Animal Thoughts

[Guest guest]

Here is what I thought of in that other post.

When the mention of fighting came up it made me think about the subject. When most people fight, it is about status or forcing someone to submit to you. Most drunken bar fights are over some perceived slight to someone or their compagnian. That is a fight about status. So is fighting over name calling or whatever else might be taken as an insult. The idea isn't so much to really hurt the person as to make them retract what they said or otherwise submit. The exceptions to this are predators and thugs who delight in hurting others, but those are rare.

Those people might be considered wolves, in the negative sense. A wolfpack has a distinct social order in which every wolf has a place and a role. In the pack it is possible to move up or down in rank. This process usually is about brute force, but can also be about alliances and is somewhat complex. Where Humans vary is that while the wolf pack takes care not to truly injure or cast out its members, humans very well will do just that. Humans also have the capacity for reason on a greater level than wolves and just plain should know better than to act like that.

In regards to fighting, I tend to take the approach of the leopard. The leopard is a smaller jungle cat that is a loner. As such, it can ill afford to be injured. A good way to get injured is by picking fights with bigger animals or those that move in packs. This is the way I look at it. Most times there is no reason to fight. Like when some idiot calls you a name: it is far better just to walk away than fight. On the other hand there are times when it is necessary, like when you find an intruder in your home who is clearly intent on hurting you and yours. In that case it is no holds barred. Like the leopard fight long enough to escape and if you can't fight to kill.

This philosophy I think has kept me out of a lot of trouble. When I am out and about, I keep my eyes open. If it looks like trouble up ahead, I change direction. I have even had to duck into noisy bars on occasion to throw off people who probably weren't up to anything, but better safe than sorry. I've also had a couple of close calls but I think the people in question caught on that I wouldn't be an easy mark and moved on.

This is perhaps also why we had so little trouble in my group of friends. That is not to say I would have hurt any of them. Quite the opposite: I most likely would not have raised a hand against them other than to deflect blows. Pretty much they all adopted my view of these things so even when we got a little rowdy, the thought of looking for a fight never came up.

It is too bad more people don't take that kind of view. It is hard really to even think of an animal that acts like many of them do.