[quote=Hellis]I was referring more to MDK's exceptionally ignorant statement that we should allow more physical altercations. I was more referring to the whole culture we build for ourselves when we force association between violence and respect. The very same psychological basis that is behind the Jock kicking around a scrawny kid etc. MDK made the argument that it should be allowed, that it was important for teaching how the world work. That is building on the status quo and if we had all adheared to that all the time things would look today the same it did 100 year ago. Progressive thinking, empathy and solidarity towards your fellow man and woman should be paramount. The point is that we should not allow bullying, in any form. Nothing good comes from it, at all. It causes deep emotional trauma in kids, it ruins lives and breeds alienation. You know who prey on alienated people? Criminal element. There is strong ties between people who perceive themselves as outcast from society and youths that end up on a criminal career path. Hell, the radical rightwings that been jumping immigrants and what not here, all were on the polices lists as juvie's, and pretty much all have issues with problems at school and feeling alienated. People who feel alienated, something that Bullying clearly causes, are exposed and easy target for pressure.
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whoa, that escalated quickly. "I wish more things could be settled with fights" is what I said, and that's..... a woefully under-crafted sentence in this context, shit, that's my bad. Sorry. Very misleading and totally on me. Let me try again (if this is still hitting people the wrong way, just say the word and I'll back out).

I don't think physical violence between two kids is inherently damaging (barring, obviously, someone causing serious injury). Where am I getting that absurd notion from.... well, one day (shit like ten years ago now) the local big kid was trolling my friend, the local small kid, and for some reason I thought it looked bad, and I jumped in there with a right hook. Proceeded to get my ass kicked for the next two minutes or whatever before kids came in and broke it up.... **immediately** we all (me, big kid, small kid) nodded, acknowledged "yeah I guess that was kind of messed up, sorry, we good brah, yeah we good," and became best friends. [i]I mean this was instant[/i]. We were playing soccer not five minutes later; everything was settled, period, we had our fight and now it was done, and that was it. We all learned from it, we all grew from it, Big Kid never picked on little kids after that, Little Kid went off and became an Air Rescue medic, I became a pilot. Not "because of this fight," at all, that's not what I'm saying, but.... because we were *able* to fight over it, we were able to learn that much more about ourselves, and grow as people.

And **that's** what I meant to be talking about when I said "kids should be allowed to fight blah blah blah MDK words." I know, that's not at all what I was implying -- my mistake, sorry again. But I certainly didn't mean 'Let's all join the Republican party and harass immigrants,' either, so.... maybe we're both approaching this wrong. Anyway. Fighting isn't bad, conflict isn't bad, by nature. There are situations where it's a negative thing (and that's where bullies typically operate), and that's when we should be worrying about it -- but to go at this problem with a broadsword instead of a scalpel, we lose so much. I mean, hockey fans, back me up here.