Just to get philosophical here, but most people go through life without making enemies by their nature. Other kinds of people  may generate a lot of people who don't like them, for good reason, but it never rises to the hatred of wanting to kill the person.

Others stack up lists of people who would like to kill them, and they interact with people perfectly willing and able to do it. Mobsters, hard core criminals, cops, judges and lawyers come to mind, and abusive spouses and employers.
Even in normal public business transactions you can't control what kind of individual you will come in contact with.

But it seems like a Basic Commonsense Rule Of Life should be: 1, Do not make anyone want to kill you, and, 2, Especially avoid making the kind of person who is willing and able to kill you want to kill you.

No one can avoid random, to-whom-it-may-concern violence, but there's a lot you can do to avoid the rest, and to defuse it before it becomes deadly.

When the back stories come out on there things, well, it's always a deal, and one of the parties (or both) is ready and willing to commit murder, and then they did.

It's just which set of rules you live by I guess. For an infantryman or  for a cop, you have to go in eyes open, you are liable to kill, you are liable to be killed. That's the rules on the employment contract.

And then there's the sort of civilian who goes out and doesn't make any effort to avoid having mortal enemies, and adopts the same rules.

It's most of what creates the gulf between people who live and work that way and people who don't. It's a bridge to cross in how one looks at the world.

There are shades of gray in the rules, too. I'm a peaceful fellow who won't escalate or participate in a threatening confrontation, a road rage incident, whatever. But if you break in on me at 3am I will kill you if my defensive situation dictates.

But see, if that happens it's nothing I did... I am just unlucky and thanks entirely to the person who broke into my house I am in the wrong place at the wrong time and have to deal with it.

It's all choices.

batman wrote on 06/13/16 at 18:18:24:


Words to live by!