This Project’s focus on good cannot have much validity unless we address the edges of tolerance and intolerance.  The world has too much evidence of intolerable violence in motion right now.  Our country is going to be pushed to the edges of many people’s tolerance as the future unfolds.  I can only describe why The Good Decision espouses non-violence and hope the reader doesn’t mistake this sense of nonviolent good for naivety. 

This writer, though living a peaceful life has also had at least two experiences with existential violence including being the victim of an armed abduction and credible death threats (work related in public service). These events are life changing. By existential violence I mean one experiences total powerlessness in the face of the imminent prospect of death or serious injury . Existential violence marks the end of the oxygen of personal efficacy for the period of the threat and leaves an indelible  mark on memory.  Combat service personnel, first responders such as police,  emergency personnel, and too many crime victims understand existential violence all too well. So do victims of war such as in Isreal, Gaza, Unkaine, Yemen and numerous other locations on this planet.  A too often uncounted blessing for people growing up in this country is a majority never directly experience violence at this level.  Unfortunately, we as a culture do entertain ourselves almost compulsively with violence-as-story-or-game which is not at all the same thing. Violence as entertainment might be partly how we allowed ourselves this far down a dangerous road.

Violence is a sure sign of mutual human failure.  Violence is like a rock heavier than you are strong. The rock is perched on the edge of a cliff.  You can push it off but once it starts rolling its not your show anymore.  Violence is a ravenous force that feeds itself on its own forward momentum.  The best advice these days when on the edge of tolerance is “take a breath” and don’t roll the boulder you can’t roll back.  No one forgets the direct experience of existential violence. You can only bury it in your own body.   None of us want the tattoo of existential violence imprinted in our memories of life.  The last edge of tolerance does not necessarily have to be the beginning of violence.  We have other tools in the toolbox of conflict resolution.