Be Safe.<\/p>\n
In the COVID era, this is the refrain that one can expect to hear from those who have spent the last year paralyzed by fear over the possibility of contracting The Plague.<\/p>\n
Interestingly\u2014even if, for reasons that I won\u2019t bother delving into here, not at all surprising\u2014those who are most fearful for their safety vis-\u00e0-vis a virus don\u2019t seem to be remotely as fearful of falling prey to human predators.<\/p>\n
Yet just as we have been treated to fear porn over exploding virus \u201ccases\u201d and deaths for over a year, so too are we daily treated to nightly newscasts featuring violence\u2014including particular brutal, unimaginably horrid beatings, rapes, tortures, and murders\u2014not just in far off places, but right here in American cities.<\/p>\n
It is indeed true that, thankfully, the average person\u2019s chances of being subjected to any of this violence are statistically slim.\u00a0 However, it is also true that the average person\u2019s chances of dying from COVID, or in a car accident, or in a plane crash, or upon being struck by lightning, or by way of any number of other causes are also slim\u2014and yet most people agree that it\u2019s not such a bad idea to appropriate at least some cautionary measures with respect to such potentially hazardous things.<\/p>\n
This being the case, it\u2019s odd that more decent people don\u2019t make it a priority to train for self-defense.<\/p>\n
Of course, it\u2019s true that millions and millions own guns.\u00a0 Given that guns exist for no other purpose but that of killing and that, because of this, they are the great leveler, the great equalizer, it is a good thing indeed that they are available for those who would otherwise be vulnerable to the evil machinations of violent scum. \u00a0This being said, I must confess to being just a bit concerned for the well-being of those gun owners, like some of my friends, who, while perhaps accustomed to shooting at stationary targets, have minimal to no martial or combat training.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m concerned that they either won\u2019t be able to access their weapons when they need to do so. Or, even if they do get to them, if they are confronted by a sufficiently ruthless attacker, or multiple ruthless attackers, they will not only fail to defend themselves and their loved ones; their weapons may be used against them.<\/p>\n
To give oneself, and one\u2019s loved ones, the best chance of prevailing over HINOs (Human-In-Name-Only), i.e. those who make of themselves the enemy of God and humanity by victimizing innocents, it is imperative that every person who is genuinely interested in \u201cstaying safe\u201d train to make him or herself<\/em> as strong and capable a warrior<\/em> as possible.<\/p>\n Yet one must make sure to train in a genuine martial <\/em>art, and not just any system that styles itself a system of self-defense.\u00a0 Truly, the overwhelming majority of human beings, including violent criminals, thugs, and even the practitioners of almost all pugilistic and martial arts, have been conditioned by countless thousands of hours of entertainment, of both the Hollywood and sports varieties, into thinking that \u201ca fight\u201d can only occur within the restrictions (yes, restrictions<\/em>!) in terms of which it is invariably framed by these pop cultural references.<\/p>\n In other words, there is a conventional wisdom about \u201cfighting\u201d just as there is everything else. And, as is the case in all other instances, the conventional wisdom regarding fighting is essentially wrong. <\/em><\/p>\n For starters, the classical martial arts, pugilistic sports, and even most \u201creal world\u201d self-defense, combat systems are predicated upon a technique<\/em>-based training modality. \u00a0While techniques are not only unobjectionable, but essential to combat, the manner in which a technique is treated and taught in these arts and systems is, at best, problematic.<\/p>\n Techniques, fundamentally, are bodily movements. \u00a0And since there are, literally, innumerable movements that are made by a person within the course of any physical activity, there are, literally, a potentially innumerable myriad of techniques. \u00a0Yet all techniques exist within movement.\u00a0 This is, as the philosophers would say, their ontology<\/em>.<\/p>\n Most, virtually all, technique-based arts, however, subvert this ontology.\u00a0 They turn it on its head: first, they select a relatively tiny set of the potentially infinite array of physical arrangements that human beings can make within their bodies; then they abstract this set from the continuous flow of movement; and, finally, they privilege these<\/em> arrangements by making them<\/em> most foundational.<\/p>\n This approach is equivalent to treating a cook book as more fundamental than the art of cookery that made its composition possible, or treating the cliff notes to Plato\u2019s Republic <\/em>as more fundamental than the Republic <\/em>itself.<\/p>\n Technique-based arts put the cart before the horse.\u00a0 They make the last first and the first last.\u00a0 They are short-hand notes that, like all abbreviations, inescapably omit the variety of details\u2014the nuances and fine distinctions that are too numerous to explicitly recount and many of which, in themselves, defy express articulation\u2014that constitute the dynamic that transpires between psychosomatic beings, i.e. human beings, mutually engaged in battle.<\/p>\n The problem with the ontology assumed by technique-based arts runs even more deeply:<\/p>\n They refuse to recognize that because the activity of what, for simplicity\u2019s sake, we will call \u201cfighting\u201d is a human <\/em>activity, it must<\/em> be located on the map of all<\/em> human activities if it is to be fully understood and mastered. \u00a0After all, the intricacies excluded by the Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em> ontology of the technique-based arts are just those that comprise the historical framework of the art itself as well as the neurological, physiological, psychological, and cognitive constraints within which all human beings are limited in whatever it is <\/em>they do. <\/em><\/p>\n There is still another obstacle built into the cake of all <\/em>sport\/competition-oriented arts, surely, but also the vast majority of \u201creal world\u201d combat\/self-defense systems that makes it extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for students in search of the ability to defend themselves to achieve, to fully achieve, their goal.<\/p>\n To put it simply, most martial arts have ceased being martial <\/em>arts: Their practitioners do not train to kill<\/em> the enemy.<\/p>\n More precisely, they do not train students to kill the enemy unapologetically<\/em>, with moral conviction <\/em>and all of the satisfaction<\/em> that always accompanies the knowledge that one has acted rightly<\/em>.<\/p>\n Of course, this is blatantly true when it comes to all \u201ccombat\u201d sports<\/em>.\u00a0 Yet it as well the case that those combat arts that emphatically distance themselves from sport fighting fail to make students as good as they can be, for even if it is nothing more than stressing \u201csurvival<\/em>\u201d as the ultimate aim of a violent confrontation, the problem is just that: They stress nothing more <\/em>than survival.<\/p>\n This is no trivial point. \u00a0Words have meanings, and their meanings are both denotative and connotative.\u00a0 Denotatively speaking, survival is the rawest, the most primal of instincts for all living organisms, from the weakest to the strongest.\u00a0 Because of this, associated with the term \u201csurvival\u201d are connotations that we ordinarily needn\u2019t any difficulty recognizing.\u00a0 \u201cSurvival\u201d connotes a goal that somehow lies beyond\u2014below<\/em>, actually\u2014the moral and spiritual domains.\u00a0 It implies survival at any costs<\/em>, i.e. at the cost of those measures that the survivor could otherwise find repugnant and over which he or she may continue to carry some degree of shame.<\/p>\n \u201cSurvival\u201d as the end of combat is base. \u00a0The attitude is something like: \u201cI will do whatever I need to do, however immoral or Godless I believe it to be, and however degrading to myself, if it means prolonging my existence just one moment more.\u201d<\/p>\n Survival, at least connotatively, presupposes that life, this Earthly life, is an unqualified good. And, in so doing, it presupposes that human beings are, ultimately, qualitatively indistinguishable from rats.<\/p>\n This perspective excludes morality entirely, for its message is one that could resonate with the lowliest of insects and rodents.\u00a0 Yet in precluding all moral considerations, it precludes even the slightest possibility that it can make of its students warriors<\/em>, for the Warrior is nothing if not a moral<\/em> prototype.\u00a0 \u201cSurvival\u201d precludes honor and all other character excellences that have always defined the Warrior.<\/p>\n But in order to genuinely train for self-defense, it is imperative that one train to become a warrior.\u00a0 This is unequivocally non-optional.\u00a0 How so?\u00a0 Well, presumably a decent person who embarks upon training in a combat art intends to use his training, his martial prowess\u2014his aptitude and will for violence\u2014only in the event that he must in order to prevent harm from befalling either himself, his loved ones, or other innocents who are physically imperiled in his presence.\u00a0 He is certainly not training for purposes of sport.\u00a0 Nor does he train for the proverbial bar-brawl, the street slugging-fest, or any other type of violent confrontation that he could easily avoid.<\/p>\n A decent person who only wants to live and let live doesn\u2019t train for the sake of fighting <\/em>some loudmouth, shit-talking, eye-fucking asshole.\u00a0 He trains in order to be able to kill, <\/em>with as much ruthless efficiency as he is capable of mustering, the most dangerous two-legged predators walking the planet.\u00a0\u00a0 The only reason that the decent individual commits his resources in time, energy, and money to training in a martial art is not, is never,<\/em> so that he can become a douchebag by squaring off with some other douchebag in some kind of macho, dick-measuring contest!<\/p>\n Rather, the only reason that the decent individual trains is so that his sword will prevail in battle over the swords of the bloodthirsty: gangsters, terrorists, assassins, serial murderers, and any and every other conceivable criminal type who lives to victimize the innocent the decent person trains to crush <\/em>into non-existence in the event that he must.<\/p>\n As Bradley Steiner, a lifelong martial artist and legendary self-defense instructor memorably remarked, \u201cSelf-defense is war<\/em> in microcosm\u201d (emphasis mine).<\/p>\n The decent person who trains for self-defense trains for war.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus, he must train to become a warrior.<\/p>\n