this was a point i was getting to in my previous post. this perception that violence is everywhere is more likely to lead to violence due to living in fear of violence. for some people this will lead to a string of beliefs that result in more violent behaviour. ie, a person believes that the world is an extremely violent place, they believe that at any moment they might be attacked, they believe in order to defend themselves they must carry a weapon or keep a gun, if anything disturbs this person their natural instinct is to reach for their best means of defence, bang bang.
i believe that the messages that we are given through from our governments and from the news our more damaging than the horror and violence that we see in the movies. we can all differentiate fact from fiction, and when the violence is real and tangible, when there is an imminent threat and pervading fear then the message that violence is the best means of defense slips right into the believe systems of the audience.
These two things are really nicely said. So much of this I think, could be avoided simply by knowing one another. Here in LA, most people don't know their neighbors. We don't give one another eye contact in the street, elevator, in cars. We aggress against others mostly because we have a fundamental perception of them being just that, but with a capital "O"thers.
Native Americans have a saying, "Mitak oyas in". It means, roughly and as a rule, "For all my relations" or "We are all connected" (or both, depending on who you talk to). Point is, if I view us as connected, it's much harder to steal from you, harm you, sexually violate you or whatever. Even moreso, if I simply know you. E-motionally, mentally, and "spiritually" speaking.
I have a checkered past because of my substance abuse history (clean now almost 25 years), have been locked up twice in my adolescence, my primary source of recovery has been in beautiful downtown Compton, California (ahem...), I have lived in Los Angeles my whole life. I have hung out with all manner of scandalous folk, gangsters, grew up around violence, worked in psychiatric hospitals for the last 24 years, done martial arts my whole life. I play all manner of video games, even the "questionable" ones. Where I'm going with this is that I've had plenty of reason (demographically speaking) to be in scraps, assault folk in drug situations and etc. I've never done so, and have never been aggressed against (save once when I didn't pay my bills with my connection). Not in the hospital. Not when I was locked up. Not because I train.
The reason I assert, anecdotally of course, is because of my willingness to really know, be close to people. As such, there's way less reason for us to impose power over one another for whatever reason. It's not simply because I'm a big boy or whatever. I stay soft, treat people as intrinsically connected to me, and start with connecting first. Am more than fairly convinced that this philosophy has done more to avoid violence in my life of all kinds, than anything else.
