You are sitting at the bar when a rough customer walks up and growls, “You’re in my seat.”  It’s the classic scenario.  The threat may be implicit, or it may be explicit:  “Get lost, or I’ll kick your ass.”  And you know that, much as your ego wants you to fight for that seat, it’s just a seat at a bar, not worth violence, and the right thing to do is to give it up and simply move to any of the other perfectly suitable seats in the tavern.

Or is it?  If you do that, what have you taught this rough customer?  That the threat of violence gets him what he wants.  Today he demanded a seat at the bar.  What will he demand tomorrow?  A wallet?  A sexual service?  By choosing the peaceful path, you have encouraged violence and subjected tomorrow’s victim to a far greater threat.

Is the correct answer then to fight over a bar stool?  No, the correct answer is to fight over the threat of violence.  You can negotiate with a person until that person makes an ultimatum incorporating a threat of violence.  At that point, there is no negotiation.  That person has ceased negotiating with you, so if you continue trying to negotiate, you are engaging a mirage, something that exists only in your mind, and meanwhile in the real world you are feeding violence.  When your counter-party in a conflict makes a threat of violence, you must cease all conversation on the original topic and shift your focus to that threat.  You must make it clear that threats of violence and ultimata incorporating threats of violence will not be tolerated, and that he can withdraw his threat or be killed.  Anything else is to reward violence.

Yes, that means you are meeting violence with violence.  This is the one just application of violence: to prevent violence from becoming the currency of the realm.  There can be conversation until he threatens violence, at which point there will be only violence until he is dead or until he withdraws his threat.  Only this way can you have a peaceful society and a peaceful life. Yes, this also means you have to be able to back up your own words.  You have to be able to escalate arbitrarily (meaning, you must be able to escalate to any level of violence, so that you can always escalate to a level higher than the people who use violence for coercion).  You have to be able to win the fight, absolutely and overwhelmingly.