Meditations on Violence

[passer-by]

http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Viole ... 558&sr=1-1

(в Букдепозиторито я има по-евтино, но Амазонският линк дава повече информация)

Едно от най-полезните и смислено написани четива, на които съм попадал в живота си. И не се подвеждайте по заглавието - не става дума само за улично насилие и бойни изкуства, а за насилието във всякакви негови проявления и как най-адекватно да реагираме на него. Авторът знае за какво пише, както е видно от бекграунда му, а и от похвалите на негови колеги, някои от които са доста известни в бранша.

Четете ако ви е интересно.
Коментирайте, пак ако ви е интересно.

Ако ви вълнува, ще постна биография на автора, но в линка би трябвало да има достатъчно информация, включително и чрез ревютата, доста от които са на професионалисти в бранша.
Слагам в спойлър заради дължината.

INTRODUCTION: METAPHORS

Spoiler: show

People are weird. They have an almost infinite ability to learn and communicate. At the same time, this amazing ability is used as much for fantasy and entertainment as it is for information and survival. Take, for example, the rhinoceros and the unicorn.
The rhinoceros is a real beast, an animal native to Asia and Africa. It is large, formidable, and familiar to most of us from pictures or visits to the zoo. What do we really know about rhinoceros? Are they grazers or browsers? Do they live in big herds, family groups, or roam the savannah alone? In the movie The Gods Must be Crazy, we learned that the rhinoceros doesn’t like fire and will stamp out a campfire. Is that true? I have no idea. Look at how little we know, and how little we know with confidence, about this beast that really exists and is truly dangerous.
The unicorn derived from the rhinoceros. Over time and distance and by word of mouth, the reality of the rhinoceros slowly changed into the myth of the unicorn. This process has been so powerful that everyone knows many, many facts about the unicorn. It has the beard of a goat, cloven hooves, and a single horn. It kills elephants by impaling and is strong enough to hurl the elephant over its head, yet it can be tamed and captured by a virgin. We know all these “facts” about the unicorn, but there is only one true fact to know:
The unicorn is imaginary.
Unicorns are mythical, yet we know so much about them. The rhinoceros is real and, except for a few experts, we know so little.
There is a parallel between the unicorn and violence. Just as travelers’ tales passing from person to person and place to place and century to century managed to morph the reality of the rhinoceros into the fable of the unicorn, the insular tradition and history of each dojo has morphed a primal understanding of violence into the modern ritual of martial arts. Just as the grey and wrinkled skin of the rhinoceros has become the glossy white coat of the unicorn, the smells, and sounds, and gut-wrenching fear of close-up personal violence has somehow spawned the beautiful cinema of the action adventure movie and the crisp precision of the martial arts.
In today’s world, who are the real experts on violence?
The Priests of Mars. The minute you don a black belt, the minute you step in front of a class to teach, you are seen as an expert on violence. It doesn’t matter if you have absorbed a complete philosophical system with your martial art. It doesn’t matter if the art gave you, for the first time, the confidence to view the world as a pacifist. It doesn’t matter if you studied as a window to another age and culture. It doesn’t matter that you have found enlightenment in kata or learned to blend in harmony with the force of your attacker. It doesn’t matter because you are about to teach a martial art, an art dedicated to Mars, The God of War. A MARtial art. Even if somewhere over the years you have lost sight of this, your students have not. You wear a black belt. You are an expert on violence. You kick ass. You are a priest of Mars.
The simple truth is that many of these experts, these priests of Mars, have no experience with violence. Very, very few have experienced enough to critically look at what they have been taught, and what they are teaching, and separate the myth from the reality.
The Super Star. Do you ever notice that weight lifters don’t look like boxers? For that matter, if you watch fencing matches you see a lot of tall skinny guys, Judo matches tend to be won by short, stocky judoka – basically, none of them look like body builders. But action stars usually do. Unless they want to appeal to the goth/techno market, in which case they are really skinny, pale-complected, and wear a lot of black.
The idea is the same – pretty sells. In the media world, everything is about attraction. The fighters look pretty, not the gnarled, scarred up, sometimes toothless fighters that I know. The fights look pretty, too – you can actually see the action and even identify specific techniques.
They are paced for dramatic content. A movie fight doesn’t end when the hero or villain would naturally be lying in a pool of bloody vomit, clutching his abdomen and gurgling. It ends at the moment the director thinks the audience is hyped and not bored yet.
Even when they try to be realistic, it’s about the spectacle. The very fact that the camera can see what is going on is unrealistic. In smoke and dust and rain and the melee of bodies or the flash of gunfire, the person right in the middle of it can’t reliably tell what is going on.
And the fighting caters to the audience’s idea of fair. It’s almost always a close fight to the very end, won by a slim margin… I’ll tell you right now that as a public servant who runs a tactical team if I ever, ever play it fair, if I ever take chances with my men or hostages in order to cater to some half-assed idea of fair play, fire me. Fair doesn’t happen in real life, not if the bad guys have anything to say about it and not if the professional good guys do, either. I always wanted to see a movie with Conan talking shit in a bar and looking down to see a knife sticking out of his stomach with no idea how it got there.
The Story. Maybe this is a metaphor, maybe it is a model: Things are what they are. Violence is what it is. You are you, no more and no less – but humans can’t leave simple things alone.
One of the ways we complicate things is by telling stories, especially stories about ourselves. This story we tell ourselves is our identity. The essence of every good story is conflict. So our identity, the central character of this story that we tell ourselves, is based largely on how we deal with conflict. If there has been little conflict in the life, the character, our identity, is mostly fictional.
I present this as a warning. You are what you are, not what you think you are. Violence is what it is, not necessarily what you have been told.
This book is about violence, especially about the difference between violence as it exists “in the wild” and violence as it is taught in martial arts classes and absorbed through our culture.
Couple things first...

Meditations on Violence. A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sergeant Rory Miller pages XII-XIV. Published by YMAA Publication Center - Boston, Mass. USA, 2008

По-нататък ще поствам още откъси, ако това не нарушава правилата на форума откъм авторски права или нещо друго.

[passer-by]

http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/NN ... cefull.htm

Още мнения за книгата и две аудиоинтервюта с автора.

След няколко часа пускам следващата част.

Мисля да карам поред, пък да видим докъде ще стигна.

Нямам скенер, та карам на доброто старо преписване, тамън я попивам по-добре. Донякъде съм я чел, де, но повторението е майка и т.н.

Малко по-нататък има няколко таблици, които ще е интересно да предам линейно. Ама ще карам описателно квадратче по квадратче, струват си.

[passer-by]

PREFACE: THE TRUTH ABOUT ME

Spoiler: show

I get paid (and paid well) to go into a situation, usually alone and usually outnumbered by sixty or more criminals, and maintain order. I prevent them from preying on each other or attacking officers. That’s the job. Now, since I don’t fight every day, or even every week (anymore – I’m a sergeant now, one step behind the front line) most of the minutes and hours of the job are pretty easy, far too easy for what they are paying me. But every once in a while, on a really, really ugly night, I more than earn my keep.
The fighting happens less, partially from moving up in rank, but even more from the fact that almost every criminal in the area knows me, and I’ve become better at talking. At CNT training (Crisis Negotiation Team – sometimes called Hostage Negotiators), Cecil, one of the instructors, recommended reading books on salesmanship. In the intro to one book, the author stated that everyone, every single person in the world is engaged in selling something – no matter if you were building a car in a factory, performing medicine or changing oil.
I thought, “Bullshit. I’m a jail guard. I’m not selling jack.”
Shortly after, there was an extremely stupid and crazy old man who very much wanted to fight five times his weight in officers. It took about twenty minutes to talk him into going along with the process. It was then that I realized that I was selling something, a product called “not getting your ass beat” which is very hard to sell to some people.
Here’s the resume and bona fides. Feel free to skip it.
I enjoy teaching people who have already trained in martial arts how to apply their skills to real conflict. I like teaching officers – people who might need it – the simple, practical skills they need to stay alive or the equally simple and practical skills they need to restrain a threat without getting sued… and I like teaching the difference.
I have a BS degree in experimental psychology with a minor in biology from Oregon State. I’d planned a double major, but Biochem killed me. While at OSU, I learned varsities in Judo and fencing, and dabbled in Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and European weapons.
I’ve studied martial arts since 1981. I’ve been a corrections officer since 1991. As of this writing, that’s fourteen years, twelve of them concentrated in Maximum Security and Booking. In 1998, a lot of things happened. I earned my teaching certificate in Sosuishitsu-ryu Jujutsu; I published two articles in national magazines; I was named to the CERT (Corrections Emergency Response Team) and was made the DT and Hand-to-Hand instructor for the team. I was also promoted to sergeant. By the end of the year I was designing and teaching classes for the rest of the agency, both corrections and enforcement. I’ve been the CERT leader since 2002.
CERT has been a huge force in my life and career. By 1998, I already had lots of “dirt time” in Booking, something over two hundred uses of force, some ugly (PCP and/or outnumbered and/or ambushed and/or weapons), but I’d only had to take care of myself. Suddenly I was responsible for teaching rookies how to do what I did. I had to really think about what made things work.
CERT also allowed me access to huge amounts of training – I’m currently certified with distraction devices (flash-bang grenades), a wide variety of less-lethal technology (40 mm and 37 mm grenade launchers used to fire everything from gas to rubber balls; paintball guns that fire pellets filled with pepper spray; a variety of chemical munitions and shotgun-fired impact devices; pepper spray; and electrical stun devices). I’ve had the opportunity for specialized high-risk transport EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operations Course) and have trained with the local U.S. Marshals in close-combat handgun skills. More importantly, I’ve had the opportunity to use some of these tools and learn what was left out of class. There has been another agency training as well – I’ve done CNT classes, though a CERT leader won’t be in that role; been through the introductory Weapons of Mass Destruction class from FEMA; attended school for the Incident Command System; been certified as a Use of Force and Confrontational Simulation instructor, and recently received a certification as a “Challenge Course Facilitator” in case anyone wants to walk a high wire and do some team building. When I’m not on swing shift, I’m an advisor for the Search and Rescue unit. Swing shift or not, I’m a peer counselor for my deputies.
I was a medic, NBC defense instructor, and rappel master in the National Guard; studied EMT I and II a long time ago; bounced in a casino for a couple of years; and attended Tom Brown’s survival and tracking basic course… and I grew up in the eastern Oregon desert without electricity or running water.

That’s just a list. Here’s the truth:
Violence is bigger than me. There’s more out there and more kinds of violence than I’ll ever see… and certainly more than I could survive. I’ve never been a victim of domestic violence and I’ve never been taken hostage, but in this book I will presume to give advice on those two subjects. I’ve never been in an active war zone or in a fire fight. Never been bombed, nuked, or gassed – except by trainers.
Violence is a bigger subject than any person will ever understand completely or deeply. I’ve put as much personal experience into this as I can, along with advice from people I know and trust to be experienced. I’ve also quoted or paraphrased researchers (many of whom have never bled or spilled blood in either fear or anger) when the research sounded right.
In the end, this is only a book. My goal in writing it is to give my insights to you through the written word. It will be hard to write because survival is very much a matter of guts and feelings and smells and sounds and very, very little a subject for words.
Take my advice for what it is worth. Use what you can use. Discard anything that doesn’t make sense.
You don’t know me; you’ve never seen me. For all the facts you have, I might be a 400-pound quadriplegic or a seventy year old retiree with delusions. Take the information in this book and treat it skeptically as hell.
Never, ever, ever delegate responsibility for your own safety.
Never, ever, ever override your own experience and common sense on the say-so of some self-appointed “expert”.
Never, ever, ever ignore what your eyes see because it isn’t what you imagined. And strive to always know the difference between what your eyes are seeing and what your brain is adding.
The format of this book. This book is divided into chapters. The first section, the Introduction, gives a brief overview of what the book is about, who I am, and why I wrote it. You’ve already either read it or skipped it. Fair enough.
Chapter 1: The Matrix, is an attempt to clear up the language of violence. It addresses the many types of violence, especially how different they can be and how the lessons from one type do not apply to the needs of another.
Chapter 2: How to Think, addresses assumptions about violence, about training, and introduces training for strategy and tactics.
Chapter 3: Violence, describes the dynamics of violence. It is focused on criminal violence – how it happens and what it is like. It will also cover the affects of adrenaline and stress hormones that accompany a sudden attack and how to deal with them.
Chapter 4: Predators, is about criminals – who they are, how they think and act. What you can expect from them, and what knowledge is not important in a moment of crisis.
Chapter 5: Training, will give advice and drills to help adapt your training to the realities of violence.
Chapter 6: Making Physical Defense Work, is about physical response to violence – not about effective technique but about what makes a technique effective.
Chapter 7: After, discusses the after-effects of violence – what to expect and how to deal with the psychological effects of either surviving a sudden assault or long-term exposure to a violent environment.

Meditations on Violence. A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sergeant Rory Miller pages XV-XVIII. Published by YMAA Publication Center - Boston, Mass. USA, 2008

[passer-by]

CHAPTER 1: THE MATRIX

Spoiler: show

You all know the story of the blind men and the elephant, right? It was originally published in a poem by John Godfrey Saxe that was about the silliness of humans disputing the nature of gods and religions.
The blind men, each very famous for wisdom and intelligence, walk up to an elephant, touch a piece, and begin to explain and describe the entire animal. The first touches the elephant’s side and declares that an elephant is just like a wall. The second, happening to grab hold of a tusk, knows that an elephant is just like a spear (okay, dull and curved and too thick but otherwise exactly like a spear… I don’t think this was the smartest of the blind men). From his short experience with the trunk, the third decides that an elephant is just like a snake.
I don’t need to go on, do I?
Not to hit you over the head with the animal metaphors, but violence is a big animal and many people who have seen only a part of it are more than willing to sell you their expertise. Does someone who has been in a few bar brawls really know any more about violence than the guy who grabbed the elephant’s ear knows about elephants? Bar brawling experience is real and it is exactly what it is, but it won’t help you or even provide much insight into military operations or rape survival.
A truly devious mind that understands the principles can occasionally generalize from one type of conflict, say flying a combat mission, to very different types of conflict, such as crime prevention, debate or tactical assault. But that skill is both rare and limited. No matter how good you are at generalizing, there is a point where it doesn’t work and you descend into philosophy at the cost of survival.
Many martial arts, martial artists, and even people who fight for real on a regular basis have also only seen a very small part of this very big thing. Often, the best know one aspect very well, but that is only one aspect.
Some of the experts who are willing to sell you their insights have never seen a real elephant. Many people, almost all men in my experience, are willing to talk at length on the subjects of fighting and violence. They will lecture, expound, and debate.
Know this: Watching every martial arts movie ever filmed gives you as much understanding of fighting as a child watching Dumbo learned about elephants. Learning a martial art often teaches you as much as a taxidermist would know about elephants. Watching boxing or the UFC teaches as much as a trip to the zoo or the circus. Really, really studying the best research available gives you an incredible knowledge about violence or about elephants, but there is always one detail missing.
When you are standing next to an elephant, it is huge. It could crush you at will or tear you in half, and there is nothing you could do. The advantage of being blind, of only knowing a part of this beast, is the comfortable illusion of safety.

Meditations on Violence. A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sergeant Rory Miller pages 1-2. Published by YMAA Publication Center - Boston, Mass. USA, 2008

[passer-by]

Section 1.1: the tactical matrix – an example

Spoiler: show

Violence isn’t just a big animal. It is complicated as hell. If you ever really wanted to get a handle on just one piece – interpersonal violence – you would need to understand physics, anatomy and physiology, athletics, criminal law, group dynamics, criminal dynamics, evolutionary psychology, biology and evolutionary biology, endocrinology, strategy, and even moral philosophy. In this great big mess, if you want to survive, you need a quick and simple answer. That’s hard.
A matrix is used to describe and analyze a multidimensional event in a multidimensional way. Ask a martial artist, “What’s your favorite attack?” or “What’s your favorite combination?” and they will have an answer. For a few years, mine was a backfist/sidekick combination. Remember that. It will come up in a few paragraphs.
There are many ways to break things up. Consider this as one example. There are four different ways that a fight can arise:
(1) You are completely surprised, hit before you are aware that a conflict has arisen.
(2) You felt something was going on but weren’t sure what.
(3) You knew it was coming and were ready, a mutual combat.
(4) You ambushed the other guy, initiating action when he was completely surprised.
There are also three different levels of force you can use. (A) You must not injure the other person (e.g. getting the car keys from drunken Uncle Bob). (B) It’s okay to injure, but not to kill. (C) Killing is both legally justified and prudent.

This takes a simple 3x4 matrix of twelve options:
SURPRISED ALERTED MUTUAL ATTACKING
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NO INJURY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INJURY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETHAL
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In only one of these twelve possible scenarios is the backfist/sidekick a really good option. It is workable in perhaps two more, but for seventy-five percent of the options, my “favorite” technique is worthless.
You can plug almost any technique, tactic, or even system into the matrix and see where it applies. Karate’s core strategy is to “do damage” – close in and hit hard. Given that it is difficult (not impossible) to kill with a bare hand, where does Karate fit on the matrix? Where does boxing fit? Sword and shield? Where does a handgun fit? Can you use a handgun when you are completely surprised?

Using a backfist/sidekick combination in an example of a simple tactical matrix
NO INJURY - SURPRISED Inappropriate due to risk of injury / requires time and distance
NO INJURY - ALERTED Inappropriate due to risk of injury
NO INJURY - MUTUAL Inappropriate due to risk of injury
NO INJURY - ATTACKING Inappropriate due to risk of injury
INJURY - SURPRISED Requires some time and distance. Won’t work
INJURY - ALERTED Possible, if attacker gives time
INJURY - MUTUAL Good
INJURY - ATTACKING Possible, but feint is inefficient if you have surprise
LETHAL - SURPRISED Insufficient force, time and distance. Unworkable
LETHAL - ALERTED Insufficient force
LETHAL - MUTUAL Insufficient force
LETHAL - ATTACKING Insufficient force


Using a firearm as an example
NO INJURY - SURPRISED Inappropriate due to risk of fatality / no time to draw
NO INJURY - ALERTED Inappropriate due to risk of fatality
NO INJURY - MUTUAL Inappropriate due to risk of fatality
NO INJURY - ATTACKING Inappropriate due to risk of fatality
INJURY - SURPRISED Risk of fatality / no time to draw
INJURY - ALERTED Risk of fatality
INJURY - MUTUAL Risk of fatality
INJURY - ATTACKING Risk of fatality
LETHAL - SURPRISED Possible, if you can overcome surprise and draw weapon
LETHAL - ALERTED Effective
LETHAL - MUTUAL Effective
LETHAL - ATTACKING Effective


Looking at it like that, however, is a fundamental flaw in thinking. To work from technique to situation is backwards. The parameters, in this case “level of surprise” and “acceptable damage”, dictate the matrix. Each box in the matrix represents a type of situation. To go through life being very skilled at one or two aspects of the matrix, and hoping the violence you will run into will happen to match your boxes, is dangerous and yet very common.
Here’s a rule for life: You don’t get to pick what kinds of bad things will happen to you. You may prepare all your life to take on a cannibalistic knife-wielding sociopath. You may get stuck with a soccer riot. Or a road rage incident with a semi. Or a pickup full of baseball bat swinging drunks. Or nothing at all. You don’t get to choose.
The purpose of the tactical matrix is to introduce regular people to the idea that violence is complex. For martial artists, it is important to understand that preparing for one thing is not preparing for all things. For citizens watching the news, trying to figure out if what an officer did was the right thing, it’s important to understand that not everything can be solved with a wristlock or a few kind words. Violence is complex.
The tactical matrix here is NOT an answer or a guide. It is an example. It’s not even an example of types of fight. It is a first step in demonstrating complexity. The matrix can be extended infinitely. Multiple bad guys? Three ways that can break down – my side outnumbers you, your side outnumbers me or we’re even. The matrix now has 36 boxes. Weapons? I have a weapon, you have a weapon, we both do or neither of us do. Four options and the matrix jumps to 144 boxes.
Got it? Good, ‘cause now we’re going to get complicated.

Meditations on Violence. A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sergeant Rory Miller pages 2-5. Published by YMAA Publication Center - Boston, Mass. USA, 2008

[passer-by]

Section 1.2: the strategic matrix – what martial arts try to be

Spoiler: show

A New York Times article dated June 7, 2005 describes a video of an officer in a traffic stop taking fire from the driver and his partner running away. The officer who ran away chose the perfect option for self-defense. It was not the best option for his partner. It was not what he was trained and expected to do. He was trained and expected to engage the threat.
Officers on patrol avoid hand-to-hand encounters. Fights are dangerous. Even when you win, there is a possibility of injury, exposure to blood-borne pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis, or a lawsuit. Within that context, there are two distinctive hand-to-hand skills that an officer needs. In the ugly, surprise situation, taking damage and unprepared, the officer needs brutal close-quarters survival skills. Putting handcuffs on an unruly drunk who doesn’t want to go to jail but doesn’t really want to hurt you requires different skills, different techniques, and a different mindset.
Sometimes there are more. A SWAT sniper needs a crystal clear thought process and the ability to deal with hours of boredom and discomfort. The point man on an entry team doesn’t need or use the same techniques or mindset as the sniper, isn’t interested in semi-compliant handcuffing and damn well better not be surprised if he works for me. He is the “surprisor”.
In just one profession, four different skill sets for dealing with physical conflict. Not one of them is like dueling, sparring or waging a war.
Martial arts try to do more than that. Some studios promise self-defense skills and tournament trophies, discipline and self-discovery, fitness and confidence, and even spiritual growth and enlightenment.
How well do these goals really mesh?
Cardiovascular fitness is extremely important for health and longevity and should be the cornerstone of any fitness regimen, yet fighting for your life is profoundly anaerobic. Whether you had a good breakfast will have a greater effect on your endurance thirty seconds into the fight (and thirty seconds is a long time in an ambush) than your ability to run a marathon.
Spiritual growth, the measure of many modern martial arts, is a difficult concept to pin down. I once asked my sensei in Jujutsu if there was a spiritual discipline associated with Sosuishitsu-ryu. Dave said, “Oh. Sure. The dead guy doesn’t get to go to church. Don’t try to read too much into this, Rory. It’s not a way of life. It’s a collection of skills a samurai might need if he wanted to go home to his family.”
Martial arts and martial artists often try to do it all. They teach self-defense and sparring and streetfighting and fitness and personal development, as if they were the same thing. They aren’t even related.
Very, very different things get lumped under the general heading of “violence”. Two boxers in a contest of strategy, strength, skill, and will. A drunken husband beating his wife. Two highschoolers punching it out in the parking lot. A mental health professional trying to hold down a schizophrenic so that a sedative can be administered. An officer walking into a robbery in progress finds himself in a shoot-out. Soldiers entering a building in hostile territory. A rapist pushing in the partially open door of an apartment. An entry team preparing to serve a search warrant on a drug house with armed suspects. A Victorian era duel with small swords.
Because they involve people in conflict and people get hurt, we lump them together as violence, but they aren’t the same and the skills and mindset from one situation don’t carry automatically to the other.

Matrix of Martial Arts and Violence: Differences of Type
SELF-DEFENSE / DUEL / SPORT / COMBAT / ASSAULT / SPIRITUAL GROWTH / FITNESS

REALITY OF EVENT
REALITY TO PERSON
REAL GOAL
BEST GOAL
DISTRACTERS Fake Goals; Illusions
OPTIMAL MINDSET
BEST ASSET
STRATEGY
TRAINING FOCUS
REAL DANGER
PERCEIVED DANGER


REALITY OF EVENT – SELF-DEFENSE Recovery from bad luck or stupidity
REALITY OF EVENT – DUEL Glorified Monkey Dance
REALITY OF EVENT – SPORT Contest of the similar
REALITY OF EVENT – COMBAT Monkey Dance between groups
REALITY OF EVENT – ASSAULT Neutralize threat/enemy
REALITY OF EVENT – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Mostly stumbling in the dark
REALITY OF EVENT – FITNESS Physical training

REALITY TO PERSON – SELF-DEFENCE Absolute threat to health, survival, and identity
REALITY TO PERSON – DUEL Voluntary physical danger for social gain
REALITY TO PERSON – SPORT Test of self
REALITY TO PERSON – COMBAT Boredom, confusion, busywork, and occasional terror
REALITY TO PERSON – ASSAULT Job
REALITY TO PERSON – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Reality doesn’t go here
REALITY TO PERSON – FITNESS Part of life

REAL GOAL – SELF-DEFENSE Survive
REAL GOAL – DUEL Maintain or increase social standing
REAL GOAL – SPORT Ego validation
REAL GOAL – COMBAT Please supervisors and peers
REAL GOAL – ASSAULT Mission and survive
REAL GOAL – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Achieve and maintain satori
REAL GOAL – FITNESS Varies, improve appearance

BEST GOAL – SELF-DEFENSE Prevent, if too late, escape
BEST GOAL – DUEL Win with style
BEST GOAL – SPORT Prove/test oneself
BEST GOAL – COMBAT Defeat opposing group, preferably by display
BEST GOAL – ASSAULT Mission and survive
BEST GOAL – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Understand self
BEST GOAL – FITNESS Improve health

DISTRACTERS (Fake goals; Illusions) – SELF-DEFENSE Maintain social illusions; deny reality
DISTRACTERS (Fake goals; Illusions) – DUEL No choice
DISTRACTERS (Fake goals; Illusions) – SPORT Fear of losing; belief that X=Y
DISTRACTERS (Fake goals; Illusions) – COMBAT Personal meaning or mission, freelancing
DISTRACTERS (Fake goals; Illusions) – ASSAULT Fear of liability, crusade, ego, administrative interference
DISTRACTERS (Fake goals; Illusions) – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Understand the world, ego
DISTRACTERS (Fake goals; Illusions) – FITNESS Appearance equals ability

OPTIMAL MINDSET – SELF-DEFENSE None or rage
OPTIMAL MINDSET – DUEL Arrogance without overconfidence
OPTIMAL MINDSET – SPORT Athletic focus, “the zone”
OPTIMAL MINDSET – COMBAT Obedience
OPTIMAL MINDSET – ASSAULT Implacable predator
OPTIMAL MINDSET – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Perceive
OPTIMAL MINDSET – FITNESS Everyday habit

BEST ASSET – SELF-DEFENSE Aggressive reactions
BEST ASSET –DUEL Cunning?
BEST ASSET – SPORT Skill? Cunning?
BEST ASSET – COMBAT Teamwork and discipline
BEST ASSET – ASSAULT Planning and preparation
BEST ASSET – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Bullshit detector (or openness)
BEST ASSET – FITNESS Perseverance

STRATEGY – SELF-DEFENSE Beat the freeze
STRATEGY – DUEL Dazzle the opponent
STRATEGY – SPORT Psych the opponent out
STRATEGY – COMBAT Control individuality, make troops predictable
STRATEGY – ASSAULT Shock and Awe
STRATEGY – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Listen, watch, feel
STRATEGY – FITNESS Stick to training plan

TRAINING FOCUS – SELF-DEFENSE Contact response
TRAINING FOCUS – DUEL Skill, fitness, and conventions; showmanship
TRAINING FOCUS – SPORT Skill and fitness
TRAINING FOCUS – COMBAT Obedience and rote specific skills
TRAINING FOCUS – ASSAULT Teamwork skills, threat analysis
TRAINING FOCUS – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Letting distractions go
TRAINING FOCUS – FITNESS Training, nutrition, recuperation

REAL DANGER – SELF-DEFENSE Loss of life, identity
REAL DANGER – DUEL Death
REAL DANGER – SPORT Injury
REAL DANGER – COMBAT Stupid leaders
REAL DANGER – ASSAULT Luck
REAL DANGER – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Being defrauded: otherwise, very safe
REAL DANGER – FITNESS Overtraining, training for wrong thing

PERCEIVED DANGER – SELF-DEFENSE Loss of life, identity
PERCEIVED DANGER – DUEL Dishonor, loss of face, embarrassment
PERCEIVED DANGER – SPORT Damage to identity
PERCEIVED DANGER – COMBAT Enemy
PERCEIVED DANGER – ASSAULT Enemy
PERCEIVED DANGER – SPIRITUAL GROWTH Inability to see the world “in light”
PERCEIVED DANGER – FITNESS None


Self-defense is clearly my focus in this book. What is it? It is recovery from stupidity or bad luck, from finding yourself in a position you would have given almost anything to prevent. It is difficult to train for because of the surprise element and because you may be injured before you are aware of the conflict. The critical element is to overcome the shock and surprise so that you can act, to “beat the freeze”. Self-defense is about recovery. The ideal is to prevent the situation. The optimal mindset is often a conditioned response that requires no thought (for the first half-second of the attack) or a focused rage.
The duel is out of fashion in our day and age. It was (and occasionally is) a Glorified Monkey Dance (See Section 3.1) forced by society. It was a contest to see who could better uphold the standards of the day, thus it was fought over insults and unacceptable behavior and not more material injury. It was possibly more about show than survival. There was a “right” way to win. This still happens in rare incidents of “dojo arashi” when martial artists go to other martial arts schools to challenge the instructors. The early UFC bouts also tried to take on this element in the “style versus style” but they were very different.
Can we use the skills, mindset, and strategies of the duel in a self-defense situation?
Sport is a contest between two people; different than the duel because it is something the practitioners seek and not something they feel they must do to preserve their place in society. It is admirable, to me, because the real goal is to test yourself. For most, it’s not about domination but about what they have, what they can do, what they’ve learned. Mixed martial arts (MMA) is part of a long evolution to take this concept as far as it can go safely.
Is the righteous rage, which has gotten so many people through an attempted rape, an efficient emotional response for a high school wrestling match?
By combat, I specifically mean war. Combat is a very different experience for generals than for soldiers. Generals can look at percentage killed, take risks, sacrifice, and maneuver men. For the generals, there are acceptable losses and you can continue to fight if you suffer twenty percent killed. For the soldier, it is binary: You are alive or you are dead. Generals win wars. Teams win wars. I remember my drill sergeant yelling, “You are not an individual! You are a part of this team!” In order for the generals to win, the soldiers must be predictable. The general has to be certain that if he orders them to march or attack or hold position, they will. Thus, obedience is critical and it is enforced by a culture that will do what is expected because they don’t want to let the rest of the team down.
Given that the most common lead up to an attack on a woman is to show a weapon and order her to obey, is being trained to obey, whether in the military or in one of the militaristic dojos, a good training method for self-defense?
Assault isn’t just for criminals. Elite military teams, hostage rescue, SWT, and entry teams use this mindset as much as criminals do. They don’t want to be tested or find out what their limitations are, they want to get the job done and go home. The mindset is implacable and predatory. They use surprise, superior numbers, and superior weapons – every cheat they can, and they practice. On the rare, rare occasions that my team made a fast entry and someone actually fought, the only emotion that I registered was that I was offended that they resisted, and we rolled right over the threat(s) like a force of nature.
If you can truly flip the switch from surprised, overwhelmed, and terrified to the assault mindset, I can’t teach you much. This is the opposite of the “frozen” response often triggered by a sudden assault, and we train hard to trigger that freeze in others.
Spiritual growth is very difficult to define. If it is a depth of understanding of the human condition, you will grow more by living and serving and talking to other people than you will ever learn in a class of any kind. If it is understanding of yourself, you will learn the most by challenging your fears and dislikes, and few stick with a class that they fear and dislike. If it is a happy feeling that all is right with the world and there is a plan and everything is wonderful and good… you can get it from heroin cheaper and faster. If it is something great and magical that will open up your psychic powers, keep playing video games. There is a danger here that I don’t properly address in the simple matrix and is beyond the scope of this book: people want to believe in magic and secrets and there are other people who will satisfy those beliefs for money or power. This can result in abuse and trauma, the very opposite of self-defense.
Fitness is objectively the most important effect of martial arts training. The physical skills and self-defense aspects of training will never save as many people from violence as the conditioning will save from early heart attacks. If you study Judo, Jujutsu, or Aikido, you will probably never use the skills to throw an attacker, but I can almost guarantee that you will and have used the breakfalls to prevent injury. Properly trained, many martial arts give balanced development of muscle, strength and aerobic training, increases in flexibility and agility, and all at a relatively low risk of injury. It may not be as efficient as a good circuit program in these areas, but it can be more fun and tou will stick with the exercise program that you enjoy.
Fitness will never hurt you in a self-defense situation. Even aerobic conditioning, which rarely activates in a fight, will help to dissipate the stress hormones that will affect your mind and body. When comparing fitness with self-defense, the problems come from the other direction. Self-defense is largely about dealing with surprise and fear and pain, none of which is useful in developing fitness.

One example from the other dimension of the matrix to hammer home the point: Look at the optimum mindset for each of the examples of conflict.
The implacable predatory mindset of the assault is powerful. It is cold-blooded, calculating, and utterly controlled. It is also inhuman, reducing the target of the assault from human to either a resource (in the criminal mind) or a threat (in the mind of an entry team).
This mindset, in my experience, horrifies the people seeking spiritual growth. It is a natural mindset and beautiful in its place, but it is scary to someone who is seeking light and love and harmony. People who imagine the harmony of nature are often willfully blind to the savagery between wolf and rabbit. The assault mindset can revel in that savagery.
The assault mindset in a sporting competition is completely unacceptable. From the assault mindset, if you are scheduled to fight a world champion heavyweight boxer on Thursday, you shoot him on Tuesday. It is not just beyond cheating – cheating has no meaning in the mind of a predator – there are only odds, tactics, and meat. This comparison is doubly true for the duel.
Some elite elements in combat develop the predator mindset. It requires trust and respect to get an entire team into that mindset. Far more teams fake it by hard training under a good leader than actually have the mindset. True predators are unpredictable and that makes the chain of command uncomfortable. They will get the job done but will ignore any parameter or rule of engagement set by command that does not seem important to them. Because of this, they are idolized in times of serious conflict and marginalized, ignored or pushed aside when combat is rare.
Fitness training is about your self. There is no prey and therefore nothing for the predator mindset to focus on. A predator without prey is a fat, lazy cat that likes to play and eat and sleep.
The predator mindset is a choice. No one is in that mind at all times – it has too many blind spots to function in normal society. Self-defense is never a choice. The attacker is in the predator mindset, not the victim. The victim will have to deal with shock and total surprise, the predator won’t. The essence of self-defense is breaking out of the frozen mindset you have been shocked into. If you can access the predator mindset a few seconds into the attack, you can turn the attack into something else. That’s powerful, but takes great experience.

This matrix could be extended almost infinitely in either dimension. Fight choreography for films, stuntwork, performing arts, and restraining mental patients without injuring them could all be added across the top. Timing differences, best class of techniques, ideal opponent, and reliance on technology could all have a space.
Despite the wide variety of skills and complete incompatibility of the mindsets or strategy, martial artists are often convinced that they are training for all of these things simultaneously. In strictly regimented classes where things are done by rote and without question, you can see the military roots of a soldier’s art… but that obedient mindset can set students up for failure if they are victimized by an authority figure or overwhelmed by an attacker who uses verbal commands with his assault. Some instructors extol the virtues of the predatory mindset, “the eyes of a tiger”, without teaching how to get there from a moment of surprise, pain, and fear (for self-defense) or dealing with the logical consequences for sport – a true predator cheats in profound ways. Not the little ways, like illegal nerve gouges in the grapple, but big ways like getting a bunch of friends and weapons and finishing the fight in the locker room before the match starts.
This extends well beyond martial arts and into the world of conflict and the perception of conflict in general. In the world of movies, boots and fists and guns are used interchangeably. In real life, the skills, needs, and legal justification for striking and shooting are very different.
Police solutions to military problems are doomed to fail just as military solutions to police problems will never be allowed in a free society.
You will bring your experience and training (your touch of the elephant) to bear whenever you read about a military operation or see a story about a police shooting on the news.
Remember this – that the fair play and good sportsmanship you learned as a child were predicated on two fairly matched people who wanted to be there, not some drugged-up freak with a knife and an officer answering a call.
That on TV and in your martial arts classes, they make it look easy to take away a knife – an officer knows that if someone is within seven yards he can be stabbed more than once before he can even draw his weapon.
That in the movies, the sniper can coolly make head shot after head shot at five hundred yards, protecting his team. In real life, snipers have tried in vain to identify a target through smoke and muzzle flash as civilians get slaughtered.
That in books, the radios always seem to work, cell phones never go off when you are trying to get into a position, the good guy always carries enough ammo, and no one ever just bleeds out and dies from a “flesh wound”.
That when the newspaper decries the brutality of the officer who used force on a fifteen-year-old, mentally-ill “child”, all the officer saw was a 280 pound person in an altered mental state coming at him, swinging a club.

Meditations on Violence. A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sergeant Rory Miller pages 5-13. Published by YMAA Publication Center - Boston, Mass. USA, 2008

[passer-by]

CHAPTER 2: HOW TO THINK


Section 2.1: assumptions and epistemology

Spoiler: show

Before we start explaining strategy or tactics, we need to address assumptions. Assumptions are those things you believe to be true without really considering them. They provide the background for much of how you see the parts of the world that you have never experienced. For instance, you can assume that people elsewhere in the world are very similar to the people you know, or you can assume that they are very different. Either point of view will color all of your interactions with and perceptions of those people. Like many things, your assumptions affect you far more than they affect the world.
The world is a big place and full of many things. We could not function if we had to deal with each event in our life as a new and separate thing. We will start the car tomorrow the way that we started it yesterday. When we buy a new car, it will start and operate very much like the old one. Assumptions, in a large part of our daily life, are necessary and usually harmless.
We get into trouble when we base our assumptions on either irrelevant comparison or bad sources. No amount of driving a car will prepare you for riding a bicycle for the first time. No matter how hard you convince yourself that they are both vehicles, both just machines, the skills are different. Cars and bicycles are irrelevant comparisons. A bad source would be taking driving lessons from someone who has never driven a car. Worse would be learning to drive a car from a bicyclist who THINKS it’s the same as driving a car.
There is a second condition that must be met before your bad assumptions can harm you. The subject must matter. You can believe anything you want about the best way to approach extraterrestrials or how you would broker world peace and since it will never be tested, you can believe anything you want with no consequences. Martial arts and self-defense are tricky, because for most practitioners whether they work or not will never really matter. It will never be tested. They can learn and believe and teach any foolishness they want. It will only be a source for interesting conversation.
Then, occasionally it will matter very much to an isolated individual. The stakes are high.
It is very difficult to analyze your own assumptions. In your own mind, they are only “the things you believe”, the “true” things. As I wrote above, they are the things you never really considered… because you’ve never really doubted them.
Epistemology is the study of how people and societies decide what is true. What is your personal epistemology? What sources do you consider unimpeachable? If it’s on the eleven o’clock news, does that make it true? If all your friends are saying something, does that make it true? If it’s in Science Digest or Scientific American, do you believe it? If your pastor said it, is it gospel? (sorry, pun) Do you trust your personal experience?
Personal experience would seem to be a no-brainer but very, very few people will trust their own experience against the word of either many people or a single “expert”.

One of my co-workers is amazing. He’s a hell of a nice guy and hell itself in a fight – huge, strong and not completely sane. We were taking a course in a personal protection system and the instructor was describing a “Straightblast” technique where you applied chained punches to the face with aggressive forward movement. The instructor was very good, a very charismatic young man who had been training for years but didn’t have a lot of experience in our environment.
The instructor explained how under a Straightblast the threat will retreat. My friend said, “But what if he doesn’t? What if he steps in?”
I thought, “Brother, the last guy that moved in on you and STABBED you, you lifted him up in the air and slammed him down so hard you broke his spine! Why the hell are you listening to this guy when you have more experience than him and everyone he knows combined?”
But my friend, this truly awesome survival fighter, had completely set aside his own experience… because this instructor was an “expert”.

Even when you develop a belief based on personal experience, you are influenced in subtle ways. Rarely, if ever, is personal experience the sole basis of a belief. As an example, most people believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. If you questioned them, a good percentage of them will say that this belief is based on personal experience. It seems reasonable to believe that if the sun has risen every day of your life, it will continue to do so forever.
However, since the same people that have awakened every morning to observe this have also awakened, isn’t it equally reasonable to believe that since you have woken up every day of your life you will continue to do so forever? Yet, very few people think that they are immortal. My wife says, “We’re immortal, so far.”
The best advice in this book will serve to enrich your life more than it will contribute to your survival. This is one of those bits. Examine your own epistemology. Look at your beliefs, and the source of those beliefs. Some of your beliefs came from early training or bad sources. Some of your sources were chosen because you knew they supported your preexisting point of view. Look very deeply at those sources that you accept without question.
As you do this, it will allow you to see many things that you have thought of as true as merely opinions, and give you great freedom in exploring and understanding both your world and other people’s.
Because of the nature of this book, I want you to apply this concept first to violence. Violence, for most of us, is unknown territory. Though martial artists have studied “fighting”, and everyone has been raised in a culture where stylized violence is everywhere, very little of what we know is based on experience, and very much is based on word of mouth. It is, for many people, entirely assumption. If the source of information is good, the martial artist may be able to defend him or herself with the skills. If the source is bad, the skills taught can actually decrease survivability.
I want to be very clear here. What you have trained in and been taught is “word of mouth”. Until you do it yourself, for real, you can’t evaluate it with accuracy. Experience in the dojo is experience in the dojo. Experience in the ring is experience in the ring. Experience on the street is experience on the street. There is some overlap in skills; some lessons transfer. But a black belt in Judo will teach you as much about sudden assault as being mugged will teach you about Judo. And my experience will always be your word of mouth.
You have certain assumptions about what conflict is like. If you are interested in self-defense, you will choose a martial art based on its similarity to your assumptions. As you read books or listen to TV analysis of crimes and war, you will subtly pick your sources to mirror your views. In some cases, if the student isn’t careful or becomes enamored of the system or instructor, he will ignore real experience if it doesn’t match his assumption.
John has studied two martial arts and has been in several “encounters”. He considers one of his martial arts unrealistic and worthless, largely because he fights “so much harder” sparring in his new grappling system. Yet, studying his old, “worthless” style, he was surprised and responded with (of all things) a kick to the chin. The threat was taken down in under a second with no harm to John. After studying his new style for some time, he chose to interfere in conflict between a biker and someone who owed the biker money. John got stomped pretty bad. He feels it would have been much worse if he had stuck with his original martial art.
Despite his own experience of a perfect fight (one move, complete takeout) and a bad one, John likes his new art because the sparring feels more like he imagines a fight should feel. It matches his assumptions and, like many people, his assumptions override reality.

If you study a formal martial art, there is another set of assumptions that you must deal with: the assumptions of your style. The first major assumption is what a “fight” is and looks like. The second is what defines a “win”. For the old style of Jujutsu that I study, the assumed opponent was an armed and armored warrior, the assumed environment was a battlefield full of armed people, the assumed situation was that your weapon had been dropped or broken suddenly, and the assumed goal was to get an opponent’s weapon, probably by killing him. This list of assumptions drives almost everything in the style. It forces a close, brutal, quick, and aggressive conflict based entirely on gross motor skills.
Most styles and instructors are remarkably well adapted to getting the win in the right kind of fight, and crippled when the fight doesn’t match their expectation or when the conditions of a win change.
Every style is for something, a collection of tactics and tools to deal with what the founder was afraid of. A style based on the founder’s fear of losing a non-contact tournament will look different, even if it is just as well-adapted for that idea of a fight as my Jujutsu is for its time and place.
Understand thoroughly what your style is for. Violence is a very broad category of human interaction. Many, many instructors attempt to apply something designed for a very narrow aspect of violence, such as unarmed dueling, and extrapolate it to other incompatible areas, such as ambush survival. My Jujutsu, for instance, is wonderfully adapted to close-range medieval battlefield emergencies. From there it is a fairly easy stretch to predatory assault survival, but difficult to adapt to either sparring or the pain-compliance/restraint level of police Defensive Tactics (DTs).
Each instructor has also assumptions based on his or her experience, training, and (too often) television and popular culture.
At a seminar, I met a martial arts instructor of great skill in his specialty – under the right circumstances, he could dodge and send people sailing with very little effort. It bothered me, because the operative concept was “under the right circumstances”. If someone rushed him from at least two long paces away and flinched past their own point of balance, his techniques would work. Otherwise, not so well. They didn’t work, generally, on the other instructors there, and he had brought his own student so that he could demonstrate successfully.
I don’t think this was conscious. I met the instructor and talked with him. I genuinely liked and respected him. I believe that in his own mind, his techniques did work on the other instructors. If they didn’t, he attributed it to our vast skill. I don’t think for a second that he realized that he had taught his student to flinch in a certain way so that the techniques would work.
The two long paces bothered me more, because he espoused that attacks happen exclusively at that range, and they don’t. He set me at that distance and asked how I would attack. I smiled, walked up, put an arm around his shoulders, and fired a knee into his thigh. He laughed and said, “I’d never let you get that close.” He just had. Without a beat, he turned back to the lesson.
He had superb skill and he (or his instructors) had rewritten the map of the world so that the techniques would work. Since the techniques require two paces, attacks must come at two paces, right? Otherwise, the techniques would have been designed differently. Right?
Imagine studying something for a decade or more that you will never actually use. You have worked to perfect it, but without a touchstone to reality, how do you know what perfection looks like?
He told me about a serious assault he had been subjected to – it was bloody and messy, an ambush at close quarters with lumber and boots. It didn’t happen at two paces, or from the front. The two he could see were closer than he believes he would ever let anyone get, and he didn’t see the third.
I assume that sometime after this incident he found his martial art, fell in love with it, and found great comfort and a feeling of safety in its practice. Does he ever think about that attack within the context of what he teaches? How do illusions become so powerful that they seem more real and affect beliefs more than an event as horrific as the one he experienced?
The assumptions of his style and his respect for them were able to outweigh a brutal and critical personal experience. That is powerful and very, very dangerous.

Meditations on Violence. A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sergeant Rory Miller pages 15-20. Published by YMAA Publication Center - Boston, Mass. USA, 2008

[passer-by]

Section 2.2: the power of assumption

Spoiler: show

Some of our assumptions are so closely held that we will cling to them, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Many, many people discount their own experience as an “aberration”, preferring to trust in “common sense” or tradition or the word of an “expert”.
I’ve caught myself doing this.
I’ve had five real encounters with knife-wielding threats… sort of.
The first was a downward stab at my shoulder from a teenage girl that I blocked and armlocked easily. So that doesn’t count, right? It was too easy, not the scary and desperate situation I’ve trained for – and it was “only a girl” and only a pair of scissors.
The second was a straight-up assassination attempt. A somewhat unbalanced relative tried with all her might and speed to put a steak knife in my kidney from behind. I’m only alive because I saw a reflection and my body acted immediately and explosively. Was it a “real knife defense” if I am aware that I’m only alive because of luck?
The third was in a casino in Reno. I was ordering a bum who had been stealing credits from other customers to leave, and he pulled a knife. I stayed calm, hands up, and continued moving towards him, keeping my voice calm. I knew that my legs were slightly longer than his weapon range and I was fully prepared to kick as soon as the critical distance was reached – it wasn’t going to be a friendly sparring kick, either. I was going for a forty-yard punt. With each step forward that I took, he took one backwards until he was out of the casino. It never went to combat. Does it count?
The fourth was searching a fresh arrestee in Booking. He was a little drunk, his cuffs were off, an he had his hands on the counter facing away from me for the pat search. At the base of his spine there was a roughly cylindrical object under his shirt. I thought “knife!” at first, but when I asked him what it was, he said, “Let me show you!” and he spun, reaching under the shirt exactly the same way I’d practiced to draw my weapon from under my jacket. He never got it out. Knife or gun, I didn’t know and didn’t care. I hit him as hard and fast as I’ve ever hit a human being, driving his head into the wall, the counter, and sweeping his legs out from under him. His head hit three hard surfaces – wall, counter, and floor – in about a second. If he never got a chance to draw, was it really weapons defense? If I thought it was a knife and it was only a cigarette lighter, does it count?
The last should have been ugly. A freak on PCP was placed in an isolation cell in Reception. With his fingers, he pulled six concrete screws out of the wall to get access to the stainless steel mirror. He then broke the steel mirror in half so that he would have one shank in each hand. On-duty staff sprayed him with five large canisters of pepper spray and he didn’t even shut his eyes. So they called us, CERT (Corrections Emergency Response Team). We handled it without a problem. Does it count as knife defense if I was dealing with it as part of a specially trained and equipped eight-man team?

These are all real encounters. Any of them could have ended my life. But because they don’t fit my assumptions, because they don’t look like the picture I have in my head of a “knife fight”, I sometimes downplay the lessons I learned, and this is a danger. Lessons from life are gifts and they should not be ignored.
One of the reasons that it is hard to find an experienced instructor for real violence is that it is hard to survive enough encounters to learn what worked and what didn’t. As odd and weak as I sometimes see these experiences, how many “experts” in bladed weapon defense have had five or more encounters? Five is a very large number in this field… but would you train for a kickboxing tournament under a coach who had only five matches? Especially if he freely admitted that of those five he cheated on two, got lucky on one, had one opponent back out, and won the first against an opponent below his weight class? Hell no… bit in this field, five is a lot of experience.
Sometimes, it’s not only discounting real experience but taking experience from bad sources and labeling it “truth” that can mentally cripple you.
One of my students was concerned that she couldn’t hurt a large man. I told her to imagine a two-hundred-pound man holding a small cat. Could the man kill the cat? Sure.
“Now imagine I throw a bucket of water on them. What happens?”
“The cat goes berserk and starts scratching the guy up.”
“Does the guy let go?”
“Probably.”
“So the cat wins?”
“I guess. Sure.”
“So you’re telling me that an eight-pound cat can hurt a big man and you can’t?”
“The cat has claws and teeth.”
“And you don’t?”
She thought for a minute. “But I’ve wrestled with my boyfriends before and I couldn’t do anything.” Aha.
She had taken a situation where she had no desire to cause injury, no fear, probably wanted to strengthen and deepen the relationship, and she had chosen that incident to base her assumptions about combat. Those assumptions nearly made her give up on training.
There are fads in the law enforcement community and we love experts. When the UFC started and the Gracies were winning everything, “Tactical Groundfighting Courses” started springing up all over the country. They were barely-altered aspects of Gracie Jujitsu or wrestling. Many of the classes I saw showed a fundamental ignorance of the job. Sport grappling immobilizes opponents on their backs; LEOs immobilize face down, for handcuffing. Sport grappling takes up space with tight body contact; in law enforcement, at that range the threat can kill us with weapons from our own belts.
The goals of the two are not the same. In many ways it was as if LEOs were attempting to improve their ability to fly fighter jets by taking lessons from the best submariners in the world.
One last story: It is said that when a baby elephant is first trained, a rope or chain is tied around its ankle and it will struggle and pull and fight against the chain. When it learns that it cannot break the chain, the chain can be replaced with a bit of twine and the elephant will never try to break it. The elephant assumes it can’t, and so a full-grown elephant can be held by a piece of string.
Many of your assumptions came from childhood. You are no longer a child.
Many came from earlier in your training – you have grown and changed since then.
Many came from unreliable sources. You can make up your own mind.
Do not let yourself be crippled by something that only exists in your mind.

Meditations on Violence. A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sergeant Rory Miller pages 21-24. Published by YMAA Publication Center - Boston, Mass. USA, 2008

[passer-by]

Section 2.3: common sources of knowledge about violence

Spoiler: show

We are, all of us, both teachers and students. As teachers, we give our students information. As students, we learn from our teachers. The teachers give us knowledge. This knowledge came from somewhere, from of four sources:
• Experience
• Reason
• Tradition
• Entertainment and Recreation

I like experience. It helps to winnow the BS from the truth. It allows you to pass on a little of the mindset, a few of the tricks, some of the obstacles that they will face. It leads to a perspective that is unique. But realistically, how many instructors have enough hands-on experience in real violence to pass anything along? Very few. The instructors who have experienced enough violence to be able to generalize are even more rare.
Additionally, violence is extremely idiosyncratic. I honestly don’t know if my experience will match yours. I don’t know if our bodies and minds will react in the same way to the cascade of stress hormones. I can’t honestly tell you how much of my survival is based on judgment or skill or luck.
I was discussing this with one of my students, explaining that unlike almost anything else, the more experience of violence you have the less sure you are that things will work out. Jordan put it in perspective: “Sounds like a case of the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.”
Experience, in my opinion, could not give rise to a new martial art. Given the idiosyncratic nature and the improbability of surviving enough high-end encounters, it would be hard to come up with guiding principles or even a core of reliable techniques. I am painfully aware that things that worked in one instant have failed utterly in others.

Decapitating goats and the limits of reason. When I was very young I read a book called The Far Arena by Richard Sapir. The premise of the book was that a Roman gladiator had been frozen in arctic ice and miraculously brought back to life in modern times. One section stuck with me for many years. The gladiator was ruminating on decapitation. He explained that it was rare, that in all his time in the arena he had only seen it done once, by an enormous Germanic barbarian. He explained in great detail about the different layers of tissue, the toughness of the muscle, and how things that cut muscle tend to be poor at cutting bone and vice versa. It made perfect sense. I filed it away in the back of my head and believed, without challenging it, that beheading someone or something would be a very difficult task indeed.
Years later I was asked to help a friend butcher some goats. The first step, of course, was killing the animal. We wanted to minimize pain and panic. Cutting throats can work. A gunshot to the brainstem can work (but the other goats tend to get scared and are harder to control). I’d been practicing with sword for years. Both the owner of the goats and my wife write fiction of the sort where details on beheading might be useful. I volunteered to lop the goats’ heads off.
Mary held a rope and the goat pulled against it, stretching its neck nicely. I used the sword my wife had given me for our first anniversary, a single-edged hand-and-a-half forged by Cord. The Far Arena firmly in mind, I prepared for a power stroke. All of my skill and all of my power… The sword went through the neck like it wasn’t there. In all the animals we butchered that day, I only felt any resistance once – we didn’t use the rope and I did a backhand horizontal stroke. That goat died instantly with its spine severed but the blade didn’t go all the way through the front of the neck. Later, there is a stage in the butchering process where you normally use a saw to cut the spine in half lengthwise. Mary started the job but the dead animal was floppy and hard to work with, so I volunteered to finish it with the sword. Without a stroke of any kind, just letting the weight of the blade fall off my shoulder, the steel went through about 18 inches of bone.
Hope that wasn’t too gruesome for you. Here’s my point: just because something makes perfect sense doesn’t mean it’s true.

Reason is weak. Most people don’t recognize the sheer chaos of survival fighting or the effects that the stress hormones dumped into your bloodstream will have. Seeing a need for training in this area, instructors have a tendency to look at an area they are familiar with and extrapolate it to violence. Many take competition experience or other people’s research and try to figure out what “should” work.
Things that should work don’t all the time. I’ve been completely unfazed by a crowbar slamming into the back of my head and been left dizzy and puking for three days from a light slap… also to the back of the head. I couldn’t have reasoned that out.
Reason has given rise to a number of martial arts styles, or perhaps fantasy masquerading as reason. There are two ways reason can be applied to any particular aspect of the matrix, such as self-defense. Most people and organizations plan from a “Resources Forward” model. Basically, they look at what they have and figure out what they can do with it. The equivalent in martial arts would be to say, “We’re really good at kicking and can punch a little, how do we use that in an ambush?”
“Goals Backwards” looks at the problem and then creates the resources. “What do I need to do, and what do I need to get to accomplish that?” There’s no real martial arts equivalent of this thought process. The self-defense equivalent is to ask, “What does a real attack look like, and what do I need to have a chance?” Look at what you need, not what you have. Then you gather what you need instead of trying to stretch resources where they were never meant to go.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and reality.
In reality, there is.
Reason, by itself, is only theory.

Tradition. Often we don’t respect the environment that spawned the old combat arts. There is, in my opinion, a persistent myth that we live in the most dangerous and lethal era in human history. Surely our weapons and delivery systems are more powerful, but our perception of the value of life has far outstripped our destructive abilities. For generations raised like I was on the myth of the destructive, wanton Killer Man, this will be a hard sell.
For 2002, the Bureau of Justice statistics put the murder rate at six per 100,000, the lowest rate seen in at least thirty years. Overall violent crime was 25.9 incidents per 1,000. This has shown a steady drop since 1996 (as far back as I was willing to go with some slow-loading tables on their Web site.)
I don’t know whether those numbers seem low or high to you.
In early 1945, the Battle of Iwo Jima lasted 35 days and resulted in 26,000 dead, combining both sides. The combatants used artillery, bombs, naval guns, and the most sophisticated personal weapons available at the time: rifles, machineguns, flamethrowers, and grenades.
In 1600, the Battle of Sekigahara resulted in about 40,000 dead in six hours. The battle was fought with horses and the most sophisticated personal weapons of the day: swords, spears, bows, and muskets.
It is estimated that the total civilian and military deaths of World War II would be around 50 million people. This was a war where the major industrial nations of the earth fought a war of attrition to the bitter end, a war where nuclear weapons were developed and used.
It is also estimated that using bow and spear and sword, the Mongols conquered Northern China between 1210 and 1240 at the cost of 40 million lives… but they also conquered Russia and the Middle East, another 10 million (perhaps a million in the sack of Baghdad alone) and another five million conquering Southern China from 1250-1280.
Do we really believe that the serial killer is a modern phenomenon? Modern serial killers don’t approach the body counts of Elizabeth Bathory who may have killed and bathed in the blood of 600 young women or Gilles de Rais who was eventually executed for the torture, rape, and murder of 200 (more or less) young boys.
What is different today? A countess could not hide behind her nobility and it is difficult and rare to say that peasants don’t “count”. We have a computer network that helps us know if a murder is part of a larger pattern. We have a media that reports what happens. At the turn of the last century, if someone were killed in your town, no one outside of your county and the relatives would even know – unless it made excellent news, like the Lindbergh baby or the Lizzy Borden ax murders.
We also have the police. The idea was a new concept in the 18th century. The U.S. Marshals Service was founded in 1789. Scotland Yard was founded in 1829. Think about the implications: If you were killed, unless your friends or family sought vengeance, there would be no investigation, no search for justice. You would be forgotten. The killer would move on. Many of these killers lived and worked in bands, sometimes gangs, but sometimes agents of authority. The press gangs beat and kidnapped citizens to “recruit” for the British Navy. The soldiers of the Hundred Years War, the Thirty Years War, and much of the Napoleonic era roamed the countryside supplying themselves, which means robbing, raping, and killing for anything that they wanted or needed. The largely unarmed citizenry had no recourse to any higher authority.
This is the environment and the context in which the older martial arts arose. It was an answer to a primal understanding of violence, something we often miss without the experience to understand and evaluate it.
Anything that is taught becomes tradition. Even a tradition of questioning traditions. Students have a right to know which of their lessons are based on experience and which on reason. Do you even know if the techniques you learn and teach have actually been used? If a martial arts style goes through several generations of teachers without combat experience, will the guesses of the many teachers come to wash away the hard-won experience of the few? Will the rhinoceros become the unicorn?

Entertainment and recreation. Too many people, students of martial arts, concerned citizens, self-defense “experts”, and rookie officers learned most of what they think they know from television, movies, or sports events. The purpose of all of these venues is to entertain, not to educate. What they show has been modified to look more interesting. The long, complicated fight scenes of a Hong Kong Kung Fu flick are just as unrealistic as the wire work and flying. In a lethal fight, one party has the advantage or gets it as early as possible and presses it to the quick, brutal end. It’s fast. There is very little drama.
Rookie officers come to the academy believing that the right way to make a fast entry is with their weapons next to their heads, pointing at the sky. A technique that only existed so that a cameraman could get the star’s face and a gun in the same picture has become something that people who know better try to do. In real life, it is a matter of an instant for a bad guy to grab the barrel and shove it under the officer’s chin. A messy death.
Each piece of a well-choreographed movie fight scene is designed to entertain you. The distancing lets the techniques show to best effect. The timing is designed for drama, rhythm, and pacing, not for finishing things. The choice of technique showcases the actor’s flexibility.
In combat sports, three major factors make it difficult to extrapolate from the ring to uncontrolled violence. The most critical and hardest to train for is surprise. You know if you have a tournament next Saturday. You know if your club practices free sparring on Monday and Wednesday nights. You do not know when, if ever, you will be attacked. You cannot warm up for it or stretch or eat right or get enough sleep. The second factor is similar – you know what is likely to happen in a combat sport. You know how many opponents you will face and what size they are and whether they will be armed. You know what the footing and lighting will be like. Rules and safety considerations are the third factor. Some rules are instituted for safety. Most grappling styles don’t allow fingerlocks or strikes to the brainsteam. Other rules are based on increasing the entertainment value of the art as a spectator sport. Cops pin face down. The samurai used to pin face down and finish things off with a knife in the back of the neck, but wrestling and Judo pin face up because it makes for a better fight if your opponent can use all of his or her weapons.

Meditations on Violence. A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, by Sergeant Rory Miller pages 24-30. Published by YMAA Publication Center - Boston, Mass. USA, 2008