Table of Contents
Behavior Analysis/
Aggression
Aggression, to me, is a quality (trait) of human responses to events. Physical assault can be termed aggressive, but it's not primarily what I am talking about. Whenever something happens to which a human can react, they have the full bandwidth of options. Some things would be considered “normal” or “reasonable” responses, while some others may be considered comparatively forceful or coercive, “aggressive”1).
Say your coworker is taking the pen you just used to write something down. You put it down onto the paper where you're writing, because you're gonna need it again. But now you're looking up at your desktop screen because there's numbers on it which you need. During that moment, your coworker, without asking, takes your pen. How do you get your pen back? Well, the possibilities are endless! And when talking from this angle, all your possible options can be plotted on a scale from “Not aggressive” to “Very aggressive”. Aggressive in this context refers solely to the amount of force used in your effort to get it back.
- The least forceful thing to do is probably something like “Hey can I have that back?” or, if you and your coworker get along and are acquainted to that level, some kind of joking, funny remark.
- Another option which raises the stakes just a little bit is “Why did you take that?”, which is sort of a mini-confrontation. Or “Please don't do that.”.
- For extra spice you could instead go “Excuse me?”, or something similar, to additionally signal a sense of irritation.
- Now, if you're really annoyed you could go “What the fuck?”, “Dude, stop it.”, which now begins to tap into the serious confrontation realm.
- One could probably think up an infinite list of small increments in aggression, but for me this is gradual enough that I now feel comfortable to start talking about actually problematic things, such as insults or violence. I would say that insults would be next on the list of aggression. Anything that serves to make the person feel bad about themselves, or to actually demean them.
- Up here could be something like threatening lawsuits, with the next step in aggression being actually committing to a lawsuit. We are talking very aggressive at this point. Lots of forceful effort to get the pen back.
- Violence is up here as well. Assault.
- Bullying, serious mental/emotional torture, especially over weeks or months.
- Next up would be kidnappings, physical torture and then murder.
- But there are worse things than kidnappings and murder, serious traumatization can be effected in all kinds of ways.
Besides the first four options, there is also the “literally just taking the pen back” move. This move can be pulled off in all kinds of ways and can, therefore, land anywhere on the scale. Between friends this could be just friendly and nothing to see here. Between non-friends, I personally would do it without saying much because I just don't really care about social etiquette and, apparently, the person next to me doesn't seem to care much either. It's basically just a “Nah” and then everyone goes about their day. But there are also all kinds of ways to signal irritation. A well placed sigh, the force with which to grab the pen from their hand, body language etc. etc. all play into how “aggressive” you are.
Expected Zone
From point 5 onwards, we are beginning to leave what I - PERSONALLY - would consider the “expected zone”. For anything that happens to a human, there is always wiggle room in which things would be “normal and expected” or “reasonable”. There is no one decided, universally applied, standard. This is also why I say “expected zone”, not “normal zone” or “reasonable zone”. There is no normal, and reasonable is subjective. Expected is subjective as well, but does not carry a Value Judgement like “reasonable” does. The interesting part is that, since you get to freely choose within the expected zone, analyzing a person's choice from within that zone is extremely valuable. Your brain already does this automatically, but now we have the inner workings right in front of us and can think about it consciously and systemically to better understand things.
Why is this interesting? Because micro-scale politics! You too can send strongly worded letters to people by: Choosing options that are on the aggressive end of the range of expected options. Don't like someone? What's the most aggressive thing you can do that's still within the expected range? Like someone but want to let them know they fucked up? Pick the more aggressive option once, but not forever. Like someone? Reward them by choosing the nicer options! My parents were absolute masters at this and I personally try to get away from that, so I don't like these politics games, but apparently in the wild these are hugely popular and analysing “signals” like these is something everyone needs to be able to do. Especially around women who use subtle aggression and societal network politics more than men? This is probably wrong in some way, forget that I said this.
Actually, this is all big politics as well. Most of the pecking order in international politics is decided by these small signals. Biggest and easiest example: China wants you to refer to Taiwan as “Chinese Taipei”, because China wants to lay a strong claim on Taiwan for itself. According to China, Taiwan is China and pressures the international community into respecting that. Now, countries get the choice as to whether follow their preferences or not. If you're a western country you probably oppose Chinese expansionism and will be inclined to say “Fuck you, China”, but only until you realize that, actually, your entire production pipeline for every product everywhere relies on China. So, your possible options within the range of expected reactions stop just short of outright calling it Taiwan. But, everywhere where China isn't directly involved, you're still gonna refer to it as Taiwan. With silent wars like this, it's always these little details. It's all symbolicism and signalling. Strongly worded letters. Russia attacks Ukrainian hospitals? Watch NATO rush to condemn it strongly. What do we think about it? Well, it's the most aggressive thing they can do without escalating shit.
Aggression
To be very clear, this list is by far not complete and the order can differ based on opinion. Would you put bullying / emotional torture as high up as I would? Discussions can be had about the specifics2). The point is that there is a range which can be scaled from least aggressive to most aggressive. One interesting perspective to put this in is by overlaying this scale with the “expected range”. Other ranges exist, like the “legal range” or the acceptable range according to your faith, the acceptable range according to your ethical framework etc. etc., but the expected range is most useful as this is what I, as a human in day-to-day life, will be referring to when I say that something is aggressive or not. In day-to-day usage, when I say “this is aggressive” I mean “this is outside my expected range”, but it can be used in either way. However, aggression never solely refers to physical assault. In fact, physical assault happens so rarely to me that the term is more useful for me to refer to non-physical things. If I do end up talking about physical violence, I will probably go out of my way to explicitly state the physical nature of the aggression, whereas anything non-physical is termed “aggression” without being explicitly flagged.
Interestingly, this scale can also be extended in the other direction. There are things that could be considered “less than expected”. For example, forfeiting the pen without any effort done to get it back would be “negative aggressive” if you so want. If you want to value judge it, you could say it would be comparatively “weak”. A better example probably would have been any kind of offense, say you have a disagreement with your partner and your partner insults you. There is all kinds of ways in which you can react - confusion, shock, disbelief, confrontation, insulting them back, overwhelming force if you're a cunt, or defensiveness and retreat. There's more than this, but all of these fall onto a scale. With defensive/“weak” behaviors on that same scale, it's now also impossible to determine a true “center” or “ideal”, proving that behavior is not quantifiable and inherently depends on an individual person's interpretion. A true center (between defensive/“weak” and aggressive) could be determined, but that true center is not at all indicative of what could be considered the best choice.
It is probably so that the examples I gave earlier for how to respond to a pen (1 through 10) are universal. Even if you're looking at someone who is threatening to kill you, you still have the options 1 through 10 and could just go “Hey, please don't do that.”. In this particular scenario, a “Option 2” response like “Please don't do that” is unexpected, but clearly an option. So, overall it is almost certainly possible to write a scale of options that apply universally, everywhere, and all we as philosophists would do is to think of scenarios and think about where on the scale we would set the center, where we put our expected response. For a pen this would be somewhere at Option 2, for being threatened to get killed an Option 7 response would seem expectable.
Where I am at right now is wondering… For a situation like this, freeing yourself with violence seems rather defensive, and it would only be shooting them with a gun yourself that we would think about serious “aggression” again. And insulting a potential murderer isn't really an option here at all (rather than just “weak”). I guess there are different types of disagreement where the same options cannot be unilaterally applied? I'm not sure.
TL;DR: While aggression is expressed in absolute terms on this scale, in day to day life it is more often used relatively, to gauge and/or express to others just how much force3) is/would be used to effect a certain goal, IN COMPARISON TO HOW MUCH THEY WOULD EXPECT. If something is said to be aggressive, what was done was more forceful (mentally/emotionally/socially/physically coercive) than what the person would have expected.