Aggression and Violence
Staying out of trouble and staying alive
Author : Steve Hanafi (Silat Sharaf Practitioner, Malaysia)
2 Million Emergency Room Visits each year.
That value is estimated by the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) regarding visits to the ER due to violent assault. It may be directed towards a specific person or a group of people, or even occur due to alcohol or drug use, but violent assault is something that is not going away anytime soon.
Violent and Aggressive Behavior
While these two are terms that are often used interchangeably, aggression and violence are not the same.
Violence can be defined as the use of physical force with the intent to injure another person or destroy properties while
Aggression is generally defined as angry or violent feelings or behavior. There’s the type of aggression that is intentional but does not mean to cause harm, and there’s the other type that is focused on causing either physical or psychological harm.
Hostile aggression happens in our daily life, in people around us. Bullying at school, road rage, street fights, bar fights, and provoking or taunting someone else – a person of a different race, color, or religion. Although aggression can further result in verbal and physical attacks as a defensive or impulsive reaction.
A violent person will be acting with aggression, but a person with aggressive nature does not necessarily engage in violent acts.
I’ll make it less complicated by turning your attention to examples in the animal kingdom.
A fight between two male kangaroos, fighting over to win the heart of the female kangaroo. The winner will get to mate while the loser walks away in shame. Another example is two cats fighting over for territory. In real life, it can be two guys fighting over a hot girl (Never Back Down, yeah, that movie), or two guys fighting in the bar.
In these situations, aggression happens, they fight in a duel. It’s a 1 vs 1, man to man style of fighting. The intent is mostly to win someone or something. It’s noisy, it’s lousy and tends to attract attention. Both will walk out of the fight and one will emerge victorious, being able to save his pride and ego from being scratched. Aggression has its own goal that can be achieved by any means, whether physically or psychologically.
We can tell it’s nothing pleasant at the receiving end
The predator look. Heads down, eyes focused on the target.
When it comes to violence,…
It’s like a pack of wolves hunting an elk. They stalk from afar, making their way to the elk, slowly, carefully planning their steps, gathering around the elk, making sure there’s no escape route, and when the time is right… boom! They strike! All at once, with little room for the elk to fight what more to escape.
Violent attack usually involves a type of weapon or another
Real-life situation such as a couple of thugs on a bike coming to a cop and emptying their Glock onto the officer then runs away or another example where someone comes up at you, stab your multiple times, hitting vital areas taking away your phone, wallet, and car and leaving you to bleed to death.
The predator stalks the victim, make their move, and taking the victim out in a matter of seconds. The predator will gather as much resource as possible to ensure their greatest percentage of victory, they’ll bring backup, have multiple plans, use a bigger and more effective weapon, strike when they’re least anticipated and pick the easiest target. In this situation it’s not a matter of winning or losing, it’s a matter of living or dying. There’s no duel, no 1 vs 1, the honorable fight is a fictional thing of the past. For animals the difference between being violent or not is getting a meal, for soldiers, it can mean destroying the armed opposition or see their buddies get blown up, for us, it can be surviving a violent altercation and making it home to our family, or not.
Staying out of trouble
- if people start being aggressive towards you
When aggression is involved, one or both side gets heavily injured, but normally no one dies (assuming that murder was not the main intention). 95% of your daily situation can be avoided by just walking the fuck away. Not every situation requires you to fight. You’re at a bar and some clumsy dude spilled your drink or food, just pay for the food and walk away. There’s no need for a “Bar fight seminar” to learn how to fight against some drunk dude in a bar. Win or lose, when the cops come, both are getting charged. So, it’s still a lose-lose situation for you.
If it becomes too overwhelming for you to be patient and not fight back, remember
“Arguing with a fool only proves there’s two”
Staying alive
- when violence strikes
Since we don’t really get to know who, when and for what reason wants to attack us, so the best we can do is prepare and prevent. Prepare through sufficient training which you can get by incorporating violent intentions during training, doing intense physical activity to build strength and stamina, having the right tools for the job and taking preventive measures; situational awareness, prior planning and avoiding high risk areas.
If anything, avoiding from getting involved in both aggression and violence has a multitude of benefit not just for you, but the people around you as well. We train to deal with a multitude of situations, and different circumstances requires different level of responses. Look at it this way, every fight is an investment, and as resources are scarce, fights that give little or nothing in return should and must be avoided. Remember that not all situation requires your response, some are straight bullcrap that deserves to be completely ignored.