Drunken stands

"It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best."

W. Edwards Deming

"The smoky air rippled with tension and their drunken rage pressed them to the head of the stairs. Ghost's bleeding mouth demanded vengeance and his tribe of friends bayed for bloodshed to redress the offense of an unprovoked attack upon their gentle friend. Mark and I stood in their way giving my brother and Dutchy the five minutes they needed to make good their escape." 

That was 20 years ago in a bar and it ended with beers for everyone and me trying to find the nameless girl I'd forsaken in my rush to defend the indefensible. 

It wasn't violent conflict that won that night's tawdry engagement but the conflicted quandary of trying to decide if beating two friends to a pulp to reach one enemy was sanctified by our moral code. Fortunately for us the code said no. The fact that the code had put us in the situation was hardly the first such inexplicable moment in our boisterous existence. 

For me, the code demanded I react. That demand came from the certainty that my brother would defend his friend, despite his friend being the one who had provoked the fight. That meant I needed to get his friend safely out of the bar. For if my brother stood by him, then I would stand by my brother, if I stood, then my friend Mark would stand by me, and when he stood, others would feel compelled to stand, and then we would fight other young men who would be compelled to stand for Ghost, who moments before was one of our drinking buddies. 

I was 22 and "drunk, drunk" yet muscle memory roughly calculated where each person would eventually stand. That left me with a binary solution. Get my brother and his friend out of the bar and give them enough time to get clear, or accept the night's conclusion would be violent mayhem followed perhaps by yet another long visit to the Emergency Room's tender embrace. We got them out, laughed off the stand off, and then I ended the night in a drunken oblivion in some nameless embrace that shamed even the pretense of romance. 

There was little nobility that night or the countless nights just like it. Little to emulate or elevate. We were just children in adult bodies running amok in some urban retelling of Lord of the Flies. But despite the abandonment by the adults, and the freedom to instantly unleash any impulse, we had a code. We knew what to do and would do it no matter the cost. We had simple rules and lived by those simple rules.  If he stands, I stand and then all will stand. Mayhem mostly ensued after we had stood, but everyone stood. There was no room for the disengaged or disaffected, no mercy for the naively entitled. 

Simpler times with simpler rules. 

Why am I reminiscing about a part of my past that I have long since repented and rejected? 

For Courage without Constraint merely unmasks the frightened Bully and Conviction without Compassion is the unmasking of the Fanatic. 

I was a drunken youth with just enough wit to know that merely having the courage to stand wasn't enough. I needed to constrain my fear of being considered fearful and so defuse the situation if possible. I needed to find the compassion to see all sides through a drunken haze and so see a way out for all involved. 

I see too many frightened bullies who misuse their courage from a lack of constraint, and too many fanatics who possess only their convictions, without the necessary balance of compassion.

If drunken youths can resolve a bloody conflict peacefully in less than ten minutes, what lack of constraint and compassion leaves such distinguished leaders bereft of a solution? 

Perhaps it is just a bar fight writ large, with no more sense or morality than our home spun ancient morality of "Might is Right."