Games

Most people have the intuition that, while you do not have the right to do violence to someone unprovoked, once they have done violence to you, you are justified in doing violence back to them. I have a system by which I try to schematize this intuition. I frame interactions between people as games. Such games have rules, which are agreed upon implicitly by those involved. The players in these games, I assume, are in an equal power relationship — that is, factors such as authority, gender and race are not involved (this mitigates such non-reciprocal cultural artifacts as orders and bigoted statements. [I should probably make a post about this assumption at some point.] ).

Cultural expectations and past relationships play big roles in determining the rules of such games. These rules can include: "talking is allowed", "intentional physical contact is not allowed" (this might well be a rule with strangers on the street), "kissing is allowed" (such as between people in a romantic relationship). For the vast majority of interactions, "don't do violence" is a rule. However, the rules of games can change, and often do in short order. These changes come about when one person implicitly or explicitly violates a standing rule. Once this happens, both players may now play by these new rules. What this creates in effect is an "eye for an eye" situation. If you are willing to violate one of the rules of the interaction, you are implicitly agreeing to play by that rule for the duration of the interaction. So, if you punch someone (a violation of a rule outside of a boxing ring), you agree to getting punched yourself. If you kiss someone, you are implying that they may kiss you back. And so on.

This allows us to set up a  naive code for behaviour: follow the rules, or, if you violate them, accept that the new rules your violation established apply to you as much as to anyone else you interact with.