Fighting as a psychological behavior has almost no relation to fighting as a skill
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If I ever get into a “fighting mood” I’m almost certain to lose. Seems to correlate positively with winning for some people though. Honor warriors.
Guardian syndrome combat vs commerce syndrome combat?
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Note I’m not thinking only of traditional physical fighting with weapons. I’m also talking fighting bureaucracy, customer service, yelp comments, marital conflict, parenting, business litigation... the universe of fighting is vast.
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To snowclone the line about sex, everything is about fighting except actual fights. Actual fights are about physics.
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These refs look interesting. I’m getting interested increasingly interested in this distinction.
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This. If you are in any doubt that this holds read Rory Miller (Meditations on Violence), De Becker (Fear, the friend of exceptional people) or anything my Geoff Thompson. twitter.com/vgr/status/133…
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Americans seem to pick up their fighting attitudes primarily via a) schoolyard bullying culture and their own responses to it b) high school sports and sociology around it. Think Ender Wiggin or Daniel in Karate Kid, with a stiff dose of Mean Girls. Wonder how universal that is.
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I don’t recall bullying being a big problem. There were isolated incidents but it was never a a formative factor. Neither was sports. So not quite sure where my beliefs and attitudes about fighting came from. Certainly wasn’t the one year of crappy karate lessons I took.
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At some point I got intellectually interested, but by then I had already formed basic attitude: avoid fights, especially fair ones. But if you must fight, fight unfair (but not dirty) and finish before other guy starts. Fait accomplis are the only way if you have no talent for it
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This is obviously high-skill in physical fights, but I wonder why more people don’t adopt this basic no-brainer attitude in low-skill situations like office politics. If you *know* your proposal is going to be reviewed same as Guy With Dumb Idea, why *would* you fight “fair”?
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Why would you go head-to-head when you know other guy is lazy and you could win simply by talking to people before the proposal pitch meeting and putting in more 2x work on the PowerPoint? No need to be John Wick for this.
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I don’t think I’ve ever won anything more complex than a ping-pong game in straight-up head-to-head competition relying on actual skills in an even match-up. In a way, being below average in athletic ability protects you from temptation of trying to be “good” at fighting.
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