The reason why bullies finding another target is bad is because someone is getting abuse s/he doesn’t deserve. Bullies pick on people who can’t fight back effectively. That’s the definition of bullying. And while sometimes being willing to stand one’s ground against a bully will result in the bully finding another target, more often the bully comes back with his/her friends and proceeds to pound the living shit out of one, not just once, but at every opportunity.
Look, there are times when I’d love to see someone get pounded into the ground, or tased into a world of hurting. See the “Women and sexual assault” thread. But just because I’d like to see it, doesn’t make it right. And just because you’d like to see it doesn’t make it right either.
I’m not a giant, or a bad ass, or even a great fighter…
But my anecdotal personal experience is, the worst assholes are not good fighters, and will back down fast, if they see a potential ass kicking in their future. GOOD fighters generally feel they don’t have to prove anything, and are perfectly happy to be left alone. In the rare case that the asshole can fight, even then, he will generally avoid other good fighters like a plague. If he really wanted to fight, he’d have gone into Golden Gloves, a martial arts sanctioned tourney, something. But that might mean fighting a possible equal. Assholes don’t go for that.
Agree totally with the above post. A bully who can actually do a bit on a resisting target is a rare thing, fortunately for society. Another good thing is, that kind of person tends to eventually pick on the wrong person and gets a brutal reminder of the laws of the jungle they have been living by. Live by the sword, and that…
My experience is just the opposite of yours unless we are talking organized gangs of bullies such as the Aryan Brotherhood or Grim Reapers. Our neighborhood has even had some luck backing down that class of bully; our local crackhouse now being empty as a result.
Maybe if the lions and lambs do lay around together and find a way to get along, the wolves will starve? Who knows? It just could be possible.
I think you’ve misread the consensus of society on this one. If you punch a woman in the face, for whatever reason, most people will feel you have done something very wrong.
My experience is with small gangs (half a dozen or fewer) of children, teens, and adults. Oh, not gangs of mixed ages, but gangs of each age group. I was bigger and stronger than most kids my age until I hit my full adult height at about 12 or so. So I could take on, and win, against bullies if it was one on one or two against one (me being the one). But every single damned time, the bullies came back with their friends. Not necessarily the same day, or the next day, but I could count on getting pounded on in the near future if I made the mistake of getting into it, physically, with a bully during my childhood and adolescence. Apparently, just wanting to be left alone to read my book is a fighting offense to bullies. I started carrying a 4" fixed blade knife with me at all times, and I let it be known that I carried a knife. THAT’S what finally stopped the bullying. My parents and my schools would have prevented me from carrying the knife, if they’d known about it, but nothing else worked.
As an adult, I haven’t been in physical fights nearly as much. I’m told that even though I’m quite short, I carry myself with an attitude that says “Mess with me and you will NOT be walking away under your own power”, though this hasn’t deterred some men who thought that being short meant that I could be overpowered. I’ve had to crack ribs a couple of times when a guy grabbed me. Now, these guys didn’t come after me afterwards…but I think that’s because they didn’t know who I am, and didn’t know where to find me.
You might have had good experiences with standing up to people, with just your fists. I haven’t. That doesn’t mean that your method doesn’t work, sometimes it does. But in my experience, it almost NEVER works. The only thing that works, in my experience, is being able to hurt the other person more than s/he can hurt me, and being able to convince the other person that I can. This usually means that I have to recruit more people to stand with me, or that I have to bring a weapon with me.
But if we posit a world where fist-fighting has become socially acceptable, then assholes will have to become good at fighting, or stop acting like assholes. And while some people may pick the latter, a good deal of people will pick the former. And then where are we? A society where assholes can beat people up in addition to generally acting assholish. Which would be significantly worse than the society we have now.
Disagree. Assholes, in general, haven’t got the mental fortitude to endure the discipline, and a gym or dojo with lots of tough, dedicated youngsters is going to make such a person look like a… asshole that can’t fight when up against a person with a lot of determination and a bit of skill.
The difference is, I’m not saying that fist fights (or carrying a knife) is a GOOD thing for society. In fact, I’m saying that having fist fights be an acceptable method of showing people how offensive they are (and remember, MY offense was that I wanted to be left alone to read my books) means that some people will have to resort to carrying a knife or gun in order to get bullies to leave them alone.
Feeling the need to carry a knife isn’t a good thing for society, especially when it’s little kids carrying. But sometimes it’s a means of survival. I wasn’t in fear of getting killed, but I WAS awfully tired of getting pounded into the ground on a regular basis.
I’m sorry, I just don’t understand how you can say that it’s not OK for someone to want bullies to pick on someone besides themselves (and act as if such a desire wrong and even selfish), but then say it’s quite OK for an individual to pack heat (or cold steel) precisely to ensure that bullies will go and pick on someone else.
But the point is they’re assholes. They’re not looking for a fair fight. So there’s no point in learning advanced fighting skills. An asshole will just look around until he finds somebody smaller and weaker than he is and then he’ll pick on that person.
The added emphasis is mine because its a bad thought IMHO.
You also forget the qualification of circumstance or situation. Let’s take the situation where a small child - let us say 3-4 years old - is being beaten by an adult. If it is a man or woman, father or mother, if I break a nose to halt that I expect most people will feel I have done something very right.
However I understand what you are saying. At a certain level most people are free to feel whatever they wish. If I am comfortable with my actions, that’s good enough; I’m an adult and accept responsibility for my actions. “Misreading” the consensus of society and pushing things has, sometimes in the past, helped advance us all so I’m willing to take the risk.
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.
Yes, some assholes will be deterred. But not all of them. Some of them will learn how to fight, and clean other people’s clocks in addition to whatever else they are doing. You all seem to believe that no asshole would ever be able to fight. I just don’t get that.
I don’t believe that and I don’t get that feel from most of the other responses. That seems like “you all seem to believe that if no-one ever physically fights, assholes will disappear from the planet” - an exaggeration of an extreme.
It comes down more to “assholes will always exist. Can we lower their number by allowing people the option of physical force and social fistfighting when appropriate?” At least I think that is where we’re headed.
I think, going back to the OP, that we did have it right “in the old days”. There was more a sense that words and actions had consequence, consequence that often could result in physical pain or discomfort. There was sometimes an escalation (we fight and I win, you get a couple friends and I lose, I get a pipe wrench and I win again) but there were various points at which we could stop; end the violence so to speak. Or change tactics and allow the legal system or society to deal with the truly antisocial among us.
Today we don’t do that. We put it all on society and the legal system. We steam and fume and hurl words back and forth endlessly. Sometimes one person hits and the other person doesn’t. Sooner or later one party or another explodes and someone dies or is crippled. Pardon me for paraphrasing Heinlein slightly out of context (enough so that few of you may understand it) but that seems like a stupid way to raise a dog. In this particular respect, give me the old days and ways any time.
Maybe you’re having difficulty with how the concepts of “smaller” and “weaker” work. Most fights do not result in the smaller and weaker fighter winning.
Why on earth would you think that a person who consistently picks fights with smaller and weaker opponents would be losing over 50% of his fights?
But there’s a trade-off there. In return for reducing the number of assholes out there, you make them more dangerous. And you make a society where you have to know how to fight, and you have to be on guard all the time just to survive. And, of course, the average guy will be in quite a few more fist-fights, which are highly unpleasant experiences if the other thread is accurate. And even if there are fewer assholes in such a society, I think it would be more dangerous, and generally more unpleasant, as well as less civilized even though there are fewer uncivilized people.
Dude. If someone hits you with a pipe wrench in the wrong place, you die. Don’t pass go, don’t collect your restitution, just dead. You can’t just cast aside that possibility.
