WendyDarling wrote:Autsider/Mr.
That no mercy philosophy is a good vehicle (choo, choo!) for population control, the perpetrator of a physical attack has chosen their own death sentence in essence. I'm down with that. Once you cross the line into any kind of confrontational physical contact, the victim has the right, the obligation even, to put down, as in kill, the perpetrator by whatever means are available and the right to pursue this no mercy course of action until the perpetrator is dead.
Finally we agree on something.
Knocking out the attacker may be sufficient, but the problem here is 1) He/she could feign being knocked out in order to catch you off guard, 2) He/she may be vengeful and try to kill you days after the fight is over. I prefer to destroy my enemies when I have the chance to prevent 1 or 2. It's just the rational course of action. A system which would force you to prioritize the life of the person trying to harm and possibly murder you over your own life is corrupt and obviously favors instigators, which no healthy system does.
If you want to have a nice fight with somebody, ask for their consent. Then, if he/she consents, you can agree on the conditions of the fight, and if you do, you can then proceed to fight.
What you want to do, Wendy, is pervert (invert) the natural hierarchy of things. You want to be able to physically assault those stronger than you, then when you begin losing the fight you want to have the option to cry "mercy" and demand the other party goes easy on you, and if they don't, then an even stronger party (military/police) would intervene on your behalf. On the other hand, those stronger than you should not be permitted to impose their authority over you and other weaklings. It would result in a weak society as it doesn't provide incentive for those who are strong to defend it, since they would be forced in a position of subordination to those who are weak.
Myself, I'm in favor of the natural hierarchy of things. Children and women are property of men, men have the authority over women and children and the latter two have to be obedient, but men also have the responsibility to protect them, and of course, not to abuse their authority. The women/children would recognize men as superior in strength and wouldn't even think of picking fights with them cause they would get their ass kicked, and the men would recognize women/children as weaker and thus treat them more gently than other males (unless women and children attempted to usurp male authority, of course, in which case they would be quickly made an example of).
In a decent society such degenerate infighting would be extremely rare anyway, so that's all I have to say.