A Bloodless Bullfight

People are always going to be in conflict, so we need to learn to squabble without causing injury. To learn how, perhaps we should go to Las Vegas.

When faced with an evildoer — or an angry, snorting, 1,000-pound bull — most of us have a natural and understandable reaction: fight or flight.

It’s human. It’s instinctual. It’s a deeply ingrained mammalian response to danger.

You know the drill: If you flee, you look for an escape route and run faster than you ever dreamed possible. But if you fight, you look for one thing, and one thing only:

Blood. There will be blood.

You want to draw first blood and put down the evildoer. The goal is to save yourself, save your spouse, save your children, save your friends. If the danger is more emotional than physical, the response is still the same: You want the offender to bleed. The guy who broke your heart. The boss who fired you. The woman who betrayed you.

Pow! First blood. Down they go.

This adrenaline-juiced dance with danger has been going on for centuries in the Latin world’s bullrings. Bullfighting is a spectacle in which a picador on a horse begins the fight by spearing the bull’s neck. ...