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I'm not sure I would put myself in this category. I think I disagree with the overall idea about how we should organize society around quokka-like behavior. My ideas on this topic are still a bit protean. But they are influenced by FromSCC's stance on rule-based systems being very vulnerable to exploitation. But I'll give it a go.
It seems to me that this rule: "Personal Violence is verboten" is very vulnerable to exploitation by smug assholes who's verbal intelligence allows them to insult, provoke, coordinate violence and other behaviors. They seem to take for granted that this rule exists, and it allows them to succeed at the expense of everyone else. That smacks as unfairness to me. The problem is that rule, is not natural. It only exists due to a strong centralized authority that will "Swing it's dick around". Now the motte/Chesterton's fence for this rule, is that in tries to prevent the interpersonal violence. The anti-violence norm is one of the pillars of mass society. But it is not a natural equilibrium because it's missing the other side of interpersonal violence.
A society needs more than a “no hitting” rule. It also needs a serious norm against provocation without accountability. Otherwise, the society privileges people whose aggression is deniable, verbal, procedural, or reputational. The thug says, “I’ll beat you.” The civilized predator says, “I’ll make everyone hate you, destroy your reputation, get you fired, humiliate you in public, bait you into a reaction, then appeal to the rules when you snap."
This is the cancel culture people claim to hate. It comes across as masculine vs feminine norms in society. We seemed to be in a phase of punishing the masculine and supporting the feminine. I don't think a society can survive without balancing these norms.
And while a lot of this idea is prescriptive, I think a large thrust is actually also descriptive. I think many lay people just intuitively grasp this idea. They grasp that if you verbally start shit out at a bar in the sticks, it is expected that you are going to get beat unless you can back it up with physical might. It's only in more urban, high-class, environments that people seem to not grasp this natural reality.
US law/precedent has the concept of 'fighting words,' that can legitimize a physical response. But I think that in societies (also the US) this is mostly just handled informally by the people themselves, police and the legal system, where seeking legal remedy for somewhat proportional responses is discouraged. I think that the feminization of society that you perceive is in large part a cultural phenomenon that extends far beyond the legal system.
However, this feminization only affects part of society, while another part is moving in the other direction, due to immigration, creating the quokka vs honey badger dynamic.
I also think that the legal system can only gradually change norms for the better, and thus cannot resolve this, although it can greatly accelerate the downfall. Modern progressives seem to believe that behavior comes from the environment and that transplanting people to the West immediately makes them adopt norms and values that are almost the same as the natives, and to the extent that this doesn't happen, it is caused by racisms and thus is the faults of the natives. So their solution is to beat the natives until
morale improvesimmigrants start behaving better. This just further encourages the quokkas and honey badgers to stick to their behavior, although the natives obviously have little reason to accept this state of affairs.More options
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Ok, I see what you're saying. I guess I see things from a different angle - I think the root cause of the serious problems in society are the overtly violent thugs. And the badness caused by them is so bad the civilised predators aren't worth worrying about while there are violent thugs.
I think it's better if we just stick to the simpler "no hitting" rule, and accept that there may be cases where someone will be able to bait an otherwise decent person into becoming violent - otherwise a lot of bad stuff could be argued as justified under some sort of "provocation".
Like, I exist in the sort of environment where actual violent thugs are non-existent, but there are sometimes these sorts of "civilised predators". And it's just much nicer this way than living "in the sticks" or something - not being able to punch an obnoxious person in the face (or even be verbally rude or obscene to them) is a tradeoff I'm willing to make to maintain such a relatively nice environment.
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