The imaginary violence that resides inside

Kirk Ericson | Jun 02, 20220

I’m not a violent person. I’m a flighter, not a fighter.

I don’t like to be intimately involved in the slaying of anything, even vermin in our home. I’ll escort spiders and moths to the door. I tell them to find somewhere else to play.

However, I did liquidate a stump near our front door a couple of summers ago that housed a wasps’ nest. When wasps sting a couple of times, you tend to lose your convictions.

So I’m mystified by a tendency my brain has, and I wonder how common this tendency is among others.

When I’m driving along a street, for instance, I might imagine what effect a rocket-propelled grenade would have on a structure if it was fired through the front door. Sometimes when I’m on a bluff with homes in the distance, I’ll think about how many mortar rounds it would take to find the range on one of those structures.

Sometimes when I look through binoculars, I’ll imagine directing artillery at advancing enemy forces. I might imagine firing torpedoes at oncoming vessels when I’m on a boat. Sometimes when I’m in an airplane, I imagine what effect a payload of high explosives would have on the city below.

I have no desire or ability to commit any of those actions. I have no desire to cause another human grievous or non-grievous bodily harm. Really. And I wish more people on this planet didn’t have the desire to cause other people harm.

This imagined violence, at least for me, is similar to being on a high structure and having that fleeting thought of jumping. The French call it l’appel du vide (the call of the void). Ahh, the French.

But the question remains: Why waste valuable daydreaming time thinking of such things? I do it less the older I get, but it’s still there.

I asked some friends — all men — whether they have such thoughts. One said he sometimes imagines throwing a full beer bottle through a storefront window. Another said when he looks through a telescope, he sometimes imagines it’s a sniper rifle.

Another said, “Yeah, I’ve had those thoughts. When I was 12.”

Maybe I’m just a victim of gender. If there’s a destructive sex, it’s males. History is littered with wars started by male leaders who picked a fight because they wanted to prove how tough they were. The people of their respective nations are manipulated along, and the next thing you know it’s kaboom, kaboom.

It’s hard to imagine a woman conjuring weapons such as thermobaric missiles, cluster bombs, napalm, AR-15-style rifles, daisy cutters, bomblets shaped like toys and white phosphorous. Women are either not wired to pursue such endeavors or society hasn’t encouraged them to pursue such ends.

It’s easier to imagine women inventing something that protects us, like Stephanie Kwolek did. She invented Kevlar.

Or maybe I give women too much credit. Maybe the pursuit of equality eventually will lead to equality in destructive tendencies. Or maybe increased equality will temper the male destructive urge.

But we’re here, now, and we’ve got these thoughts about destruction mucking about our brains. Do violent thoughts inevitably lead to violent acts? Do they need to be excavated from our brains and shot? Or hugged?

I’m a fan of peace: Peace talks, peace in the valley, peace pipes, Peace Corps. But to be a true fan of peace, we must understand that the command “Blessed are the peacemakers” likely requires us first to be peace thinkers.