Verbal Aggressiveness

We live in what often feels to be an increasingly aggressive society, specifically in attitude toward one another. 

Paul Tournier, in his book, The Violence Within, provides a thoughtful explanation:

“Now, as the work of the biologists has shown, aggressiveness is not a death instinct, but a life instinct. It is the instinct of self-preservation which constrains every animal and every human being to constant self-defence, to ‘save his skin,’ to inspire respect by a more or less threatening display of strength.”

In this paradigm, he goes on to say, 

“One must defend oneself, one must be strong, even threatening, not to conquer and destroy, but in order to be recognized as a person and respected by others.”

Tournier states that the receivers of this strong-arming then must “have a sufficient dose of aggressiveness in order to stand up to the aggressiveness of others.”

So this form of aggressiveness only begets more aggressiveness, leading to a stalemate, or worse. 

Tournier contrasts this aggressiveness with true strength:

“The stronger one is, the less one needs to show one’s strength.”

So in essence, what Tournier is saying, if applied to today's increasingly socially-practiced militant verbalism—in which respect is no longer the first rule of public and private discourse—is that aggressiveness is really weakness.

True strength, on the other hand, which may or may not have begun in a state of aggression, rests, finally, in its calm refusal to be verbally threatened into submission, compliance or group think. 

True strength lives in peace amid differences because it allows for differences and does not fear them.

copyright Barb Harwood