Signaling an aversion to violence is really the low-hanging fruit of people who want to show off how virtuous they are.

in violence •  5 months ago 

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The problem is that, just like most other ideas that seem simple, people don't think things through.

Violence is a broad term. Violence usually isn't justified; but, it often is. What's more important is that, in order to be useful in some situations, you have to at least be able to handle looking at violence. Taken to an extreme, coupled with irresponsible behavior, this aversion to violence can actually make people dangerous.

Now, if you're squeamish, and you can't stand seeing blood, or seeing someone getting shot or stabbed, I'm not going to demand that you force yourself to watch John Wick or Kill Bill or Black Hawk Down or Saving Private Ryan. It's your perogative to miss out on some of the best movies ever made in their respective genres.

That said, if you can't handle fictional violence, how are you supposed to handle real violence? You probably refuse to expose yourself to seeing real violence. You probably have trouble processing real violence with any objectivity if you are forced to see it.

Again, that's all fine if you just admit that you're useless when it comes to assessment of cases of real life violence.

That's fine. I'm useless if you want somebody to shoot a basketball through a hoop. We're all useless at a lot of things. You're only dangerous if you don't admit that you're useless.

Right now, a lawsuit is filed in response to the Uvalde school shooting. The defendants would be Daniel Defense, Meta, and the makers of the game Call of Duty.

The only way that anybody could argue that Call of Duty is a driving factor in inspiring troubled young men to kill innocent unarmed children -- without simply having the cash grab motivation -- is if it's a person who knows so little about violence that it all looks the same.

I'm not much of a gamer; but, I know that Call of Duty is fairly violent. I also know that there isn't a level where the goal is to break into a school and shoot a bunch of defenseless kids.

I'm not saying that people should be entirely desensitized to violence. Still, adults shouldn't be so sensitive that all violence looks the same to the point that they can't see the difference between a game where you're playing a soldier fighting against armed neo-Nazis or terrorist or whatnot, and killing a bunch of children.

Almost everybody I've met who still thinks that Kyle Rittenhouse should have been convicted is either somebody who has virtue signalled that he or she is so averse to violence that they couldn't watch the video evidence, or people who were so emotional that they saw things that weren't there.

Again, if you can't handle watching three people get shot, that's fine. Just shut your gob about the case. Admit that you're too sensitive to be useful here.

Alas, that's the one thing I haven't seen in this case. I haven't encountered a single one of these people who just "hate violence too much" who have said, "You know what? I know that there's video of the incident. I just can't emotionally handle it. I'm removing myself from the discussion."

That's the adult, responsible thing to do, that nobody is fucking doing.

There is no shame in recusing yourself. Sometimes it takes tremendous strength to look at yourself, acknowledge your weakness, and assess your own ability to be useful in a situation.

Murray Rothbard once said that there's no sin in being ignorant of economics, but the sin lies in having passionate opinions about economics while remaining ignorant.

The same goes for violence. You've done nothing wrong by being too sensitive to be objective and well educated. It's downright, outright morally wrong to express passionate opinions and judgements on what are invariably important, often life or death cases.

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