This Whole Ray Rice Thing

When I saw the video of Ray Rice knocking out his fiancee, I had the same reaction as everyone else. I felt sick to my stomach and thought how could he hit anyone like that.

There is never an excuse for domestic violence. Ever.

However, domestic violence is a problem in all parts of the world so there must be something that causes it. I want to make it perfectly clear, I am not an expert on domestic violence or its causes. If you take a couple of steps back and look at the world, maybe we can understand why it is happening. If we can understand it, we can start to rid the world of it. We are not going to rid the world of it tomorrow but we have to move towards that goal and even through it will probably take generations we have to get there.

At the time of the incident, Ray Rice was employed as a professional football player. In a matter of full disclosure, football is my favourite sport but, football is a very violent game. To stop the ball carrier the rules require you to knock them to the ground so a body part other than the palms of the hands and soles of the feet touch the ground. This won't happen with a light tap. At the professional level, players build their strength to near super-human levels. Combined with this strength to either hit the ball carrier or ward off the hit and break the tackle, players must aggressively act on instinct. If you can't do this, you will not be employed as a professional football player for very long.

Professional football players have been playing the game since they were young boys. If you are going to make it to the highest level, it must dominate your life for as long as you can remember. Football players are rewarded for aggressive play. Let's keep this all in mind.

I don't know what was said or done to build up to the point that Ray Rice decided to strike another human in an elevator. Ultimately it doesn't matter. He didn't have the tool in the toolbox to keep his aggression and instinct in check when he wasn't on the football field.

No matter why he did it, he was wrong. Maybe the system let him down and didn't prepare him to deal with these types of situations. I don't have the skill set to fix that but if he had the right tool in the box, there may have been a chance this never would have happened.

There are jobs where we value aggressive instinctive behaviour. However, that behaviour is only appropriate in certain situations and over the long haul, it is very difficult to suppress who you are or have become. So, maybe if we groom people to be aggressive at work or play, we need to do a better job at grooming them to use it only when they should.

I don't think anyone wakes up in the morning as says, "I'm going to smack my woman around today." Nonetheless, it happens and it shouldn't. Domestic violence is everyone's problem. We can't turn our back on it, we have to speak up and deal with it if we know it's happening. We have to be there are help when people are headed down the wrong path. 

These are just some of my ramblings but if we all try to make it a domestic violence free world, we will get closer, and we need to get closer for everyone's sake.