It was 2018. I was visiting counselor friends in Orlando. We are sitting around the conference table in the only office I ever considered home, talking about stuff when my friend made a contemptuous comment about her husband buying a shotgun.
I like guns. I like the 2nd amendment. I think any person who can’t take me in fight should be armed because there are monsters in the dark. The comment got to me. Why do I and my friend have such opposite views about guns? And does this extend to swords, fists, and violence in general?
When I was commuting for hours from the place that I hated living in to the job that was genuinely killing me, I thought about this question. When I was driving back I thought about it. When I was at the gym, pretending to work out I thought about it. When I was freezing my ass off in the cold dead winters of Pittsburgh I was thinking about it. When I was letting the sun cook my brain I thought about it. Why are we so opposite on this subject? Why do I think that in order to be safe its best to be armed, and why does she think the opposite?
So it took about 18 months to get the answer and when I finally understood, when I finally got hit in the head by the goddamn clue-by- four, the skies opened up and angels sang.
Some people believe safety exists. Other people believe safety does not exist.
It blew my mind once I figured this out. If you grew up like I did, being traumatized, constantly afraid, constantly waiting for the agony to hit you, you want safety but it is a rare thing. No one ever provided that for me. In fact if I ever asked for that I was called a pussy and then beaten up. And then told I was morally wrong for wanting basic safety in the first place.
Of course I want to be armed.
The world is dangerous, random, and tragic. People are malicious, or so incompetent that it ends up being the same effect as malice. Get a gun because you can use it to defend yourself. It is only by my own ability to create safety around me that I can feel safe.
For me, someone willfully choosing to remove their ability to protect themselves and the people they love is the height of suicidal foolishness. But then you talk to these normies who were probably raised right. If you grew up relatively safely, or at the very least grew up with the belief and experience that danger is the exception rather than the rule, then of course you see things differently. The world is safe and in that safety you can find joy and peace. People are generally nice, or at the very least not malicious against you. Safety exists as a normal part of the universe, and it's only when a monster shows up that it becomes dangerous.
Of course you don’t want to be armed, safety exists naturally and you don’t have to do anything to attain it.
No one talks about the actual belief about whether safety exists or not. When you hear the politicians on the C-SPAN or the talking heads on the radio, the Democrat calls the Republican a bloodthirsty animal who just wants to kill, and the Republican calls the Democrat an overprivileged weakling who never had to throw a punch to save his pathetic life.
When you hear the debate about gun control, no one is actually talking about what's really going on underneath the surface. We’re just screaming at each other, trying to shout down the other side. Or we’re using the useless tools of “facts and logic” to fight them, as if it was ever an intellectual, logical, or objective issue.
When I work with my veterans, my service members, my first responders, and they say, “I have to sit down with my front to the door and my back to a wall”, “I can never actually have someone behind me.” “Getting off the elevator, I always let the other person go first. No one's going to get behind me to put a knife in my back.” .
And then they complain about their girlfriends, just gallivanting through the Starbucks with no situational awareness, not even knowing that a freaking animal can come in and kill us all. Safety doesn't exist for this person, except that which they, and the few people they trust, actually create around them. They know how dangerous it is out there. It’s my job to help them learn how to trust and relax and lower their hypervigilance to just vigilance
(Side note. Military, police, first responders recruit almost exclusively from those who grew up in chaotic, neglectful, dangerous, and/or traumatizing environments. More on that in a future dispatch.)
Then I talk to their wives or girlfriends who say, “I don't understand why he’s so tense. I don't understand why that we have to be like carrying a gun all the time and having a bug out bag and all this other stuff and why he has to like be so freaked about walking down the damn street.”
This concept of safety not existing is one of the many things that contributed to my social anxiety and social isolation. I was constantly terrified of everything because everything was constantly dangerous. I never knew the rules but the consequences of breaking them were megaton. Constant surprising agony, rejection, loneliness, berating.
And when I saw people who actually felt safe, who were relaxed, who trusted each other and their families, who could actually enjoy life, I didn’t understand it. How were they not constantly afraid, or at least aware of how dangerous everything was?
It took so long for me to realize that the danger for me was real, but it wasn’t for them. And it was never supposed to be there for me in the first place.
I could go on about this, and I will in part 2. In the meantime, look at yourself and look at your beliefs about violence and peace and safety and danger. Look at someone else who has the opposite views as you, and imagine what it would take for you to be like them.