And motivations at the time. As a general rule, no, I don't even like hurting people much less killing them. But threaten someone I feel protective about, and it's another matter entirely.
> Sadly, we see all the time people butchering
> eachother as a result
> of having dehumanized (in their minds) the other or
> having been dehumanized themselves.
And people know this, and take steps in war to deliberately dehumanise the other side.
You can do deliberate mental adjustment yourself for a limited time, too. Mock sword-play with steel or wooden weapons is a funny thing, you need to do an odd sort of double-think to get the aggression necessary to win without causing actual danger to anyone. But the aggression side, when faced with an opponent taller and stronger than you are, goes, "I'm going to die. No other choice. *He's coming with me*." And then you win, while your opponent back-pedals frantically wondering what the h*** is coming at them. Go in thinking "let's see if I can damage him a little bit and not take any damage myself", you lose. But, you also pull your blow.... it's double-think. Has to be. And yes, the George Silver "on no account let your opponent hit you" rule still applies, you just make sure they can't hit you because they're already dead...
It's the Humakti approach. "Today is a good day to die", and so on. Not fearing death, because you're already dead. But it's a deliberate mental trick.
> As Jane points out, drugs (in her example
> adrenaline) can have an
> effect. Hand-to-hand combat often proceeded by heavy
> drinking?
It happened a lot, I gather, and quite understandable, too. But I suspect the dehumanising factor you describe is more important, at least in cases of war rather than individual combats.
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