Violence is for afraid pussies and only cowards carry weapon

But how can this be verified, other than for example through an analogy , like in Kosinsky ‘Painted Bird’ ?

and apart from the skipped steps,

the gun to the knife fight as you put it, that very seeking to control is about fear.

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Steps Summary
Jerzy Kosinski

Summary

The narrator is a young man who travels from place to place experiencing life in its rawest form. In a small village, he shows his credit cards to a young orphaned woman who washes and mends his clothes and tells her that she will never need money again if she comes with him. She follows him to the city to find a better life for herself and trades sex with him for money. The situation is reversed when he finds himself in a strange city without money and has to trade sex for food.

As a ski instructor in an area close to a tuberculosis sanatorium, he makes love to a woman patient through mirrors; the two never touch. An encounter with a woman at a zoo leads to the narrator’s picking up another woman, who turns out to be a male transvestite. A waiter at a train-station restaurant arranges for the narrator to attend a show where a woman and a large unidentified animal copulate while observers place bets as to the depth of penetration.

A grouping of anecdotes about the army includes stories in which two civilians are killed by a sniper, a group of soccer players disappear when they drive across an artillery practice field, and soldiers play a macho gambling game for entertainment. Punishment for a man who cheats in the game is to have his genitals crushed to a pulp between rocks.

The narrator remembers events that occurred during World War II but were not army experiences. As a boy, he was boarded out with farmers who mistreated him. He got revenge by enticing their children to swallow concealed fishhooks and broken glass, which killed them. A cemetery caretaker he knew had been a boxer before being put into a Nazi concentration camp; his captors let him survive so that he could entertain them by fighting with professionals, but the rules were such that no one wanted to fight against him.

When the narrator was a student at the university, he heard about a scientist who at a Communist Party reception pinned gold condoms on every guest instead of medals. At one time the narrator was banished to an agricultural…

Kosinski’s second novel, Steps, consists of forty-eight short vignettes narrated by an unnamed young man who moves back and forth between two worlds, Communist Eastern Europe and the West. The first is a claustrophobic environment of peasant villages, compulsory military service, political intrigue at a university, and the endless criticism and surveillance of Communist Party organizations such as the kind he described in The Future Is Ours, Comrade. The second, the West, especially America, is an equally treacherous environment where the narrator begins as a victim—like the young Kosinski—because he can hardly speak the language. Eventually, the narrator transforms himself from victim to oppressor. He drives fast cars, learns how to use complex eavesdropping devices, and flashes a wallet full of credit cards.

Steps, then, is the narrator’s account, in a voice that is detached, cool, and seemingly impervious to moral insight, of two related transformations of himself from the status of a character plotted against to that of a writer who does the plotting. In both East and West, the narrator begins as an outsider, speaking the language of victimization. In both, he masters the language of his oppressor and then proceeds to work his will on his enemies, first by escaping from the East, second by acquiring the possessions needed in the West to remain independent—income, credit, mobility.

Language and sex in Steps can be either sources of power or signs of weakness, depending on how the relationship between speaker and hearer, or between sexual partners, establishes itself. The narrator sees both language and sex in terms of the interaction of will. Each activity involves…

Guide

The Painted Bird

Jerzy Kosinski

However beating up, especially regularly, someone you supposedly love who you are bigger and stronger than shows a need to control yourself and the other person, and apart from the skipped steps, -------

So there are periods when the police and military stop putting a gun to everybody’s head and forcing them to obey or die or get put in a cage? We disagree what conflict is, clearly.

We also disagree on what constitutes violence. Defending yourself is part of violent conflict. Sometimes it can be just as damaging to the enemy, or even more, than an attack would be.

And a toddler can also press a button which activates thousands of nukes, therefore we are all equal. Lol.

Some people are more competent in violence across a broader spectrum of situations, most importantly in realistically probable situations, not extremely unlikely ones like a toddler in a room with a 1000 nukes button.

Who is arguing for doing this?

Of course people seek to control their environment. And yeah, if I allow certain beings to be free agents, they will do things that I deem undesirable - you could say I fear these things, maybe that’s true, whatever - the point is, they are undesirable to me, so I will want to stop them and not let them be free agents.

I’m not going to let my dog into my house and be a free agent, cause it shits and pisses everywhere. Since I don’t want shit and piss everywhere (you could say I fear shit and piss), I ban my dog from going inside.

What is wrong or weird about this?

You just say it as if people are supposed to automatically consider it bad with no argument or explanation.

Interesting how some people would only say you are fearful if you deny somebody the freedom to do things you don’t like.

What about people who don’t like that others do something, yet they don’t act? How come they don’t get accused of being fearful?

If anything, I would say both are fearful, but the first deals with fear in a more brave manner - by fighting back, while the second remains passive, possibly (I’d say probably) out of cowardice.

Krishnamurti said that.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_rbPhUOpxQ[/youtube]

The linear strategy to control violence has changed into a complex rate of change which is becoming immeasurable , like the safety becomes a barrier as the quick draw approaches limits.

That’s the problem with change, it virtually turns brain and brawn into a conflicting sets of parameters.

You’ve found an ally :obscene-drinkingcheers:

I was listening to Chris Hedges today who said the original idea of liberalism was to be in the middle between (presumably) the two forms of authoritarianism: plutocracy on one hand and fascist dictatorship on the other. It’s quite long, but nonetheless interesting conversation on booktv youtube.com/watch?v=xPoIprwyW0Y

The only system is a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

A recent example is a proposal that would create a new judicial branch specifically for business cases that would unclog the system, which seems like a good idea, but the problem is the governor would appoint the judges, so I had to vote no. The people may not make the best decisions in elections, but at least there is a chance and a mechanism for breaking the cycle of corruption as opposed to having a governor appoint his buddies to the bench.

[i]Benjamin Franklin’s Final Speech in the Constitutional Convention
from the notes of James Madison

I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution: For when you assemble a Number of Men to have the Advantage of their joint Wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those Men all their Prejudices, their Passions, their Errors of Opinion, their local Interests, and their selfish Views. From such an Assembly can a perfect Production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this System approaching so near to Perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our Enemies, who are waiting with Confidence to hear that our Councils are confounded, like those of the Builders of Babel, and that our States are on the Point of Separation, only to meet hereafter for the Purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. [/i] pbs.org/benfranklin/pop_finalspeech.html

I get that too.

Have you met a policeman? If so, were they taking turns with their colleagues holding loaded guns to peoples’ heads? I mean, even as an entire force, the VAST majority of the time, nobody even has a gun aimed at anyone. Same with the military.

So maybe you’re speaking figuratively? “They may as well be” (which is the whole point of a deterrent)? But even then it’s only if you act in very specific ways that are by far the exception, that you break laws. For the vast majority of people, they don’t even need to think twice about doing what they feel like and worrying about whether a policeman or soldier is going to point a gun at them. Maybe you and/or the people you know are constantly aching to do things that are unfortunately against the law? If so that’s kinda unusual, man.

Maybe you’re trying to say that only honest people are the ones who’re constantly aching to do things that are against the law? Don’t you know anyone who genuinely gets a kick out of doing nice things and helping people? I dunno, maybe your crowd are such edgelords that such thoughts are forbidden, in which case I feel sorry for you :\

In my opinion we’re still laying out our positions, and you’re still pouncing on any slightest inkling that we disagree… like I said, this approach really isn’t helpful if you want to get to the bottom of things. If that’s not your intention and all you’re seeking to do is get one up on others, then we’re after different things I’m afraid.

So dodging a punch is inflicting violence on the person who threw a punch… yeah maybe we do disagree after all - let’s see. Perhaps the dodge inflicts mental anguish and doubt on the punching person and therefore they incur psychic damage? I dunno, man, what you’re suggesting here is a long shot…

Well, define competence. If consequence is at least a main factor if not the only one, the toddler pressing the 1000 nukes button is at the top of competence in violence…

You’re trying to refer to a more varied potential to impose violence on others that’s less circumstantially dependent, but like I already said, the weapons manufacturer and the military strategist that you mentioned need very specific situations to occur for their talents to bring about violence. An MMA fighter needs close-up combat, a sniper long-range… Even a certain mix of all these talents is circumstantial - which is the whole point that I was making when I took it to the extremes that I did… Sure a marine would have more capacity for violence than your average gender studies first-year, but here you are saying that defending yourself is part of violent conflict. “Sometimes it can be just as damaging to the enemy, or even more, than an attack would be” if the student ran away? :\ Which way do you want it? Is violence in everything or are some people more competent?

I dunno why I’m pressing this point, we both know what you mean, it just doesn’t seem that air-tight of a point - it has tons of issues with it. That’s all I’m trying to get across to you, but then I guess that’s just us disagreeing and me being naive etc? Perhaps you’ll at least acknowledge that my points have validity, but at this point I hardly expect humility from people here. Some have it, which is a great strength and it might even be possible to make some real progress with such people. But there is only regression to be had with the hostile.

Unwrong in the thread on women cannot be strong and victims at the same time. I posted a response, talking about how the violence those men use is based on fear, and that they are responsible for their own behavior and it is not inevitable, etc., and later that day you started this thread. I though it was a partial response to what I said - Perhaps it was a coincidence, but I took it as a response - so it seemed like you were supporting his position. He was not suggesting one should beat women, but rather that it was simply sort of inevitable, what else can a lower status man do. IOW they had no responsibility. As if only lower status men beat women, and many other problems with his post. Then your thread appears seemingly mocking the idea I raised, about those men actually being afraid to face their own feelings and so they turn to violence, but in this thread it is as if you are responding to a general claim about all violence.

By the way is anyone here arguing that violence is for afraid pussies and only cowards carry guns? I could see some new age people, some pacifists, I suppose. But I’d be suprised if someone really generalized like that here. But if they did, I will happily go and criticize that position.

Of course, but this makes no sense in the context of a romantic/love relationship. To keep being around someone who you do not want to be a free agent is giving yourself a lot of work where there is nothing for you, or the other person. You become a defacto jailer on the side of your actual job. And since controlling women by hitting them is a way of avoiding all the fear of what a free agent would do, feel, say, think, you are messing up your own mind as well, rather than dealing with whatever problems you have.

Of course there are many situations where one must and does control the environment. But who wants to live with a prisoner? Time to leave or deal with your shit.

Out in the world with not-family, not friends, of course we take also sorts of steps to control things, though on the violence end, generally to defend and prevent violence and other seriously negative stuff from happening. Soldiers and police are another case entirely, and regular citizens in extreme situations where pre-emptive violence may be necessary.

[/quote]
It related to the man who feels he needs to hit the person he supposedly loves. She ain’t a dog and if she ain’t using violence, he has no need to escalate to that level. And if he wants to anyway, it’s time to look for someone else. Or deal with the emotions he is jumping past when he decides to hit her.

If I was wrong that you were in some way responding to what I wrote in the other thread, my apologies. My argument in that thread was specific to the situation where a man is hitting a woman he supposedly loves. (and would hold for women battering men cases). I do not have some generalizatin that people are in some kind of fucked up mental state if they use violence or necessarily in denial or skipping steps. There are many situations where I would use violence, and in a few cases have. It seemed like you took my analysis of a specific type of violence and generalized it. But perhaps you just started a thread that had no connection in your mind to that other thread. Great. I don’t know who believes what you titled your thread as. If they are here, link me to a post and I’ll join in being critical of that position. It’s silly.

Sillyho, it’s hard to say there’s no conflict when you have to threaten those who disagree with your rules with imprisonment, a beating, or even death. That there is no open conflict is obviously because one party - the system’s enforcers - is so much more powerful than others that no other even dares to challenge it. It’s an inequality.

Some laws don’t make sense.

Yes and therefore toddlers are equal with adults. And hey, a cat could accidentally press the button too, therefore it is equal to humans. Oh wait, an apple falling from the tree could also press the button, so it is equal too.

But you’d never seriously argue any of that in practice. You’re just being disingenuous and trying to spread confusion.

Unless the Toddler can not distinguish a metaphore

I didn’t read that entire thread but yes, originally this thread was a response to the things in your post.

I think men who have authority in the relationship are “jailors” of women as much as the state is a jailor of all of us, or as much as humans are jailors of animals they keep as pets, or as much as adults are jailors of children.

What I’m trying to get across to you is that if we are going to live on the same territory, somebody is inevitably going to end up having authority.

And when it comes to male female relationships it only makes sense for that somebody to be men, for reasons which are obvious unless you have been thoroughly brainwashed by feminism.

Yes the state are jailors of men. But I think men are mostly manipulators and not jailors of women.

There are several problems and why this is. So Ecmandu is not fully crazy, only half crazy.

First, the state are both jailors and manipulators of males and females.

Males, are mostly manipulators, but not jailors, of females.

The reason that males must manipulate females is obvious: Modern females are usually repulsed by most males inherently, and rarely approach. If all males followed Ecmandu’s advice, which says never to manipulate or approach females, then only 2% of males would ever get laid. Which is what Ecmandu complains about in the first place.

Nikola Tesla first noticed this trend 100 years ago, that females were becoming increasingly masculine. Females will a masculine mind will never approach males. So males have to somehow activate their feminine minds to have any kind of relationship.

When females, have minds that are so masculine that they are literally repulsed by penis, then people tend to drift towards fantasies to counteract that, such as BDSM fantasies of females in bondage who lust for and worship the penis.

You’re over complicating this. It’s really more simple. If you lust for women, you are evil. If you offend a woman, you are evil. Even if you are a minority. It all revolves around maintaining the female ability to control sex. If you are a white gay who wouldn’t dare flirt with a woman, then you are ok and a good person in the book of SJWs. Except you can’t offend a woman either. That is why the white gay known as Milo is not ok in the SJW book either.

Also, the other thing I noticed, its like with American women only the most basest, primitive part of their mind is flourishing, while their feminine, Natural part of mind rots and withers into nothing.
Okay, let me explain.
Picture an American school. There is a hot guy at the school. And the hot guy has a crush on a girl. The girl has a masculine and feminine part of her mind. The masculine, hostile part is to keep her safe of danger. So the guy tries to approach her. She cruelly rejects him, because she is in man-mode. In normal society, there would be feminine women. Women talking about sex and penis. Encouraging her to be more feminine and give him a chance. But nope. Instead she will read a bunch of feminist garbage. The masculine part of her mind will continue to grow, like a tumor. She will become more and more masculine. The human part of her mind, that has empathy, will wither and rot into nothing. She will become increasingly unable to comprehend anyone else’s problems except people who think exactly like she does. She won’t have any nurturing qualities. The only men she will ever sleep with, most likely was when she was under the influence, drunk or on drugs, because without drugs she would be in her normal, masculine state, hating fearing males and having no empathy for males. So most likely she will get hitched to some addict. Most likely, her children will be raised in a daycare, her husband will have left her after a divorce paying her child support, and her kids will be raised by the State and a masculine, non-nurturing woman, without any paternal influence. Having a macho mind, she will want to ban guns, because men fight with their hands. People who are too macho usually don’t see the need for guns, they don’t feel any fear or danger in society. They look at the stats objectively, like a robot. Guns kill people. Thus they should be banned for the greater good. Nowhere will they even think about buying body armor, to protect themselves or their family. Because, like a macho man, they have no self identity, they dont value themselves as an individual. They are just part of a collective. Just like how men in the titanic, robotically sacrifice themselves. Macho women, wouldn’t feel any fear living in a filthy, dilapidated city full of danger. Thus they wouldn’t see anything wrong with equality. Filthy, dangerous, eye-sore cities would be equal to clean, natural, european cities of the beautiful countryside. And we all must support equality of the urban city because urban, dilapidated city is good and we ought to be proud of the progress we made.

My life has been threatened and in danger several times. But I had to deal with a pathetic liberal pansy who didn’t believe in guns so I had to hide in total darkness for an hour in fear. I have had to deal with crazy stalkers and insane drunk people who had a gun trying to break into my home. So I don’t need people like you who live with a sheltered spoon trying to take away my right to live. People who want to ban my guns, they are literally no different than some murderous asshole who wants to kill me.

And even if I was a sheltered spoon like you. And nothing but safe. I would read up the law of averages. Being safe for so long means something bad is bound to happen to me. Id get suspicious and arm myself.

And then there’s the other thing. You’re probably a goodie two shoes who’s been brainwashed by cartoons. Crappy, childish superhero cartoons who look down on honest criminals. You don’t believe in ancient fairy tales like Robin Hood anymore. It’s like kids read Robin Hood. But yet they don’t take it to heart. Thankfully things are beginning to change. They made a recent movie with Michael Palin, glorifying bank robbery. And that is a step in the right direction. Banning guns will give less chance of honest criminals to get away with crimes. That is why I can’t stand surveillance.

If you give the government complete control, any random inbred tyrant who happens to born into it, gets to do what they want. And as we know politics is already corrupt and controlled by the rich elite. So why the hell would you want them to have total control in the first place?

You might have a point that my background clouds my judgment of what it’s like to live in environments that are unfamiliar to me.

No doubt it works both ways, but I don’t want to deny you or anyone a right to live. Yet again the main factor at play seems to be poverty, and what it can do to people such that they feel the need to use guns aggressively, causing everyone else to feel the need to use guns defensively. I would rather these people were instead allowed to grow up in similar situations as I did, because those conditions don’t cause the kind of catch 22 that you’re describing.

This is why I advocate relative wealth equality. Not absolute equality, that’s dumb. It’s my theory that there’s a sweet spot between that and what we have now that can be regulated - ideally self-regulated through an optimal mechanism.

As it is, our global sledgehammer solution is “government” to regulate the private sector that rewards the pushing of inequality towards extremes with visible but insufficient forces towards equality.
To answer your closing question, I don’t want them to have total control any more than I want private sector “winners” to have total control, or anything close to it on either end.
The naive ideals are that government will successfully self-regulate (left) or the private sector will (right). The only people worth listening to are the ones who are able to think outside of the box.

I’d rather people didn’t feel the need to be criminals, honest or not.

This was all set into motion ages ago, with the banks taking over our country 100 years ago, the American dollar has decreased steadily in value ever since. If you look at the wealth distribution charts it looks ridiculous, like the 1% has so much wealth it escapes the bounds of the page, and the poor have wealth that is only a few pixels tall, the middle class only having double or triple the amount the poor has, while the 1% would take several pages to print out how long their bar is.

It’s like that thing with lions. One alpha male lion takes over the tribe and kicks out all the other males, and makes all the women his bitches and gets to have all the girls. Then the other male lions are exiled and turn gay. Then turn straight again and kick out the last alpha and become the next douchebag in his place. As humans, I thought we were beyond such behavoirs. But this banning guns thing just seems like a propaganda pushed by the 1% to further emasculate the other lions.

You’re not going to stem accelerating inequality by giving more poor people guns, sorry. Especially not considering the modern technology that the rich can fight back with.
Guns do nothing except protect/kill those who had the bad luck to be born to the wrong parents in the wrong neighbourhood, or to be in the wrong place at the wrong time/be shot by accident.

Inequality goes deeper than a scheme set in motion ages ago by banks, or propaganda. The richer you are the more likely you are to become richer and the poorer you are the less likely you are to get out of poverty. Anecdotes abound of exceptions, but the rule is the rule, and it appears to follow the Pareto distribution.

The mechanism needs to be amended to cause wealth to dissipate (more) evenly for the benefit of everyone, but there are so many archaic ideals to contend with here, but more menacingly the simple fact that if you can cheat the system and get away with it, you and others like you (more likely to be genetically and environmentally similar to the cheater) will proliferate and the whole problem will spiral away yet again. At this point it seems to be a choice between what form we want inequality to take. It used to be aristocracy, before then it was the kind of might that these “alpha male lions” of which you speak had in order to dominate others. What kind will we come up with next to replace the current one?

I’ve been wrestling with the possibility that there may be no solution for a long time now, I just know that if there was one, we’d not need to bother having this kind of debate.

The solution is obvious. Maybe if the 1% stopped feeding us fake news and putting toxins in all of foods and flourides in our water, poor people would be better at math and business because they wouldn’t have brain damage from all the chemicals the 1% made to keep us down. Feminism and hating males also a tool made up by the 1%, making it llegal to be male. So much paperwork too, everything has fines and fees and its just draining to even try and navigate society, everything is so damn over-regulated with the fine print and taxes and fines and fees. They over tax the middle class and the super rich just seem to always get richer while the middle class always seems to be in debt. And then you have to act like a trendy goodie two shoes to even be given a job, its really similar to Orwellian attitudes where everyone has to act a certain way and people who are negative or talk about conspiracies are viewed as going against the program. The program is of course the 2 party system and prison plantation meant to mostly benefit the 1%.

I too hate the institutionalised superficiality of the whole economic game, and yet to so many people it comes so easily and even at least seemingly naturally. These people are never the ones who are the most honest, brave and free thinkers either - so I am faced with a society that encourages and even rewards something I consider to be a grave vice: inauthenticity, and it even at least tacitly punishes its opposite that I consider to be a great virtue (no doubt giving lip service to say the opposite, but actions speak louder than words) - Orwellian indeed.

The effects of poverty on human physiology and subsequently their cognitive faculties is provably extreme enough without any foul play like poisoning water and supplying/prescribing questionable chemicals. Even in utero effects are far more severe than people previously thought - at the very least it’s enough to stunt the development of the frontal cortex that is needed for things like math, business and seeing through fake news. It’s actually better for everyone to keep people out of poverty for this reason alone - including the 1%. They won’t feel their superiority over others quite so much, but the collective contribution of everyone being healthier and more mentally capable will elevate even the 1% higher than they currently are.

But that’s the whole problem.
To so many people, they would rather sacrifice something of themselves to cause others to fail even worse. This is the driving force behind all the philosophies of unregulated inequality being morally superior - dressing it all up with ideal notions of freedom.

I’m not sure you explicitly said what the obvious solution is, but you don’t need to, because the obvious solution is to solve the above tendency. But the obvious problem is that this obvious solution has no obvious mechanism by which we can achieve it. I’m more and more sure that it’s not even possible all the time.