When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

by Tim Larkin

Some of those men who sized up Conner in the CCDC were garden-variety thieves and drug dealers. Perhaps a handful were violent sociopaths. But there was no telling them apart on sight in the cafeteria, just as there was no telling any of those criminals apart on sight from the ordinary people on Fremont Street. That was my lesson for Conner: you can’t tell just by sight who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy. Each one of the men who walked out of CCDC that day was, the day before, one of the guys in the cafeteria who stopped cold to size us up as potential threats. And if my experience watching Mike nearly bleed out twenty-five years earlier at the hands of a man half his size was any indication, there was no telling which one of those newly free men was the scariest, either. But remember: all of what I’ve been explaining goes both ways. Just as there’s no way to de-escalate a situation of true, asocial violence, there’s no reason to escalate a situation of social aggression. We learn the difference between the two not only to prepare ourselves to fight for our lives when we absolutely have to, but also to prepare ourselves to wisely back down when there’s no need for a fight.