A bit of biffo

Where does one start, about violence?  With a rhetorical question like that, I guess.  I will be told that violence is a primeval, necessary, ineradicable part of the human condition and vital for survival.  And indeed I have to admit that living intentionally and mindfully without violence, as I try to do, is rather the exception.  It is seen as a curiosity.

In my octogenarian years I have come to the view that human society reels and staggers from the effects of testosterone.  We can start with contact sport – although I immediately interpose that I have just read an article about chess, in the Guardian, in which the writer, who is preparing a book about championship chess, not a team sport, admits that the object of chess is bloody, to destroy your opponent.  The aim in a friendly game down at the pub is the same, to defeat someone else. 

The language in which sports are now reported reflects all this.  Opponents were smashed, destroyed, annihilated, cut down…  There is much more by way of example, but I can’t bring myself to read sports reports to garner more examples of the violent speech which now seems standard.

Knowing nothing as I do about the rules and practice of team sports such as rugby, league, netball, hockey, even cricket, it seems to me that aggression and violence, proscribed by gentlemanly rules in my youth, are now not only winked at but expected and enjoyed.  Violence in contact sports now regularly spills over into the off-field misbehaviour of sporting icons and role-models, fuelled by alcohol and drugs, resulting in drunken brawls and attacks on women.  Much of it is routinely excused one way or another.  “Letting off steam” covers a multitude of sins.

The world looks on in dismay and disgust as hordes of travelling team supporters from the UK or Australia typically, foul-mouthed and ignorant, stalk the streets and football venues in other lands, hurling abuse and urinating their contempt for decency. 

Most of this however is child’s play compared to what I view with horror each day on Al Jazeera, BBC or CNN.  How many tens of thousands of young men, testosterone flowing freely, are currently rampaging around Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Chad, Mali, Tunisia, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon… Ukraine… to name a few places?   What you need are battle fatigues, a Toyota ute with some kind of ordnance mounted on the back, and an assault weapon in your hand which you brandish while you shout what in a politer age we called epithets. 

Presumably all these blokes believe they are in some righteous cause.  Whatever their problems, violence is apparently the way to fix it.  They shoot you.  They believe Allah is pleased.  Some of them commit atrocities – I forced myself to watch the unedited video of the beheading of 20 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya.  I have no words to compass my disgust.  Violence was bringing its own deep satisfactions for these people.  Testosterone and power on one side, humiliation and pain on the other. 

Now the victims of male violence include vast camps of hopelessness, women and children rendered homeless, terrorised, sent wandering and starving. 

Back at home, here where I live in this peaceful land, there are still children and babies brought to hospital with smashed heads or broken arms or ribs.  Women still get attacked at home, injured and raped.  Testosterone rules, along with beer and sport and the mate culture.  One aspect of all this less often told is the violence of the Pacific Island culture.  The ranks will close to conceal women who have been thrashed.  It is considered normal and necessary for children to be whipped.

I have no solutions, except personally to forswear violence in action and speech.   If violent attitudes at least are an addiction, then help may be needed.  But it can be done.  I think we can live without violence.