THE DISRESPECT

[Delphinoid_]

With the impression you're giving off, it certainly sounds like you're the one debilitating excessive amounts of fear because you've never been taught any better. The nice guy method doesn't always work, I'm telling you. At some point, quarrels will eventually turn into dangerous, fighting situations. Running away allows the enemy to perceive you as a weak-minded individual. So just like playing chess, you're exposing a weak side on the board for the enemy to attack you whenever they want. Playing it safe won't always work. Being aggressive has benefits! I'm not saying it does all the time. I'm saying it does in certain situations.

For starters I'm not sure why you're talking about running away. Second, it sounds like you're prioritizing what strangers think of you over the safety of yourself and the people you care about. If you and your loved ones are safe, why does it matter if someone thinks you're weak-minded? Not to mention that I personally think that someone who doesn't let themselves be controlled by their emotions or their perceptions of what others think about them is the opposite of weak-minded. I think it speaks very positively of their maturity and self-confidence, but that's just me.

You know what's not healthy?... The advice you're trying to get me to adopt. It tells me that you're a pacifist who'd rather have someone else fight his own battles for him. This is exactly how people get bullied, disrespected, and taken advantage of which is something I won't tolerate! There's an appropriate time to be fearful of something, but this isn't the case. Unless you're held at gunpoint, you better not show any weak signs of fear to the enemy, I'm telling you.

There's a difference between being afraid and showing that you're afraid. I agree that in these kinds of situations it's usually better not to show when you're afraid. But it's okay to be afraid deep down.

Unless you have a medical condition, or you're sick, you better not rely on your wife or girlfriend to fight your own battles for you because now the roles are switched. The traditional way is better... not this soft, modern bullshit (about everything being neutral-gender) they keep poisoning our minds with.

This is a weird thing to say... I believe that all humans should act within their moral and physical capacity to protect those they care about. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. You can advocate for women protecting others while still maintaining that men should equally protect others. I don't really understand your point. I strongly feel that the way you seem to view both men and women is dehumanizing.

Yeah, I hear you, and I understand what you're saying, perfectly. But, what happens when your method doesn't work anymore, huh? All of a sudden the aggressor just put his hands on you. How are you going to react to it? Running away?... Really?? All you're doing is causing the situation to escalate to a dangerous level for you because you refuse to defend yourself. You have this false narrative that running away is going to solve all your confrontational problems. Then, you think it's ok to live in this false reality based on your method of working on everybody, which is highly illogical and insufferable.

I don't think I mentioned running away. It's true that are many situations that just aren't worth engaging in in the first place, but I think this is different to running away. Keep in mind that by causing a scene, everyone around you is affected, not just you and the other person. If things look like they're going to get physically violent, often de-escalating / disengaging is best for everyone, and it takes a great deal of strength, mental fortitude and self-confidence to be able to be the better person without letting it affect your ego. Often it's worth standing your ground (especially when you know things won't get physical), but it really depends. I just don't personally agree with using physical violence to do so.

Of course, if there was some hypothetical supervillain situation where someone I cared about was going to be dunked into a vat of acid unless I shot the "supervillain", and I knew that nothing else could save my friend, then I would regretfully do it (I would rather take the burden of this sin than have the person I care about perish), but I would do so with the consequence of knowing that I've committed a grave sin (according to my own personal morals) that I'll now have to live with. This is a really weird hypothetical though.

So when your words didn't convince the enemy to see the error of their ways, and they're a different breed who responds to quarrels with violence, you must defend yourself. Otherwise, it is you who gets bullied. I do, however, agree that some people who are aggressive and cantankerous can be calmed down with your method. But there is no one-size-fits-all, if you know what I mean. There's a reason why self-defense exists.

This is where people just have different ideologies. I don't care if someone wants to beat me up; I would rather be hurt myself than inflict pain on someone else. That's just me though, and I don't really condone anyone else taking this approach. Morality is a largely personal thing. What matters to me is when people hurt those I care about.

I know because you're obviously a pacifist. What ever happened to the message you told me earlier, huh? "It's everyone's responsibility to protect their loved ones". So that means it's YOUR responsibility too, to protect your loved ones.

Of course it's my responsibility too. I just don't believe that using physical violence to do this is just or righteous. If others see violence as being reasonable, that's up to them.

Standing in-between them won't always work. They'll push you outta the way and continue whaling on your best friend. Your method is based on fairy tales - nothing but fictions only. They're not guaranteed outcomes with authenticity attached to them. In a perfect world, maybe. But not with monsters. You can't keep doing the same thing over again and expect Grade A results all the time.

Then I would try even harder to get them off and take their hits, or come up with a new strategy that prioritizes not committing what I believe to be an immoral act. There are plenty of ways you can divert someone without resorting to physical violence. These kinds of situations are nuanced and don't really respond well to flowchart solutions though. If somehow I was totally convinced that there was no other solution then I would have to resort to some degree of violence (hopefully only a very low level of it), but 1. this would be an absolute last resort and 2. I would still hold myself morally accountable for this. When it comes to people I care about, I do still value their safety over my own personal morality, but harming another human is still harming another human in my book.

I want to mention though that we can talk about hypotheticals all day, but they're just hypotheticals. For example, what if you give the guy a right hook and becomes even more furious than before? What if this causes him to turn around, shoot you in the face and then go back to beating your friend? What if it makes him more aggressive and brutal towards your friend? What if your offense causes him to go hunt down your family after you're dead? We can keep going on like this, but it's very reminiscent of the way children talk about battles between their favourite fictional characters, where you keep developing them into more and more fantastic and unrealistic situations in order to ensure that the only "correct" outcome is the one you personally prefer. At the end of the day it's just a waste of time.

What I believe from my own experience (and the experience of everyone I know) is that you're heavily exaggerating how often these situations happen and how hard they are to quell, possibly because you want them to be common in order to justify your own approach. Certainly there are in theory times where violence is inevitable, but these are like... once in a lifetime occurrences at best. Despite what you might believe from fictional media, most people (even at their worst) aren't "monsters" that will maul anyone who looks at them funny, and the very few people who are like that are typically avoidable. You seem to think that brawling with someone over a pack of McNuggets is reasonable though, so this could explain why you see things differently. This might just have to be something we disagree on.