a mind of violence

Just as a warning, this post is a relatively frank assessment of one specific part of the male mind as I see it. The content, other than possibly being blunt, is merely PG in nature. Also, since my mind is male, I feel that I am far more qualified to write on that than something on the female mind. While I am not explicitly requesting this from anyone, I would love to hear assessments from other people on how they believe the minds of people of their gender work.

A lot is made of the focus of sex in the male brain. Not nearly as much is made of the focus of violence. While it may be true that the male brain is more wired for sex than violence, I am not currently convinced that this is the case. I think the drive for violence is more easily masked and diverted than the drive for sex and that is why many diminish the important of violence in the male mind.

First is the most obvious type of mental violence which makes it the easiest to mask. My experience has been that I imagine out violent scenarios to situations quite frequently, and I believe this is something that is common to most or even all other men. This is something that has always been with me, meaning I did not learn it from watching TV and movies, and I do not believe I am alone in this given the content of most action films and comic books. Given how opposed I am to offensive physical violence, that I continue to experience this should carry some significance. This maskable violent imagery is only the most straightforward element of violence in the male mind, though. Just because I imagine violence doesn't mean that anyone has to know about it, but there are other telltale signs of violence in men's minds.

Diverted violence is generally related to a focus or interest in warfare and the elements of warfare and dystopian survival. My observation has been that even many of the most pacifist men have interests of which the appeal is largely due to the similarity to some element of warfare. This can take the form of sports, video games, and business, among other things. For example, football is just a proxy for the actions on a battlefield. It is less obvious than gladiatorial fights were, but all of the symbolic stuff is there. Violence in video games is almost redundant, but even most games that are not violent involve vanquishing a foe. Games that do not involve this are usually designed as crossover games to appeal to women. Finally, the business world is almost entirely structured to be a battle zone. The strong and those supported by the strong (meaning government-supported entities) survive largely by ripping the competition to shreds (I just got a violent mental visualization about that).

Dystopian survival mentality is sort of related to warfare mentality in that my male mind is wired to accept that every once in a while society will destroy itself through warfare and a group of people will have to survive the wilds after it is gone. This is not without some truth. At any given point in time through history there are regions of the world where this is reality. I am not an outdoor sportsman and I do not even own a gun, but I can say that they have some appeal because they would come with the knowledge that I could hunt and fish to provide for my family and shoot to protect my family if society disintegrated.

Since God made most men this way I do not think there is anything naturally evil or wrong about the violence drive as I have described it in the same way that there is nothing naturally evil about the sex drive. The wrongness occurs when the drive for violence goes unchecked and manifests itself destructively. Where that point is where the drive is unchecked is for God to know. I just have to be sure not to reach that point.