Marc “Animal” MacYoung proposes a violence scale for explaining conflicts to “normal” people:
Levels 1 to 2 are issues that can be resolved with a stern look.
3 to 4 go so far as a harsh word.
5 to 6 require verbal threat display (yelling screaming, etc).
7 is mild physical intervention ( a slap or ‘sitting on someone’).
8 is more force required.
9 is serious force.
10 is lethal force, immediately applied and without hesitation.
Very few people have any experience with anything beyond level 7:
This is important because basically past level 8, you are not playing for the same ‘goals’ as are common for 7 and below. Therefore you cannot judge level 8 and above by level 7 and below standards.Below 7 the stakes are usually social status, pride and maintaining social order. Past 8 the stakes are much higher. In fact, level 10 boils down to what Martin Luther King once said:
The question is no longer between violence and non-violence; it is between non-violence and non-existence.That non-existence is either yours or someone else’s. Now slap your hand on the table again, that’s how fast non-existence can — and does — happen at level 10.
An illustrative story:
For example, an old friend of my father’s was a patrol cop. They rolled on a domestic violence call and pulled up to see the guy on the porch with his wife on her knees with a shotgun to her head. As they were getting out of the car, he pulled the trigger. Looking up at them he raised the shotgun towards them…At the inquest he was asked why he had shot the man six times. He replied “I ran out of bullets.”
He told me he’d just seen this guy shoot his wife in front of cops and then point that gun at those same cops… he didn’t figure the guy wanted to talk. That’s a level 10 situation.