The thing to remember is that "they are humans". Sounds awful but I at least so quickly forget that the inarticulate, foul mouthed, swaggering throw back is underneath all that slack jawed, menacing, in-yer-faceness just a sensative human being. Realising this even in the midst of a potential fight is key!
All humans/animals are "sensitive". Humans especially get cut inside very easily. The middle-classes have it slightly more easy. They can express themselves through a diverse range of systems from language, to legality. Faced with a problem they can vent their frustrations through mirid games like the police, solicitors, politicians and letters to newspapers all involving a rich language. They experience enormous empowerment as these systems emrace their view points and their "problems". One might even embrace problems because of the power that it affords!
The underclass on the other hand look out at the world from a very different perspective. The police for example are more likely to look at them as the perpetrator than to be their friend! How infinitely frustrating and insulting when you are the one who is hurting! Asian lads I know rarely experience a week without being stopped by the police. Me - white middleclass - has never once been stopped! When the very structures of "your" society exclude you then you experience an enormous loss of power and control and lowering of self-esteem.
So what do you do? Firstly strengthening bonds with other people in your position occurs and a rejection of the "establishment". The underclass is spontaneously born as a group of people who positively embrace poverty and social exclusion! (Very Nietzsche). Short term solutions to pain drive them into the net of pain! Football is the saviour of the lower classes because it enables bonding and membership that is free from the social structures that problematise their life. This kind of "local", near-horizon thinking is the problem. Society ghetoises not only the under-class physically but mentally. Now the real problems begin.
Faced with a problem and frustration there are few channels to mediate. Desperate for money - there is only one short sighted solution steal. Short of respect and power - there is only one short sighted solution: violence. The under-class are led automatically into "anti-social" behaviour in order ironically to achieve what the upper-classes gain through society!
With a knife drawn the under-class individual has the apparent control of the porche driving professional who is otherwise untouchable. Such power for someone who has no other mode of expression is a persuasive approach.
The professional while weak in the near-horizon knows they have the "system" to mediate this situation: private medical care in the event of injury, sympathetic police, best solicitors, politicians etc.
Both individuals however are sensitive and seeking exactly the same thing - they are just brought to conflict because of the very different worlds they find themselves in.
The solution? The professional who is mentally articulate has to realise that it is their responsibility to mediate this situation. Fighting either physically or via the system is naive and trivial. Getting the police to "hunt" down your attacker is no better than being "hunted" down and attacked in the first place - it is just as brutal and ignorant.
The problem is "sensitivity". The most violent person is the person who seeks comforting the most - this is why they are fight so hard for respect. Returning Love in the face of abject violence is the only solution.
How is that possible with fear, anger and hatred poised to anihilate ones own system? If these evils win then we have taken exactly the same route in life as the under-class individual. We may mediate via politics and "the system" but we are still seeking self-protection and responding to our own "sensitivity".
Jesus taught us the true response very vividly. We go to our death (if need be) with bravery and peaceful acceptance. If we are going to die in a street mugging then so be it. What we must NOT do at all costs is die in fear and hatred. The key thing as we die is to realise that our assailant is only trying to get respect from us - but in their inarticulacy and desperation they have only been able to demand it through fear and alterity. So profoundly ironic that the person they wanted to call friend they have been brought to hate and kill.
If we face death like this however amazing things happen. What human being can face a display of love like this without recognition of themselves? The very recognition that they are so desperate to find? It is through facing the loss of ourselves in death like this that we can show even the most "messed up" to find themselves. But to do this we must find ourselves. So the lesson for the middle-classes is the fear of the under-class is that they are really under-class themselves and that the noble aryan see all people as friends.
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