Violence and Silence 2004-01-17

When is violence acceptable? Last night a friend of mine told me how he had just finished "kicking the everliving shit" out of two guys, simply because they happened to be with another guy that was getting the shit kicked out of him by someone else.
Apparently this other guy had been sleeping with some girl who was engaged to be married. The fiancee finds out, then goes to his friends and says, "I just found this out, this guy needs to bleed."

Now, my friend, he tells me later, "When someone says that, you don't ask questions, the time for talking is done. You just grab your bat and say 'let's roll'."

So, I've been labelled as a pacifist by my friends. This isn't strictly true, but it might as well be. I believe that violence should be the last resort of the truly desperate. And I've never ever seen an instance where the desperation has been enough to warrent violence. But that's just me.

Apparently, violence of the sort my friend described is acceptable, since you hear about shit like that all the time.

Anyway, it's not the violence that really disturbed me last night. It was how my friend acted afterwards. He was giggling in this high-pitched tone of voice (and his voice is normally pretty deep), sitting there looking immensely pleased with himself. He felt not just satisfied, but ecstatic that he got the opportunity to put some serious hurt on two guys who didn't even do anything wrong. They just happened to be there.
I don't think I'd be as disturbed by all this if he'd acted a little more calmly. A little more, "I had to get my friend's back, no matter what, and things got out of hand." A little more, "I did what I felt I had to do, even though it's not right." But no. It was all giggling and dementia.

What can a guy say to person like that? "I think you've got deep-rooted problems, my friend, and I think you should get psychological help."
Yeah, right. Like that would go over well.