I've recently come across Eric Newby's "The Last Grain Race" again - I read it decades ago, when I was starting to get interested in sailing, and at one stage had a hard copy but that has disappeared somewhere along the way. In it, it described something that has always seemed strange and often appalled me, and that is liking some people have for physical violence. In Mr Newby's case, before he sailed on the "Moshulu", he and a similarly young colleague would - when they got bored, "have a pummel". On the "Moshulu" he described an almost transformative fight.
Why? Was everyone so incapable of behaving decently without that?
I guess the answer to that is "yes, they lacked that capability". Physical competition is not necessarily bad, but thinking people have to prove themselves physically to get respect is illogical, harmful (it denies that group good leadership/contributions by, for instance, an Einstein who cannot physically fight), unjust, and just downright stupid.
Physical dominance is just another form of bullying and oppression - and I have known, incidentally, a couple of cisgender women who had the same inclination, to the extent of saying they would accept the views on a subject of someone who beat them physically - irrespective of evidence and rationality.
That such mediaeval thinking can still exist in this day and age is appalling.
As a further example of this sort of problem, I recently watched the Netflix series "The Liberator" - which I put off for quite some time because it a cartoon (sorry - "adult animation" . . . ). In that, there are early scenes along the same sort of line, where soldiers use physical violence - rather than competence - as a basis for establishing what they call "respect" (given it fallacious foundation, it can only be described as a pseudo-respect - at most an homage top the real thing). In the TV series, one NCO is portrayed as being insubordinate to the main character (a Lieutenant, at that stage) and justifying it on the basis of his racism. In the TV series, the lead character has one of his men fight the NCO and beat him. In the book (I read a sample), he is quite open about using violence, but of NCOs against soldiers.
This problem does not exist only in terms of physical violence: there are all sorts of irrelevant expectations that people are subjected to - such as having to serve for a certain amount of time in a position, or do certain types of action to gain access to a management level, and so on. (And irrelevant expectations of respect - such as from
Uni degrees, which I point out to graduate engineers are a licence to
start learning.)
No wonder the world has so many problems of we use such irrational salves to our insecurities, instead of putting the welfare of the world and all sentient life ahead of our shortcomings as human beings.
This includes all management and politics that fails to be along the stewardship (or servant-leadership, if you prefer) model, or denies the primacy of the climate crisis or the legacy of bigotry in all its forms.
PS - some of the problem is that those who favour fisticuffs are not fluent or familiar with other approaches, or have been made to feel uncomfortable by those who are. The solution to that is NOT more derision: it is using those vaunted skills to teach and develop that comfort, ability and fluency in others - starting, if need be, when they are but children.
