a nice bit of violence

Violence is popular because it is low energy. All it needs is one snide remark or a punch in the face to get maximum effect with very little energy output. When we’re afraid to go the longer way round we resort to good old tried and tested violence. We become hard nosed to get a result, like the ‘sugar hit’ we get from being judgmental about someone else, making our values look better than theirs. We draw energy from feeling good about ourselves, in comparison to the guy who is bad-without-doubt, which in turn makes it easy for us to dislike the bad guy. When things don’t go right it feels so much better to have someone to blame. We use the judgment-pick-me-up all the time. But does any of it work? Maybe not, because our judgements eat us up. They make us sour and stop us looking for the best side of the people we are with. They consume energy we could be using more constructively.
To become both non-violent and non-judgmental, we need to be both selfish and unselfish at the same time. We need to balance our spending of energy with what we want to get back in return. If what we do is all selfless we’ll likely not be able to keep it up. Better to get this flow of energy from ourselves and to ourselves working nicely,so that we'll be less inclined to dip into violence.