Mark Morford: "I Am Done With Violence" (a worthy read)

[Katherine Brengle]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/03/15/notes031506.DTL&nl=fix

[niyad]

1. he is one of my favourite people--and this column is defnitely one of his

best. will go post it so my little trolls' heads can explode!!

[Katherine Brengle]

2. I like him too, he has a very unique voice--

and I agree that this is one of his best that I have read.

[Mythsaje]

3. I spent most of my life

studying the martial arts. I doubt I'll ever get over my love for a well-executed choreographed fight scene. But I'm also growing jaded in my maturity...I don't want to see the same things over and over again (one of the reasons I'm pretty much done with Jackie Chan. Been there, done that).

But I think somewhere along the way the majority of Americans have forgotten that violence has a specific place, that it's not meant to be a gratituous expression of our frustrations.

I had a teacher once--a fabulously skilled martial artist, but a really crappy human being. He confused "heart" with the idea of "not taking shit from anyone," as if somehow the skills he'd developed gave him some kind of natural right to beat the crap out of someone for the mere act of being disrespectful.

Respect, I already knew, is a two-way street. If you don't respect another person's right to exist and act differently than you might, you have no right to expect respect in turn. Interposing our own expectations on other people is a betrayal of our own honor and the self-respect it takes to maintain it.

For me the first expression of self-defense is awareness of an approaching problem. The second is diplomacy. A line out of the first Karate Kid movies that has always stuck with me was when Miyagi asked "Why do you want to learn how to fight?" and got the reply "so I don't have to."

Violence should be an expression of necessity, not simply a single option in a list of choices with equal merit. I don't blame the media so much for this, since we, as a species, have always been violent. In fact, the dialogue about the place violence has within our society has grown more involved SINCE television and movies have become a major part of our culture.

Even as a gamer (table-top or computer, typically) I'm more interested in problem solving than hack and slash. It's not unusual for me to run a whole game session without once including a fight. Some gamers find this frustrating, but others find it refreshing. Violence should, even in fantasy, often be a last resort. There are often better options.