"Reasonable violence is, simply put, the amount of violence necessary to give suitable punishment."
Oh! Thank you. English is not my native language so I lost you there, thank you very much for clarifying that.
"When someone steals from you, you break their hand. That's reasonable. They are now one-handed for the time being for trying to steal something that's not theirs."
Do you literally find this reasonable? I think it is too much for someone trying to steal you. Now if that person is holding a knife, or a gun... then my life is threatened. I would probably break his arm under stress, I don't know. But if someone doesn't go for the kill, if someone is not serious about hurting me, if I can talk myself out and actually ask why stealing, you know what, I did that once. I asked a guy with a knuckle why? Why are you acting like an @ssh0le? Are you in need for money? You could just ask me for money. And I actually helped the guy. Tell you what. He ended up protecting me from others.
"Somebody trashes you behind your back or verbally attacks your girlfriend, you give them a punch. "
Do you literally find this reasonable? I would ignore them. Literally ignore them. They are probably losers, they got nothing to lose. On contrary, I can lose my peace of mind, not to mention they can sue you for assault and you can't prove sh1t! Thus I ignore them. My girlfriend even ignores them. But if someone tries to harm or harass her in front of me, or behind my back, I will deal with them straight ahead. And I would do more than punching. But they MUST raise their hands first.
"Breaking their hands is unreasonable, since apart from verbal abuse they did not do anything serious."
Yeah! You are right, my point exactly. Verbal abuse is not anything serious. I would ignore them. I mean, if a 5 years old kid would "verbally abuse" me, I would ignore it. You know why? Because I would say "It's just a kid". Kids do not consist a threat. Thus you ignore them. The fallacy comes to two assumptions.
- Adults are mature
- Adults are threats
For the first, we obviously see on OP two immature parents. Not all people mature.
For the second though, people fear a threat. And we fear of loss in general. Losing our dignity, our status, our health, our lover, the other's respect. Violence emerge when someone fears a significant loss.
But I am with a girlfriend that actually gets mad, if I won't ignore idiots. She is a magnificent person.
"Try to combat them with words! They'll only be more and more daring. Because words won't hurt them and they know it."
Heh! They don't know sh1t! You never met someone like me. I fought with words. Some people left the scene humiliated. But I give you that, most of them ended up attacking me at some point. Then I had to defend myself. But defending yourself versus an attack, well, that would be reasonable violence.
"Try to show someone their place with words."
That's not my job neither is my responsibility. I will defend myself with words. That will be VERY awkward for them, mostly because they are gonna feel fools if they fight back verbally or physically. And I do it in front of a crowd. This adds momentum.
"If they're an entitled, spoiled brat... You will never hurt them no matter what you say. "
I don't intend to hurt. I intend to defend myself and I hope to reach for a better self hidden scared inside them.
"Violence is more efficient in that... Because the moment you lose, it's a direct hit to your ego."
Yes. A direct deep scar, that won't heal until you get revenge. See where this goes? Violence and revenge is like a poison you drink, expecting your opponent to die because of it. Violence harms efficiently, but both sides.
But I understand your point of view. I know nothing about you, the circumstances you had to face and the challenges you had to pass. But you know what? I respect you. Because you got the guts to tell me straight your moral code and you are genuine. You know people find mistakes to that and probably tell you how wrong you are, but you still got the guts to speak about it. Hopefully you are open to improvements, as long as you evaluate them yourself. You might get into trouble if you don't evaluate correctly what reasonable violence is at any circumstances, there are laws you know, keep that in mind. But I salute your originality and your courage.
I think what you should just rethink about what is important and significant as threat, what fear is real and what fear is fake or exaggerated and finally recalculate the punishment, making them also law compatible. We all do mistakes on such evaluations. All of us.
