The 3 laws of Violence Preservation

BECAUSE BEAUTY & BRUTALITY ARE NEVER FAR APART

Three young Balinese girls doing the traditional Balih-balihan dance. How beautiful, how exotic, how peaceful. Their proud parents sit in front, all dressed up to the occasion. The tourists (me included) are at the back busy taking tons of photos. This is what many have in mind when thinking about the tiny Indonesian island of Bali. Indeed, this is what the local tourism authorities would like you to picture. Yet, while all of this is happening, less than 50 meters away – in the very same temple – a fight to the death, complete with knives, blood, and gore, is in full swing.
Wanna guess who draws in a bigger crowd?

Yep, you guessed it, the fight!

A few days back, our local guide told us that Bali is the island of peace and joy, so no matter what our hardships were at home, here, “you must all be happy.” I’m amused at the contrast between his words and the bloody killing zone in front. Perhaps I shouldn’t be.

Why?
The laws of Violence Preservation. That’s why!

Exactly like Newton’s… only very different

If you had to subject yourself to a major in physics studies during high school like I did, that English chap and his three Laws of Motion would have needed no further introduction. For the rest, let’s just say that 350 years ago, Isaac Newton came up with laws that explained the mechanics of our world, and made young teens fail their physics exams ever since.

The laws of Violence Preservation are liberally modeled after Newton’s. They draw inspiration from these immutable rules and then take them on to a whole different realm of existence.

So, without further due, here they are:

1. Violence is constant among the nations of the world. No culture is more violent or less violent than the other.
2. Violence is always at equilibrium. For every peaceful/gentle conduct, there’s a violent one to balance it. If you can’t find it at first, all you need is to look a bit closer.

I first came to know these laws from a work colleague living in Bangkok, Thailand. It was some twenty-odd years ago when he charted them to me over a glass of Singha beer at a bar near Siam Square. At first, I didn’t take these laws too seriously. What could be violent about the Thai? I thought to myself, dismissively.  I since came to know better. Flying the world few times over, I found the Violence Preservation laws to be more accurate than I have ever believed.

“Savadica” this motherf***er!

With a lovely, sunny Saturday morning to spend before taking the evening flight back home, I boarded an ordinary-looking taxi with an unordinary looking driver behind the wheel. He was quite old, impeccably dressed, and spoke surprisingly good English – better than most Thai professionals I’ve met during that week. Navigating the empty streets, I gradually found my companion to have more surprises up his carefully-ironed sleeve. His violent story made me cringe. Ever thought Thailand as a peaceful place full of friendly, tree-hugging people? Think again!

“Are you an Israeli?”, he asked, “Did you serve in the army?”, I told him I did serve in the Israeli Airforce for three years. “I like Israelis!” he replied quite proudly, “you know how to take care of your enemies. No nice bullshit mercy. Just kill them!” Surprised that I was, it didn’t even match my bewilderment of what came next. My designated taxi driver is it came out to be, was a bag full of surprises.

For more stories about violence, click the links below:
*  Holi Wars!
*  Passions run high in Brazil’s murder capital
*  This guy is high on Rajasthani Opium, and so is the government
*  Banana Republic

“I was a young infantry officer in the Thai army during the ’60s and fought in Vietnam”, he told me. I didn’t know Thailand even participated in that war. Later, Wikipedia would put my lack of knowledge in order. “Our squad was ambushed by a bunch of Vietcongs, which came from one of the nearby villages. We said nothing to the Americans – they were just a bunch of scared boys with no real idea of how things are done around here. Like you, Israelis, we came in and…” I’ll spare you the (very) gory details of the atrocities. Arson, rape, infanticide, torture, plain murder, you could pretty much check every war-crime known in Hag. To say I was comfortable with the flattery of being equated with such conduct would be the exaggeration of the century. Still, sometimes it’s just better to nod, smile, and shut up!

Violence Preservation laws. Take off the sweet, friendly veneer of Buddhism, and you’ll find a country mired in violence. From years of brutal military dictatorship to a national sport of kickboxing. Yes, the beaches are peaceful, but Thai prisons are one of the world’s worst places. The grand King Palace is just a stone throw away of gruesome and exploitive Pat Pong dungeon.

Snuff porn on a train ride in Tokyo

Japanese are known to be very civilized, always in control, and highly cultured. Sure, they did have that episode between 1937 and ‘45, where they have gone all “Banzai!” on whoever stood in their way. Still, would it be fair to say that violence had been eradicated in the land of the rising sun?

for more posts on Japan check-out the below:
*   Would you like to see how real Japan looks like?
*  Going… going… Gone!
*  The secret gardens of the world’s most packed city

I had this thinking while riding the central Tokyo Yamanote line from Shinjuku to Meguro. The nice, clean-cut guy was sitting on the opposite chair, reading a comic book. It was a Hentai – Japan’s unique, very-perverse, and highly violent (and obviously graphic) manga porn. Japan is so prolific with these, and their public popularity so vast, to make Hentai anything but a rare and exotic perversion. Yes, the more you try to repress violence, the more it finds creative ways to emerge back to the surface.

Hentai is so bizarre and “out-there,” it might actually deserve to be a part of Japan’s cultural pantheon. Just don’t expect it to be included in the next list of UNESCO protected world heritage icons. I don’t think the image of a man with a bull-sized penis ripping apart a poor young virgin while trying to impregnate her is the staff popular with the UN bureaucrats at Geneva. Or maybe it is…

Make love AND war

There are endless such examples. You think Serbians have given up on violence after the destructive implosion of Yugoslavia? Go to a derby football match between Partizan Belgrade and Red Star, and you’ll see nothing has changed. Sure there’s some football being played out in the field below, the real fight (no pun) takes place in the seats above. Are Scandinavians peaceful? Sure!  But only superficially. Scrape that thin veneer of calmness, however, and what you’ll get might scare the bejesus out of you. Unleashed northern violence lying just beneath a surface of serenity are the hallmarks of The Brun, Girl with Dragon Tattoo, and countless other great Scandinavian literature, art, and cinema.

How about a trip in time to the ’60s? The decade of love they call it. True, but it was also the decade of violence, the most violent one since WWII. The Beatles sang “all you need is love”, while student uprising shocked Europe, two Kennedys, One Luther King, and countless other leaders were killed at gunpoint in broad daylight. Khrushchev nearly brought the world to its end, while Mao had his cultural revolution on the other side of the planet. No word on Vietnam.

But the ’60s had nothing unique about them. “in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance”, said Harry Lime, masterfully portrayed by Orson Wales in the movie “The Third Man”. He may not have known it then, but he was just quoting the 2^nd law of violence preservation.

Like any mathematical equation, the laws can also work in reverse. No better example then home – the middle east. I need not convince you the place I leave can be a volatile powder keg. It is. But that just means that Tel Aviv streets are as safe as one can imagine, middle of the night to. You can pretty much say the same for Cairo, Marrakesh, Aman, and other cities of the region. It is if the people of the region have collectively decided there’s enough political violence, so conventional one is redundant. Israel’s incarceration percentage is only a fraction of the US.

Back to Bali

It’s the same beautiful temple, only 50 meters away. Two cocks are fighting to the death in the muddy gravel. Just to make things clear, I’m talking about two male chickens, I’m sure you did too.

Inside a boxing-like covered arena, the fight is drawing crowds from all over. Money changes hands, while the bookies struggle to records the wagers and calculate the odds. When the fight starts it’s noisy, grisly, and short. I’ve seen and recorded a few cockfights during my Southeast Asian travels, but I’ve never seen one on such a grand scale and organization, nor one that ends so quickly. The secret? Razor-sharp knives tied to each poor bird’s feet. Looks like the happy, peaceful people of Bali, figured out a normal – to-the-death – the fight between two birds wasn’t enough to make the cut (pun intended). Loyal to the 2^nd law of violence preservation, the island of absolute tranquility, decided to go, head-first, into absolute brutality, complete with schpritzes of blood, and an occasional severed limb.

I stood mesmerized in the mayhem of screams and gore. I could have turned away, I could have walked out, but something must have made me stay. Few weeks in paradise must have taken their toll, and I too fell victim to the laws of violence preservation.

Then my wife came back and ordered me – no word minced – to get the hell out of there. Understanding the implied violence of her decisive words, I realized that the laws of violence had a 3^rd addition:

3. Laws #1 & #2 do not apply when potential violence threatens you!