20. VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

-    Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Earlier, I mentioned how my daughter once asked me if it was okay for good people to do bad things to bad people. What I haven’t told you was my answer to that question, and it’s relevant because it addresses consequences that relate to the Death Drive. So here it is.

When my second daughter was born, sleep in my house became scarce. To help my wife rest, on weekends, my then 4-year-old daughter and I would sneak down to the basement in the morning where I’d practice martial arts while she watched cartoons. So, one morning we went downstairs and on the way I stopped to get her a snack. I was tired, because the newborn had been up all night and as I was getting a bowl of strawberries, my daughter asked out-of-the-blue, “Daddy, is it okay for good people to do bad things to bad people?”

Now, it was early and I was tired and my daughter was in the ‘why’ stage, so all I wanted to do was get her in front of the television so I could wake up. But she’d asked her question as only a 4-year-old can, equal parts innocence and honesty and the profession of arms is all about the use of force. Being a soldier is all about ‘doing bad things to bad people,’ and it seemed to me that if I couldn’t explain this to a 4-year-old, then I likely didn’t deserve the rank on my uniform.

So, I knelt down and looked her in the eyes, the gears in my head grinding away to find a harmless response that would make the question go away. But what I was also thinking was that I wanted her to grow up to be ten times stronger than I could ever be. Because in the real world, there are predators. Yes, danger may not lurk around every corner, but it has a way of finding us when we’re least prepared.

With that in mind, I told her that, sometimes, we must do bad things to people to stop them from doing even worse things to us or people we care about. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to hurt others, because when we hurt someone else, we also hurt ourselves. If I’d been more thoughtful, I might have said, “Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” But as I said, it was early.

As it was, her eyes went up in her head and I remember thinking I’d blown it, and that I’d be explaining myself to my very tired wife later that day. And then, after a few seconds, my daughter said, “okay,” and asked for a strawberry. So I gave her one and then I picked her up and carried her downstairs, thankful the rest of the answer wasn’t needed.

At least, not yet.

See, I’m not such a brave guy after all. Only a necessary one.

Because the full truth is that while, ‘doing bad things to bad people,’ may sometimes be required, it also makes those we hurt want to do, ‘bad things,’ back to us. For every Taliban we captured or killed in Afghanistan, there’s a good chance we created another if not more from their brothers and cousins. And so and so on and all the while, the more things we do that privilege our own needs ahead of others, the easier it becomes to do them. Until at some point, we’ve become the type of person we might not recognize, the kind who don’t think about anything except themselves.