I, at first, was not going to address this, but I think I am going to now.
For this is more a reaction to how the term 'enemy' is perceived by him and in response to the emotions that the word illicits in him.
For to be clear, there are 2 things which must be untrue... and yet they are very true in real life.
1. Human beings are very capable of dehumanizing someone without thinking of them as an enemy.
2. No one says that an enemy has to be dehumanized.
I have always believed this term to be true:
Better an honest enemy then a fake friend.
I will give a case in point. This is an issue which happened to me a few years ago, a few here know this story as I confided in them at the time as to how it made me feel.
(Thank god my wife no longer works at this place) One day my wife went into work and at work there is a guy who is an x-convict. In the past he has made the claim that he went to jail because he burnt down the house of his baby's mother who refused to let him see her son. Well, this one day, the guy and a friend were talking about a girl they had seen in town. Well, in earshot of my wife, the guy said, "OH! I would so rape that". My wife responded, 'Don't talk like that in front of me!" To which he responded, 'And you would be next'.
She instantly called me, I left work and went to deal with him.
On the way (I work 20 minutes from her), I called up all of my information on convicted criminals and I knew a few things:
1. I knew if I had to fight him, that he was comparable in age, height, but not size. 2. I knew that whatever I decided to do, I could not give any sign that I was scared... for that I was... I respected the possibility of what he could do to me.
So I determined to use 3 possible steps:
1. Go in with fire and brimstone coming out. 2. If I could not quell him instantly, be as imposing as I could. 3. If nothing else worked, then I would do what I had to in order to make sure he knew I would defend my family, even go as far as hurting him.
Having set my mind, I took the next little bit to set my mind for what I needed to do.
When I walked into the place, my anger was obvious. My wife saw me and instantly got scared. When he saw me, he instantly did the ducking of his head. A classic sign of non violence. So step 1 worked. I did not have to go further along those lines.
I had conquered an enemy... perhaps it can be argued that I dehumanized him. But my next steps were to heal the issue.
For my wife would continue working there and would be working with this man.
So I left that area to go talk to their collective boss. I went from angry to calm in 20 steps. I made sure he knew my purpose there and that he could rely upon me to help maintain order if he needed help. That my ultimate goal was for his business to work in harmony.
After that, I returned to the guy and we talked.
I made sure he was aware that I would defend my family and that if such happened again, he could expect me to not hold back.
We then talked about a few thing his boss brought up as far as his attempts to change himself.
Which I told him were good and that as long as he continued along those lines, he had me as someone who would help.
We left shaking hands.
There were no other issues after that. I laid clear boundaries which he no longer crossed. Where for a period I did think of him as an enemy, we both learned to respect one another. I do not think that he has accomplished that which his boss said he was doing. There were all of the signs I could see that he was using drugs etc. But he did contain that part of him around my wife and things went tolerably until she left for her new job.
The suggestion made earlier by John is that once we see someone as an enemy, we have to debase them as a human being.
Nonsense
As a lightsider... we have a responsibility to try to do well by every human being there is. Even those who do wrong.
Now, of course there will be those that we fail with. In this case, I feel I succeeded. But I limited my scope to defending that which I agreed to defend and left the rest to him. Hopefully he will take the lesson and apply it to the rest of his life.
Could there have been a different way of dealing with it?
His boss was not willing to do anything about the issue, in fact was mad at my wife for calling me... until I showed up and did all that I did.
So given the tools I have, it was the best choice.
He was an enemy, but always was he respected by me. And the goal was to improve the working conditions and to prove my wife was not alone, it all worked.
To hear John tell it. Since I considered him an enemy, I should have left him irrecognizeable. Spirit broken, fearful, etc.
In effect dehumanizing me as not being able to do as I did.
I know Johnny did not intend this. But this is the problem when we define issues in the manner Johnny did. We do not leave room for anything outside of our domain of control as being possible.
For me, it has always seemed better to leave the definitions to the Dictionary.