What does fighting solve?

[LSN80]

In regards to fighting, I mean.

As kids, the majority of us are taught that walking away from a fight makes us the better person, the bigger man. Violence solves nothing, and leads to more violence, we're instructed. The easy thing to do? No, but it ensures that a bad situation doesn't become worse. People respect the person who attempts to diffuse the situation by talking through it rather then resorting to fisticuffs.

I've spouted off a bunch of useless cliches because they're blanket statements. Every situation is different, and in being so, requires a different approach, does it not? You tell me, as reported from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Malcolm Lockwood is a 43 year old man from Pittsburgh who was at his step-son's basketball game when the child was severely embarrassed. Jake, his 10 year old step-son, to put it mildy, is clueless about basketball. So much, that after grabbing a rebound, he was prompted by the opposing coach to then shoot the ball....into the wrong basket. He did, it went in, and the opposing coach urged him to "Do it Again" all-the-while laughing it up with his fellow coaches.

Following the game, Malcolm confronted the coach, 'encouraging' him not to do it again. Heated words were exchanged, and eventually, the basketball coach challenged Malcolm to a fight. Malcolm, wanting to be the better man and at the urging of his new wife, tried to walk away. That is, until the opposing coach whispered the following words to Lockwood:

"The spastic kid who shot at the wrong basket? The rest of the season he's a target. We have the chance to take a cheap shot, we do. We see an opportunity to get in his head, we go for it."

What the opposing coach failed to realize was that Malcolm is a 2nd degree black belt, and when they fought to meet later that evening, it didn't last long. Palm strike to the throat, elbow to the nose, and the coach was done. The injuries, while minor, resulted in the coach being hospitalized for 2 days, and Lockwood was sentenced to 30 days for felony assault, of which he served 10.

Was it the best answer to the situation? Honestly, I don't know. For Lockwood, however, it was worth it:

"When does mocking a ten year old become a part of the game? Encouraging a sensitive kid to shoot at the wrong basket, humiliating him? What a class act. Out of respect for my wife, I attempted to walk away, but his continued threats necessitated I take action. And I'd gladly have served the entire 30 days if it meant men like him never picked on or humiliated a child again."

I'm of the general persuasion myself that walking away from a fight is the best course of action. There have been four situations in my 30 years where I've been presented with "opportunities to fight, and three times, I've walked away. While I'm not convinced fighting solves anything, I felt the situation dictated it, as it was in defense of my wife. I wasn't out to teach someone a lesson, hurt them, or gain vengeance, simply defend her honor. Did I do the "right thing? Can't say. Did the coach who humiliated Lockwood's ten year old step-son learn something? Obviously, the ideal would be that he did, became a better person, and never bullied another kid again, but that's not how life works. I'm not even sure that, presented the same situation as before, that I'd react the same. So, let's try and figure this one out.

Of what purpose does fighting serve?

Are there situations(outside of defending yourself) where you'ld engage in a fight? What are they?

Any other discussion surrounding the topic are more then welcome.

 

[HBsam31]

Before I answer your questions i am going to take a moment to vent some anger. That coach should not ever be allowed to coach or be in charge of children again. He was humiliating that child. This is not the NBA finals here. It is a youth basketball game. The first problem is child sports are taken way to seriously. IMO that coach deserved to have his ass whipped. Whether it served to teach him a lesson or not a good humbling was exactly what was needed. Can you imagine how many people were laughing at that kid. The idea of it is actually making me angry as I type this. We live in a sue happy environment. Hell, I figure the guy that did the ass kicking will end up getting sued by the coach, and he will probably win to. I think that is just as wrong as fighting. What should have happened was the coach's wife,if any woman would even be with a ball less piece of garbage like that, should have slapped him around herself. Dammit this made me mad, and I try not to let these topics get to me like this. Now onto the questions.

Of what purpose does fighting serve?

Even after everything I just wrote it solves nothing. Like I said the guy doing the fighting here even though I think he had every right will probably get sued, and he already went to jail for it. I honestly think that is a shame. That coach was humiliating a child in a meaningless basketball game. Talk about a self esteem killer. I don't want to hear that the kid should not have been playing basketball because he didn't know the sport. (I am sure someone will come with that). The idea of youth sports is to learn the damn sport not get drafted into the NBA. Still though I am sure the coach will keep doing what he is doing with no repercussions, and the guy that did the whipping will be labeled a hot head and probably banned from attending youth games.

Are there situations(outside of defending yourself) where you'ld engage in a fight? What are they?

I would have done the same thing Lockwood would have done. I have a little 2 year old girl, and if that was happening to her I am sure I would have reacted in the same way. I would also fight if someone was harassing my wife. I am not a hothead. I am not going to fight over someone pulling out in front of me or running a stop sign, but the wife and kid is a different story. Again fighting really doesn't solve anything, but there are certain things you just don't do. This coach is an embarrassment to coaches everywhere, and he got what he deserved. The sad part is I doubt it will make much of a difference.

 

[lenguy]

"How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?"-Tyler Durden- Brad Pitts character in the movie Fight Club.

[Disclaimer]Now, before I go on any further. I just want to pause a moment and say I don't condone violence or abuse in any form. I want to try and stress this. What I say is merely for discussion shake.

So I'll take you back to that quote, How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight? Ever been in a fight? In a legit fight where the person whom you directly stand across from legitimately wants to hurt you and genuinely wants to cause you harm? I have. When you are faced with a daunting situation like that, you have either two options. 1. Turn tail and run or when that option is out of the question and a fight is unavoidable then you have to 2. fight to stay alive.

If this person wants to do damage to you, for whatever reason. They won't stop because you say ouch. They won't stop because you tell them to. They will simply bring the hammer down and make you suffer. If you were backed into a corner and had no way out, what would you do? If that knife staring at you from across the room was the only sliver of hope you need to possibly escape with your life, what, would you do?

I'm not talking about inflating your ego and defending your honor because somebody calls you out. I'm not even describing the situation from defending your wife or girlfriend because some guy called her a ****. I'm talking about dark ally shit. A group of guys corner you and one pulls a knife and you stand there and contemplate the situation and how it favors you. You have to ask yourself, what are you prepared to do? If he was dead set on killing you, what are you prepared to do? Could you bring yourself to kill a man?

Society likes to embellish and tout the fact that we live in a proper, civil and just world. Where people dictate their lives based on a specific set of morals, ethics and principles. Man isn't the savage barbarian he was hundreds or thousands of years ago. We've made great strides and live in a time of unmatched human cooperation and coexistence. But we are still animals and every animal will bare its teeth at you if the circumstance calls for it.

In the society we live in now, fighting has no merit in a world that is tailored made under the disposition that we can just use our words instead of our fists. It works, we've successfully managed to suppress our aggression and be led to believe that we've tamed the wild animal within because its counter productive in the world we live in. Violence doesn't bring people and nations together, cooperation does.

If society were to break down for some reason. The laws we put into place will no longer be there to govern us. Food becomes scarce and resources become low and our energy needs dry up, we'll see how well you think you know the people around you.You might even learn a few things about yourself while you are at it. People will do some very heinous things in order to protect them or their loved ones if given no other choice. I think a lot of people would be shocked to discover the ugly truth about humans. It is written in our history after all, our history is written in blood. We might be faced with choices that we may not like but when it comes down to him or you, is there really any other option?

Of course this is only the most sever of post-apocalyptic scenarios. In a world like this where a fight could mean the difference between your life or another then yes, fighting could solve everything. However in a fight of who's right or wrong then I can't imagine how a fight between fists would resolve anything between a dispute that began with words.

My point is this. Regardless of your stance of fighting or violence in general. If you were caught in that dark ally all alone at night with nobody else around and you came face to face with the grim reaper. You have to make a choice and you might have to toss your morals out the window. If you don't come prepared to do what it takes to escape with your life, then you will no longer count yourself among the special privileged who can still say they have one.

 

[Lowdown]

I'm inclined to agree that adults take children sports way too seriously these days. To answer your question though, fighting doesn't really solve much at all, even if you're in the right. That doesn't mean a good ass whipping can't be justified, like in the case mentioned with this step dad. I've been in enough fights growing up that in the end, things can go right back to square one. Most if not all the fights I had were on school grounds, and more often than not I got punished for it. I'm proud to say I haven't had any physical altercations in my adulthood, though I've come very close to doing some bodily harm (long story).

But when faced with a scenario like above, you never really know what you'll do when the pressure hit. That adrenaline starts pumping, and next thing you know the rational part of your brain shuts down. It's hard to try to use your head to diffuse a heated exchange. Yet it's the best course of action before anything else; fisticuffs or any attempt of brutality should be a very last resort if it is deemed necessary.

 

[The Butcher]

I condone fighting when all else fails. It's completely natural, and so long as both combatants are willing and the issue is settled at the end of it, fine by me.

You won't see me doing it outside of self-defense. I have fought, but only in a handful of scuffles as a teen/young adult (dorm room/frat environs; too many adult beverages). As I've aged I've acquired a large arsenal of ways to diffuse situations. I also avoid situations and places where violence might ensue. Not everyone is me, though. Frankly, a lot of people just don't know any better, and we can't make people something they aren't. No matter how enlightened we try to be as a species, we're still creatures of instinct and conditioning, and one of our predilections is to violence.

I have said here before that I believe in government sponsored torture to obtain information from enemy combatants. I am also pro-spanking. And if two individuals consent to throw their hands at each other, so be it. As much as we should try our best to avoid violence, we should also acknowledge that it gets results. It's a last resort to be sure, but in certain situations and depending on the personalities involved, it is unavoidable.

The coach in the anecdote above deserved to be taught a lesson. He was taught that lesson the hard way. And the stepfather learned a lesson as well, as his actions also had consequences. That's how civilization works, has worked, and hopefully will always work. Fighting can solve things, but we should always do our best to turn the other cheek and avoid physical confrontations.

 

[i'm a cm punk girl]

I feel a lot of the time, fighting is stupid and should try to walk away. But some people are fu**ing a**holes and can leave you no choice, making it wher fighting is justified.

 

[Mustang Sally]

The injuries, while minor, resulted in the coach being hospitalized for 2 days, and Lockwood was sentenced to 30 days for felony assault, of which he served 10.

Which stinks, by the way. If two people agree to fight and one gets the worst of it, I can't see putting the winner in jail while the loser goes free. If the fight was initiated by the winner and the loser was forced into it, that's another matter.

My high school had a strict no-fighting policy which, while admirable in it's intent, could have used a little leeway in it's interpretation. I was involved; the incident representing the only time I've ever experienced near-adversity.

To keep it short: two guys caught me in the gym and were forcing me to a place behind the retractable bleachers. Maybe they wouldn't have gone through with it; it's hard to say, but another guy jumped in to get them off me. He was a science geek type of guy and the two of them released me and went to work on him, which was his intention, as he later explained. Only a few seconds went by before the gym teacher came running to stop it.

In the principal's office where the four of us wound up, I was sure my guy would get off......but, no. At first, Roger was going to get the same punishment as the two bullies (a two week suspension) but when the principal told him:

"You don't fight......you tell a teacher."

Roger displayed a real flash of temper, which was completely unlike him, saying:

"Okay, next time, that's what I'll do....I'll run for a teacher while the two of them drag the girl behind the bleachers and rape her. Hopefully, I'll bring the teacher back in time."

All of us sat there with our mouths hanging open, including the principal. No had never heard sarcasm from this mousy guy before, but the principal's statement seemed so absurd when considered next Roger's words.

What aggravated me was that Roger still was suspended for 3 days because.....right or wrong.....he had fought on school grounds...... a punishment that was eliminated when his parents and I went before the school board, thank heavens.

Sometimes, you have to fight, as hateful as that might sound. Policies are made to be adhered to but the authorities should never get so caught up in their rules that they forget human beings are involved and situations differ.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

Generally speaking, as it pertains to history as a whole, fighting is something that does seem to have solved problems, or at least solved them as much as many people feel they can be solved. Not saying that it's right, but there you go.

In ancient civilizations, whenever cultures simply had a mad hate on for someone else, they would often go to war. Sometimes these wars were fought over land, natural resources, material wealth, power and just good old fashioned prejudice. If you were....I dunno....say part of a Celtic tribe in the British Isles circa 500 B.C. and you had issues with another tribe over whatever, a simple answer to these issues that divided you was to simply fight it out and the stronger tribe would ultimately have their will enforced. More often than not, however, the war would end via some sort of truce or mutual agreement in which one side gave something, the other side gave something, neither side really won, people wound up dead and general hostilities between the tribes remained the same. That is, unless you were just flat out conquered or otherwise obliterated. So someone may have ultimately won, from their perspective, but a culture who had something unique to offer the world was subjugated or wiped out of existence.

If you're someone whose primary concern is to have your will enforced, then winning a fight is a way of seeing that happen. Not only that, but it can also give you something of a rush. Winning a fight and proving your superiority over another human being physically, at least for men, does often give you a sense of power and pride. This is something that seems to be hardwired into our DNA just as it is to the DNA of pretty much every other animal that's ever been known to exist, has existed or probably ever will exist.

I was watching a show on the History Channel a few days back in which the probability of Neanderthals and modern humans interacting, possibly interbreeding and fighting was discussed. According to the show, Neanderthals are believed to have been wiped out somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000 to 8,000 years after the first modern humans came into Europe. The leading theory is that the modern humans, with their superior mental capacity, were able to create weapons to counter the superior physical strength of Neanderthals. As a result, the two species were competing for resources and survival with the Neanderthals ultimately becoming extinct. If this theory is right then, essentially, fighting may have helped modern humans ultimately rise to prominence.

Even in this day and age, fighting is a sort of seen as a way for a man to prove himself. Any form of professional sports is a perfect example of a primal need to prove ourselves. We kill ourselves in the gym to build our bodies in order to be appealing to the opposite, or sometimes the same, sex. We spend 16 hours a day working in certain jobs to make big money. We buy big houses, expensive cars, fashionable clothes, etc. all as a means of showing that we were able to "get over" on someone else. While it's not exactly physically fighting, some view it as a nonviolent type of fighting. By succeeding in life in a way that society generally considers to be successful, such as attaining financial security, fame, material wealth, etc; some see it as a means of proving your superiority.

Now does that mean that fighting is a good thing? It depends on your personal philosophy. For instance, World War II saw tens of millions of people across the world die. However, if the Axis Powers won the war, then would that have honestly been better for the world? Adolf Hitler was a brutal, tyrant that did his best to wipe out entire races of people. Not only Jews, but other non-Aryan races, Catholics, gays, I've little doubt he would have eventually targeted people of Middle Eastern descent, etc. The cost was beyond horrific but, in the grand scheme of this, was it really the only choice there was to be made?

Even in a one on one sense, what do you do when you really don't have a choice? If you're someone who goes out purposely looking to get into something, then I've little sympathy. It's different, however, if you're someone that's minding your own business and things get out of hand. Being the "bigger man" and walking away from a fight, if possible, is the civilized thing to do. The thing is, though, that we have instincts in our very being the predate civilization. In every human being burns the instincts of a million savage generations throughout much of which you often had to fight just to be able to see another day. It's as much a part of who we are as anything else, maybe even more so than most things. We might not seem to think so or reason so because of our progression through the ages, but it's still there. All the material goods, wealth and technology can't wipe it away because it's a core of who we are.

 

[wrestlingfan]

As someone who's had his fair share of fights in middle school and elementary, I say yes and no. Fighting (I mean just normal scrapping between kids), not righteous fighting like some of the scenarios/stories mentioned above), really does nothing for you but kill your day, and have you looked down upon, but this may sound bad, but there is a thrill in. Sometimes it cools off animosity. Look at how many people became friends, after fighting whether it be verbal or physical.

I've never been a fan of the no-fighting rule. Other than disrupting the class for 30 seconds, fighting hurts no one but the individuals who have chosen to get into that type of situation. Nor is a kid who is pushed, first reaction will be to "go tell the teacher". Human nature, usually goes with retaliation first especially in the case of kids who now have to deal with being called a "snitch" by their peers.