Disclaimer: I have tried to put my unacceptable opinions in brackets. But they're virulent you know.

Preface

As "The Violence Guy" I have often been questioned by people curious about defining their own experiences. I have also interviewed many people who only thought of their violent experiences in a single context, discounting the rest as something 'other'. A crime victim may define that act as violence or not. If they define it as violence then childhood fights they experienced may not—in their mind—be regarded as violent acts.

There is also the question often put to me about my surviving crime, considering my impoverished urban lifestyle. Being a pedestrian does bring additional exposure in urban environs. A pedestrian is more easily spotted, the predators have more time to consider how his demise can benefit them with the least risk, and there are a lot less of us pedestrians on the menu than you zooming motorists, inconsiderately bypassing the ambushes so thoughtfully arranged by your local hardworking criminal.

Let us just say it's is all about recognizing a developing situation and making sure that you keep it from escalating. This will become self-evident once you examine the matrix below. This is the tool I use to regulate my behavior in the face of aggression. The personal results have not been a great feeding of the ego. But, I have remained a thankfully obscure item on the local criminal menu; that not-so-fresh blowfish prepared by the novice sushi chef with the shaking hand...

Concept

Let me begin to clear the air by equating violence and aggression. It is best to conceive of these two terms as alternate descriptions of 'coercion backed by threat of force and/or the application of force to injure, maim, violate or kill'. Because the term violence is more often equated with vigorous physical effort and resulting injury I have generally abandoned it in favor of the term aggression, which has broader connotations. There is a very real semantic dilemma here. Engaging in aggression—even verbally—is to step onto a very slippery slope. The most common misunderstanding harbored by the subjects of my study and people who I discuss the study with, is that most define an act as violence or aggression only if it is marked by confrontation and the physical use of force, generally discounting threats, even lethal ones.

Examples:

1. A security guard who apprehends a shoplifter through verbal or 'light touch' compliance will not mark this as an act of aggression or violence, although the shoplifter and her spouse will hold quite a different view.
2. The mother of a jilted woman who threatens to "kill" the former boyfriend does not believe herself to be engaged in violence, but the fleeing Don Juan might disagree.
3. The police officer who placed his hand on his holstered weapon as he approached me on a darkened street at 11:08 PM Wednesday December 7th 2011, was, in his mind, acting defensively. I saw it in another light, as a state-sponsored act of aggression that violated my supposed freedom to walk to work unmolested by body-armored wearers of Bat Man utility belts. [Isn't that in the Bill of Rights somewhere? Oh, that's right they didn't have Bat Man back then.]
4. A man who threatened people with heavy tools in collecting debts for a drug dealer as an adult did not consider that his fist fights with neighborhood boys in his childhood rated as acts of aggression or violence.
5. A prize-fighter robbed at gunpoint described the act as a property crime rather than an act of violence or aggression. The ATM had robbed him just seconds earlier!
6. When I barred the entrance to a criminal when acting as a doorman by extending my open hand to come just short of his face I recognized that that non-contact act was indeed the initiation of hostilities. Since he outweighed me by 260 pounds I palmed an ink pen with my hidden hand so I could push it into some soft part if he decided to trample me. Neither of us chose to escalate, with him backing down. [If I were a practitioner of some esoteric Asian art I might claim to have submitted him with my "chi". But I am not a chi master, just a humble American sorcerer who summoned an elder demon out of the nighted abyss to shatter this barbarian's fragile resolve!]

I use the list below to put acts of aggression in context. Consider cataloguing your own life experiences by assigning each a number from this table. Also consider each number to represent a wide-range of behavior that might like-wise constitute an escalating matrix. I have survived dozens of violent crimes by managing them in the '0' to '4' zone. People ask "How can you know?" Those people don't have a clue and just need to stay locked down in their zooming vehicles. [Really, if it breaks down, call out of work. Don't take the bus, you're already dead.]

The Aggression Matrix

Threat Nuances

Please carefully consider the threat end of the scale. Manipulation of this range of aggression is what keeps you off of the top of the scale. It is the duty* of every civilized person [Yes, blame me for the 'barbarism' defense, please.] to maintain an encounter and manage it in the threat zone.

A careful consideration of '0' and '1' should reveal to any rational person [Yes, both of you.] a veritable escalation scale for each. Consider the difference in body language from cowering in a fetal position, to shrinking back with hands in pockets, to putting out the conciliatory hand, to warning off an approaching person with the staying hand, to hovering with grinding teeth and clenching hands, to snarling at their soft throat with your slathering snout...

"I'm good. Thanks—the happy pill—the pink one in my shirt pocket. Deep breath..."

Think of the verbal range alone. You can hop on the scale with anything from "I don't want any trouble, sir" [even if he is only thirteen-years-old] to "I'm going to eat your children!" [He's thirteen-years-old isn't he—a baby's daddy by now.]

*I know that sounded preachy—grated in my mind in fact. But it is still called 'civilization' you know. Just thought it was worth a heads up.

Mutual Combat

This is its own stupidity zone, and is easily a point of departure into the threat zone where many mutual combats end up being terminated as things deescalate due to exhaustion or the appearance of Mom—or for adults, the police. In court this comes down to 'no harm, no foul' [so long as nobody pissed off the cop or called the judge a dyke] or made the order-of-magnitude miscalculation!

Getting Cozy with the Order-of-Magnitude Miscalculation

Getting into battery can result in a slide all the way up the scale until someone is having their brains kicked out against a curb. I did not structure this end of the scale based on intent. Determining the intention of the combatant you did not get to interview is very difficult for the third-person researcher. This is all about results, and based on the possibilities implicate in the table above, Hell is the limit. I really want to call this THE BONED ZONE. Oh, I just did. Charles, should I bracket that? The use of weapons to do harm takes you right to seven as a starting point. Legally, this is where battery escalates into larger legal liabilities.

Weapons will take you very quickly to 10. According to our bankrupt society's malleable mores the actions listed as Level Nine are more heinous or equal to killing. Being a practical person I rate killing as worse—even though it often takes less effort—because the dead can't fight back, unless, of course, their powers of chi may still be accessed in the hereafter and projected back into the world of the living. I have yet to meet a kung fu master that makes that claim. But I'm sure he is out there.

Be safe, say no to the boned zone and keep it in the threat zone.

James, December 11th 2011