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How do you protect against an arms race scenario? He hit me, I'll hit him harder; and repeat. I would agree a mostly anonymous attack can be rebuked without muc

How do you protect against an arms race scenario? He hit me, I'll hit him harder; and repeat. I would agree a mostly anonymous attack can be rebuked without much consequence (unless he pulls a knife), but what about for the occasions where animosity can fester: schools, villages, etc?

1337p337 16y ago
For most of high school, I had the misfortune of living in the South. (I got the hell back to civilization as soon as I could.) The little town (population 6,000) didn't see too many people move in or out, and there were grudges festering left and right, and there were fights all the time. This is purely anecdotal and based on what I saw and did, but in an environment like that, it seems to me that escalation is only a problem if you don't escalate quickly enough. If I ended up in a fight (and I probably could have resolved a lot of conflicts without fighting, but I had that perfect combination of arrogance and insecurity that plagues the teenage mind), the problems continued only if I lost easily. Some of the best advice my mother gave me was "You can at least get a sandwich if they got a meal." (Other hits from mom: "The secret ingredient is always more butter." A stout lady, most of her advice was either directly about food or used a food analogy.) If I won, or if I managed to hit hard enough in the process of losing, I'd get no more trouble, except in one pathological case. Being unskilled but kind of big, I was often able to hit hard enough; if I have anything to say about it, my kids are going to log plenty of hours in a boxing gym. > unless he pulls a knife I carry a knife nowadays, after being in enough situations that came close enough to turning ugly that I wished I had one. I think, on general principal, that it's good for everyone to carry a weapon. A distant relative of mine who was born in the town we moved to had told me that when he was younger, in the 1940s and '50s, everyone had a gun in their jacket, "and you could tip your hat and be polite, or take turns shooting at each other." There's something to that, I think, in adult society. If there are no easy targets, if anyone you try to mug/terrorize/rape/attack/etc. can potentially end your life, then society is its own deterrent to crime. There are always irrational actors, of course, but if the crazy guy has a weapon, I want a weapon, too.

1337p337 16y ago

For most of high school, I had the misfortune of living in the South. (I got the hell back to civilization as soon as I could.) The little town (population 6,000) didn't see too many people move in or out, and there were grudges festering left and right, and there were fights all the time. This is purely anecdotal and based on what I saw and did, but in an environment like that, it seems to me that escalation is only a problem if you don't escalate quickly enough. If I ended up in a fight (and I probably could have resolved a lot of conflicts without fighting, but I had that perfect combination of arrogance and insecurity that plagues the teenage mind), the problems continued only if I lost easily. Some of the best advice my mother gave me was "You can at least get a sandwich if they got a meal." (Other hits from mom: "The secret ingredient is always more butter." A stout lady, most of her advice was either directly about food or used a food analogy.) If I won, or if I managed to hit hard enough in the process of losing, I'd get no more trouble, except in one pathological case. Being unskilled but kind of big, I was often able to hit hard enough; if I have anything to say about it, my kids are going to log plenty of hours in a boxing gym. > unless he pulls a knife I carry a knife nowadays, after being in enough situations that came close enough to turning ugly that I wished I had one. I think, on general principal, that it's good for everyone to carry a weapon. A distant relative of mine who was born in the town we moved to had told me that when he was younger, in the 1940s and '50s, everyone had a gun in their jacket, "and you could tip your hat and be polite, or take turns shooting at each other." There's something to that, I think, in adult society. If there are no easy targets, if anyone you try to mug/terrorize/rape/attack/etc. can potentially end your life, then society is its own deterrent to crime. There are always irrational actors, of course, but if the crazy guy has a weapon, I want a weapon, too.