You've got to go down to get up! (Which isn't exactly how the song goes, but you get the drift.)

He does take a hammering at this point. Which leads to all kinds of hitherto unthinkable self-reflection. This is the point at which Spike has to ask what he wants from unlife. But then, hooray, he can just start dishing out the violence some more. Unlife is good! (But once the thinky thoughts have been thunk, they can't be unthunk, if you know what I mean.)