> This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems. > ⚔️ Have you ever been in a situation where you were told something like "violence is always the wrong answer" and it felt like bad or hypocritical advice? If you're up for sharing, I'd love to hear your take. The Council closed the Akademe without saying why, but like all his fellow students, Neyik heard the rumors: the ancillary students left, and injured most of the senior professors in the process. Turned out "left" was code for "fled" which was itself code for "escaped" — from Akademe mages trying to create perfect soldiers.  Wolves who walked as men; men who walked as wolves, wielding swords and claws and able to fend off even the cruelest of armies. Or creators. --- ## Afterword When it comes to violence, there are generally two modes of thought. The most popular stance — the philosophy endorsed by most schools where I've worked — is best summed up by Martin Luther King, Jr. > This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems. This claim has bothered me since childhood. Let's take this out of the realm of interpersonal conflict for a moment. While this story and afterword were prompted by the incident where [Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars](https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60897004), this is not _about_ that; my opinion is that [I lack the context and cultural background to have an opinion](https://twitter.com/NomeDaBarbarian/status/1508307384845803521?t=dmIikK-NTwEBwXF3b16okg) on the incident. Instead, let's think about veganism. In the 21st century, it is completely possible to have a diet that completely avoids violence towards animals. People can reasonably say "killing animals is unethical" or "slaughtering animals is more damaging for the environment than growing vegetables" or "pastoral herding economies are more trouble than hunter-gatherer lifestyles in ideal environmental conditions." Whether or not these are positions everyone agrees with, they are at least debatable. But the idea that violence is _ineffective_ seems... strange to me. Some people ([like me](https://eleanorkonik.com/vapid/) %% ( [[2021-11-10 Vapid (DRAFT)]] ) %%) might not know _how_ to slaughter a chicken, but that is not the same thing as "violence doesn't solve anything" — violence towards chickens can absolutely solve food crises, and the question of whether one _should_ commit violence towards chickens is a _strategic_ and _ethical_ one. It is not [a priori](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/apriori/) true that violence is ineffective. Killing a salmon can absolutely solve a problem involving caloric deficits. I'll agree that violence can multiply evil and that initiating violence is often the wrong choice, but that is a _strategic_ analysis, and perhaps an _ethical_ one; on a pure "cause and effect" analysis, violence solves problems all the time. Violence against Native Americans certainly "solved" the problem of "not enough land" for Andrew Jackson's constituents; it was in my opinion _unethical_ and _the wrong choice_ for a whole host of reasons, but on at least one level certainly _worked_; Andrew Jackson's constituents benefitted in at least some ways from Andrew Jackson's violence. "Did it solve a problem" is different from "was it the best solution," of course — there are some long-term consequences of Andrew Jackson's actions that his descendants are having to deal with, for sure. I'm not trying to sweep those under the rug. But given a choice between starving to death and punching a rival in the face to steal his food, there is a difference between "violence is the wrong choice" and "violence is ineffective." Some situations really are [zero-sum games](https://brilliant.org/wiki/zero-sum-games/), sometimes violence does really solve problems. It's not without _cost_, it sometimes _creates other problems,_ but if the problem is "I am starving to death" or "I am being physically beaten on a daily basis by an enemy," the idea of taking violence completely off the options list is bizarre to me. Hitting classmates doesn't solve a bully's underlying emotional issues, certainly, but learning martial arts well enough to defend yourself against a bully — to _fight back_ often _is_ effective at getting the behavior to stop. There are risks, of course: escalation of this nature can land somebody in the hospital, or expelled from school. Choosing violence, like all choices, has consequences. But "violence never works" is different from "you will be punished if you fight." A school's zero tolerance policy for fighting sometimes has more to do with the inability of schools to properly adjudicate issues than ethics. Fights almost always come down to "he said, she said" finger-pointing, and it's compounded by the fact that administrators of schoolhouse rules have an easier day when it's just one child quietly being bullied by another instead of something more visible than two kids fighting. Most administrators and counselors have remarkably little patience for interpersonal drama and are frustrated by the lack of tools they have to meaningfully _solve_ interpersonal problems, so there's not much to be done except punish both parties and move on. Religious dogma like "if someone hits you, turn the other cheek and let them hit you again" makes sense in some contexts; oppressed groups fighting a powerful government can't win in a toe-to-toe fighting match and then must make the strategic decision to use passivity as a weapon. Strategically speaking, that's valid. But [economic insecurity leads to violence](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/15/kenyas-pastoralists-face-hunger-and-conflict-as-locust-plague-continues) precisely because _violence can solve problems of economic insecurity_. Not always, of course, but sometimes, actually, violence can: - raise awareness of a particular situation - allow one group to secure resources that once belonged to another group - prevent another group from taking your resources [Measured violence is often a reasonable response to harm](https://twitter.com/magpiekilljoy/status/1508310900993888261). Whether it's _a good idea_ is a separate issue entirely, and "what counts as violence" is an increasingly fraught question in modern discourse. But when deciding whether to engage in violence, there are questions of strategy, ethics, and optics to consider. Part of that consideration is the knowledge most of us share: that violence absolutely can solve problems. To pretend it can't is an enormous disservice to basically everyone. While "violence is always the wrong answer" can be a useful rule of thumb for children (and adults in "civilized" societies) who have more effective protectors to turn to, it's not aligned with the complexities of reality. The "graduate students" in _Left,_ who chose violence over remaining captive, are not well-served by the advice to turn the other cheek and keep taking the abuse. They fought back and escaped, and I can't imagine a scenario in which I could tell people in their situation, "it's ineffective to answer violence with violence" with a straight face. I will grant [violence is the last refuge of the incompetent](https://www.forbes.com/quotes/4550/), but [nothing good ever comes of violence](https://www.forbes.com/quotes/6682/)? Sometimes, violence brings freedom. Other times, it brings food. Violence not a perfect solution ethically pursued in an ideal world — but to imagine it's _never_ the right call? The 3rd century Visigoths — [facing starvation and corrupt generals insisting on enslaving their children](https://www.thoughtco.com/valens-and-the-battle-of-adrianople-121404) — would beg to differ.  So would the Swordwulfen refugees from the Edarebian Akademe. > ⚔️ Have you ever been in a situation where you were told something like "violence is always the wrong answer" and it felt like bad or hypocritical advice? If you're up for sharing, I'd love to hear your take.