A nice bit of violence

Does being hard nosed (in our decision making) assure results? Is violence popular because it is low energy? Perhaps the human way isto establish dominance to make sure we get our own way. All it needs is one snide remark or a punch in the face and we get maximum effect for very little energy output. When we’re afraid to go the longer way round we resort to good old tried and tested aggression. The hard nosed approach gives us a ‘sugar hit’, allowing us to be judgmental about someone else, which makes us feel good about ourselves, which in turn makes it easy for us to dislike the other guy. When things don’t go right it feels so much better to have someone to blame. We use the judgment-pick-me-up. But does it really work? Maybe not, because our judgements eat us up. They stop us looking for the best side in other people, and that consumes energy that we could be using more constructively.
To become non-judgmental as well as non-violent, we need to be both selfish and unselfish at the same time. We need to balance our spending of energy with what we get back. If what we do is all selfless we’ll never be able to keep it up, too selfish and it goes the other way. Better to get this flow of energy from ourselves and to ourselves working nicely. Then we’ll be less inclined to resort to clumsy methods.