Mind trumps muscle

It’s commonly understood that might is right. No matter how clever you are someone physically stronger will call the shots. The final say goes to muscles and weapons, not minds.

Although there is some truth in this, it’s actually a very distorted picture of how things generally work. It really only applies in isolation. It’s perfectly true that if a big person wants to overpower a smaller person they can. A suitably sized playground bully or robber or bouncer or soldier or policeman will prevail. At that exact instant might is right. But if you pan out a bit it doesn’t hold. In the case of the last three potential assailants they are, to coin a phrase, only acting on orders. Those orders usually come from people who never get their hands dirty, let alone bloody. The source of their violence is a command or a law, the product of a mind.

Of course such servants may actually stray from their orders and start acting violently above and beyond the call of duty. But in that case they themselves would be subject to discipline, much like the thief and the playground bully. Laws, more products of thought, would be invoked to subdue them. And if they continued to disobey, other public servants would be employed to physically coerce them. In this sense at least, the pen is mightier than the sword. It commands the sword.

Much of the attraction of democratic society is its ability to level this particular playing field. A healthy meritocratic society has to be one where minds can discuss things and compete with each other fairly, economically and intellectually, without the threat of superior physical strength. Even the most hardened conservative would agree. The state exists primarily so we can all do business and blossom, to the best of our abilities. It’s there to stop bullies and thieves stealing our honest gains. (Back in the real world of course…)

In fact, even at the level of the individual a mind never takes a lead from its own fists. Even here it’s the mind doing the violence, even if it is using its body to carry it out. You can’t blame muscles for the signals they’re sent. They can’t control the mind, the mind has complete control over them. Contrary to common belief, the real bottom line is, mind trumps muscle.