First look for the guy with the semi-automatic assault rifle. Next keep your eyes peeled for the maniac raving and waving the hunting knife around. The guy wandering around the crowd bashing people with his bloody shovel should also be a dead give away. It is also important to note that anyone covered in the human blood of others should be avoided. If anyone is bearing down on you with a gore-dripping chain saw and an intense fanatical gaze then I’d say you’ve done a fair job of recognizing that individual’s potential for violence. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to see that individual coming from a mile away? Let me tell you about my ability to recognize the impending wrath of rage.
I am hyper vigilant. What this means is that I have experienced enough violence to see the value of paying attention to all possible avenues for any danger to enter the surrounding environment. I watch people. I watch animals. I tune into the environment as a whole and I pay attention to the complete flow of its movement. It is easy to spot danger “from miles away” if I pay attention. Paying attention puts an individual a few moves ahead in the chess game that is survival.
The difference between survival and chess is that there are only sixty-four squares in chess and there are infinite possibilities in life. What must be recognized to simplify this is the way things are moving. It is important to pay attention to what is going on in the immediate environment. We all exist in a flowing stream of physics that interacts with everything external to immediacy.
I have a simple formula for analyzing the risk of violence in an individual. I balance the wants and values of of the individual against the presence or lack of those wants and values. Then, I look at the expressions of the individual to determine that person’s self value. The formula is not complex. Measure the individual’s frustrated or supported external values against the person’s frustrated or supported internal value of self. This should place you in a fair frame of mind to determine if someone will snap. This is so easy that all of the cats and dogs I’ve ever met can do it.
I can spot danger before danger spots itself. I see the glimmer in the maniac’s eye and I match it with my own firm gaze. The danger of violence lingers in the outskirts of all of our perceptions. All one must do is look a little bit deeper to recognize its subversive face before it begins wielding tissue-embedded weapons and a fully automatic machine gun flinging fast metal at one’s flesh. All journeys and murders begin with a single step. The wrath of rage telegraphs all of its punches in the flow of the environment that surrounds.
