Willingness to stand up for oneself is not necessarily the same as one overestimating their ability to fight.
I was bullied regularly as a kid. I was no match at all for most of the bullies, they easily had strength, size, numbers, and fighting experience over me, but since the schools wouldn’t or couldn’t do a damn thing to protect me, especially when the bullies followed me well away from school grounds, the only choices I had were to either endure it, or to try to change the situation by standing up for myself. Even if I got my ass beat even worse just for standing up for myself, at the very least it made it clear to them that I was no longer guaranteed to be a frictionless target and that sometimes changes things for the better.
It’s not about winning. It’s about putting up the fight, because the potential outcomes of not fighting back aren’t always much better than standing up for oneself.
That said, I personally wouldn’t want to put a foreign trip in jeopardy by assaulting anyone if it wasn’t an actual self defense situation, much like back at home. I’m just responding to this idea that willingness to fight is not the same thing as being overly confident that one will come out on top.
I don’t think you understand what it’s like to be constantly bullied and constantly on guard. At some point there is no concept of “worse”. At some point there is only the sense of “literally anything in the world except this.”
As do I. Sometimes the bullies genuinely have the upper hand. Like the Nazis versus the people in their concentration camps. Fighting back just lead to more violent retribution against those who were already being mistreated. You can’t magic your way into suddenly winning a losing battle. It’s absurdity after absurdity in here.
Fighting back just lead to more violent retribution against those who were already being mistreated
This is what I meant when I said there’s no “worse”, just “different”. In a concentration or extermination camp I think it’s insane to blame any of the victims for what their captors do.
Willingness to stand up for oneself is not necessarily the same as one overestimating their ability to fight.
I was bullied regularly as a kid. I was no match at all for most of the bullies, they easily had strength, size, numbers, and fighting experience over me, but since the schools wouldn’t or couldn’t do a damn thing to protect me, especially when the bullies followed me well away from school grounds, the only choices I had were to either endure it, or to try to change the situation by standing up for myself. Even if I got my ass beat even worse just for standing up for myself, at the very least it made it clear to them that I was no longer guaranteed to be a frictionless target and that sometimes changes things for the better.
It’s not about winning. It’s about putting up the fight, because the potential outcomes of not fighting back aren’t always much better than standing up for oneself.
That said, I personally wouldn’t want to put a foreign trip in jeopardy by assaulting anyone if it wasn’t an actual self defense situation, much like back at home. I’m just responding to this idea that willingness to fight is not the same thing as being overly confident that one will come out on top.
And a lot of times it changes it for the worse, too. What even is this argument?
I don’t think you understand what it’s like to be constantly bullied and constantly on guard. At some point there is no concept of “worse”. At some point there is only the sense of “literally anything in the world except this.”
And I think you’d be shocked to find out how wrong you are. You’re describing my high school years. Guess what? Fighting back made it worse.
I’m genuinely sorry to hear that and I’m glad you made it out of there. But I stand by my point.
As do I. Sometimes the bullies genuinely have the upper hand. Like the Nazis versus the people in their concentration camps. Fighting back just lead to more violent retribution against those who were already being mistreated. You can’t magic your way into suddenly winning a losing battle. It’s absurdity after absurdity in here.
This is what I meant when I said there’s no “worse”, just “different”. In a concentration or extermination camp I think it’s insane to blame any of the victims for what their captors do.
I’m not assigning blame here, I’m just talking about the cold, hard reality of what actually happened.