Duelling

     One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the sheer naivete of people endorsing violence as a solution to various problems. It is, of course, a cleverly concealed naivete, insofar as favouring violence can make you feel like a toughminded badass, and look down your nose at the idealistic peaceniks and their Kumbaya fantasies. And while it's true that there's a lot of pacifism that is pretty unrealistic (bad guys will not simply lay down their arms), there also seems to be this ridiculous belief that violence can be contained, that it will serve us faithfully, that it will only do what we want it to do and then it'll stop.

     Case in point: there's a cluster of memes that have been circulating for some time now with various images underlying text that reads something to the effect of: "If duelling made a comeback, people these days would be a whole lot less 'offended'."

     Now, to begin with, no they wouldn't. People would be at least as offended as they are now, in no small part because threatening people with violence for expressing themselves in a way you don't like is not far from the top of the list of offensive behaviours. It's probably true that they'd be less inclined to complain about being offended, but that's not at all the same thing.
     But that's the people who aren't good at duelling, or those who are but just really don't want to have to kill someone. Among the people who enjoy violence and are good at it, being offended would become a popular and lucrative hobby. It's amazing how easy it is to be offended by, say, the business rival of a client, or someone your client really really doesn't want as an in-law...
     This is pretty much exactly what happened in Scandinavia, back in the days when holmgang was a lawful way of resolving disputes. Not surprisingly, there were people who made a living going around picking fights with people, and the only people who could defeat them were too busy making their living the same way. Eventually it was abolished because it was profoundly unjust and horribly abused.

     Oh, but it was abused. That wasn't how it was supposed to work. Some bad apples took a perfectly sensible system that would have worked just fine to make everyone be polite and respectful to each other, and they corrupted it into something evil.
     See, there's the naivete I'm talking about. This amazingly selective approach to violence, this belief that we can allow duelling as a remedy only for people who are legitimately, sincerely offended, while somehow magically excluding it from people who are only pretending to be offended for some ulterior motive. It's that same fantastic belief that leads people to think we can somehow magically tell the difference between good guys with guns and bad guys with guns. Or that it's important to ensure the population is armed so they can overthrow the government if it becomes too tyrannical, because somehow it'll only be good decent law-and-freedom loving patriots who would be able to seize power from the tyrants by force of arms, and not evil ambitious tyrants who want to seize power for themselves by force of arms.

     I understand being frustrated with the political process, losing faith in democracy and negotiation. and despairing of ever being able to fix things by these means. And I know what it is to feel certain beyond a reasonable doubt in the righteousness of my cause to warrant meting out just punishment to the evil-doer. I've been temped by violence many times, and still am from time to time.  I've heard the beast ask to be let out of its cage, just a little bit, just to get that one guy who really really deserves it and that'll be the end of it. But that beast lies, and it is naive to trust it to go back into the cage.