The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Hunter S. Thompson on Violence, Vengeance, and the Only True Fix for Our Destructive Impulses

More than half a century after Tolstoy’s little-known correspondence with Gandhi on violence, human nature, and why we hurt each other, as the civil rights movement was being built on a philosophy of nonviolence and Leonard Bernstein was making his moving case for the only true antidote to violence, twenty-something Hunter S. Thompson (July 18, 1937–February 20, 2005) became fascinated by a subculture that seemed to embody the most violent and vengeful aspects of human nature and society: Hell’s Angels. Although Thompson was on his way to becoming a counterculture icon himself and would struggle with addiction for the remainder of his life, he was at heart an idealist — from the remarkably precocious letter of life-advice he sent to a jaded friend at the age of only twenty to his unrelenting advocacy of integrity in the media. He viewed lawlessness, violence, and vengeance not as an intelligent and productive act of political dissent but as a moral failing and a vile indulgence of our basest nature, and saw Hell’s Angels as a grotesque microcosm of society’s larger tendencies toward such pointless, lawless violence.

In the mid-1960s, Thompson took a magazine assignment profiling the infamous motorcycle gang of proud “outlaws” and, true to the integrity code of the gonzo journalism movement he founded, he embedded himself with the Angels for more than a year, all the while being upfront with them about his intentions as a journalist. The resulting article became the basis for his first book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (public library), published in 1966, which launched his career as a writer.

In 1967, legendary broadcaster Studs Terkel interviewed Thompson — who was about to turn thirty — about his experience with the Hell’s Angels and the deeper themes in the book. Nearly half a century later, the always delightful Blank on Blank has brought a particularly poignant segment of this interview to animated life:

One of the most important things is to recognize that we do have this mounting violence in us, and then to find the reasons — and then once you find that, it’s like curing a boil… The same venom that the Angels are spitting out in public, a lot of people are just keeping bottled up in private.

I think this technological science of obsolescence — the fact that people are becoming obsolete — the people who are most affected by this technological obsolescence are the ones least capable of understanding the reasons for it. So the venom builds up much quicker — it feeds on their ignorance. Until you recognize what’s happening, what makes you do these wild things … it’s like an albatross around your neck.

Complement with Thompson on living a meaningful life and this graphic biography of the famed gonzo journalist, then revisit some favorite Blank on Blank masterpieces: Ray Bradbury on storytelling, John Lennon and Yoko Ono on love, David Foster Wallace on ambition, Jane Goodall on life, and Richard Feynman on the most important thing.


Published July 30, 2015

https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/07/30/hunter-s-thompson-studs-terkel-blank-on-blank/

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