struggle
A fight (from Old High German kampel "quarrel", from Latin campus "(battle) field") is a dispute between two or more rival parties whose aim is to achieve an advantage or to bring about a disadvantage for the opposing party. The attacking side is usually referred to as the aggressor. A fight can u. a. by means of violent acts, in the form of controversies , as economic competition , as sporting competition or in virtual form in computer games . Often times, a strategy will help you gain an advantage.
With fighting also a great effort can be meant, with the aim to dominate itself to overcome adversity or to insist in a situation (for example, "upwind fight", "against the weaker fighting", "fighting for recognition ").
Between seriousness and play
A fundamental distinction is made between martial and sporting combat, i.e. between violent and playful or symbolic competition. In violent competition, opponents face each other as enemies . Whether symbolic fighting means preparation for violence or renunciation of violence has been discussed since ancient times. According to the modern western view, the symbolic or sporting struggle should also create a sense of fairness that would remain in a serious dispute. The boundary between sporting and serious disputes blurs, for example, in economic competition or competition between rivals in relationship matters .
Playful fights can also be observed in the animal world . The anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) has created a wide range sporting competition to be within the scope of the rules has reached an agreement on which one to measure peacefully or to be entertained . In competitions you can get recognition or prizes, sometimes scorn or pity. The risk of losing can increase motivation rather than decrease it.
If fighting becomes an ideological demand, a “ right of the strongest ” can emerge, for example in so-called social Darwinism .
history
Fighting has been going on for as long as there have been living beings evolved enough to deliberately harm others. Struggles for resources , reproduction partners , territories etc. are an essential part of evolution . At the same time, among more highly developed animals (e.g. primates ), more and more sophisticated methods of avoiding or peaceful settlement of aggression (see social behavior ), such as B. non-fatal battles for rank , gestures of submission, expressions of affection and the like.
Man has developed tactics for fighting through his intelligence by acting in an organized manner and investing ever greater effort to achieve an advantage. In order to motivate people to participate in disputes, increasingly sophisticated propaganda techniques have been developed that make use of ideologies and emotionalizations such as images of the enemy or religious justifications. The weapons technology has been continuously developed and refined as well psychological methods to demotivation of the opponent.
Humans also developed more civilized solutions to (potential) conflicts , such as B. the use of courts , markets and other institutions or politics and diplomacy . Large armies and arsenals are said to serve to avoid wars (e.g. through a power vacuum ) rather than to lead them. A strong police force can have a similar purpose . An escalation from initially civilized to violent conflict is and has always been possible.
The Christian world order of the European Middle Ages with its utopia of renouncing violence on the one hand and a certain tolerance for rule breaking on the other (forgiveness of sins) has led to the state's monopoly on the use of force today . It is the vigilante prevent and combat any rules or procedures create a basis. This development since the 13./14. In the 19th century, the sociologist Norbert Elias examined the process of civilization in his main work . He wondered how the duel of the medieval robber barons could become a clearly regulated aristocratic duel when the nobility no longer lived scattered, but were more and more drawn together to form large courts . Based on this, Elias tried to understand why traffic rules worked in the big cities of the 20th century without leading to constant disputes between those involved.
Since the 18th century (in Great Britain since the Glorious Revolution , in continental Europe essentially only after the French Revolution ) the modern sport gradually developed in the western world and in Japan also since the 18th century modern martial arts such as kendō , i.e. peaceful ones Forms of fighting.
With the American Revolution of 1776, the establishment of social systems began , which primarily bring about a reconciliation of interests internally using democratic means. This revolution, as well as later revolutions in Europe, did not solve all social conflicts in the long term, which has led to some militant-oriented social movements that today still have the right in the form of modern institutionalized trade unions , v. a. Organize labor disputes to assert the interests of their members with their employers . As a rule, such fights nowadays are non-violent, but with work stoppages and lockouts, the opponents materially damage each other. In the USA and South Africa, social movements even had to ensure equality for people of different skin colors. In their beginnings, these modern movements are often for a time divided into a non-violent or maximally civil disobedience part and a part that is at least rhetorically prepared for violence.
In the second half of the 19th century armed conflicts in and between most of the European states were partially prevented by the notion of an external threat ( nationalism ). At the same time, the willingness to use violence against minorities within and against other nations increased through propaganda, social upheavals ( industrialization ), simplifying Darwinist convictions, a perceived threat to the "old order" through demands for the elimination of grievances and other factors. In particular, nationalist ideas resulted in the First World War , social grievances in the October Revolution and simplistic racist enemy images in the Second World War and the Holocaust .
Human-to-human battles reached a high point during World War II , when fascism and National Socialism brought about extremely aggressive ideologies that caused the deaths of millions of people. The subsequent Cold War between the victorious Western powers on the one hand and the former Soviet Union on the other was much more civilized, if one disregards the proxy wars , sometimes fought with extreme brutality , mostly in poorer regions of the world, and the fact that the cold War with its armament with weapons of mass destruction was tantamount to the material battle of World War I, except that the weapons were not used. In parallel, terrorism developed as a struggle outside the rules of the game.
The sociologist Erving Goffman , for example, studied fighting in competitive American society after the Second World War and investigated everyday phenomena.
See also
Parties
Violent fight
literature
- Axel Binhack: About the phenomenon of fighting in sport and society. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-593-36090-X .
- Eric Dunning , Norbert Elias (Ed.): Sport and tension in the process of civilization. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-518-58363-8 .
