It's easy to support the violence and looting when you're safe in the lily white suburbs.

[HereSince1628]

31. Yes, but anyone who has pounded their fist on the table, or given the finger must sort of 'get it'

as a consequence of the human drive to make behavioral displays of frustration and anger.

It's part of human nature, a feature of behavior that is shared among gregarious great apes. We are, unfortunately, put together in a way that facilitates these things.

Not long ago exaggerated displays of waving clenched fists, and thumping fists on podiums was a routine part of oratory. TR, FDR, JFK all were are wavers and sometimes users of fist bumping.

Many of us have witnessed displays in our lives, or in the media, of frustrated/angry tirades...remember the scene in Christmas story when the father is in the basement with the dysfunctional furnace?

Some of us have witnessed destruction of property, throwing things smashing plates, etc. Some of us have seen tantrums of 'losing it' within our own homes. The rumor mill says this behavior has even taken place not long ago in The Residence. True or not, people believe it because it's not uncommon.

When tolerance is neared or exceeded and words fail humans make displays of their displeasure. These things usually aren't entirely rational or well thought out. The displays are typically done in our immediate vicinity and so the damage, destruction that takes place is often to our own property or immediate environment.

These displays are witnessed, and the communication of the display is usually understood. Sometimes others join in support, and coalitions making even bigger displays form and grow. Most of us have seen this in human 'games' such as bench clearing baseball fights. Is it rational? No. Do we punish it? Sort of. But we understand it as part of the darker reality of human nature.


From a distance it's possible to see what happened yesterday in Baltimore was both unacceptable and predictable as human nature. It was an inevitable display of the end of tolerance and yet also the destruction of property, yes, criminal destruction of property intended to serve the community and make lives more tolerable.