CIVILITY, SAVAGERY AND RUTHLESSNESS

By:  Skip Gochenour

I.                   Americans, as freemen, carry weapons about in society.

A.     “A Polite Society” is used to describe the society where freemen are able to go about armed.

1.         A polite society is also a civil society as distinguished from a savage society.

2.         Civil is derived from civilization.

a.              At the root of civilization is a system of behaviors designed to reduce the instance of violence between men when they encounter one another.

b.              These ritualized behaviors have evolved over time, some nearly universal, some culturally specific.

c.              The exhibition of these behaviors permits each of the parties to the behaviors to interpret the intentions of the respective parties.  So long as each party follows the protocols of interaction, each knows what to expect of the other, thus establishing a system of trust.

d.              Part of the system of trust is predicated on the understanding that neither party will initiate an attack without first exhibiting behaviors that indicate and escalation.

1)     Posturing, bluster, bluff, challenges (referred to as diplomacy when engaged by countries) are all ritual behaviors that precede initiation of attack.

2)     These protocols are designed to allow the parties to decide whether to continue to blows or mitigate the event.

3)     The point is that no one, parties or onlookers, is surprised by the attack or who the attacker is.

3.         Ruthless individuals, forego the rituals and attack.

a.              Such individuals have violated the trust component of confrontation.

b.              This display of ruthlessness is “predatory” behavior and is generally held in disdain, though admittedly necessary on occasion.

4.         Ritualized pre-attack behavior and predatory behavior are each seen in the animal world.  There is reason to conclude these behaviors operate at a “hard-wired” level.

5.         Man has evolved a series of behaviors, civil behaviors that are designed to allow the practitioners of such behaviors to live a life of violence avoidance.

a.              Civility, the abhorrence of violence, is a process where the members of a culture become less inclined to use violence.

b.              Politeness is for the specific purpose of reducing instances of violence by avoiding actions which might give offense.

c.              The VCA see politeness/ruthlessness as a strategy.

d.              He sees your politensess and his ruthlessness as putting him in control of what will occur.

e.              It is not bad manners to point out bad manners.

f.               It is a means of determining the true motives of the aggressor.

6.         The practice of civility, in some components of Western, particularly American society, has taken on trappings of moral superiority.

a.              It is considered impolite to be impolite, even when intentional offense is offered.

b.              Nothing is worth fighting for, even when one’s life is threatened.

c.              Those who would fight for what is there’s, even their lives, are viewed with disgust and distrust.

d.              Such people are removed from reality in their daily lives.

e.              They live in a self-constructed fantasy world.

B.      A civilized society organizes itself under a sovereign that holds a monopoly over the use of force.

1.         The sovereign organizes dispute mediation apparatus for the purpose of maintaining its control over the use of force.

2.         Without this dispute mediation system, the politeness strategies would not be sufficient.

3.         Police, courts and citizens operating under justification principles operate in this system.

II.                 Citizens, Justification, Claim of Right and Sovereign

A.     In American society the sovereign has enumerated principles of justification where a citizen can exercise his claim of right to possession in the face of predatory violence.

1.         Among the components of the definition of slavery is the lack of expectation to the private ownership of property, including family and life.

2.         Slaves have no right to claims anything as theirs, freemen do.

3.         If a freeman has the right to ownership, he has the right to fight those who would, without legal justification, take it from him.

4.         Hence, the legal principles of justification.

a.              These legal principles graduate the level of force permitted based on the possession that is sought by the aggressor and the level of violence offered in the seizure.

b.              Proportionality of response is a component of justification.

c.              When confronted by an aggressor, it is the knowledge that his actions will be reviewed by the sovereign that guides the decisions made by the defender.

5.         Freemen are willing to fight for their claim of right rather than submit to those who would take that possession without legal justification.

a.              Possessions include his life and the welfare of his family.

6.         Freemen fight for what is rightfully theirs as a matter of honor.  That same concept of honor causes him to fight within the rules established by the sovereign.  They observe the rules of civility as a matter of character.

7.         While observing the principles of justification, the freeman also understands that a lethal assault by an aggressor calls up in the defender rational and justifiable ruthlessness.

8.         Ruthlessness is the only antidote for ruthlessness and savagery.

III.              Savagery

A.     Savagery is doing the unimaginable.

1.         As civilization evolves, some actions become unimaginable. 

a.              Severing a head, dismembering a body, are just as unimaginable if they occur in an American city or the streets of a Middle Eastern country.

b.              Civilization sees such acts as depraved.

c.              But such acts are part of the real world.  They are the product of an intentional desire to to shock the sensibilities.

d.              They are not evidence of a sickness but rather a strong will.

e.              Men who engage in savagery must be dealt with directly.  They must not be dealt with savagely.

f.               Those who engage in savagery are part of hard reality, they are not aberrations.

IV.               Fantasy, Civility and Savagery

A.     Civility and savagery share the concept of fantasy.

1.         Modern civilization is largely a western society construct.

2.         With its Greco-Roman roots, it became a bud in the Enlightenment and Reformation and came to bloom in the 19^th century.

3.         It is derived from what de Tocqueville referred to as “habits of the heart”.  Largely it is a product of trial and error that produced a workable construct.

4.         This construct was introduced to non-western societies through European imperialism of the 17^th to the 19^th centuries.  Societies that did not pass through the Enlightenment or the Reformation learned western civilization constructs through mimicry.

5.         Nation-state sovereignty is a western construct that tries to operate in parts of the world that have tribes, warlords and gangs as integral parts of their cultural structure.  Some non-western nation-states were formed by fiat in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

6.         The cornerstone of nation state sovereignty is that each nation state is responsible for the actions of all parties within its respective borders.

7.         Throughout the history of man, tribes, warlords and gangs have engaged in behavior that western civilization presently regards as savagery.  Such conduct was and is the hard reality of the world.

8.         To present day western civilization, savagery is “unimaginable”.

B.      Reason and fantasy.

1.         One of the pillars of western thought is the concept of reason.  The ability to reason has contributed greatly to science, technology and the reduction of violence among its practitioners.  It is a marvelous construct.

2.         It also produced a world of fantasy in some portions of European and American society.

3.         Some members of society rejected concepts like free will, honor, character and wickedness and constructed explanations for behavior that looked for “root causes” that were out of the influence of the actor who engaged in the behavior.

4.         To identify the “root causes” these searchers used their own frame of reference without regard to reports of the actors.

5.         They used “reason” based on their own world view models.

6.         While they could conceive of VCA committing “instrumental” acts, they postulated the acts were to varying degrees the result of constrained choices due to circumstance.  Social engineering would correct the problem.

7.         VCA with “expressive” motivation were largely seen as products of social pathologies.

8.         Little effort was exhausted in explaining the role of civilization in reducing VCA behavior from its historic occurrences.  (eg cannibalism, medieval torture)

9.         VCA engage in ruthlessness and savagery because it works as a strategy.  (Vlad the Impailler)

10.     Some expressive VCA are propelled by fantasy or magical beliefs.  (They can feel the life energy of the person they strangle flow into them through their arms.  Several score virgins await them in heaven.)  But they are not psychotic. 

11.     Such beliefs are based on a desire to believe them, not pathology, just as the belief they are not responsible for their acts, but manipulated into them by the political acts of another is the result of a desire to believe, not reality.

C.     Civility, Honor and Character Trump Savagery

1.         Men who go about armed must be the example of civility, even in the face of savagery.

2.         They must learn to be honorable in the same way it has been conveyed through the centuries, through the example and teachings of their parents.

3.         They must learn the sense of shame that comes from dishonorable behavior and they must dread worse than death the loss of trust of other honorable men occasioned by their dishonorable actions.

4.         They must learn the self-mastery of self-discipline that permits them to be in one instant ruthless in their response to an aggressor and in the next instant to refrain from taking mean advantage of him when the next blow is not necessary.

5.         They must learn that to be truly a free man they must be willing to die than to be subjugated to a ruthless savage.

6.         When all of these qualities are in place, and can be called up without thought, the man who holds them as his dearest possessions is the most civilized among men.