Fist Fights are Good For Society

[Acid_Lamp]

Alright. After a day of voting, the informal poll results show that 49% of respondents think that people are ruder or more disrespectful than they used to be. Only 12% think that people are nicer, and 31% think that people are about the same. That’s hardly overwhelming, but I think it does show that a significant number of people are observing a decline in civility. If you combine the neutral and negative results, 80% of people are observing a neutral to negative trend. Go the other way and you only get 43% observing a neutral to positive trend. That’s still less than the lone 49% of negative respondents.

Of course the poll is still running, and I expect the numbers to change. It is bearing out about what I’d expected though.

[ralph124c]

“Shotguns at ten paces”-Abraham Lincoln:cool:

[msmith537]

@Acid_Lamp

Alright. After a day of voting, the informal poll results show that 49% of respondents think that people are ruder or more disrespectful than they used to be. Only 12% think that people are nicer, and 31% think that people are about the same. That’s hardly overwhelming, but I think it does show that a significant number of people are observing a decline in civility. If you combine the neutral and negative results, 80% of people are observing a neutral to negative trend. Go the other way and you only get 43% observing a neutral to positive trend. That’s still less than the lone 49% of negative respondents.

I think you will find that throughout history, people have always felt that society was getting more rude, more violent and less civil and that the “good old days” were a much better time. By any objective measurement, including crime statistics, standard of living and so on, those people have been consistantly wrong.

[ralph124c]

First, I cannot imagine that anybody (in their right mind) would recommend a fist fight. You are exposing yourself to unlimited harm and risk-suppose you punch somebody, they drop and fracture their skull(and die). You are now looking at a charge of manslaughter-your legal defense will cost you >$40,000, and you will (most likely) wind up in prison.
Suppose your opponent KO’s YOU? You could be killed or paralyzed for life.
Yep, being Macho = being stupid.
There is a reason why sane people walk away from fights…it is called common sense!

[ivan_astikov]

And if everyone just rolled over and took a beating everytime an aggressor came along, where do you think society would be now?

[Trepa_Mayfield]

@ivan_astikov

Couldn’t that much more easily happen when you sanction highly trained special forces operatives, with access to unlimited black budget funds and friends in high places? Can you imagine if all these guys in different country’s elite forces decided they had more in common with each other than they did their current paymasters?

“There’s always a bigger fish…”

“There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…”

“Who watches the watchers?”

etc., etc.

If you’re relying on tougher forces to police the tough forces, that’s just a never-ending spiral of battle and posturing.

[Little_Nemo]

And if everyone just rolled over and took a beating everytime an aggressor came along, where do you think society would be now?

Maybe I’m confused but I thought that was what you were advocating. A society where people are allowed to go around beating up other people.

The opposite position is not rolling over. What we’re saying is that beating people up shouldn’t be tolerated. Beating up another person should be a crime not an socially acceptable practice.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@kopek

Let’s talk about that asshole. He has gone looking for smaller and weaker people - who have, one after another, cleaned his clock for him. His success rate has been well under 50% and he is starting to feel like the victim. At a certain point he will either stop his behavior or exceed the norms of society allowing us to incarcerate him. Again, those aren’t my first choices, but I can live with it.

Or he’ll realize that he needs training, find a mentor, and learn to fight better.

BTW, I also think you sound ridiculous for thinking that anyone looking for smaller and weaker fisticuffs opponents would lose more than 50% of his fights. Is this hypothetical aggressor also possessed of phenomenally poor eyesight and a lack of perspective?

The other thing that makes your arguments sound crazy is that you admit you got beat up all the time, but in 3 hours you could teach women self-defense.

To others who think the OP sounds like a good idea, what would you do if that annoying guy in line ahead of you had a friend with him? Would you still smack him?

Face it, fighting is not in society’s best interest. It’s not even in your best interest.

I recall a fight here in Las Vegas about 8 years ago: 2 guys drinking in the dawn hours got into an argument, and took it outside. 1 guy hits the other guy; 2nd guy falls down, hits his head on the pavement and dies.

Can you guarantee that this will never happen in your New Fighting Society™? Or do we all just have to live with the fact that anytime someone takes slight umbrage with something someone did or said, one or more people could die? Do you really want to live like that?

[Yookeroo]

@msmith537

I think you will find that throughout history, people have always felt that society was getting more rude, more violent and less civil and that the “good old days” were a much better time. By any objective measurement, including crime statistics, standard of living and so on, those people have been consistantly wrong.

I don’t think it’s impossible that people are getting ruder, but, yeah, relying on people’s memories sure is a dumb way show that that’s the case. The good ol’ days were always better.

[msmith537]

@Yookeroo

I don’t think it’s impossible that people are getting ruder, but, yeah, relying on people’s memories sure is a dumb way show that that’s the case. The good ol’ days were always better.

How does one objectively measure “rudeness”? A few centuries ago, people were very polite…right before they met to kill each other with flintlock pistols or rapiers.

[ivan_astikov]

@Little_Nemo

Maybe I’m confused but I thought that was what you were advocating. A society where people are allowed to go around beating up other people.

The opposite position is not rolling over. What we’re saying is that beating people up shouldn’t be tolerated. Beating up another person should be a crime not an socially acceptable practice.

I don’t think anyone is talking about individuals being allowed to have licenses to give others a beating , or at least, I’m not. I’m talking about 2 willing people being able to have a fistfight - without having to get in a boxing ring - and not being deemed as criminals.

@Snowboarder_Bo

I recall a fight here in Las Vegas about 8 years ago: 2 guys drinking in the dawn hours got into an argument, and took it outside. 1 guy hits the other guy; 2nd guy falls down, hits his head on the pavement and dies.

Can you guarantee that this will never happen in your New Fighting Society™? Or do we all just have to live with the fact that anytime someone takes slight umbrage with something someone did or said, one or more people could die? Do you really want to live like that?

Alcohol and fighting are never a good combination.

[ivan_astikov]

On second thoughts, I lie; drunken fighters can be hilarious to the neutral observer!

[Lynn_Bodoni]

I’m talking about 2 willing people being able to have a fistfight - without having to get in a boxing ring - and not being deemed as criminals.

And what happens when one person is NOT willing to have a fight? The other person will claim that it was consensual, in a great many cases.

This sort of thing has been tried before. Watch any bad movie (Roadhouse comes to mind) which has a Southern cop or sheriff in it, and you’ll see how the Good Ol’ Boy system worked, with a few bullies at the top and damn near everyone else at the bottom. It’s a meme because it really did happen often enough to become a meme. Sure, most of the movies have one or two badass fighters who come in and clean up the town, but for the most part, IRL the men (and it was ALWAYS men) who ran the town managed to keep control of things, and persuade the badass fighters to join them, not whip them. Women, for the most part, WILL get beat up a great deal more often than they’re able to win a fight, unless they spend a lot of time training.

If you think that this system would be great, consider this…let’s say that you’re going to have a nice little fistfight. But when you show up, the other guy has brought a friend or two, or has brought a knife or gun. Because it WILL happen. And somehow, the evidence of this disappears when you try to bring charges, if you live through it.

And I’ve met enough assholes who are women, or who are physically crippled, that this method wouldn’t really work. Are you really proposing that people should be able to beat the shit out of some 70 year old woman because she’s a bitch? Hell, my late father-in-law grew up in very rough circumstances, and he got into fights regularly, and he was the biggest asshole I ever saw. Getting his ass whooped on a regular basis didn’t make him more polite. If anything, it made him meaner. His parents and family didn’t socialize him properly, and that’s the basis for most of his personality defects.

@Acid_Lamp

Poll available HERE.

Lynn Bodoni, I agree that the root causation of poor social behaviour begins with the parents, but what shall we DO with these people?

I don’t know. But having fist fights to settle differences won’t solve anything, and it will cause more problems than it will solve. I suspect that we would really need to be a bit more active in taking kids away from people, and possibly even requiring parenting licenses to change things, but I don’t think that our society is open to those solutions.

[panaccione]

Ok I know I’m a little late on this one but take my perspective from a former wrestlers point of view.

I was the smallest guy on my team but in general I know I can take the majority of society. Probably, even you. In fact I’d go as far to say if your not a ripped 190 something or don’t have skills like mine I’m not going to be afraid of you. There’s not too many people I can’t take or at least hold my own or if at last resort run away from.

Am I an asshole and go around picking fights? No. I don’t need to and I know what I’m capable of. Shit the guys on my team, 6 foot 220 pound dudes who train like madmen and could tear your head off fit the description of a gentle giant to a tee.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that boys especially need to be strong and able to stand up for themselves if they want the bullying to go away. Cause honestly I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for wrestling.

[kopek]

@Lynn_Bodoni

By “little girls like me” do you mean little girls carrying knives, or willing to defend themselves? I can tell you that I was socialized to believe that girls and women did NOT fight in any way, and that includes defending themselves. Hell, little BOYS would have been in deep shit if adults had known that they were carrying knives, let alone little girls. I was brought up with the notion that females didn’t actually punch or kick to defend themselves, but slapped their attackers and screamed, and that was enough defense for any occasion.

That is so far from what I experienced that I don’t even know how to comment. We’re the same age but the gi8rls I knew (and dated for that matter) were just as ready to defend themselves as anyone else. Everyone I know, both in the country and when we moved into the city, carried a knife of some sort; its a Hell of a handy thing to have around. And in the rural areas everyone had firearms; even most of the girls. It was our way of putting food on the table sometimes. But using a gun or knife on someone; packing it as a weapon? Nope - just another tool. I can remember one fight in about 9th grade coming home from school during hunting season - me and Steve S had to put our shotguns down to duke it out. He won and shooting him over it wasn’t a thought that crossed my brain then or now.

@Lynn_Bodoni

If you think that this system would be great, consider this…let’s say that you’re going to have a nice little fistfight. But when you show up, the other guy has brought a friend or two, or has brought a knife or gun. Because it WILL happen. And somehow, the evidence of this disappears when you try to bring charges, if you live through it.

I will admit that this is 30some years ago but I was witness to a fight between two competing motorcycle clubs. We’re talking clubs, knives, chains - all the basics of a Saturday night. I know for a fact that some guns were present but not used. Because neither side, at that point, wanted to bring official (IE - police) attention on what they were doing. Some broken bones and stitches but no one died. And some of the people there had killed before; these weren’t choir boys but hard-core patch-wearing gangsters.

Again, we’re different now. No one follows any rules, written or unwritten. But carnage was not, and need not be, the result of every physical altercation.

(PS - actually it all must have worked in some fashion – a couple years later the clubs merged. Problem solved; for them at least.)

[Rumor_Watkins]

the point of police forces are to offload the time and expense necessary to remain constantly vigilant and prepared for attack from someone who you may or may not have offended at some point in the past.

i don’t want to walk around town with a sword or gun strapped to my belt (I would observe that the correlation between the proliferation of policing forces and the de-armament of fashion styles is extremely high), constantly looking over my shoulder because I’m afraid I may get jumped by someone who I offended by my words.

and for those of you that agree with this, but merely want to sanction fist fighting as some way to exact summary punishment on the ever-increasing cadres of “casual (non-violent and non-threatening) assholes” then you need to really take a look in the mirror and ask yourself why you get all butthurt because someone was rude to you. and also, because casual-asshole-fistfighting-okaydom would rapidly degenerate into the scenario in the preceding 2 paragraphs. you think that if you cold cock someone who was rude to the Starbucks barista, you wouldn’t be wise to start looking over your shoulder from thereon out?

as Dalton says: It’s two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response. get over yourselves, and remember not to miss the next few doses of your testosterone supplements lest you come up with any more retarded solutions to non-existent problems.

[Trepa_Mayfield]

@kopek

Again, we’re different now. No one follows any rules, written or unwritten. But carnage was not, and need not be, the result of every physical altercation.

Jeez. Who do you hang out with, anyway?

No offense, but…I just can’t imagine someone saying something so insulting that my first instinct would be to beat them up for it. If it was obvious that they weren’t open to negotiation, and it wasn’t bad enough to go to a higher authority, I’d probably ignore it, or leave the area. So even the main conceit of the argument here is baffling. Can someone give me examples?

[Little_Nemo]

Again, we’re different now. No one follows any rules, written or unwritten.

Where do you live that there are no rules?

[Lemur866]

Exactly. I have to say, if you’re constantly being offered insults and rudeness so egregious you wish you could punch the offender in the face, perhaps the common denominator in the equation is you. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been insulted. Closest is about 15 years ago I had a neighbor down the street that would scream obscenities at people on the sidewalk, but she was a senile old lady who looked to be about 90. Punching her wouldn’t have solved anything.

[AskNott]

Long, long ago, I was in high school. I could say it was back when it was called “about-this-high school,” but it wouldn’t be true. I got my diploma in 1967.

I knew a guy who had been in a few fights. He had a policy about guys who beat him in a fight. He carried that grudge around, and he polished it. The next time he met the guy, he’d attack him. As long as he kept getting whupped, he’d look to fight that guy. He seemed to think there was honor it that.

His case does not speak well for the goodness of fist fights. However, I may be only wasting your time.