My friend wants to punch their aggressor, so they tell me. They think about running into him on the street and punching him on the face. Between the two of us, I’m definitely the pacifist and I would always want a world without violent solutions, but, in this case, I wholeheartedly support their desire to simply punch him in the face.
You see, they ended up hurting themselves days after their incident, weeks later they got the courage to finally look for legal counsel, then their family withdrew support for the supposed well-being of not my friend. To make matters worse, the same night the little bit of power my friend could’ve had was denied, they had an encounter with their aggressor. They didn’t punch his face, they left for home shaking.
Should I tell my friend to not think about punching their aggressor’s face? Should I deny them their small coping mechanism? I’m the pacifist, but my fantasies would not be of simply punching him in the face. I would go low, very low, lower than him, in creative and cruel ways that make me actually sick by just considering them in passage, but that wouldn’t be more terrible than the actual reality so many people have to endure because of people like him.
Stop judging the words of those suffering under the boot when that’s the only power they really have, their only solace. We are mostly not David, we are Don Quixote.
I'll be using the information in this site: https://www.verywellhealth.com/coping-mechanisms-5272135
The point of my post was to say there is a difference between fantasy and plans, and not to judge or act as if fantasies will ever be more than that.
The problem here is fear, not hate. The person that harmed them lives in the same neighborhood and running into them while on the street is a great concern, but my friend could go out in part because of this fantasy. It's small, stupid and generic. Unhealthy is writing useless in your arm using nail clippers or trying to cut your own wrists.