Originally Posted by
nicegirlsarenice
Fighting isn't such a bad thing at all. It's a primitive and instinctual thing, it's natural.
Long ago there was a respectable Irish culture of fistfighting. My dad got into a few fights. They weren't ever trying to knock someone's teeth out or hurt them badly, god no, just slugging it out to see who bait who. Now you have knives, you would NEVER have knives back then.
We're competetive by nature. Sure hurling and soccer are good competetive sports, but you'd be a fool to think they were somehow more refined or "better" than a pure fight. Apes fight all the time, just for fun. They can also pick up stones and try to bash each other over the head with them, but they extremely rarely do that in their own group.
And it's probably the trying to suppress and disallow that instinctive flame of fighting that causes a lot of these deadly and completely stupid "fights" in the end. People want to let it out somehow. The closest thing we probably have that's widespread is boxing clubs. I'd actually be interested in joining a boxing or karate club, some sort of fighting club.
So I think fighting itself isn't such a bad thing, it's only when alcohol etc. is involved that it gets so terrible and disgusting and frightening.