L.O.G. 219 Anger Aggression and Violence

Alright, we got everything set up, Greg. We're going to go ahead and get started this morning. Happy Thursday morning as we're recording this before a big start to the chaos that always is this year: August, September, October. Everything's busy, travel season for us, so we will be doing back-to-back this month. If you're in Topeka, Austin, or Ann Arbor at any time during this month, keep an eye out for us. You may find us at airline hubs; that's usually where we're sitting in the airport. Yeah.

So today, we're talking about, in general, the question, "Is anger a healthy emotion?" But what we're getting into is distinguishing between anger, aggression, and violence, what we mean by this. We've talked about rage a lot on this podcast and what that means. We always say when you get to that level of rage, there's really no stopping it. It has to abate on its own. People have to, once you hit that point, but that's like the red line point, right? That's, there's nothing higher than rage. So, explosion. Yeah, exactly. The person spontaneously combusts, like what's happened in the cartoons so far. It's like when someone says, "Well, it could lead to death or worse." Killed or worse, yeah. So, it's understanding the big things I want to hit on in this discussion when we talk about anger, aggression, and violence is that someone doesn't have to be angry to become violent. Or, they might not display what you would think was anger. And also, the flip side of that, just because someone's angry doesn't mean they're going to be violent. There are people—even you mentioned Charlie, [correction to Shelley] Shelley—there are people that walk around angry all the time, 24 hours a day. That's their baseline, that's who they are. And Shelley's the last person who's ever going to do something outside of what you're supposed to do. She is. I mean, that's the last person I'd ever think would go high and right. But she's angry all the time, that's just how she is. But it's good to understand. So we'll get into each one, understanding anger, aggression, violence, and even some of the psychological sociological imperatives to this. Like, anger, right off the bat, if you're just going to say, "Is anger a healthy emotion?" My immediate answer is yes. But we'll get into what that means. Maybe it's no for you, I don't know, but it is yes, it's absolutely. So what all this means, where do you want to start? Do we want to start with anger and then kind of break down what each one means?

Right. Let's go topical, Brian, because we can dig deeper if we have to. A great thing on LinkedIn this morning, when I check my LinkedIn every morning just to make sure that I'm still alive, like looking for the obituary, there was a female that was talking about her Fitbit—I don't know what they're called now, they're the wearables. She said that she got to the point last week where the heart monitor was so annoying, it was bothering her that she stopped wearing her Fitbit and spent last night in the emergency room. Yeah, there you go. Why? Because that alarm is screaming for you. Anger comes with an alarm. Rage doesn't. When we're starting to talk about aggression or violence, they can come out of anywhere and don't have to be precipitated by anger, and you made a great point about that. So I say if we're going to define anger, let's talk about anger as being an emotion. It's brought on by irritations, like a pearl coming from the oyster. You feel abused, or that you've been given unfair treatment, or a frustration. So when we talk about Shelley being the angry one 24 hours a day, that's absolutely true. But what is Shelley's motivation? I've known Shelley now for 40 years, and the idea is that she is always for the underdog. She hates to see people that are bullied. Yes. When there is frustration in the workplace, she has to come in and say, "Stop it and get back to work!" Because Shelley is all about everybody functioning. If there was ever a DEI human before this latest push for it, from ancient Greek, it'd be Shelley. She's like, "Okay, no, no, this is all wrong. This is the way it's going to be." And she doesn't mind saying it. See, that's the problem. A lot of us, Brian, don't understand that anger is a healthy emotion, and it's meant for us to do two things, basically, overall. The one thing is to advocate to right the wrong, to name it, to face it, and to get rid of it because it keeps coming up as a warning, just like the bell I was talking about. The second one is so you can see that something is wrong and attend to it before you get to other levels, right? So there's a balance there. So your constant prodding of anger is to tell you to clean up thyself, a physician heal thyself. And the opposite side of the same coin is that there's an environmental factor that you have to attend to, or it's going to continue to frustrate you. That makes sense. And remember, folks, I'm not a fucking doctor, I'm just an idiot. But when I come up with that, to me, it makes a lot of sense. Anger as an emotion could be brought upon by pain, right? It could be mental, emotional, or physical pain. You do the Peter Griffin stub-your-toe. You can get angry because of physical pain that you're in, and that anger will manifest. Yeah, exactly. I went for three minutes in class doing that. Oh, yeah, yeah. And everybody still laughed the whole time. Nobody waited, they were laughing the entire time. So that can manifest itself through anger. Some, you know, as those emotions build up. But, kind of like you said, that can be a survival base. I can get angry over some injustice and want to immediately correct it, or correct it over time, whatever it is. I can use anger almost as a fuel source in a sense as a human.

That's exactly it. But it's a fuel source that comes with a tangible, and I don't want to use the word 'warning'—'warning's' a little too strong. 'Reminder' is a great thing. So, anger... I get up and I look at the house, and the house is dirty, and I'm, "God damn it, I was supposed to vacuum and put the dishes away!" Well, what is that? It's a prompt, it's a motivator, it's a way for you to clean your own house internally. And then you go outside and you go, "God damn, neighbors are up to no good!" You see what I'm saying? So, clean the rest of the world. And if we didn't have these, that's the big ticket item when it comes to aggression and violence. Aggression and violence are never useful emotions. And I say that with a caveat. If you're fighting through your life, it's good to have violence, to have a modicum of aggression available to you. And that's why it starts swinging. But when you need it, guess what? Your body will tell you that you need it. So if we would segue into aggression and violence, then we can unpack anything. I see it as very simply this: there's a biological imperative to aggression and violence. Yes. For example, your brain's chemistry tells you it's time. Or the other side of that coin is that you've been eating paint chips since you were a kid, and the implications of that were biology that tends to make you more violent, so you have a shorter temper, those kind of things. Because there are, there are, you know...

Well, that's even... you're talking about your brain telling you, your biology telling you, but that could be a corrupt file folder.

Exactly. So then we talk about sociology. You and I talk about socialization, and what we mean is that you learn through your life. Like, socialization with my dad. You've heard me talk about my dad a lot. My dad and my mom duked it out all the time, and I'm talking open fist. And we were, we're a fighting family and we're a hidden clan. So if you, God damn it, my Uncle Paul punching you, "Pay attention!" Well, that would be socialization, Brian. That pattern of thinking or feeling comes from your life experiences. And then, we always talk environmental. So environmental or situational factors, right? Those are characteristics in the environment. So, "Everybody Kung Fu fighting," you're probably going to throw a punch. "We're in Ukraine," do you get what I'm trying to say? And there's fighting words, do you see what I'm trying to say? And then finally, cognitive. So cognitive are those ones that we're trying to carry off into every part of our training. Cognitive would be those patterns, those beliefs, the things that emerge within us as a result of the interactions with our world. Not just our family, not just my car, not just my job, but everything. And guess what? They accumulate over a lifetime. And that's where we get the stuff like the hate accumulator, you know what I'm saying? So that's cognitive, though, right?

It is, because they become, they become a powerful coping mechanism. Exactly. Right. They become a way to see the world, to justify your beliefs or thoughts. You were wrong in some way, and maybe that was illegitimate, but a lot of times it might have been completely legitimate, like you got screwed over, right? And then you maybe lack the adaptability, let's say, because who hasn't been knocked down a couple times in life or whatever through no fault of your own? And then, you lack of it. So now you harbor that sort of resentment, that anger starts to grow, and that aggression can grow, could turn into violence. But you don't know what's underneath there necessarily. And then, because it becomes that cognitive bias, you then see the world, "Well, here's another way I was wrong. Well, then here's another thing that happened to me, and look at this." And now it starts to add up, and it's just, it's just confirmation bias, confirmation bias, confirmation bias.

And so, continue to touch on that way. Touch on that. So, okay, your alarm was late because the power went out, and it went out in the middle of the night, so you wouldn't likely have known it. So then you go outside and you have the wrong set of keys. You got the wife's keys, you're trying to get in, the clicker isn't working. You see her car light up, or his, whoever you're... it's all good. Yeah, it's my house, right? The three-way. So, then you get into your truck and you try to turn it over and it's going, "Yeah, yeah, that starter is finally going." Well, what do you do as a human? Each one of those was prepared for me and dished up today because God wants Buddha vision and wants to poke me in the eye. How do you think the rest of my day is going to shape? Oh, no. And with those, look, precipitating factors: fear, precipitating factor, anxiety. Here we're talking your basic physical needs. You need food, you need shelter. And no, I'm not talking about that God damn pyramid. What I'm talking about is that you have a plan, and now nothing's fitting your plan. And the idea that nothing's fitting your plan, your mind immediately goes chemically to, "Well, nothing is going to for the rest of the day." So the first person you're about to walk in with that breakfast that you and Shelley like—I haven't had yet—the Chick-fil-A. Remember the Chick-fil-A near that one hotel in Virginia where it was just packed around? So we go to go in the door and the first person in the door goes, "Hey, the line starts back there!" So now what happens is that leads to other things. Look, 9/11 has a traumatic portion for people that weren't even alive during 9/11 because environmentally, cognitively, they know something happened on that day, with reading off the names and doing the bell. And then somebody showed them the pictures, and we can get trauma from that. Why am I saying that? Because anger is different. I can be angry over a whole bunch of different things, right? But that aggression and violence now all of a sudden pops up, "Hey, you son of a bitch!" And I'm beating a guy with a head wrap, and he's an idiot. He's from Punjab. So none of those equate until we falsely or accidentally equate them. So our experiences, our ability to go out into an environment and have aggression on violence triggered by anger is probably the wrong way because aggression and violence are rarely constructive. Do you get where I'm going?

Okay, right. But it's a default that's so close to the top, but it's dead, so we're gonna go there for that issue. I like how you put it. So, the violence, aggression, as a solution is rarely ever constructive. However, it's so biologically necessary. Yeah, it's very... it's like always, it's always on your belt, it's always right there within arm's reach. And it's actually the closest thing, because you're primed for survival. Your brain's going, "Well, I might have to kill something. Someone might try to kill me. This could be the end of my life and the end of my family's life and the end of the human race. So I have to have that prepared in a sense." And so that that's what makes this difficult, because everyone gets into it and a lot of them are great. We don't go into like the different coping mechanisms or what to do or how to do this—the TTP (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures). It's your job.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's a lot out there, and people can choose what works for them. A lot of that stuff doesn't work for me. I have my own ways, and that's actually the best way is to find you. So it's about getting to know you and your triggers so that you can figure out, "Oh, wow, I don't need to get upset over this," or, "This is what's happening over there, but it's all good." It's people focused on... but that's also sort of, I think a lot of them missed the point and they misunderstand it. It's a, that's a lot of 'at-bang' thinking. That kind of reminds me of that article one of our listeners sent. You can check it out, we just discussed it on the Patreon side. But someone did some meta-study, I don't know, it was one of those where a professor or whatever, it was a really good study. Wow, very small control group and a lot of conjectures. And they talked, what they're talking about is how learning different anger management techniques actually got people better at focusing their aggression. And so it actually didn't work. It just got them better at fueling their anger towards a specific thing or person. Which was interesting, and I get, I get where they're going with it, but what I'm trying to get at is that's sort of that 'at-bang' thinking. It's like, "Okay, I'm realizing this now." And that's internal to yourself, to know and recognize where you're at on that spectrum. As if I'm already getting angry, that's the time to take that breath. Because for us, it's a big one, is that's physiological and psychological arousal that will cause, so you're limiting your performance at that time, right? The anger, anger, I guess, the worst, my cognitive performance is, so it's affecting you. But the other side of that, too, is identifying those things in others, too. Yeah.

So, here's what I would like to do with you, and it's a thought experiment. We haven't prepared this, but I would like to say that we're talking about anger. We talked that anger doesn't have to lead to violence, and violence can be sprung from the well without ever getting angry. We also talked about aggression and violence when [we] put them in the same bag. I say that in a minute, we go to aggression and violence and separate those. It's a very simple separation just to make sure that every person listening can do exactly what you just said: we don't have to just see it as a trigger in us, we can see it in another person and then be warned. Here's the problem, and you brought it up perfectly. You talked about 'at-bang' thinking. So listen, sham and scam artists that are still out there, when we talk about September 11th from The Human Behavior Podcast (HBP) RNA standpoint—a predictive analysis standpoint—I will bring up Ramsay Youssef. And you'll go, "Who the hell is Ramsay Youssef?" Well, that goes back to the First World Trade Center bombing, and it goes back to him working in the Texas Peaches shop, and it talks about them planning a bomb. And while they were doing it in Saudi Arabia, a guy had rented a plane, he was flying the plane, and he had full 55-gallon drums, and he was trying to show how big the blast could be. And a guy named Bin Laden in his construction company were watching, Brian. Those are the precipitating factors. If you do not understand those, you will consistently and constantly repeat your mistakes over time. And I think it's a parallel, do you get what I'm trying to say? I mean, I think it's exactly how we think. We don't think where everybody else thinks, "Oh man, look at the towers, they're burning and the firefighter and this." You're 'at-bang.' You can't get off of the bubble. And so what do you do? You keep repeating that same nightmare in your life over and over and over. Don't, right? And so what we're trying to say is all of those other things, and you're going, "Yeah, but how do we put them together?" Well, if you're alert to those subtle, nuanced things that are happening in your environment, you start going, "Hey, there's an explanatory storyline. It's an ML (Most Likely), which means I don't have to worry about it, or it's the most dangerous course of action, and holy shit, they're planning an attack!" Right? That's what we've got to do. So if you turn that same flashlight or laser on your own life, you'll be able to see, for example, aggression—verbal aggression. We know people that are verbally aggressive all the time. They're constantly 'cut.' We used to call it 'cut, chop, slice,' and we would just say that so that person would understand that they're being verbally aggressive. We also know, even in our former company, people that were relationally aggressive. What does that mean? They were bullies, they were just bullies. And they were constantly in cliques and backstabbing and doing all that other stuff if you weren't part of the group. And then you brought it up, the psychological. "Okay, I'm using guilt as a weapon. I'm going to isolate you and make you feel inadequate." Or the physiological, the physical aggression, where I break something in order to intimidate you, or I hold something back from you that you should have. Or now we're starting to actually touch and kick and everything else. Those are separate from violence because violence is intentional injury. That's my primary goal. I am coming in with the idea that I'm going to start knocking shit around. So those two things [aggression and violence are] rarely constructive. Anger is always constructive. And if we built a timeline, we could use different instances to say these things are weighted more heavily and need to be looked at as pre-event indications, and these don't, right? Do you get where I'm going with that?

Yes. And so that's again, because you brought up a few points, you brought a few points in there that are kind of important to hit on, too. Because whether it's the, especially with aggression and maybe how people speak, a lot of times sometimes they don't even realize that they're doing that, right? So my wife used to call it when we kind of first started seeing each other and stuff like that, she's like, "You can't talk like that." I was like, "Like what?" She's like, "You get this, or your Chicago voice and your family, and you get loud and you kind of do that." I'm like, "Yeah, but I'm not..." She's like, "I realize that now, but like I have this reaction from her past experiences where someone starts talking like that, and it's very serious and they're being angry and mean," where I'm just getting animated about something. And I was like, "Oh, okay, I got it." And so then I recognized that when talking. I was like, "Oh, okay, like, cool, I don't have to do..." Like, it made it clear to me. Now, I at no point meant anything, I was just happy. But she was because of her experience, she went, "Oh, I don't like where this guy is, the way this guy's talking to me. This isn't happening again." Internal and external mode.

Okay.

And when she, when she, and but part of that helped how she put it, she's like, "You get your Chicago attitude." And I was like, "That's kind of funny." Like, "I see what you're saying." Like, you get to a point and then you're like, "Hey, what's this prick's problem?" Or the coppers. Remember we did an episode a long time ago. There's a lot of coppers, pardon my vernacular, but there's a lot of coppers out there that get to the point where they're full and go, "Hey, fuck this guy!" Yeah. And that's when it's on. That's when things go wrong. And then, and then, and then you don't realize the next person showing up there doesn't realize that they think it's something much more serious.

Flashlight first. Exactly. And that's where this, but that's what we're talking about, exactly. Can you imagine? Can you imagine, and this is for all our business folks out there, and we don't think about it because of the lenses of law enforcement work and first responder and military. If you go into a meeting and go, "Hey, let's kick the tires and lights and fires," you're talking about arson and talking about violent aggression. And then what do we say? We say, "Okay, Tom, let's put that on a punch list. And Mary, let..." Do you see what I'm saying? What you're doing is you're assimilating verbal aggression into something, but your intent is different. Your intent is to motivate and to get people focused and do that. But what you really don't understand is you're actually fanning the embers of emotion that could lead somebody adversely and affect them to going violence. So you've got to rehearse that, buddy. You really got it. And that's why we boil it down to a very simple, "People want their say, not their way," right? Most people want to get something off their chest. They want to complain to the manager. They want to tell you why what you're doing to them is wrong or unjust or something. That's what they got to get. And my, you know, me and your big things, let them. It's like, "Okay, you're gone. Go on. Yeah, that sucks, and I understand that." So, but that's also a de-escalation strategy because what you're doing is you're adding the gift of time and distance into what could turn aggressive. Everybody listen, that's a good cue. Because the second part of the coin Brian just gave you, if we look at the obverse, the flip side is, is this person acting up or is this person acting out? Because that's a huge one to compare with that. Because, like we just said, okay, it's like, I can imagine listening, "Are you talking about anger?" Great, that person's angry because this happened, they feel something, they were wrong. Okay, nothing, nothing wrong with that. But if I come in with the wrong response, that might lead to now aggression, and now that continues, that aggression may turn into violence. They may actually act, you know, act out, right? They might actually want their, want their, want their way now, not just just their say. So it's, and I know people listening are kind of seeing where we're going with that. But what about that sort of the optics I brought it up at the beginning, is, you know, you don't have to be angry to become violent. You don't have to show any type of aggression prior to becoming violent. And that's, that's also sort of the other side of that coin where we miss it, right? Maybe the first stuff we were talking about is where we can accidentally contribute to a situation where it can start to escalate, or we're not realizing how much we're escalating the situation or watching that happen. But then the other one can be hard to identify. It's like, "Well, wait a minute, this person seemingly came out of nowhere and committed this violent act, but they didn't look mad, they didn't look good, they weren't aggressive. They spoke kindly to the person at the front desk and then walked into the back office and killed everyone."

Exactly. So let's, let's define that. Let's put that on that yellow pad, Brian. Aggression doesn't always involve violence, but violence always involves aggression. If we understand that, now we're further separated: anger, aggression, and violence. And so aggression, for this part of the discussion, is confrontational behavior. And so we have impulsive aggression—it wasn't planned, key to the moment. We have planned aggression—"Tomorrow I'm going to go in and smack Billy and take his lunch money," or, "Tommy and Jane always had the best lunch, I'm going to steal their shit from their lunch." Okay. So now we have two sides of the same coin there. Then we have direct and indirect. Direct: "I'm calling you a name. Hey, slim, come here. Hey, buddy, beard, please." You get what I'm trying to say? And what does that do, man? Now you're starting to get people going like I told you that one time on a plane where I told like, "Hey, partner, let me get ahead of you here, second." And he stops and gets in my face and says, "Yeah, not your partner!" There's the one I heard about, buddy. It's like it's for three things: it's like talking to a dog, talking to a child, or talking to someone about you're about to fight. "Hey, buddy," it's like that. And the indirection, like Andrea used indirect aggression, and she's a PhD now. And Andrea used indirect aggression for 25 years. And you know what that was? That was her rolling eyes and making gestures to make you feel uncomfortable. And when I would tell her to do something, her entire body would do the limp, like, "I can't do it." Okay. So if you understand that it's direct and indirect, and you understand that it can be impulsive, compulsive, planned, okay, then you can control it. That's the key. The key is it's not easy to control, but if you can control your aggressive outbursts, then you can't lead to violence, right? You can snip that. Now violence is always going to involve aggression. And that's when you know because you start pumping your chest and you start leaning your head out, you start showing your teeth. Why? And people go, "Those are anger cues!" You're way to the right side. And I think that's what we're really talking about, Brian, is we're talking about so how do you tell where you are?

Yes. That's, that's because that's, that can be somewhat subjective per person, right? We just talk about, "Well, wait a minute, if Shelley's angry all the time, then where's her line at? Or where would I know?"

Never aggression. Yeah, there's never... she's loving. And people go, "Oh my God, she's the best mom!" Everyone else says she's an amazing, she gets the job done. But she's not going to take a lip, she's going to call you on BS. Right? And, but Brian, there's never been the aggressive. I mean, I've seen her get aggressive when people are bullied, and she steps in and goes, "Not today!" Okay. Exactly. Right. But that was because she had to choose that path because there may have been violence. You see the way that works? It's like paving stones, right? Once you paved those stones, you can go further across the lava. And the lava is always hot, it's always waiting for you. Violence is always there. There's never been a meeting between two human beings. They call making love—Shakespeare, 'the beast with two backs.' Why? Because it's a violent encounter. And most times, it certainly is with me, for the love of God. But the idea is that what happens is there's the potential for violence and aggression in everything we do. Why? Because our early selves had to manifest as a survival mechanism. So they're still on board. Maybe they're, maybe they're buried deeper. Maybe it's 'the Princess and the Pea,' Brian, but they're there. And anybody that doesn't think that they're there is full of shit. So that's where they have to go back and assign the value to themselves. And what we saw, the Pope slap that woman, do you remember that? Okay. So if somebody, if somebody doesn't believe that you could get ramped up into that level of aggression or violence, then you're wrong. But it doesn't have to be brought on from anger. Do you remember Joe Pesci in, whatever the film was?

Yeah, that was 'Three at the Drive-Through,' right?

Yeah, okay. You know what he didn't do? He didn't do what that lady in Philadelphia did a while ago and drive back in and shoot the person because they didn't give her enough of the ketchup or whatever the side was. Read the articles, folk, do your own research on this, and get out there and see. There are some people because—and this is my theory, Brian—because they haven't been trained with alternatives, because they don't understand there's alternatives that are going to go 'flash to bang.' They don't either... they either haven't been taught or they haven't learned through life that there's other ways.

And then also, the environment really, really plays a massive role—the actual physical environment and sort of like the mental, emotional environment. That's why you see a lot of the stuff happen on airplanes where people act out of control, because once you put, you're literally locked in this fucking aluminum tube, not going anywhere. That immediately adds pressure to the safe situation. I mean, well, you can't get up and walk around. You gotta ask the person next to you every time you want to, right? These outcomes are forced by the environment sometimes because there are no alternatives. So mentally, I'm thinking you're on a plane, like you can't go anywhere, you can't just walk away and take a breath, you can't leave the situation. So you're locked in. It was, it was the same thing with like, COVID and the lockdowns, and putting all that pressure on societally without people realizing it. It's like, that's when you start to see those stress fractures. We're still...

You're not doing anybody any favors by having the over-service to Chantal, the over-service of alcohol in the airplane. And that's coupled with what you drink on the ground already. Now we're 30,000 feet, Brian. What do we always say? Problems don't get easier at 30,000 feet. Those are things you got to solve on the ground. Brian, do you ever have to call coppers on the ground for a disorderly conduct that gets out of hand? Well, you can only imagine it's going to be exacerbated on a plane. So there's certain time, that's why traffic, too. What do we have? We have our mobile FIFA. Yeah, that's right. Driving down the freeway, and somebody pulls in front of us, and we say, "Thou has now taken an aggressive posture against my vehicle!" And we all turn into the Neanderthals. We have to understand there's a very small barrier, in film, between our primitive selves and our current self. My, when I hear people go 'lizard brain' and 'monkey brain' and all this other stuff, it's stopped. You're going in the wrong direction. You're reading the wrong books. You, you, you've always been had sets. Okay. But the earlier forms of you didn't have the critical thinking, it didn't have the reasoning. And so I would add one to yours. I would say environment. Yeah, nature, nurture, get it? I would also say the person didn't learn those skills, wasn't exposed to sense-making or problem-solving. And I say that PTSD, a traumatic injury, specifically a traumatic brain injury, can turn people violent. Excellent. People. I, I've seen people laugh at inappropriate times, right? I've seen people that undervalue the situation that they're in, Brian. People that take just a person saying "Excuse me" as a challenge. And a lot of times that can be due to that closed head injury.

Well, and some of the stuff, I know people listening are like, "Well, yeah, I know, we get it. We've seen that," or, "People get upset." That's sort of like the "so what?" And it actually goes right back to what you brought up at the beginning, which is seeing these things at a very simple, almost 'white belt' level.

You got it.

Because you have to. That's how you recognize it when it's the serious situation where intervention is necessary, or you need to leave, or you see it before it happens. Because I go back to like a lot of the stuff I post even on social media, on our Instagram and stuff like that. Like people like, "Oh, so you're saying these people are doing something wrong?" They're almost like, "Never said that, reread the fucking post!" But the idea is you can articulate behaviors in a sterile, benign, general environment. Then it's easier to see them, they become obvious when it's not that situation, right? So if I can articulate it here, and that's kind of what we're getting at, is that we forget those things. How many times do you drive a car and you're not angry and you're totally fine, and you've been doing that your whole life? But you don't know that the person next to you at that stoplight, they're at some completely different level for whatever happens. They're full, they're full and they're spilling around all over every side of that car, and you didn't know it.

Everywhere.

And that's a, it's a good way that we teach, or that we talk about, or stuff that I use even to understand people. You know, is that person that you're running into, it's like, "Oh, man, when someone says something or gets upset in a situation," it's like, "Is this person's cup full?" Or are they just, they ran here and barely got their connecting flight because the airline booked it that close, and they're just trying to get their stuff away, and the flight attendant's already yelling at people. Like, what are you dealing with here? Is it really, is this the guy that's going to go off on everyone and start swinging, or is this just, "This is about to abate and it will be fine?" And those points are what we're talking about in the moment to identify. Is that trying to look at it from that point of, "Is this person's cup full? What else have they shot? What are they demonstrating? What are they teaching me?" Right? What are they trying to say to everyone? Is it saying that they're making this bigger than it is? That means it's bigger to them than the situation.

You're underestimating how big it is. Exactly. So, make a circle. And if you've got the bio on there, and if you've got the social, and if you've got the environmental, then you've got the cognitive. The idea behind those. And again, environmental, I feel more comfortable calling that one situational, because it doesn't have to be just the environment, it can be a situation within the environment. Right? Yeah, right. That's why I'm pausing on that one. But if you put those on a board, and you just circle them on your yellow pad, so here's a limited objective experiment for all the cops: next time you show up on a person that's seemingly out of control at the mall or on a street or at a bus stop, what I want you to do is do the following. Try this: go up and go, "Hey, Chief, calm down here, okay? You're going to have to calm down." And you might as well on the other training lane throw gasoline. Yeah, right? So we know that you're going to accidentally, intentionally, inadvertently, deliberately cause some turbulence just by your arrival. True. Yeah. So this is what we're trying to talk about. Can you, like de-escalation again? Oh my God, de-escalation, duty to intervene. We keep hearing it shoved down our throat. A good de-escalation strategy. De-escalate always, always be...

Yes, the situation. The isolation isn't a tactic, a technique, a procedure. So it's an outcome, right? It's an ABCD always, it's de-escalation. Right?

Yeah, with you. Okay. I got to broach the topic, dude. This afternoon, I'm going to go to the beach and roll around with my rubber band-sized thong, and I'm going to do butt face. So I'm not going to make the one o'clock and the two o'clock. Well, before I even get to you, I'm going, "Man, is Brian going to be pissed about that?" Those things, those environments, Brian, are where we can de-escalate. So if I'm showing up at a scene and I'm already looking through the windshield and seeing the guy dancing around with a shovel and go, "Hey, look at this jerk here, we go again!" What am I doing? I'm setting myself up for an escalative, likely outcome. So I'm changing the dynamic of the situation. So all I'm saying is, biologically, you have to understand certain facts are in play. Sociology has brought you to this point. Cognitively, you're looking at this from your worldview. And then environmentally, you're saying, situationally, this is going to go poorly or well. With just those four biases on board, can you imagine how wildly [things] can spin out of control? So what do you got to rehearse for? You got to rehearse for that specific event. No, I don't mean the guy with the shovel. I mean pulling up and saying, "Holy shit, my cup's full!" How am I going to understand your cup that's spilling all over this restaurant where you're parading around? Do you get it? I mean, it's really that simple. And I know you understand that. But how do we get the people listening to understand that it really is a simple series of triggers that can turn on or shut off the anger/aggression/violence earlier? And that's the goal.

It is. And you've seen me do it. Sometimes my technique is like, "I'm going to give someone enough rope to hang themselves with." I'm going to give them an out. Because what you do when you do that and you allow them options, you'll know. Because most people, if they really want a good outcome, they'll take it. They'll take an option, they'll say, "Okay, like, you know, I'll, I'll give me one," and I'm short of rage or violence, but that's what I have options. What I'm saying is that if they choose not to and they keep going, now you know that they have a demonstration of some other intended outcome here. Yes. And they're not complying, or they're not taking that sort of extended olive branch in a sense, like, "Hey, look, I understand."

You know, when I say, "I understand." Exactly.

Absolutely. When you continue to escalate after multiple times, well, now you know, "Okay, this is now a situation where this person is going to act out. They're likely going to do something. They are," you know, "they're, it's, it's escalated past the point." So what I'm getting at is then that helps you kind of realize what, where's the one where I have to, I have to jam on the gas pedal? Where's the one I have to slam on the brake? And those extremes are so essential in training. And I give you an example: when I ramp up, and you've worked long enough with me, you know that I get to the point where I say, "Is there anything I can do or say that is going to lower the level of anxiety in this room because I gotta tell you, I'm getting afraid? I don't know what's going to happen next." You know that I enlist the aid of everybody in the room. The person goes, "Yeah, leave." And you go, "Well, I didn't call me. I can't just leave." And now the person goes, "Yeah, well, that's bullshit!" "Well, I understand, but I've got..." What are we doing now? Gift. And when we're talking, we're not swinging, Brian. And the problem is that we're still on this God damn timeline. That woman didn't listen to her alarm, right? Because the alarm was telling her, "Something's wrong with her heart," and she ended up in the emergency room. You copper on the street, if you're not listening to those alarms from the environment—Brian, the environmental alarm—from not just the person, but saying, "Come on, come on, let's get this over with!" No, if you continue to press the time, and you're not looking at time as a gift, then you're going to be in a trick bag fighting for your life. It rarely occurs, but there are times that you'll show up where 'flash to bang' has to happen, and you have to show up, get out of your car and shoot somebody, or show up and run them over for the betterment of society. But they're so rare, they make movies about it. So...

Right. No, and balance. That's always the balance. And this comes down to, you know, this is, I guess, another element to rage, anger, aggression, is time, right? So, time and timing. Time, like for, for, you know, determining an outcome, or if we're looking at any of these situations, time is always a critical component. Because if you, if you, you can, you can, like you just said, escalate a situation by trying to decrease the amount of time. But over time, you get a more accurate observation, right? The longer I can observe something, the more accurate my observation is going to be. I can gather more artifacts and evidence. Right?

And one more. Experiments.

Well, you can try more angles. And you can't stay angry forever. I know we make the joke about Shelley, but like, when someone's angry in the moment, you can't physiologically stay that way for... and this is a different type of anger. If you classify that anger has different thresholds and different levels, this expressive anger that you're feeling, yes, over the domestic violence situation you're involved in, or whatever else, is quite different. And it can only goes...

No, it can't.

And so, in a sense, that time is on your side in a lot of these. Anything, anything emotionally charged, too, like, those emotions can't run forever. You're going to get tired and pass the fuck out. I mean, you literally can't.

You can't. No. You're maintaining some physiological level. And what do we give kids, Brian? You're always saying that. What we learned, the most important lesson we learned, we learn on the playground. And when we're kids, what do we get? We get a time out. So, is it ever okay to throw a white towel into a brawl that's going on and going, "Hey, let's give a timeout just for a second. I need to know who everybody is." Okay. Now, what we're doing is going, "Hey, can we, is there a different way?" I love trying new strategies in scenarios. And you know me, I love to lead with comedy rather than anger or violence. And sometimes it hits, 90 percentile with me. And then 10%, it falls flat, and I know, "Okay, try again." But what does that give you? Exactly what you demonstrated. You could sit on the stand, Brian, and go, "I apologize." This is the ACLU calling me right now and saying, "I disagree with you!" The idea is that, how do I ring mute that there? So the idea here is that it wasn't a joke. We love the ACLU. I'm just saying the phone call caught me off guard. What you were saying is that you can actually take and testify to, "Listen, Your Honor, at this point, I tried this strategy, and the strategy failed miserably. And then I tried this, and I saw that there was an inkling of understanding, but the person kept their, you know, level, whatever. So they continue to choose." So it's not Plinko. I joke about Plinko all the time. Right? And when I joke...

Yeah.

And it goes randomly wherever it's going to end up, that's not, that's life. Yes. But that's not the scenario you find yourself within. You can largely control the scenario you find yourself in. What's the difference with cops? Cops are thrown into scenarios that the average person would never consider. I walk into a house, there's two people dead and the subject has the shotgun in his mouth. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And now go, and they're clicking the timer. Well, you don't often get that as a citizen.

Yeah, yeah.

So we have to understand anger, and we have to understand the ball that is anger, and that anger can exist on its own and never go to aggression. We have to understand that aggression can never lead to violence. But we have to have the understanding that in all instances of violence, there's going to be aggression. So if we know that, then we can work backwards away from the X prime. And the further left of the X, we have to give to time and distance, de-escalate. And that's what we're talking about. If you fully understand the concepts, and let's even take that back, if you rudimentally understand...

Rudimentary understanding. Yeah, yeah.

That word seems so much of the situation. The basic understanding of the situation, you put it as 'white belt,' then you can avoid situations that are angry and aggressive and violent, and navigate life without ever getting into a scrum. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, if you're looking for a scrum, you don't want to watch our show anyway. Right? I mean, that's a funny...

Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a good point. You know, you realize where you're at, and that's, um, when you're constantly training responses, psychological inevitability that you're going to use your stick or your gun, or...

I totally agree.

So if you're not constantly training for how do we make this a better outcome? How do we talk through this? How do I, what strategies can I implement, what can I say or do right now versus, you know, this is the checklist of responses that I have? I mean, that's, that's part of the reason why you, why you see a lot of the stuff that you do, right? It's just, it's just the function of how we approach these problems. It's, it's, it's obviously so, it, you know, very reactive and and not, you know, when we, we look for, we don't, we don't give ourselves potential outcomes that that may not be obvious, right? I can say, "Well, you can make something up in the moment," is better than trying, relying on something you learned. Can sometimes help you. Do you get what I'm saying? Meaning...

Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. The concept of 'tact freeze' was 'tactical freeze' was born out about the conversation you're just having. And I've had tact freezes in combat zones with people where we had to take a knee under fire and go, "Wait a minute, is this the best decision?" And people throughout my career have criticized 'tact freeze,' very small number of people, Brian, and they're always the same type of person—I don't want to get into that. But I remember being on Benning, being at a thousand-meter line, and calling a tact freeze in a person that's very powerful, comes up and goes, "Well, you're not going to call that in combat!" And I go, "Well, actually, you can." You can. I remember when we were talking about Hoberman and beginning Hoberman with the, with our Milo strategic partnership, and doing 'shoot, don't shoot,' and people going, "Well, you can't call a tact freeze on a shooting!" Well, as a matter of fact, you can. It's called controlling the tempo. Okay. And if you can't do that, Brian, then you need to back the fuck off! Yeah. Because you're in it. And then, guess what? Then it's not a chess match or a checkers game anymore, then it's the fight for your life. But you can't go into every situation as if it's a fight for your life. And people are going to disagree and go, "Well, you have to be prepared for anything." Yeah, but you're controlling the tempo. So if you walk in every time with a mouthpiece in and you're your brass knuckles on, of course you're going to be fighting. You're going to be Dropkick Murphy. You're right. You're going to have the costume chip on your shoulder 24/7, Brian. And guess what? You invoke the name of Candyman three times, he shows up. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. I mean, that's simple math. Right?

No, it is. And I, I think that's kind of what we're getting at with a lot of this and, and sort of, um, in a sense, having an acceptance that these are human emotions that play out. And when seen out of context, that that's also something that's normal in a sense, right? Some humans have to act out and act a certain way, and society has to say, "No, that's too far over there," or, "No, we don't, we're not, we're not 'the Code of Hammurabi.'" That's why we have, you know, the Supreme Court. Exactly. So, not, not all of them, um, you know, not all of them are catastrophic, but they can, can potentially be based a lot of times on how we handle those situations.

Exactly. And you know what you're trying to do psychologically with a human. And then, someone said, "Well, what if it's this person? What if they have this issue or that?" It's like, "Yeah, yeah, well, then you'll that'll become apparent, and that'll be obvious, and you'll know." Like, "Okay, well, because this person, because these experiments will fail," right? So, isn't life a series of, I'll use sociological experiments, but it's so much more than that. And that's what you're going to be able to... And look, you're not going to cure halitosis, but handing the guy a breath mint—that's what we're talking about at the moment—is going to de-escalate the situation for both of you. You know, and it's going to make things less uncomfortable, and then maybe you can get somewhere. So, be the breath man. You gotta, you gotta have a lot of confidence to turn down a breath mint. You gotta... When someone offers me a breath mint or a piece of gum, I always take it. I'm just assuming they're trying to...

Well, I feel the same with phencyclidine (PCP). If you're going to have some bladder acid or whatever, I'm going to take it. I'm going to take it, I gotta know where this goes.

But the idea is, listen, if you've listened this long, you understand we're on to some good stuff there. It's up to you. If you're in this situation, the situation doesn't always revolve around you, but it includes you, and therefore you have an influence on that situation. It can be positive or negative. So understanding the simple functions of anger in society and how it's a beneficial emotion, yet anger and aggression, when they start melding together, they start leading toward that path of violence, right? I, I like that. I also like to know that violence can spring up full-grown without any anger whatsoever. And that helps me understand where aggression comes in as a trigger. And I understand that sometimes I can control that, Brian. I can control it in me, and I control it environmentally around me, or I can choose to avoid. And you know what the easiest thing for our non-copper, non-first respondent friends? Avoid it. Avoid at all costs. When you're seeing that that Chernobyl start to glow, often take the 'A' train, man, get out of there.

Yeah, there's, there's so many situations, especially like with my family or someone, that it's like, "Alright, well, let's go down over here. Just get some distance. I don't know what this guy's... probably nothing, but this person's arguing in a place he shouldn't be arguing, so yeah, I'm just going to go sit over here and get some distance."

And you know, I've got a lantern and a hammer, nothing else, right? Yeah.

Okay.

You know what I mean? Sometimes it's that obvious. Right?

Well, it, it certainly can be. And when you're looking for the right thing, or understanding it, like even with some of the terms we were talking about today, it becomes more clear. It, it just understands...

Well, you gotta yellow pad that shit, buddy. And that...

Because that's why like I do it with the Insurgent all the time. Because if that's because, you know, she's a kid, 11, so like emotions go up and down. She has to act a certain way as she grows. So I, I understand all this going in, so it's identifying, "Is this really an issue? Is she acting out? What's going on? Is she feeling like she's not getting enough attention because we got the new baby here?" You know what I mean? So it's just, so I play with it, I'm like, "What would..." She talks back, and I'm like, "That sounds like it's gotta be the worst thing that will ever happen to you in your entire life!" It just gives me that look, like...

Exactly. She drops and deflates because she knows like she's making a big deal over nothing. And I go, "But if she keeps going, 'Okay, this is a big deal to her, what are the other, what are the underlines?'"

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so it's that back and forth. And kids are the best because their reactions are slower, right? They're, they're, they haven't... It's like lying. Like when you see a kid lying, you see it. It's like watching it in slow motion because they don't know how to do it well yet because they haven't developed it over time like adults. So it's like, it, they're, it's always good to watch because it's like their emotional response can happen a little slower so you can see it, right? And that way when with adults, yeah, it might be more subtle. So, so I, I was, I just throw those examples in there. But, um...

So are you telling me that you want to, just on a whim, you want to get various people angry on the street and then talk them down just as an idea? Is that what you're going to do today?

I'm not going to deny that that's happened before in the past, with people saying, "Hey, you gotta amp people up and then get them back down," as some, like, "Or I've had someone say, 'Hey, go, go talk that meth head down while he's tweaking in the gas station!'" I'm like, "I don't think it's gonna work." "Well, let's see how good you are at this stuff. Here we go, here we go, it's on! Hey, don't worry, I'll shoot him if it gets weird." It's like, "That's not making me feel more comfortable." So you can, you can, you can do those limited objective experiments if you know what you're doing. I guess I would predict not to do those, but if your entire life has lived in MLKOA (Most Likely Course of Action), you're probably going to be okay. If your entire life is an MDC (Most Dangerous Course of Action), sooner or later, man, somebody, the house has the advantage of there. Look, I say it better: it's a matter of time.

Well, that's a way to look at it. Alright, anything else to add on to this, Greg? I think this, I'm happy with what we covered, and I think we gave a lot there.

Folks, it's up to you to unpack. We can't chew the food up and spit it in your mouth. So yeah, I'd love to take a look at what we talked about. Let's get some feedback. We can, that just costs more, and we can 'mommy bird.' But this is a good, this is a good one where I'd love some feedback or questions, too. Like, "Hey," because I know someone's going to be like, "Hey, well, what do you mean about this?" Or, "What about the situation?" We absolutely, yeah, we, we, we love those questions when, especially when it's very contextual, when someone says, "Hey, when I've seen something like this before..." Those are great because you can definitely agree, we can go down that kind of, you go down that bullet point list of everything we discussed and say, "See here? See here, here." And then you get that epiphany moment, you go, "Oh, okay, now I get it." And now if it's your story, you'll remember that going forward. So please reach out. leftwithgreg@gmail.com. Other than that, it's going to be a busy month for us. So thanks everyone for tuning in. If you're enjoying the show, please, again, share it with your friends, tell them about it, and we would appreciate that very much. And don't forget that training changes behavior.