A few days ago, a video went viral in which a man in a cinema, while nothing more and nothing less than a children's film was being shown, visibly upset, insulted, threatened and assaulted his wife, in the presence of her young son.
During the course of the scene, a professional boxer present in the room, tries to mediate peacefully and asks the aggressor to stop his attitude. Far from doing so or being intimidated, the abuser confronts him in a threatening manner and begins to shout and insult the boxer, who, after some feints of withdrawing, of comings and goings, ends up losing control and starts hitting and punching him. While it is true that some people try to intercede so that things do not get worse and others leave the room hastily with their children, other witnesses cheer and approve with a "well done". Finally, while he continues hitting him, several people approach and the boxer desists from his attitude, but not before having left the woman's aggressor KO. Visibly affected, the boxer addresses the rest of those present in the room, and apologizes.
As a simple witness of the things that happen before a minimally attentive look, I related this scene of the cinema, without knowing very well why then, with another event of which I was a witness a few weeks before and that caused me certain perplexity. Being in a playground, a child, in order to get on the slide before the one before him, gave him such a slap that he forced his mother to intervene: "you don't hit, you only hit if they hit you!". At that moment the painting of Goya's black paintings, "duel with clubs", came to my mind, and I imagined that those poor little kids who did not raise even half a meter from the ground, each becoming entitled to hit the other at the same moment in which he is hit, in an exercise of "legitimate defense, began to slap each other in an endless loop.
Is violence against violence legitimate? Are some violences more legitimate than others? Will the boxer have prevented the macho and violent aggressor in the cinema from abusing his wife again in the future? What about the boys and girls of today, the adults of tomorrow? Will they seek other ways of resolving conflicts? Will they be made of another paste and will they be innocuous to the violence they see, and suffer, around them? What will the children in the cinema have thought and what mark will have been left on them? And the child in the park? How will he feel knowing that blows are answered with more blows? Will he listen to his mother? What relationship does the learning of these facts have with the present wars and with those that, for sure, will come? Do you think I'm exaggerating? Do you think I've lost my mind? Do you really think so?
If so, I apologize, but perhaps we do not want to recognize that the "uncivilized" of the "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot", have not disappeared, because they, in reality, are ourselves.
