Fight or flight becomes instinctive when we are put in any stressful situation.
You get confronted and you have only two choices.Right?
But what happens when a person – or an army – is left without a choice?
I mean, if retreating is not an option, fighting is all that is left.
And funny things can happen when you make someone fight for their life.
For a better chance of ending a conflict, it seems like there should be as many options for peace as possible.
In my limited experience, it seems like most aggressors want to walk away when they know that the battle is lost.
An entire fight – an entire war – can turn on a small shift in momentum.
I guess this could all me wrong.
But sometimes, the best choice might be giving a bully the opportunity to back down and save face.
The Romans knew about this idea.
Without a way out, tensions only increase and combatants have no choice but to fight on. Scipio Africanus, the general who defeated Hannibal, would say that an army should not only leave a road for their enemy to retreat by, they should pave it. The Romans had a name for this road, the Gallic Way.
-Ryan Holiday, Conspiracy
