Mike, you're the Lao Tzu of brawlers - great post!
I've come to a lot of the same end-attitudes (though I have a long way to go).
It's odd, in a way, the role "conscience" plays in it all. I once had to defend myself with a small wooden bench against a guy wielding a baseball bat. My conscience prevented me from bashing his head in after I'd disarmed him, yet it has not caused me any remorse to have intercepted-smacked him with that bench 2-3 times when he first pulled back with that bat to strike at me. In a prior skirmish (with someone else) my hestiation due to conscience earned me a kick in the face. I'd have to say that skirmish affected my conscience from that of "hey this is a human being" to "hey, this #*%6 wants my blood - he's dead meat!," where warranted.
By the way, you have the making of a great T-Shirt in "fighting is better than taking lumps out of fear, even if you lose."
Again, great post. That's gonna be one hell of a book!
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