The pleasure of fighting

Dear Axiologist. You correctly noticed there is a fight going on in this blog and suggest we might want to declare a truce. I do not think I want a truce now because I realize I enjoy fighting, provided it is for sports and not an actual war (which it is'nt).

What are we doing here ? we fight while exercising our reason. Is'nt this an instance of the connection between emotions and reason that you point out (rightly, in my view) ? It is quite clear that a large part of our emotional world is related to fighting and we only need to consider our ancestor's way of life to understand why. So let us fight, but only in socially accepted ways that minimize harm and produce as much indirect benefits as possible, like aggressive blogging, sports or business.

Indeed, I am not sure we have a choice. A well known experiment goes like this. You put a rat in a cage where he gets non lethal electric shocks at random intervals. It is properly fed and the environment is in all aspects ok, except that the rat has nothing to to but wait in idelness for the next jolt. As a result, most test subjects become depressed. They developp imunological weaknesses, lose weight, etc. Now put two rats in the same cage and subject them to the same treatment. Very soon, they will start fighting between them. But they will not become depressed. None of the symptoms previously mentioned will appear in most cases. Declare a "truce" (in the form of a wall in the cage between the two rats, for example), and they wil become depressed again. So do not try to prevent me from fighting with my cage mate, since it is probably good for both of us.

I believe there is also a connection with the unabomber. My impression is that he did not have enough opportunities in his life to fight in order to cure himself of what he had suffered. I just recieved 'Harvard and the Unabomber' from Amazon this morning, so I will be able to check if I am right shortly. But, from what I know, Kaczynski went on to pursue an accademic career after he graduated from Harvard. As I know from direct experience, there is little opportunity for a good healthy fight in accademia. There is hostility indeed, but it mostly translates into low intensity warfare and the kind of dirty tricks that are probably not the best thing for mental health. This is in marked contrast with business of sports. Perhaps Kaczynski would not have become the Unabomber if he had done more of these.