Violence is the foundation of our society. Although instances of interpersonal violence is almost a rarity on an any given day in the Western world, its presence is still felt. Every interaction a person has could potentially lead to violence. Bumping into the wrong person, a minor disagreement, fucking someone’s girl, all reasons you might get punched in the mouth.
Enter the State. The state says “we will protect you”. And so people let the state take over.
We evolved in a time when there were no constraints on the application of force other than how well a potential victim could defend themselves. We are not polite because its the right thing to do. Humans are hardwired to understand that if you give any animal a reason to kill you, they might. We also evolved in a time when if you could get away with hurting someone to secure resources for yourself, that was that. I imagine we were really quite savage in the beginning.
Of course now we are better than that. The state in all its glory has given us civilized ways to settle disputes, allocate resources and protect people. Violence is is criminalized. Disputes are settled by courts. Resources divided through an economic system. Thus we enjoy a relatively peaceful day to day existence on this rock.
Unless you break the rules. Break any of our complicated rules and men with badges and all manner of weaponry come put you in a cage. In our civilized society, these men with badges, might beat you, take your resources, shoot you, put you in a cage with rapist and leave you for dead. These complicated rules we have that eliminate violence are enforced with violence. Logically, an arrangement of that nature cannot eliminate violence. It does stand to reason that such an arrangement could make violence more centralized and more efficient. Instead of honor killings and street justice on the street, the violence is hidden away in jails and prisons. Instead of a complicated web of individuals, families and clans righting perceived wrongs on their own terms, we have good guys vs bad guys.
The rules that the state enforces extends into every facet of life. They are so complicated that a person is undoubtedly breaking one of them (local, county, state, federal, international) at any given time. Making a disarmed populace all potential victims of state violence.
Violence being the basis of existence, organisms competing over limited resources and such, it doesn’t bother me that one system or another has this violence or that violence. I just can’t live with the idea of getting an ass whooping from a group of guys, whose salary is paid by me.
Apollo 21 