting-out, (c) degree of rationality (acting toward a goal), (d) degree of ideological rejection and replacement.

^^^^^

A reprise and reordering of our meandering analysis…

1) Escaped energetic. The usually conforming person or group lose control over their emotions and actions and fall into the pure pleasure principle (this could include what the rest of us would consider hateful acts). This leads to a sharp temporary change in the local social order. Unaffected witnesses (representing the general community) and/or their police representatives act to contain, limit, and suppress and bring the situation back to status quo ante or some approximation there-of. Where the police join the pack we have the ugly, hateful mob.

2) Conformity violence. The culture, law, and/or social order direct that a violent act or sequence of acts take place. The people governed by the convention either act themselves (posse or ad hoc response to a situation for example) or through their agents. This action can take a ritual form as in executions or can be pro or reactive in a developing situation. The acts usually maintain the system (limit threatening change).

3) Instrumental violence. This gray area more usually involves some kind of fraud rather than violence. Acts to limit information or control the interpretation of events. Favors that come close to bribes. And so on. In the world of violence they take the form or implied threat. Surreptitiously roughing up the other. Fortuitous accidents that give one an advantage. They come perilously close to criminal acts.

4) Parasitic violence. More transparently criminal acts. The violence or threat of violence gives a profitable advantage to the aggressor. The act appears to reject the rules but actually depends upon the rules to achieve its purpose. The bank robber does not want to destroy the organization of the bank. It is more like taking and unsecured loan that does not have to be repaid.

5) Revolutionary violence, terror. The act against the currently dominant legal and cultural system is ideological and represents a conformity to an alternate order. In its own terms it is conventional and conservative. But it denigrates, denies, and/or rejects the normal forms that are in place.

6) Merton includes a person or group in his scheme who for us would be a violent fantasist. He does not accept the current legal, cultural, and social order but conforms as though he does. He would appear in our analytical approach among the non-responders at the scene of wild action. But there are many reasons for non-response–fear, caution, lack of training, skill and strength and so on. Perhaps this is another form of the uncommitted marginal man? He acts within the current way but he is not part of it. In Freud’s system he might claim not to believe while being paralyzed by his super-ego.