Existential Honor

Many moons ago, I took part in a city council’s initiative to educate teenagers about the dangers of the “Knife Culture” that is so prevalent in the UK. Part of it involved teaching self-defense, and talking about the dangers of knives and weapons to kids at various youth centers around the city, with the hope that they’d start to realize how deadly and dangerous such weapons are – the program wasn’t perfect by any means and had the obvious danger of further glamorizing knives, and reinforcing the idea that these were weapons had the potential to kill, etc., however it was hoped/believed that when the true horrors and consequences of knife attacks were explained, that the majority of youths who carried, might consider not doing so. When I would talk to a group, I’d normally start by asking how many of them carried a weapon. There are a number of issues with self-reported surveys, as some people will want to give of a certain impression of themselves that isn’t true, whilst others will not want to draw attention to themselves, etc., however all other things being equal (ceteris-paribus), the average was about 7 to 8 out of 10 teenagers admitting that they carried a knife. The number one reason, when asked, was that they did so for self-defense; almost everybody I talked to argued that they wouldn’t use their knife offensively, only defensively i.e. they wouldn’t pull their knife unless they were threatened. What seemed to be happening was that there was a localized “arms race” i.e. you only carried a knife, because everyone else in your neighborhood did, also.

If this was truly the case, nobody would ever pull a knife, because there was a risk that the other person would too. The problem was that knife attacks were extremely prevalent, and usually involved an armed assailant against an unarmed one – or somebody who didn’t pull their knife, either because they hadn’t the time, or weren’t motivated to do so, etc. When I would start to talk to these kids about “when” they would pull their weapon, and discuss scenarios and situations with them, they would become less definite and oftentimes frustrated – they had difficulty verbalizing what would cause them to draw their weapon. This is true of many adults who carry – if you talk to many individuals who carry a firearm for self-defense, they can quote you the laws surrounding when they are justified to pull and use their weapon, but often have difficulty applying these laws to actual scenarios i.e. you present them with a situation which isn’t cut and dry and they become less certain about their rights – this is one reason I’m such an advocate of scenario-based training, as this gives people the opportunity to understand and work through their decision-making process. When I would push these teenagers to explain what would cause them to pull their knife, I would commonly be told that it was due to an issue of respect e.g. somebody looked at them in a funny/disrespectful way, and if they didn’t stick up for themselves then they’d be marked as a coward/target and would be abused in some way in the future. Hence, they’d pull their knife and attack the individual(s) who disrespected them.

When asked as to what constituted “disrespect”, the list was random, and truly at the discretion of the individual – one teenager told me how he’d stabbed a middle-aged man who’d held a door open for him, whilst giving him a “funny” look. I asked him what he meant by “funny”, and he responded by telling me that it was “just funny” – just about everybody in the group nodded, knowing exactly what he meant, without being told anything that was exact. This particular individual wasn’t excusing what he had done, he was genuinely justifying it; in his eyes, he’d been disrespected. This wasn’t a rational response, it was an emotional one. If you are angry, you will interpret everybody else’s behaviors and actions, as being angry also – we see the world as we are experiencing it, not as it is. If you show a photograph of a smiling face to an angry person, they will tell you that the person is smirking, and laughing at them – those around them are there to justify and reinforce their anger – or is in fact angry themselves, with the smile being seen as a grimace. Mix this inability to interpret looks and behaviors correctly, into a culture where there is the idea of “honor” and “respect”, and you have a dangerous cocktail that is brewing. I’m sometimes asked why somebody would just attack another stranger, without any obvious motive - this is one of the possible reasons.

It may seem strange to us that these individuals can’t walk away, i.e. they seem to have a choice, in that they must notice a glance or a look, then choose to interpret this as a slight, and then act upon it – it is a process that they must go through. However, the guilt and shame of not acting would, as the psychiatrist James Gilligan put it be, “Psychic Annihilation” for them; that is, they can’t live with the fact that they were disrespected, as they see it. This pressure to act is magnified when a group is involved, as the individual will fear losing the respect of the group (which may mean that the group will turn on them, or disown them, if they are perceived to be weak) if they ignore something that could be interpreted as a slight. This causes a level of hyper-vigilance in groups, and causes individuals to respond more aggressively and violently towards those who disrespect them.

This notion of existential honor, was something that I was palpably aware of when working the door in certain clubs. It was not uncommon if somebody caught you looking at them for too long (as they judged it), for you to be called out, if it was deemed that you were disrespecting them; you’d be met with the aggressive question, “are you looking at me?” At first there appear to only be two possible answers: yes, or no. The danger with answering yes, is that your response would be taken as a challenge, escalating the situation, and if you answered “no”, you’d be called a liar, and judged as somebody who could be intimidated. Either answer will justify to the individual that they have been disrespected, and cause them to act, in order for them to avoid Psychic Annihilation. The question is structured in such a way, as to justify the use of violence. I would usually choose a middle route, and tell them that I wasn’t wearing my contact lenses, and not to worry, leaving them a face-saving back door that they could exit through. I’d then be keeping a much closer but more surreptitious eye on them for the rest of the evening, as I now had a better measure of their character – If I’d not been in a position of responsibility, I would have left that environment, as I don’t want to share it with a volatile individual who is only going to drink more.

If you haven’t grown up in, or experienced a culture, where the concept of honor trumps all other reasoning, it is hard to understand why simple actions, behaviors and comments, can cause people to become aggressive – to the point where they would pull a weapon and potentially kill somebody. We should be aware that such individuals exist, and that there may be times when we interact with them. If they won’t accept a face-saving way out, and we don’t have a disengagement option, acting pre-emptively is most likely to be our best survival option.