Category: Societal Smarts

Tribes, Super-tribes, Uber-Tribes – Marc MacYoung

Something I am working on is explaining the human ‘wiring’ to be tribal and how modern society has pushed us out of our comfort zone when it comes to the ‘size’ of our tribe.

This is a simple concept with MASSIVE implications.
Starting with that we ‘owe’ obligations/sharing/support/concern to those INSIDE our tribe. The rules of how we treat those inside our tribe are very specific. We NEED the tribe for our survival. These reciprocal tribal obligations are what kept our species alive on a planet that was trying to kill us. Yes, this is a species level survival issue. Other species went extinct, we haven’t — because we are social primates. At the same time, when it comes to those outside our small tribe… well it ranges from not my problem to ‘fuck them’ to — and this is the source of my growing concern — “We’re going to get those evil rat bastards.” Changing tracks, I want you to understand something about an idea you take for granted. Nations are a VERY recent invention in terms of humanity. (250 years vs. 200,000 years.) Here’s another kick to the gut. The idea isn’t global yet either. But let’s look at what you were raised in in the West. We are told that as a nation we are a giant Uber-tribe. If you are a US citizen you have 324,000,000 fellow tribes people. You’ve been conditioned to accept this as ‘normal.’ Except there’s just one little glitch…

This is beyond most people’s functional ability — WAY beyond. Dunbar’s number postulates that we can only maintain between 100 to 250 stable relationships. That is our actual ‘tribe’ (or village if you will). With a little mental gymnastics most people can be comfortable with the idea of a Super-tribe (lots of people like them). We start gritting our teeth at the Uber-tribe. Where people really glitch is when someone tries to promote the idea that the ‘tribe’ is global. Ummmm I owe tribal obligations to 7 billion people? Totally over the sanity horizon, for anyone not espousing it, is saying animals, trees and Mother Earth are also your tribe — and you owe them the same obligations. Riiiiiiiiiiiigght.

Here’s the hitch. Uber-tribes are just too big. Going back to something I mentioned in passing we can sort of, kinda wrap our heads around Super-tribes. These are imaginary super groups that we both self-identify with and label others as. In the self-identity category, this reduces the ‘uber’ to a smaller, more intellectually manageable super-size. So now instead of 324,000,000 million your Super-tribe is a tens or hundreds of millions. The four main categories we use to separate ourselves from the Uber-tribe are politics, race, religion and socio-economic.
We’re more comfortable with drawing these lines between Super-tribes. But guess what? When we do that we fall into the “Us v.s. Them” mindset of tribalism. A mindset that historically had checks, balances, limits, consequences and most of all rules of behavior — especially when it came to getting along. Rules that if you broke, people you loved died.

This isn’t just internal rules that you followed. (Kosher and Halah food rules will keep your family from dying of food poisoning in the desert.) It’s very much keeping people you love from getting killed because of something you did to a member of another tribe. That’s tribal warfare out at the sharp end. And despite the bad rap it gets, way more time and effort is spent on trying to keep from having to try to slaughter each other than killing. This is people you know and love dying if you screwed that pooch.

Except now we’ve got a weird mix. A mix that can manifest in many different ways. One way is “Well I didn’t know the guy personally, but a member of my Super-tribe was killed by a member of a hated other Super-tribe, so that’s that.” Another version is “I want my Super-tribe controlling the Uber-tribe” (with no idea of what it takes to actually run things). Then there’s folks who seem hell bent on “We’re going to force you to do what we want.” This can — and often does — mix with “I’m relying on the rules of the Uber-tribe to keep me safe as I spit my hate at the other Super-tribes.”

This is a bit of a problem for a variety or reasons. One of which is you virtue signal inside your own tribe for status and conformity “Those rat bastards…” “Yeah!” Allowing for the “Jungle Book” aspect of dancing and chanting of ‘It’s so because we say it’s so!’ — this not a problem. This is acceptable behavior INSIDE your tribe’s territory. However the rules of different tribes are different. No big surprise, but what has been lost in the Uber and Super-tribe shuffle is the rules of how those of different — often hostile — tribes interact when they find themselves in proximity.
These are different still.

This loss is not a good thing. Starting with you don’t walk into a mixed environment and behave the same way you do among your own. This especially by calling out how stupid, wrong and evil that hated other group is. It doesn’t matter how much you believe it. It doesn’t matter how much you do it back home. You don’t do it outside your tribe because you’ve just insulted about six different people there who are from that Super-tribe. Oh yeah, and you ignored the effects of your word on the 12 others whose tribes are more closely aligned with the other than yours. (If you’re expecting those 12 to step in and save you, I have some bad news…)

Now as long as everyone has more invested in keeping the peace than responding, you can ‘get away with it.’ If by that you mean nobody throws your ass through a window (which in case you didn’t know, really slices you up.) The problem that I am seeing is that good will is waning. More than that, because people aren’t getting punched for bad behavior anymore, it’s escalating. People in certain Super-tribes are getting more emboldened about their words and behaviors, more self-righteous, more hostile. While those in other Super-tribes are getting pushed towards the point where ‘keeping the peace’ loses priority in light of the constant stream of insults, abuse and hostility.

Which again, ‘those rat bastards…’IS perfectly acceptable to say INSIDE your Super- tribe, but not in mixed company. You conduct yourself differently when you are dealing with folks from other tribes — or, and this is something people tend to forget, in neutral territory. That may be acceptable behavior where you’re from, but in this area you don’t know how many of the people you just pissed off are armed.

Another problem that I am seeing is that punching someone for lipping off has been banned. This low-level consequence used to teach people there were lines you didn’t cross unless you were willing to pay the price. Two relevant points. There are all kinds of levels of striking and reason for striking. I tell you this so you can understand the first point, a hit is the level you use for people inside your tribe whom you don’t want to hurt. The second point: Violence between different tribes often involves weapons. That’s because the intent IS to hurt. Stop and consider the implications of what I’m about to say.

Lower levels of physical violence can indeed escalate. However, they more commonly serve as a safety valve. A pressure relief that would go before the boiler blows up. That safety valve has been wired shut … and pressure is growing. Worse, it seems there are some folks out there intent on stoking the boiler. I’m going to leave you with this thought. You have a whole lot of people who are out there with no idea about the nature of intra and inter-tribal violence. Many of who are apparently pushing for conflict against other Super-tribes. Do they recognize what they are doing? Are they thinking that they are under the protection of the rules of the very Uber-tribe they are rejecting and holding themselves apart from? Are they thinking that the rules of their Super-tribe are the only rules that count? (Translated to: I have the right to do ____, but you don’t have the right to react except according to my standards.

Solid example: I can scream my hate at you, but you can’t strike me for my words.) Are they willfully abusing people? This by relying on other’s preference to keep the peace instead of reacting to their goading? Are they giving themselves more and more permission to act because they’ve moved into a Super-tribe echo chamber? An environment that not only encourages, but demands they loudly ‘virtue signal’ whatever ultra-orthodoxy is in fashion at the moment? Is this a fight they think they can start and then walk away from if it gets too intense?

Beware the Backlash of Over-enforcement – Erik Kondo

Just as Under-enforcement breeds contempt, so does Over-enforcement (or the perception of over-enforcement) lead to a Backlash.

A backlash (overreaction, retaliation, revenge, retribution, reprisal) is the natural response that arises when someone feels that he or she has been over-enforced upon. This response is produced by emotions such as:

resentment, anger, outrage, bitterness, antagonism, indignation, spite, vengefulness, vindictiveness, rancor, and more.

A backlash can be thought of as an emotionally driven response. Therefore, it may or may not be justified. The important point is that a backlash stems from emotion. It is created when someone feels that he or she (or his or her tribe) have been unjustly treated regardless of whether it is true.

Many people realize that under-enforcement breeds contempt. Therefore, in an effort to not under-enforce, they place no upper limits on the magnitude of enforcement they use or advocate. These people tend to over-enforce. They don’t consider the destructive power of the associated backlash against them or their cause. Societal over-enforcement comes in many different forms. Here are a few examples;

  • Blaming all members of a tribe for the actions of part of the tribe is an over-enforcement.
  • Holding all members of a group “culturally” responsible for the actions of an individual member of the group is over-enforcement.
  • Shaming by making all members of a gender, race, religion, or occupation feel guilty about the action of members within that gender, race, religion, or occupation is an over-enforcement.

The shaming slippery slope argument comes into play here too.  Someone decides that A leads to B and that B leads to C and then C leads to D. Therefore, following this argument, if anyone engages in A, B, or C, he or she is also guilty of engaging in D.

The problem is that people who have only engaged in A, B, and C, haven’t engaged in D. And shaming them for engaging in D is likely to lead to a backlash, especially from those people who have just engaged in A or B.

It is common for people who feel judged by others to feel resentment. When entire groups of people feel judged, their combined resentment can create a powerful backlash.

Nobody likes to be judged. Entire movements have been spawned by people who have felt judged by others.

There are many socially motivated organizations on both sides of the political spectrum whose social campaigns consists of creating “awareness” about perceived problems in society. To attract attention, these organizations paint many problems as “cultural” issues that are caused by everyone in a tribe. While this method is effective for gaining support from members outside the accused tribe, it inevitably creates a backlash.

If the accused tribe is small and relatively powerless, the backlash may be manageable. But many times, some social advocacy organizations take on entire races, genders, religions, occupations, etc. in their quest to expose what they consider to be “cultural” bad behavior. The result can be a powerful backlash that threatens their cause. Even if their cause is morally just, their methodology of widespread blaming and accusation against entire groups is flawed. They win the short-term battle of recruiting supporters while losing the war that is overall acceptance of their cause.

Over-enforcement is worse than just over-shooting a target. If you over-shoot to not under-shoot, you only miss. But you throw a ball too hard against a backstop, it may rebound harshly and hit you in the eye.

It is easy to talk tough when you don’t acknowledge or realize the possibility of a backlash. If it were not for the backlash, over-enforcement would most likely be an effective solution to many of the world’s problems. But the backlash exists.

But just as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, so does under-enforcement breed contempt and over-enforcement lead to a backlash.

Opposite reactionary backlashes also create a destructive feedback cycle where each backlash creates a larger backlash against it.

For a visual example, a skateboarder who goes too fast for his ability may get the Speed Wobbles. Maybe he hit a bump or something to set them off. What happens is the skateboard turns to slightly one side and the rider overcorrects. The board now turns to the other side. The rider is literally behind the curve; he corrects too late and too much. Each correction (backlash) results in a greater, faster, and more violent turn. What the rider needs to do is to relax and stop reacting. He needs to calm down and let the board settle itself. If he doesn’t do so, he is likely to crash.

The Speed Wobbles create fear. It takes courage to ride them out. This fear must be contained and reactions must be controlled for the Speed Wobbles to subside.

Another visual example of this destructive cycle is the harmonic feedback as seen in this video of the failure of the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

In conclusion, all enforcement actions need to take into consideration the possibility and danger of the backlash and particularly creating a feedback backlash cycle that spirals out of control.

 

 

Benidorm and Social Reproduction, Part II – Garry Smith

The most powerful agency is the family, it is our earliest exposure to others and for most the bond is strong. Social reproduction takes place primarily within the family, here language, verbal and non verbal is learned and practised, behaviour observed and copied, attitudes and opinions formed and experimented with and all of these subject to positive and/or negative reinforcement from those who hold the power. In the family or tribe stepping outside shared values, norms and beliefs is a risky business.

We are no different than other families, I witnessed traits in my grandsons that I recognised from my granddad, little behaviours that have passed down through the generations. Perhaps the best bit of our holiday was the time we sat at table to eat, when our kids were at home we always had meals at the big family table, same here. Coming together to eat and talk is quality bonding time and it was wonderful to see our eldest grandson’s excellent table manners and the way he converses with confidence. Sustaining conversation needs a large vocabulary and the skills to use it.

How we talk, what we say and how we say it is usually a good clue to our personality and level of education. In his classic work, Class, Codes and Control 1971, 1973 & 1974, Basil Bernstein pointed out how linguistic differences work. He set out how different social groups use different modes of speech which he called codes; he divided language use into elaborate and restricted codes. I loved his work when I discovered it as an adult student in further and higher education, particularly as I could speak both codes. I felt my world expanding as I was exposed to ideas and knowledge that had hitherto been hidden from me. A couple of years ago I was asked on our local BBC radio to explain my love of Shakespeare as a working class man, Shakespeare being the cultural property of the educated chattering classes, I did so. A women who came on after me claimed I could not be working class because I was too articulate. Get that, an articulate member of the working class is not possible because my working class Sheffield accent was not expected to have a wide vocabulary and the ability to use it elaborately. The middle classes can be quick to shut down something they are not familiar with.

Bernstein was a pioneer in the work of sociolinguistics; he examined the relationship between social class and children’s acquisition and use of language in the family and school. He defined the restricted code of the working class and the elaborated code of the middle classes. Yes he stoked up a political shit-storm and was vilified by many more because he upset their beliefs and emotions and their political leanings. Well I loved his work, it explained my emerging bilingualism, as my wife said early in our relationship, you write middle class and talk working class, I still do, my friend Rory Miller has commented that I hide behind my working class accent or dialect as I prefer.

Most debate on the two codes gets bogged down in the detail and the political arguments, for me I am interested in how language, and the way it is learned and used, continue to produce and reproduce our social identities and the power structures this maintains. I follow where Bernstein led.

For clarity the two codes are both sophisticated, the myth that this is a deficit model has been countered, at the time of publication the identification of two codes and their cultural, social and political roots was a regressive step as seen by the left but as I stated earlier more for political and emotional reasons. Restricted code is particularistic in that it relies heavily on shared understanding between group members, much is not said, it does not have to be. A complex and subtle myriad of shared understandings underpin the use of restricted code. Partial sentences, often very short are all that are needed for participants to communicate fully and effectively.

Elaborated code is universalistic in that it is explicit and comprehensive, full not partial sentences are used so that hearer’s can quickly understand the speaker’s intentions. No opportunity for misunderstanding is allowed, explanations are included where necessary and clarifications of understanding obtained verbally.

Users of elaborated code listening to a user of restricted code will likely not understand what is being said as they do not possess the required shared meaning that underpins it, it is common they will perceive the user of restricted code as having a lower educational ability. Likewise a user of restricted code will likely not understand the speaker of elaborated code, it is possible they will perceive the user of elaborate code as having a higher educational ability.

Bernstein explains how this is brought about by the complex process of socialisation.

“Two general types of codes can be distinguished: elaborated and restricted … In the case of an elaborated code, the speaker will select from a relatively extensive range of alternatives … In the case of a restricted code the number of these alternatives is often severely limited … On a psychological level the codes may be distinguished by the extent to which each facilitates (elaborated code) or inhibits (restricted code) an orientation to symbolize intent in a verbally explicit form.

[W]e can expect … to find … elaborated code within the middle class … In the lower working class we could expect to find a high proportion of families limited to a restricted code” Bernstein 1971.

This was written in 1971 but still describes many communities in contemporary Britain. So as humans we are produced and reproduced in the social groups we are born into, we inculcate the values, norms and beliefs of those closest to us, for most of us this is our parents, we literally soak up our culture, beliefs, emotions and all like a sponge. We inherit our feelings, emotions and a huge raft of scripts for dealing with everyday life. These scripts and the underlying emotions that trigger them guide our actions.

“Language skills are a critical factor in social disadvantage and in the intergenerational cycles that perpetuate poverty. Poor language skills are the key reason why, by the age of 22 months, a more able child from a low income home will begin to be overtaken in their developmental levels by an initially less able child from a high-income home – and why by the age of five, the gap has widened still more.

  • On average a toddler from a family on welfare will hear around 600 words per hour, with a ratio of two prohibitions (‘stop that’, ‘get down off there’) to one encouraging comment.  A child from a professional family will hear over 2000 words per hour, with a ratio of six encouraging comments to one negative (Hart and Risley, 2003).
  • Low income children lag their high income counterparts at school entry by sixteen months in vocabulary.  The gap in language is very much larger than gaps in other cognitive skills (Waldfogel and Washbrook, 2010).
  • More than half of children starting nursery school in socially disadvantaged areas of England have delayed language  – while their general cognitive abilities are in the average range for their age, their language skills are well behind (Locke et al, 2002)
  • A survey of two hundred young people in an inner city secondary school found that 75% of them had speech, language and communication problems that hampered relationships, behaviour and learning (Sage, 1998)
  • Vocabulary at age 5 has been found to be the best predictor (from a range of measures at age 5 and 10) of whether children who experienced social deprivation in childhood were able to ‘buck the trend’ and escape poverty in later adult life (Blanden, 2006).
  • Researchers have found that, after controlling for a range of other factors that might have played a part (mother’s educational level, overcrowding, low birth weight, parent a poor reader, etc), children who had normal non-verbal skills but a poor vocabulary at age 5 were at age 34 one and a half times more likely to be poor readers or have mental health problems and more than twice as likely to be unemployed as children who had normally developing language at age 5 (Law et al., 2010).”

Jean Gross, Communication Champion, September 2011, www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/

Over 20 years ago I used to teach a class in adult education called ‘Aspects of Social Inequality’. The root causes of inequality are multilayered and inter-related, they result in the continuation of virtuous and viscous circles of social reproduction. Erik pointed this out and then we have all the other issues around gender, race/ethnicity etc. However, the thrust of his article was how this leads to miscommunication and conflict mismanagement.

This article is seeking to tease out some of the intricacies and theoretical explanations to what are effectively tectonic plates of miscommunication that continue to rub up against each other causing continual friction and occasionally massive eruptions of conflict.

This article will be completed in the New Year, and on that note a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

 

Rape Culture – Gershon Ben Keren

In recent months, I’ve read a lot of articles in the media, by journalists and bloggers, that suggest the solution to rape and sexual assaults against women, is a simple one: men should stop raping/assaulting women. This is also an argument that is extremely prevalent on US college and university campuses. Unfortunately, when we look at the facts around these cases, this argument doesn’t make sense- it has no basis in reality. It is a popular opinion, but one that can lead us down some dangerous, although unintended, paths including victim blaming, and putting the responsibility for certain aspects of an assault onto women, rather than the assailant – something that was implied throughout the recent Brock Turner case.

Rape is often seen as a crime that is primarily motivated by sex, and is often attempted to be understood from this perspective. Many people still believe that rapists are sexually frustrated individuals driven by “normal” sexual desires and urges, that they are unable to fulfill due to the lack of availability of a consensual partner. One of the reasons that this view exists is because we try to understand the world as we see it, rather than accepting that there are individuals out there who have a different world view to ourselves; who see things differently to us. Many rapists have partners and/or are married and have an active “consensual” sex life. It is not the need for sex that drives the rapist, but the urge to exert power, anger and control over a non-consenting victim.

A rapist is not looking for consensual sex through negotiation, only resorting to forceful means when this doesn’t work; from the outset they are looking to dominate and control a non-consenting victim. Only when we accept this will we start to recognize rapists for who they are and begin to understand the experiences of their victims. If we believe that sexual assailants are actually searching for consenting victims and only rape out of frustration when their target refuses, we may inadvertently introduce the suggestion that the victim may in some way be responsible or guilty for leading this person on, and contributing to their frustration either by the way they dressed, acted or behaved, etc. This is a very dangerous door to start opening, as it can be used to explain away a sexual predator’s nature, behaviors, and actions.

There is a big difference between someone who is pressuring, negotiating, and shaming a person into consensual sex, and someone who is seeking a victim to sexually dominate and control against their will, and unfortunately this difference is rarely acknowledged. In our current culture, it is becoming more and more acceptable to behave in a misogynistic way towards women, and for men to have an attitude of entitlement towards sex. However, this entitlement is based on the belief that women should want to consent to have sex with men, and it is only a matter of pushing and pressurizing to get this consent.

There are of course women who have consented reluctantly to sex with men they didn’t really like, or would rather not have, after being pressured and bullied, however from the man’s perspective and understanding it was consensual; they were seeking consensual sex, through anti-social means. Do such attitudes need to be addressed? Absolutely, however they need to be addressed, separately and differently to rape, as the motivations of the individuals who engage in them, are very different to those of rapists. To try and deal with them in the same way and with the same methods will not be successful. These anti-social bullies are motivated by sex, whereas rapists are motivated by anger and the need to have power and control over their victims.

Rape is a premeditated act, committed by a sexual assailant, who has fantasized, and to some degree planned and orchestrated their assault – that may be as simple as deciding not to take “No” as an answer. This is different to an anti-social, bully trying to negotiate a “no” into a “yes”, in order to have consensual sex, with a possibly reluctant and hesitant partner. The sexual assailant will have fantasized and masturbated over their control and domination of an unwilling victim, who they can humiliate and dispense their anger towards, whilst the anti-social, misogynist will fantasize about a willing partner who wants to please him, because he is entitled to be treated in that way i.e. women want to have sex with him. One can potentially be educated concerning their views and attitudes towards women, whilst the other is a predator who is to a greater or lesser extent hardwired to sexually assault women; for any number of reasons.

Rapists, will often try to identify themselves not as predators, but as those who believed they were engaged in acts of consensual sex, and unfortunately, many people believe them -because they don’t distinguish between the motivations of a predator, and the forceful, demanding, and entitled behaviors/actions of those looking to negotiate and engage in consensual sex. The “men just need to stop raping women” argument, needs to be re-labelled to, “men need to stop pressurizing and bullying women who don’t want to have sex with them, into having sex with them” and this should be coupled with the advice that women should be trained in how to identify men who are sexual predators. Society has a role to play in educating men on how to “negotiate” consensual sex, and the individual has a role to play in learning how to predict, identify, avoid and deal with sexual predators.

One of the reasons I believe that misogynistic behaviors and actions towards women have been linked and tied up with rape and sexual assault, is because this type of attitude and treatment of women, lacks a term/definition. I have always referred to it as “Sexual Aggression”, and I believe that many universities and colleges in the US don’t actually have a “Rape Culture” but instead a “Sexually Aggressive” one, and it is this that needs to be distinguished and addressed. Brock Turner tried to hide behind this culture argument and used it to explain, excuse and discount his actions. He tried to argue that rape and sexual assaults are caused by alcohol and drugs, and the sexually aggressive culture on university campuses, rather than on a predatory personality, and the judge at his trial bought this argument. One of the great dangers behind the “men just need to stop raping women” argument, is the belief that it is a lack of education, which causes men to rape, and that if this sexually aggressive culture could be addressed, there would be fewer rapes. Brock Turner knew that what he did was wrong. The fact that he tried to argue that his unconscious victim had in fact consented, demonstrated that he knew that sex with a non-consenting partner was wrong – and he knew this, regardless of the amount of alcohol he’d consumed.

Sexually aggressive individuals may become angry and antagonistic when a woman refuses their advances, or won’t acquiesce to their requests. They may also vent their frustrations in other ways, such as trying to humiliate and embarrass the woman they were trying to convince to sleep with them, however this is because they are unable to get consent. They may keep bullying and pressuring, but these actions and behaviors are designed to force a change of mind, and this is where the motivations behind them differ from that of rapists and sexual predators, who aren’t looking for consent. These individuals are not primarily motivated by sex, but by other, darker urges. Unfortunately, education and a change in “culture” won’t stop them; appropriate personal safety training, and self-defense can. If we can accept that rape is a premeditated crime, born out of masturbatory fantasy, and committed by predatory individuals, and not a product of a culture, sentencing will be fairer, and victims much more likely to come forward and identify their assailants, without the risk of judgment. If we continue to argue that rapists first seek consensual sex, and only when that fails, and as a last resort engage in non-consensual sex, we start to bring into question how the victim behaved and acted in the situation, and that is doing them the greatest of disservices.

 

Moral Perspectives on Violence – James Hall

“You weren’t there man, you don’t know!”

A key consideration in reality-based self-protection is ensuring that any action we may take in protecting ourselves or others is both lawful and ethical. Others have written extensively on these points, so I won’t discuss them in detail here. A further factor which is less well covered by the existing literature is the moral aspect of the use of force, encompassing not only how other people may perceive our actions as being morally justifiable, but also how people may judge and come to terms with their own force decisions and their consequences.

As martial artists and self-protection practitioners, we have all made the decision (consciously or unconsciously) that there are circumstances in which the use of violence is legitimate, both legally and ethically. Wider society, however, often takes a different view. Politics and the media consistently put forward the message that violence is never acceptable, even that it is evil. We may come up against this clash of moral perspectives, particularly after an incident in which we may have harmed another person in self-defence. For example, we may believe that our actions were perfectly justified in the circumstances but find that family and friends are not supportive, or we may look back on our own actions and wonder whether we actually did the right thing at the time. People who have never had any self-protection training yet successfully use violence to protect themselves may have trouble coming to terms with their own actions, and we may become involved (professionally or informally) in helping someone resolve conflicting feelings about the morality of their own actions.

How an action is judged as “right” or “wrong” – morally acceptable or unacceptable – is shaped by many different influences, including cultural norms, religious teachings, philosophies and so on. This article explores some basic psychological perspectives on morality, and offers some suggestions on how an understanding of moral psychology can help in situations such as those described above.

One of the most influential researchers in moral psychology is Laurence Kohlberg. While teaching and researching at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, and later in the 1970s and ‘80s at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Kohlberg investigated how moral sensibilities develop in people from childhood through to adulthood. He identified six stages of moral development, which occur in order as a person matures:

  1. Obedience & punishment: The rules of right and wrong are set by other people who are in a position of power (usually the child’s parents); behaviour is “wrong” if it leads to punishment. This stage occurs in early childhood when the child is only aware of his/her own immediate needs.
  2. Individualism & exchange: There is more than one view of what is right and wrong; what’s “right” is what satisfies the needs of the self and of others. This stage occurs in later childhood as the child develops a sense of empathy and begins to test boundaries.
  3. Interpersonal conformity: The person’s social group determines what is “right” and “wrong”. “Right” behaviour is rewarded with social approval, “wrong” behaviour is punished by losing status, being ostracised by the group, or by other forms of social punishment. This stage occurs around the early teenage years, when children are particularly vulnerable to peer pressure.
  4. Law and order: The person understands and accepts that a common set of rules binds society and ensures social order, and has an appreciation for the importance of upholding the law. This stage occurs in later teenage years as the individual matures into an independent adult.
  5. Social contract and individual rights: The person questions the law, realising that laws are not always just and can sometimes work against the interests of individuals. The person develops a sense that the right to life is superior to any law created by society.
  6. Universal ethical principles: The person develops their own, fully formed, individual view of what is right and wrong, based on their own beliefs and values. This view may or may not be shared by others, and may or may not overlap with the law. An example of a person operating at this level would be an activist who breaks the law in pursuit of their view of social justice.

A crucial finding of Kohlberg’s work is that only about 10-15% of the adult population reach levels 5 or 6 of this model, because these levels require an uncommon degree of abstract thinking. The obvious implication for self-protection is that if we need to explain our actions after a violent encounter, there is an 85-90% chance that the person to whom we are talking will be bound up in judgements of the social acceptability and lawfulness of our actions, and is therefore likely to judge any actions on our part which go against social norms and/or the normal standards of lawful conduct as being morally wrong (or at least morally questionable), even if such actions were necessary to preserve life or safety. This suggests that we are more likely to gain the moral support of the person to whom we are explaining our actions if our explanation appeals to their sense of social acceptability and lawfulness, rather than any over-riding considerations of protecting life and safety.

A second influential perspective on morality was put forward by Carol Gilligan, also of UCLA, in the 1970s after Kohlberg’s work was first published. Gilligan felt that Kohlberg’s work was biased towards a male view of morality, and that women’s moral reasoning was different. Gilligan developed a different model describing three levels of moral reasoning. As in Kohlberg’s model, the levels reflect increasing capability for abstract thinking.

  1. Survival: Whatever I need to do to survive is morally right.
  2. Self-sacrifice: Whatever minimises harm to others is morally right, even if that means I am harmed in the process
  3. Universal harm reduction: Whatever minimises harm to others and to myself is morally right (i.e. I don’t want others to be harmed, but I have a right to not be harmed too).

In contrast to Kohlberg’s model, which emphasises how a person develops a sense of the “rules” of moral conduct, Gilligan’s model focusses much more on how individuals make personal judgements of what is right and wrong based on assessments of harm. Gilligan believed that men’s moral reasoning is bound by adherence to rules, whereas women’s is more flexible and personal according to the demands of the situation.

Both Kohlberg’s and Gilligan’s models have attracted extensive criticism and controversy, which is too extensive to discuss here. However, there is another important point to be drawn from them which is highly relevant to self-protection.

Kohlberg and Gilligan used very different methodologies in developing their models. Kohlberg presented the participants in his studies with short descriptions of fictional scenarios (“vignettes”) in which a character is presented with a moral dilemma and takes a particular course of action. The participants were then asked to judge whether the character’s actions were morally right or not, and explain the reasoning behind their decision. Gilligan interviewed pregnant women who were facing the decision whether or not to terminate their pregnancy. Kohlberg’s participants were making reflective judgements about a fictional person’s actions, with plenty of time to think about it, and with no personal stake in the consequences for themselves.

Gilligan’s participants were making real judgements about their own actions, under time pressure, with potentially deep and life-long consequences for themselves. This suggests that the differences between the models of moral reasoning may be due to the differences in the circumstances in which the judgement is being made, rather than differences in gender. Like Gilligan’s participants, a person who has used force in self-defence will have made a judgement under pressure, probably acting on instinct or unconscious thought, in a situation with possibly life-threatening or life-altering consequences, and acted on that judgement, whereas the person assessing their actions after the fact will be making a judgement more like those of Kohlberg’s participants – with the benefit of conscious analysis, hindsight and time to reflect, and with no personal stake in the outcome.

This crucial difference between the moral perspectives of a person who has taken action and a person assessing that action after the fact has implications for articulation strategy, and for resolving moral conflicts following the use of force. The person who has acted may judge their own actions in a way which reflects Gilligan’s model – based on survival and minimisation of harm – whereas the person assessing the actions after the fact may make their judgements more according to Kohlberg’s model, likely to be bound up in social convention and the letter of the law.

Kohlberg’s and Gilligan’s models attempt to describe how people make moral judgements in the general sense. Other research has focussed on how people make moral judgements specifically about the use of violence. Again, in the early 1970s, Seymour Feshbach, also of UCLA, found that although people generally consider violence to be morally wrong, the strength of that belief varies according to the purpose for which violence is used. Participants in Feshbach’s studies felt that violence was more morally acceptable if it was used for a legitimate purpose – for example, police shooting dead an armed offender who presents an immediate danger to the public was felt to be more morally acceptable than a parent slapping a child to correct their behaviour. Several studies have explored this further, including a study by Craig Anderson and colleagues of Iowa State University in the mid-2000s.

Anderson’s study used a questionnaire to measure participants’ moral approval or disapproval of four types of violence, namely warfare, penal code violence (i.e. violence used in the course of apprehending, managing and punishing criminals), corporal punishment of children, and domestic violence. The study found that all four types of violence were judged to be morally unacceptable, but there was a large difference in the degree of unacceptability between the types of violence. Corporal punishment of children and intimate partner violence were judged to be extremely morally unacceptable, attitudes towards warfare were disapproving but to a much lesser extent, and attitudes towards penal code violence were only just disapproving – almost neutral. This suggests that, although many people will say that they disapprove of all kinds of violence, people have an underlying sense that violence is more morally acceptable (or less morally unacceptable) if it is used against people who “deserve it” – e.g. the enemy in war, or people who have already committed criminal acts – and much less morally acceptable if it is used against the innocent, or people who can’t defend themselves.

The relevance of this to self-protection is that, when explaining our actions after an encounter, the person listening is likely to hold a disapproving moral view of violence in the general sense, but is likely to disapprove of our actions less if we can give them evidence of the criminal nature of the actions or intentions of the person who created the threat. Similarly, a person attempting to come to terms with their own actions following a violent encounter may be struggling with their own moral disapproval of violence in the general sense, so directing their attention to the criminal nature of the actions or intentions of the person who created the threat may help them to feel less moral disapproval of their own actions.

In summary, the implications of the research described above suggest that, when practising articulation after the event (e.g. in scenario training) with the intention of obtaining the support of the person listening at a moral level, we need to consider the following points:

  • Our perspective on the morality of our actions will be shaped by the demands of the situation and the necessity of taking action in order to prevent harm to ourselves and others; the perspective of the person listening will be shaped by reflective judgements, with the benefit of hindsight, and with no personal stake in the consequences of the decision.
  • The moral reasoning of the person listening is likely to be bound up in social convention and lawfulness, therefore demonstrating the lawfulness of our actions is important from a moral as well as legal perspective.
  • The person listening is likely to morally disapprove of violence in general, but may disapprove of our actions less if we can demonstrate the criminality of the actions or intentions of the person against whom we have used violence.

This is a lot to remember under the pressure of a real-life situation, so it is of course important to emphasise articulation / debriefing in scenario training in order to develop the necessary experience.

Understanding the difference between moral perspectives from within the situation at the time and outside the situation after the event can also be helpful to anyone involved in counselling (professionally or informally) survivors of violence, or resolving the psychological aftermath of an encounter in which they themselves have been involved. In these situations, it is important to emphasise that:

  • how a situation appears in hindsight is very different from how it was at the time;
  • the criminal actions or intentions of the person who created the situation mean that violence is more morally justified (or less morally unjustified);
  • the right to life and protection from harm over-ride perspectives on morality which are bound up in lawfulness and social convention.

In a liberal society in which many perspectives on what is right and wrong co-exist, talking about morality can often be awkward. It is much easier to focus on whether any actions we may take in defence of ourselves or others are lawful, since the law is unambiguous. Ensuring our actions are lawful might keep us out of jail, but whether we can rest with a clear conscience and retain the support of loved ones and our wider community depends on how we and others perceive the morality of our actions. Developing an understanding of the psychological basis of moral sense in ourselves and others, the difference in moral perspectives from within and outside a situation, and the dynamics of moral views of violence should help to give us the best possible chance of doing that.

References

Anderson, C. A., Benjamin, A. J., Wood, P. K., & Bonacci, A. M. (2006). Development and testing of the Velicer Attitudes Toward Violence Scale: Evidence for a Four-Factor Model. Aggressive Behaviour, 32(2), 122–136. doi:10.1002/ab.20112

Feshbach, S. (1971). Dynamics and morality of violence and aggression: some psychological considerations. The American Psychologist, 26(3), 281–292. doi:10.1037/h0031219

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Harvard University Press.

Kohlberg, L. (1964). Development of moral character and moral ideology. Review of child development research, 1, pp.381-431

About the Author

James Hall is an instructor in applied Karate with Genjitsu Karate Kai (http://www.genjitsu.co.uk), is ranked 4th Dan (Karate) with the British Combat Association and holds Foundation level certification in Iain Abernethy Bunkai-Jutsu. James also holds a Graduate Diploma in Psychology from Aston University, UK. James can be contacted via e-mail at hall.jp@gmail.com or via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/james.hall.902819

Copyright notice

This article is copyright James Hall, 2016. This article may be shared and re-printed without explicit permission for non-commercial use only. Please contact the author for any enquiries regarding commercial publication.

 

Benidorm and Social Reproduction – Garry Smith

In his article in the March issue of Conflict Manager ‘When it Comes to the Rules, Social Classes Matter’, Erik Kondo wrote about the conflict between people from different social classes. I fully agree with the thrust of the article but wanted to take it a little further as it chimed so much with my own curious journey, so far, through life. We are not born into a void; we are born into families who are parts of communities that are part of ever bigger groupings like a set of Russian Dolls.
Where you are born and who you are born to is indicative of how you will turn out, not 100% determined but early influences will have a massive impact upon your future identity. Social class is the most used variable when we examine social life; Erik acknowledges race, gender and other variables and these all interact with each other to create a complex social dish that can have a myriad of permutations. There is no one set recipe, the world is a curious place and Sapiens a highly differentiated species.

So in order to dig a little deeper into some conflicts between groups can be interpretated in different ways I will take you on a little journey if that is OK.
A couple of months ago I was sitting outside our lodge in the mountains above Benidorm in the Spanish Playa Blanca region. It was a balmy warm mid September morning, the grandsons had just woken up and my daughter was feeding the little one. Soon we would be off to breakfast and then off to the adjacent zoo, adventure playground first and yes I covered every inch of this many times over, with another look at the tigers, lions, rhinos, monkeys etc then off to next doors water-park for more, swimming, monkey bars, flume and slide activity, yes I went on the one called KAMIKAZE!!! all interspersed with periods of rest, food and drink. Everything was included in the package and it was superb. I arrived home a tired but happy man.

It was 31 years since I went to Benidorm for a winter break, its reputation for sun, sand sangria and sex has not diminished. To be fair the place has grown and grown into something resembling a mini Manhattan, skyscrapers dominate and the place is crowded even in low season. Benidorm has become a parody of the cheap holiday in the sun even spawning it own hit comedy working on the stereotypical British holiday makers in the Costas (not the coffee shop). Take a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJIBZDMtG0k
I started as a great comedy but outran itself after a few series as it became more and more bizarre. We British love to poke fun at ourselves, it in our dna. Benidorm, the place with its cheap booze, full English breakfasts and fish and chips, in any order, was Britain in the sun for many. No need to speak Spanish, ‘they’, all speak English, result. So it attracted those who, often on limited budgets, the working class, whilst the middle classes headed off to their Gites in France or a villa in Tuscany and the wines and cheeses of rural France and Italy.
Let me tell you, nothing has changed. We went into Benidorm for less than half a day, it was half a day too much, and in my opinion it has no redeeming features at all. It is a cess pit with live sex shows a plenty, cheap booze and washed up pub entertainers on offer for those who like that sort of thing, judging by the numbers of bars offering these services plenty still do.

The fat man in the vest with the knotted hanky standing in the sea edge with his trousers rolled up to just below the knee, paddling in the sea edge, has disappeared and was mostly a caricature anyway. However, the modern replacement is no less comical, or frightening, depending on your viewpoint. Obesity is very common, with some families hugely overweight. Heavy tattooing is common, women of all ages as well as men, and I quite like tattoos BUT some, most of the ones on show here, were cheap and nasty. Smoking and vaping is proliferate and in the dining room access to the salad bar is really easy as the fried foods get mopped up pretty quickly.

Upon our later arrival at our hotel we checked in, dropped our bags in our lodge and went to eat, just a snack and a quick drink. There were a few people around and like anyone else we were checking them out, a few were drunk, happily drunk, most were merry, families making their way off to bed mostly, quite a mixed bunch but not the kind of people that stay at the hotels we normally book, let me explain.

My wife and I were looking for a half board hotel in the Austrian Alps, clean air, cool beer brewed under the German purity laws, excellent cuisine and everything spotlessly clean and full of middle age, middle class couples who like to walk the many trails in the mountains enjoying magnificent scenery, crystal clear rivers, pine scented woodlands and crisp, clean air. It is what we like best. We discovered this a few years ago and have been back every year since. We do not over indulge, usually meet nice people, mainly professional people, and it is really relaxing. We are amongst people not unlike ourselves. The walking class as we call it, complete with our walking clothing we are easy to identify, health conscious individuals who love exercise.

With just over a week to go our daughter decided to come with us with her two sons aged 6 and one who would be one the day after our return, this changed what we were looking for and after a lot of searching we found the Magic Natura Animal Water-Park and Polynesian Lodges 4 star all inclusive resort in the mountains outside Benidorm, yes the name says it all really. Basically a hotel with all the food and drink provided next door to a zoo and water-park and we had unlimited entry to both during our stay. We checked the reviews on Tripadviser and they were excellent, I must say retrospectively we agreed 100%, the kids loved it, excellent food etc. very different from what we would have done otherwise but fantastic family time together.

Before I go further, my wife and I have firm working class roots, non negotiable. I have worked in some of the toughest, roughest communities in Sheffield, I was no angel back in the day, my wife is a senior criminal lawyer, she deals with murderers, rapists, paedophiles, drug addicts and wife beaters on a daily basis. We have seen plenty of the underbellies of social life if we have not seen it all. We deal with it constantly; it is why we love to go to Austria, up in the Tyrol, to get a break from our daily reality.

However, this time that was not to be. We had read in the reviews that from the pools and Jacuzzi you look out over elephants, gazelles etc in the zoo below, we were looking forward to that. The first morning we made our way to breakfast and it was akin to sitting above the plains of the Serengeti observing the herds of different species as they grazed. There were all shapes and sizes of people but many were morbidly obese, many more just obese and most fat. The dress code was CHAV, a backronym standing for Council House and Violent, (to be fair there was not a hint of violence during our stay) but people were what we would describe a rough, on the whole, on occasion it felt as if there were primates in the zoo next door with more intelligence and manners than some of our fellow guests.

You could see the few middle class families looking around realising they were not amongst their own. I love people watching and listening to different conversations, here with my shaved head and earrings and my working class Sheffield accent I blended in perfectly. Hiding in plain sight. Whilst busy virtually all the time, playing with the family, it was interesting just watching and listening to people around me. It reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984 when he describes the proles.

“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern…Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.” Orwell (1949).

So the modern day proles supped their beer, smoked their fags and loaded up on fried food and enjoyed themselves. The bar opened at 10am and the drinking began. I witnessed morbidly obese people demolish huge platefuls of food washed down with coke after coke between meals. We ate well, I ate very well, there was plenty of seafood, lots of fresh fruit, beautiful salads and yes I had 2 full English breakfasts, on different days, plus a couple of portions of chips. The food choice was wide and delicious was our most commonly used adjective.
Well in my opinion most things are ok within limits, ultimately each individual will make their choice. Each individual will live with the consequences. The thing is most people do not choose, most are socialised into the way of their tribe, primary socialisation taking place within the family, secondary socialisation from other members of their tribe and then external agencies like education (the state) after that.

The most powerful agency is the family, it is our earliest exposure to others and for most the bond is strong. Social reproduction takes place primarily within the family, here language, verbal and non verbal is learned and practised, behaviour observed and copied, attitudes and opinions formed and experimented with and all of these subject to positive and/or negative reinforcement from those who hold the power. In the family or tribe stepping outside shared values, norms and beliefs is a risky business.

 

How the 20-60-20 Theory Can Improve Public Perception – Patrick Van Horne

Public perception of and support for law enforcement is a “point in time” statistic. It isn’t fixed or written in stone. It is something that can be influenced and improved or it can deteriorate and decline, but it isn’t permanent. I know how frustrating it can be for many of the 1.2 million law enforcement officers in America (1) to be judged because of the actions of a few people. It was no different for 1.4 million members of the military who were judged because of what eleven soldiers did at Abu Ghraib. While national news outlets have been effective at shaping the current negative perception of police officers, that image does not have to endure. In the wake of the Baltimore riots this past April, allow me to provide an approach and a method to police officers who want to rebuild trust and support in the communities they patrol and overcome the negative narrative.

The 20-60-20 Theory is a framework that I recommend law enforcement officers consider when seeking to earn the trust of the neighborhoods they work in. The 20-60-20 Theory helps to define things that you can control and should in turn focus on, as well as the things that you can’t control and shouldn’t spend time dealing with. The 20-60-20 Theory is built off the Pareto Principle, which is often discussed as the “80-20 Rule,” which says that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. If you were to apply the 80-20 Rule to business, it would say that 80% of a company’s revenue comes from 20% of their customers. Another example is that 20% of a company’s employees cause 80% of their problems. If you apply a standard distribution to the 80-20 Rule, you would create a bell curve with an equal 20% of the population on each end of the spectrum and a remaining 60% of the population in the middle, as shown in the diagram.

From Theory To Policing

When you apply the 20-60-20 Theory to law enforcement, this principle shows that there is going to be 20% of the population that is never going to support police officers. There is simply nothing that you can do to influence this group or sway them. For this negative 20 percent of the population, there is a corresponding 20 percent of the population that is going to show unwavering support and adoration for police officers and their mission. There is quite literally nothing that you can do to cause this group to stop supporting our nation’s law enforcement officers. These two groups on the extreme ends of the spectrum are often easy to identify because they display their emotional responses to each and every news story that is released and refuse to even consider opinions contradictory to their own. These two groups also represent the 40% of the population that we do not want to spend any time with because they aren’t evaluating situations rationally or logically, and we will never be able to change their opinion. By identifying this 40% of the population that we will not be able to influence in either direction, we are also able to identify the 60% of the population that we do want to focus our efforts on.

The remaining 60 percent of the population in the middle of the spectrum represents the group of people who have yet to make up their minds about whether to support or protest law enforcement. While recent events, such as national news coverage after the Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner incidents, might have caused the 60% to lean in one direction or the other, their views and opinions are not fixed and they are constantly looking for new information to help shape their opinions. Earning or losing the support of this informed and well-rounded 60% is essential because they are the majority. As the 60% has the ability to tip the scales significantly in either direction, police supporters need to be campaigning for the 60%’s support, and they have to do it while police critics are also attempting to influence the 60% with their anti-police narrative. The decision to focus on the undecided 60% of the population isn’t just theory, but has also proven to be effective in recent history.

During an extremely violent period of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2007, local leaders throughout Iraq’s Al Anbar Province decided that supporting Al Qaeda instead of the U.S. Marines and Soldiers in the cities was no longer in their best interest. At the time, Marines were actively searching for and fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq (the negative 20% of the population) in cities like Ramadi, Haditha and Fallujah, while building a local police force from the supportive 20% of the population. Progress in Al Anbar was slow, however, because the middle 60% of the population were still supporting Al Qaeda. As the 60% of the population began to see the consequences of living in an Al Qaeda-controlled city and saw what their version of Sharia law entailed, their opinions changed, and the Al Anbar Awakening began.(2)

When the local religious leaders started recommending that the men from their followings join the Iraqi Police, recruitment numbers exploded. As the local population turned on the negative 20%, Al Qadea operatives in Iraq were run out of the cities. There are numerous similarities between the Anbar Awakening and the current situation for police officers here in the United States. Admittedly, a significant portion of a police officer’s job requires that you spend time focusing on and trying to prevent the negative 20% of the population from committing crimes, but focusing only on this group forces officers into a reactionary mindset. Spending time to earn the trust and support of the open-minded 60% of the population can help police officers get ahead of the curve. This doesn’t require an elaborate plan, just some basic human skills of showing respect, learning the names of the people in the community (not just the criminals,) helping people out where you can and demonstrating that you actually care.

The 60% of the population you want to influence isn’t going to be swayed or influenced by words, but are going to be looking at your actions to determine how serious you are about building and earning trust. While the steps to actually develop a relationship aren’t anything new for police officers, we hope that by defining the target of your efforts (the 60%,) we can help to make your time spent in this pursuit more effective. The time to begin engaging with the neighborhood isn’t when an incident has just occurred because it is hard to build trust in high stakes situations. By talking with the middle 60% of the population and shaping their perception during low risk times, you will be able to make the steady and systematic gains to counter the negative narrative.

Patrick Van Horne is a Co-Founder and CEO of The CP Journal, a former Marine Corps infantry officer and the co-author of “Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life.” Follow Patrick on twitter at @PatrickVanHorne

(1) Numbers based on 2008 data provided by Department of Justice http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fleo08.pdf http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/csllea08.pdf

(2) You can read a well-documented report by the Institute for the Study of War on the conditions leading to the Al Anbar Awakening and the results, here.
www.understandingwar.org/report/anbar-awakening-displacing-al-qaeda-its-stronghold-western-iraq OORD3;

This article was first published in the in “ITOA News: The Journal Of The Illinois Tactical Officers Association we would like to thank Patrick for his kind permission to publish it in Conflict Manager Magazine.

 

Meet the Businessmen – Garry Smith

In my previous article ‘Shitters, Nearly Men and Inwegos’ I introduced three broad types in the career of a football incident and alluded to a fourth type. The Journey from Shitter to Nearly Man is not compulsory, people can start at any point but generally, for the majority of football hooligans it is a journey, an apprenticeship served. These people are  involved in social violence and are jostling for positions in the belonging area of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Securing a position within the mob is the first priority, however lowly a shitter you may be, if you are in you are in and will begin to self identify. Once in it is about bonding with the group and acquiring then increasing status within the group. Let’s take those in order. Bonding is key, we have seen how the group, made up of different types works as a whole, it is more than the sum of its parts. The anonymity and contagion described by Le Bon, (See book review in Conflict Manager February 2016), help to lower thresholds of what society in general regards as acceptable behaviour so that individuals can regress and settle into monkey brain thinking and behaviour. So acting and thinking exactly like those around you successfully integrates you, the rhythmic chanting and aggressive territorial group monkey dancing rapidly reinforces the in group feeling. This together with dehumanised and emasculating songs and chants directed towards the enemy helps to other them increasing the intensity of the bond. Now we have a tribe.

If it sounds a bit textbook that is because it is, exceedingly so, Go back and watch the Chelsea Cardiff video again with the sound off. By being a part of the mob, by sharing the intensity of the experience then young men bond together, it is centuries, millennia old process that is constantly being recreated by our so called modern brains. Things we would never do as an individual are now possible when the monkey brain liberates you from the restraining frontal cortex.  Once bonded increasing the intensity of your behaviour and gradually moving closer to the action can increase your status especially if repeated over a period of time, you see there are shitters and shitters and location is the key. At the back is ready to run, at the front and you can still run but you are getting closer to the fire as it were, beware Icarus. As progression takes you into the role of Nearly Man you step away from the Shitters, this is a testing middle ground but an increase In status until you pluck up the courage and Inwego.

The Inwego is the top status in this group but remember the Inwego is also the Outwecome. In the clash in question there are many hooligans and at first very few police, if they wanted to they could seriously go for it but they do not, there is no sustained fighting of anything more than a couple of seconds and much of that is sniping shots and wild swinging, trying to hit and not be hit and here is where the usefulness of that video ends for me although not the typology.

The fourth type of hooligan, and these can be further subdivided later, are the Businessmen, (the Sheffield United hooligan element, my lawyer wife has represented several generations of them are called the BBC, Blades Business Crew, sweet name and to the point, they do the business. Myself and my peers predated these guys by a few years and were simply known as the Lansdownethe name of the  pub we drank in). There are some wild and whacky names out there, such as Arsenal – Gooners, The Herd, Aston Villa – Steamers, C-Crew, Villa Hardcore, Villa Youth, Birmingham City- Zulus, Zulu’s Warriors, Zulu’s Army, The Zulu, Derby County -Derby Lunatic Fringe  Chelsea – Headhunters, Everton – County Road Cutters, – Liverpool The Urchins, Leeds United – Leeds Service Crew, Middlesbrough – Middlesbrough Frontline), Newcastle United- Gremlins, Newcastle Mainline Express NME, -Nottingham Forest – Forest Executive Crew, Manchester Unitde – Red Army,  Sheffield United – Blades Business Crew, Shrewsbury Town – E.B.F – English Border Front, Tottenham Hotspur – Yid Army, Wolverhampton Wanderers – Subway Army and most famously West Ham United’s – Inter City Firm.

What characterises these groups is they were not mass mobs. These were close knit firms where entry is based on ability.

I choose Businessmen as the name for this group of individuals as all the ritualistic behaviours associated, indeed central, to that displayed in the Chelsea Cardiff clash, and the location it took place in are superfluous to them. It is ability to do the business that matters not shouting, chanting and dancing in the street, but fighting.

The businessman has graduated from or in some cases bypassed all that and simply wants to fight, many are just psychopaths  want to hurt others, the football is irrelevant,  to do the business in the most efficient manner. That is not to say that there will be no monkey dancing, there will, but it is kept to a minimum, pre fight intimidation will involve the monkey for sure but this is usually short lived, here the fists and boots do the talking. All the noise and theatre of the big clash like Chelsea Cardiff is a hindrance, it will attract the attention of undesirables, the police.

The type of unit found here is much closer knit and usually by invite only, size can vary but you have to have earned the right to be there. Staying there means regularly reproducing what got you there which means going toe to toe and not quitting, you fight until you win or until it’s unwinnable, No chanting, no colours, small groups of men called firms hunting one another or steaming into the bigger mob with its different layers and running them. A small committed unit can do that, been there done it, Sometimes we travelled away 25 strong in the back of a panel van, (avoiding police detection), and parked in the home team’s territory deliberately so it could go off right in the middle of them, sometimes we travelled with as few as four, me and three brothers, nobody ran if the fighting started even though on one occasion one of the brothers went to prison for 3 months, we were chasing a much bigger group of home fans who picked a fight with us then did not like it when we got stuck in, doing the business, and they ran, we got jumped by some guys in a car, so fought them, unfortunately they were plainclothes police, again a tale for another day. You see the bonding amongst young men who hunt and spill blood, and risk spilling blood, is very strong.

The businessmen are different from the Inwegos in that the latter have reached their high point, they excel in social violence, they have reached their pinnacle and are happy there as belonging and status are achieved, they have reached the highpoint of their career. For the former something different is happening, these individuals have achieved the highest point on Maslow’s pyramid, all the previous layers are accounted for, they are above the game and are able to self actualise, violence, often brutal and extreme violence is what they are good at, to them engaging in a violent encounter is their version of playing a solo violin concerto. I can vividly recall some of the prolonged violent exchanges I have been involved in as if they were seared into my brain. I can also remember, and sometimes  crave for, the exultation that came from standing tall if bruised at the end.

This is not about myself but it is impossible not to recall what it felt like, how the buzz felt as that cocktail of drugs raced around the body, despite the hurt that often came later, and how long it lasted, it felt like days. Moving to doing the business from being an Inwego is a big step, some do not take it, I had friends who were very violent psychopaths, we used to co-opt them into our firm for ‘special’ occasions as did all the other firms, they only came along to inflict pain on someone, if you are an Inwego or a Nearly Man these people will eat you up for breakfast.

On a personal note when I finally discovered martial arts I thought it was cute, it still is, but however rough we make it, I like ten guys on 2 msq mat gloves and gumshields in and free punching, it’s still not going in on someone who will put you in hospital if they can with the intent on doing the same. It is why I glibly say Ju Jitsu is like methadone to me.

I no longer attend football matches, I am too busy and the football was woeful. I rarely look at the scores even and have lost contact with those I used to associate with, back in the day they were like brothers to me, we built and held reputations. Now I see one or two of them, some are dead, some old men, one walking with a stick, they once walked tall.

I have read much of what academia has produced as analysis of football hooliganism as well as the writing of former hooligans. Much of the former is flawed and occasionally distorted, I actually wrote to one author who published his PhD as a book, I pointed out how he was totally incorrect on 2 examples in his book, major errors, I know I was there and I started one event and I knew the person convicted of the second who he said was never caught, despite being all over the front page of a newspaper he quotes multiple times.

The latter are OK but no rigour and are often boastful. For the third time I will make it clear this is not an academic essay, it is something between academia and personal recall. Shitters, nearly men and inwegos exist, and so do the businessmen.

So I hope I have created a typology of those involved in football hooliganism. You can take this model and apply it to most models where group violence occurs, these groups will have different reasons for being there but the types will be present, think Ferguson, think the recent protests against migrant rape gangs in Europe, think Black Lives Matter, turn on the news, they are there.

The majority will be Shitters, then some Nearly Men, some Inwegos and lurking somewhere in the back streets beyond the fringes are the Businessmen.

 

Self-Righteous Entitlement – Wim Demeere

Photo: Martin Shkreli

One of the recurring issues I have when teaching self-defense is that many people have trouble understanding their inner dialogue. In particular, how it goes off track and leads them into trouble. There are all kinds of reasons for that, I’m not going into it today. Suffice it to say that it’s something you see all around you, every day, in varying degrees. You see it in the asshole who cuts you off in traffic, almost causing you to run over a pedestrian. Or the idiot who bumps you into an elderly lady because him being late for a meeting is just so important and you barely manage to catch her before she falls (and breaks her brittle bones). We’ve all met those guys.

Funny thing though, if you point out how rude they are and how their actions endanger others, they get all self-righteous on you and somehow you’re the unreasonable one and they’re the victim. As in, how dare you even speak to them like that!

Truth be told, sometimes we’re that guy. Be honest now, you’ve sinned in this department just as I have. There’s a difference though: reasonable people eventually realize they are messing up and become ashamed of their own behavior. Then they try to change their ways.  Assholes don’t care, they just keep on going with the bad attitude.

The problem with not caring about anything but yourself is first of all, you’ll eventually start believing your own bullshit:

  • You are so much better than everybody else.
  • Those losers are so stupid, they’ll never get it.
  • Nobody can touch you, you’re so awesome.
  • Anybody who tries, you’ll kick his loser ass.

And so on.

The thing these guys don’t understand is that it’s not because people don’t speak back to you or don’t beat the crap out of you for being an egotistical asshole, that they don’t want to. Regular folks don’t always fight over stupid arguments, but they can sure feel like it.

If you scare them a little by turning on your mad monkey vibe, they’ll probably back off. It works, you win. If that happens enough (it often does; being aggressive works very well), then this becomes your reality. You feel it is the natural order of things that you can flip somebody off when they annoy you and never suffer any consequences for it. Why? Well, because the last fifteen times you did it, they cowered and went away. So in your experience, that’s how the world works and you’re absolutely right: in your experience that is certainly the case.

But now we come to a favorite quote of a scientist friend of mine:

The plural of anecdote is not evidence.

Just because that’s how it always turned out for you, doesn’t mean it always will. Just because they didn’t punch you in the face, doesn’t mean they didn’t come close. And you’ll never know why they held back.

Only an idiot thinks everybody else will always restrain themselves like that.

The second problem with being an self-righteous asshole is that because of the dynamics I just described, you eventually get a sense of entitlement about it. It is your right to be an asshole and act as if nobody else matters. Why would you learn to settle matters with a compromise? Why would you even bother seeing things from the other person’s perspective? You’re awesome! Everybody else sucks!

Keep that attitude going long enough and your decision making skills will lead you down a path you can’t return from. It’s just a matter of time before you act self-righteous and obnoxious around somebody who won’t put up with your shit. If you’re lucky, you get out in one piece. If not, well… Here’s a story one of my clients told me a few days ago.

He’s an avid hunter and was out with a friend and his dog, going for game birds. The hunting grounds were close to a river with a path next to it. That path is popular with cyclists and people going for a walk. So they made sure they stopped shooting well before they got to the path. His friend however made the mistake of not putting his dog back on a leash (that’s the law here) and it got in front of a guy on a bike. The guy fell. The friend went over and asked if the guy was alright, said he was sorry, it was his fault and is there anything he could do to help. You can’t really ask for more than somebody owning up to his mistake and offering reparations.

The guy wanted none of it, replied that he should kick the friend’s ass and moved forward. The friend lifted one arm in a defensive posture and the conversation went something like this:

Guy: “Are you scared?”

Friend: “Yes, I am.”

Guy: “You better be.”

After some more huffing and puffing, he got on his bike and left, buzzing my client and missing him by an inch.

 Here’s the part he missed:

  • The friend is a second degree Judo black belt who can more than hold his own.
  • My client had already positioned himself strategically to take the guy out as he threatened the friend.
  • My client went into the flinch guard as the guy buzzed him and told me he was sorely tempted to knock him off his bike with the elbow shot we’ve been training for months. The range was good and it would have worked; he hits really hard.
  • One of their main concerns was that getting in an altercation while hunting would mean they lose their license if the cops got involved. They didn’t want that so they didn’t act.

If you look at it from another point of view, here’s the story again:

A guy gets self-righteous at a man armed with a hunting rifle who offers him a sincere apology for an honest mistake. The guy doesn’t accept the apology and threatens to assault the armed man, while his trained dog is standing next to him along with his self-defense trained friend who’s also carrying a hunting rifle. The main reason they didn’t act was a piece of paper.

Can you see the disconnect with reality?

Threatening two men armed with firearms and a trained dog? In what universe is that a smart move? Probably in the same one where you say “You don’t have the balls to shoot me?” and then eat a bullet?

This is the kind of slippery slope reasoning self-righteous entitlement leads to. I’ve seen it all over the world, in all layers of society. People get used to treating others like crap and just assume there will never be consequences because so far, there haven’t been any. But they fail to understand that it takes two to tango. They refuse to acknowledge how their behavior puts them in a situation that escalates into violence. A situation in which they don’t come out on top, at best.

 When you come to blows with somebody, you are part of the equation. For better or worse, your actions brought you there. Hopefully, you just failed to avoid the problem. But there are also those situations in which you are part of the problem. It would be a mistake to think you can get away with that forever.

So don’t be an asshole.

 

Shitters, Nearly Men and Inwegos. – Garry Smith

 

You should be reading this after watching the short video of the clash between Chelsea (the Headhunters) and Cardiff (the Soul Crew) hooligans on the Kings Road, London in 2010. This article seeks to identify what actually happens when two football mobs actually meet. However, this is not an academic paper, it is a recollection based analysis from someone who did this shit, me.

Loved it, lived for it and got as high as a kite from getting stuck into the fighting. Saturday afternoon and the occasional Tuesday night were the highlights of my week during the football season. The three types of participants I identify from the video are useful, in my opinion as a model, nothing more, they allow us to break down the mob into workable types. These are the shitters, nearly men and inwegos (as in we go).

This was the career path I followed. I remember as a boy my grandad took me to watch Sheffield Wednesday every so often ( now known as child abuse), we sat in the South Stand near to the Spion Kop, and Kop as we called it, named after the tragic defence of said hilltop by the British Army in the Boer War. Needless to say this was home turf, to be defended, with no segregation gangs from opposing clubs would get onto the Kop and claim it, if the away fans got control it was called taking it, it was purely tribal behaviours, invading the others territory coming and letting everyone know, this is the group monkey dance par excellence involving hundreds and often thousands of participants on each side. It can be achieved by a walk on that is uncontested, infiltration and attacking from within or just full frontal attack, do not underestimate the ferocity sometimes involved in this kind of action. As a boy I saw the crowd surges and the fists and boots fly and was hypnotised.

It was scary, bodies flew everywhere, people got crushed against barriers, chasms opened up between fighting groups and closed again as more fists flew, it was more exciting than the football for sure, especially to an impressionable nine year old. Therein lies the hook that drew many a boy towards the action.

So fast forward a three years and I began going to watch Sheffield United with my friends, just a group of 12 year old unsupervised boys, what could go wrong, kids off to the football on their own, it took a lot of persuasion to get me there but on that first visit, with a 35,000+ attendance, United secured promotion, cue pitch invasions, celebrations and I became a Blade.

So the next season wearing our scarves it was every home match playing all the big teams in English Football and the big teams brought big mobs sometimes 10,000 plus and there were big clashes in and around the ground especially on the Kop as visiting fans tried to take it, from the opposite end of the ground, yes we had had to cut a deal with our parents and curiously they deemed us being on the visitors and safer, we watched the fighting from the far end of the pitch.

Well before this becomes a biography let me tell you a year or so in and we started to go on the Kop,we were drawn there but near the front, not the back where the hard stuff happened and the big boys and men rolled in from the pub to compete for the sacred territory. But, we gradually found reasons to get nearer, we learned all the songs and chants designed to intimidate/emasculate the enemy complete with all the exciting swear words, (my first arrest of many to come was at 15 years old for threatening behaviour, I received a Police Caution), we learned to let the monkey loose, we hated them, they hated us, this was fucking war. The fact that they were exactly the same as us but from 20 or whatever miles up the road was lost on us, we had our colours, they had theirs, we had territory to hold they wanted to take, pride was at stake, honour even.

So we eventually began to tag along with the main Kop crowd as it left the ground at the end and participated in the clashes with opposing mob. Running them, them running us, avoiding the police, throwing the odd missile from the back, we were too small and scared to be in the action but we were watching, learning, feeling what it was like, what it would be like. Of course we would be the first to run if the other mob broke through our front, that is why I now name this group the shitters. They want to wear the clothes, talk the talk, walk the walk, damage property, swell the ranks but they are low level participants of little use when the fighting started. In fact they often get in the way.

You may think I am othering the shitters but I am not, they all have their roles to play when big groups clash but they are of no use to a small determined firm. They are like the peasants bulking up the Anglo Saxon Fyrd defending their Shire, bulking up the mob is nothing new. We can use the three types to describe a career path in football hooliganism, most start as shitters, I did, of course they do not see themselves as shitters but as aspiring hooligans.

Shitting it is a phrase we used of those afraid to do something, especially fighting. It is a derogatory term but shitters had their uses. This was what I call the great wave phase of English football hooliganism, The big mob ruled, this was not about tight, well organised firms of committed individuals, but hordes. The bigger the visiting horde that descended the more likely the trouble. All the psychological and sociological analysis I have read largely missed the mark, this was young men let loose on a Saturday, uniting in numbers and as such gaining the power to do what they liked and if what they wanted to do was to rampage down the high street of another town chanting and fighting any opposition they would do it, we did it, I did it, it was incredibly exhilarating especially when we add in alcohol. Raw power in the hands of those who do not know how to handle it.

To be fair we could be talking Anglo Saxon clashes with the Vikings here the analogy is so clear and whilst victory at the shieldwall needed vicious brave warriors, often pissed out of their heads, to wield the axes and swords at the front, they also needed the weight of as many others at their backs to stop the shieldwall collapsing and to push back the enemy shieldwall.

I am not romanticising football thuggery, only drawing a parallel that our so called modern brains function to long ago programmed behavioural patterns, much of what we know of conflict communications is played out before our eyes in the Chelsea Cardiff clip. It is better to be a shitter in the mob than to not be in the mob, by becoming a shitter you may one day become an inwego, after you learn the trade. So we began our climb to becoming nearly men, we got closer and closer to the action, we learned to monkey dance better and better, for us it was about putting on the big display, becoming the big I am and as you get closer and closer the more you learned. The socialisation of us as football hooligans progressed and we were more than willing participants.

We learned the monkey dance and that was our role, to make the group monkey dance as big as possible, the shitters participation rarely extends beyond threat display unless their mob massively outnumbers the opposition. Looking hard, big and making lots of noise, gesturing to the enemy and throwing things is their main preoccupation.

From there the next step is when they start to actually start to move towards the action instead of shitting it at the back. Getting nearer the action is riskier, they are getting closer to getting involved in the actual contact, that is why I call these people the nearly men. It is like a moth fluttering around a flame, drawn towards the danger but just managing to keep out of it. By now you may want to go watch the video again as you will see what I mean. Picking out the shitters and the nearly men is not hard.

I have no ratios but we can picture it as a pyramid with a few hundred shitters, a few dozen nearly men and a small hardcore inwegos. As I said this is a model, it does not intend to deal with specifics or scale, I am trying to paint a picture for you, from there we can look at different aspects of hooligan behaviour later.

Now for the nearly men, for the inwegos to have around them what look like inwegoss helps them intimidate those they are facing up to, dopplegangers have there uses. These are not the peasants in their sackcloth holding a scythe, but something resembling an armoured fighter, possibly holding a blunt sword but hard to tell until engaged in the fight. These guys will be wearing the right clothes, they have the monkey dance off to a tee and look the real deal, they nearly are. The nearly men will fight if pushed, usually if they get caught but it will be fighting on the retreat, to create an escape when the lizard brain takes over, but they may equally run, the pace of their transition from shitter to inwego and the situation will combine to trigger whatever response.

I remember one occasion when we overran the police protecting several hundred away fans and they backed rapidly into a garage forecourt with no exits, as the roar went up from us they simply huddled in a mass and tried to cover up, no fighters, all front, shitters and nearly men, we simply steamed in and battered them until the police regrouped and forced us off using horses, dogs and truncheons. Happy days!

The nearly men are/were mostly late teen early adults but this is a broad generalisation, I was drifting in and out of the actual fighting from age 15 (remember I also got my first police caution at this age too and it made me a celebrity at school), a nearly man or nearly boy even. There is no fixed age but there is a right of passage as you move from each stage, some get here and never move on so the nearly man can be a lifelong thing. In the clip we can see middle aged nearly men, possibly ex inwegos who have come back from retirement for the big occasion doing their duty to club and firm, dancing in and around the action. The thing is for me and my friends it was a stepping stone to becoming inwegos.

In the Chelsea Cardiff encounter you see a lot of people getting very close to those exchanging punches without actually getting contact themselves, this involves a lot of situational awareness in a chaotic situation, the nearly men fill the gap between the shitters and the inwegos. Allowing the shitters to stay close enough to be a threat but still with enough space to run if the opposition breaks through. Shitters are in full on monkey brain, if the situation goes against those in front then their lizard brain will kick in and they will run, they will, shit it, shed their tail and run like hell until a safe distance then turn around and monkey dance again to prevent them being humiliated.

So we turn to the inwegos, there is plenty of monkey behaviour there too, remember the learned/innate behaviour practised for years before. In my first draft I called them fighters but felt uneasy with that term right from the start, this is not fighting as I understand it, not full on toe to toe stuff anyway, what we see in the video are swift attacks, often from out of view, from behind and the side, taking advantage of the chaos, taking advantage of being able to hit and move to avoid being hit themselves. These guys see an opportunity and ‘in we go’, but just as quickly it’s ‘out we come’.

Now it takes some pluck to go in and have a go, it’s as exciting as hell and it sure means that these guys milk the self esteem they create by moving to the front and engaging, by becoming an inwego you show that you are a risk taker prepared to trade blows for the group, the reputations won here are priceless to the participants and stay with you for years. I remember my dad telling me that a friend of his, his own age, having witnessed an evenly matched brawl between 40 or so Sheffield Wednesday fans and ourselves, that if my dad had seen me in action he would have been proud of me. This was despite me being a 34 year old college lecturer at the time, one of the old boys coming out of retirement to meet the old enemy.

The inwegos are out front, their monkey dance is subtly different to the nearly men, the latter need to be seen to look hard and up for it, the former are and try to mask this, an effective monkey dance will drive back an opponent, for the nearly man this is desirable for the inwego it is not, distance equals comfort for the nearly men but denies the opportunity to raid for the inwego.

Violence here is intimate, it is up close and guess what, the inwegos on the other side hit back too, going in has risks and rewards, if you fear humiliation you will not go in and the monkey fears this more than anything, that is the shitters for definite and the nearly men for sure, for the inwegos it is a gamble, a managed risk in an unpredictable environment. Status in these groups depends on performance in the clash, in the fight, I was a sucker for this, I craved status and I earned it, crashing in first. As my career developed I liked infiltrating their mob as it went away from the ground and attacking from within them, this caused untold mayhem as it was unexpected, one minute you are chanting their team’s name then the next you are punching anything that moves in a target rich environment, we had a whole box of tactics and trick but they are for another article. The thing to remember is that the inwegos have mastered the monkey dancing and the singing, the threatening and the gesturing, like any addict that is no longer enough, a harder drug is required.

That is being in the fight, we were a very tight group as we got older having shed all the extras we simply gathered the fighters, honed down the numbers and went straight to the business, but football violence changes and stays the same, it’s a conundrum that baffles the academics. For the inwego it is not just getting stuck in, although that is the best part, it is being seen to get stuck in, this is what grows a reputation and that needs to be created and recreated over time.

Some inwegos come and go, some are a flash in the pan, sometimes for big clashes like this one all the old boys come back for a pop, tribal loyalties are strong. In this group are a rarer breed the fighters, the ones who can suppress the monkey emotions and function in chaos, it could be that they function in that rare human lizard sphere Rory mentions in ConCom, I can only guess, I remember intense fights with good numbers of committed fighters on both sides in slow motion detail. Mostly I remember the latter days when the big clash was seen as a waste of time, we stripped down the numbers, ditched those who wanted to dance, this was by invite only, this was for those who wanted to fight. There was no time for display, that attracted the wrong kind of attention, police attention. This was hunting, seeking out the enemy and steaming in.

The thing is my past clouds my interpretation, I make no secret of that, and I said at the beginning this was not an academic paper but a recollection based analysis of one event. My past colours how I see this clash, I have been in many such as this, I thrived on being in there exchanging the punches and kicks, it is what I did for fun. But trying to see what is happening using the lizard, monkey, human brain model as a lens helps us to break down the ritualised behaviours nicely in my opinion. This whole scene of carnage to the comfortable middle class in England, who saw us as the devil’s instruments, or viewed with total miscomprehension from behind the picket fences of middle America, was well established around the world by the time of this clash.

The English disease has spread abroad and to other sports because people imitate, the contagion has spread. More than this it is because the behaviours we see in this clip are underpinned by the very evolution of the human brain, its architecture and the environments and socio-economic conditions it has evolved through. Violence is the oldest form of communication, the primal manifestations we see in the clash Between Chelsea and Cardiff allow us to play the anthropologist and to see the monkeys dance played out in all its glory by the group as a whole and by different subgroups within it.

One last thing. For now I have focused on the individual types in the whole as I see them, so go back and watch it again, see how clearly you can pick them out, share it with your peers, your students and also look for one more thing, the effectiveness of the group monkey dance, because none of these individuals is truly that in this encounter, they become a part of the whole, absorbed into the whole emotional monkey atmosphere because once the monkey appears he infects all those around until they are all infecting one another, then it’s time to do business and thresholds get crossed.

The vast majority of those in this example are amateurs, shitters, nearly men and inwegos. Next month I will introduce you to the businessmen, a different deal altogether.