What Chuck Does

Affliction - Why Do We Fight?

fight [fahyt]

–noun, verb

1. a battle or combat.

2. any contest or struggle: a fight for recovery from an illness.

3. an angry argument or disagreement: Whenever we discuss politics, we end up in a fight.

Why do we fight? This question is designed to search deep into the assumptions of our actions, thus the answer lies not on the surface. For example, the answer is not “because I was pissed off” or “because he/she attacked me”. Regardless of physical or emotional confrontation, what I am getting at is that we fight to protect ourselves. Protect ourselves from what you ask? Or why do we protect ourselves? If we examine the fundamental level of the motivation of why people “fight” you’ll find a theme of answers. People fight for their own interests, self-esteem, self-worth, self-concept, values, honor etc. If you follow these motivations back to their single source you will find that people fight to protect their existence. Interests, self-esteem, self-worth, self-concept, values, and honor are all extensions of our ability to “exist”, of what it means for us to be alive. So while we have evolved from mere cavemen and now rarely fight because our physical existence is threatened, we now fight because we perceive variations of threats to our survivability.

But when we fight, how many of us are actually aware of what we are fighting for or why we are fighting to begin with? In the heat of the moment, where are we? Are we in the fight? Are we present? Or are we in our own minds reacting to our perceptions? Or even worse, are we looking for the right “program” in our memory banks in order to react to the situation? Thus we see that “fighting” or defending our so-called existence is merely a game of the lowest evolutionary level. While it rarely now involves fists and teeth, the execution of our actions is the same. Identify threat, select response, and eliminate threat. While the situations are no longer 1) See caveman invade territory 2) Decide to attack caveman 3) Hit caveman with fists; our thought processes are the same 1) See ignorant driver cut me off 2) Decide to retaliate 3) Give ignorant driver the middle finger plus some expletives. As humans, we have evolved thousands of years and yet we are still enslaved by the same thought processes of our less intelligent brethren of the past (read: caveman). If you think about it, most of our reactions are misplaced and pure anachronisms. The ignorant driver that cut me off did not really threaten my physical existence, did he/she? Of course not! He/She merely threatened my values of common courtesy. So why do I react as if he/she sucker-punched me in the face? Therein lies the dilemma and the start of the reactionary process (automatic behavior/cycle of reactivity)

So we conclude our first step. Understand and question our assumptions. Why do we fight? We fight to secure our existence. If that is true, then why do so many of our altercations have nothing to do with our physical existence and instead more to do with values, greed, self-expansion (validation of our own self-worth, self-esteem, existence, etc.)? Yes they are extensions of our existence but they no longer require an outright elimination of the threat. They no longer require the type of reactions necessary to secure our survival. The threats no longer require that we kill the opposing caveman. If the threats and reasons for why we fight have changed over evolution, shouldn’t our reactions to these impulses change as well?