Poker

This is a placeholder for something I want to think about in more depth later. Had a really good couple of days. BK and KK were in town visiting. BK and I brainstormed some variations on ConCom that will probably make a book. Synergistically, started reading Jane Austen: Game Theorist  yesterday.

In poker, you can play the cards, the opponent, or the table. Same in life. Or fighting. Or whatever.

Playing the cards. There are four suits and thirteen of each type of card in a deck. If you have four cards that make a straight, the odds of getting one of the cards that will end it is slightly higher than 2/13. Trying to fill an inside straight? 1/13. Need one card for your flush? Instinct says it should be a 1/4 chance of drawing the right card, but you already have 4 of the 13 cards in your suit, so 9/52.

The life or fighting equivalent is playing from your own skillset. To go into a situation, counting solely on what you know, ignoring other information.

Playing the opponent. In poker this is reading tells, getting to know the other players so well that you can read how strong their hands are. You can read what they desire and what they fear. You can read the draw (a draw of 2 cars in 5-card draw usually indicates they are holding three of a kind, for example).

The fighting equivalent. From Maija Soderholm I got exposed to the late Sonny Umpad's  exhortation to first learn to read your enemy, then learn to write him. This one is deep. It ranges from simply feinting to gather information or to draw a response; to getting so far inside a threat's head that you are effectively gas lighting the threat. You can control not only what they perceive, but how they interpret their own perception and whether they can trust their own perception.

Same in life. If you understand people and can read them, you can use those insights to manipulate them. You can control the game. A lot of people glitch on this. "Manipulate" has negative connotations in current usage. But really, manipulation is just acting with skill. I'd rather have good people be skillful than not.

Playing the table. Too many people who play cards just play their own. In stud, you can calculate how the cards showing change your odds. Need a jack? 1/13 chance... but if two jacks are showing, it's now 1/26. If all of the fives and tens are showing, you'll never fill any straight. (note: in this post I'm not talking about Hold 'em. Talking about what my dad would call "real poker"-- draw and stud.)

To me, in fighting, playing the tables working all the auxiliary stuff-- environmental fighting, accessing social possibilities. The asymmetrical battle of bringing in the law or HR when it suits you.

Tying it back to game theory. To be successful you have to know yourself. Your mind, your resources (including skills) your goals and your parameters. You also need enough empathy to get into your opponent's head and discern the same things from the other point of view. To approach expertise in the subject, you have to understand how all of the seemingly extraneous stuff interrelates-- the social dynamics, environment, physical and communication skills... the whole bit.

Sheepdogs

Grossman popularized the sheepdog metaphor. The idea is that there are sheep-- generally nice and productive but not what one would call hard core. And there are wolves, and wolves are the bad guys and prey on the helpless little sheep. And there are sheepdogs, who have many of a wolf's traits but use those abilities to oppose the wolves and protect the sheep.

Grossman popularized it, but he was quoting a Korea war vet. My dad was a vet from that era and he used it too, so it must have been in the air back then. But it has jack shit to do with the way most people use it.

The part of it that was true, and what my dad meant by it is that as a soldier, I had more in common with an enemy soldier that I do with the civilians we are protecting. Yes, we. Saddam's Republican Guard or the Wehrmacht or the 82nd Airborne... people were defending their homes, their people, their values. Sometimes expeditionary forces, sometimes home guard... but especially in the age of conscripts, a drafted US soldier in a third-world country he's never heard of and a conscripted kid from that third-world country actually have a lot in common. And more in common with each other than they ever will with citizens or, especially, their own generals and their own politicians.

More broadly, coal miners in Virginia and coal miners in China will have more in common with each other than they will with their own bosses or their own governments.

That, to my mind, was what the sheepdog metaphor was trying to convey.

But it's become something else. A badge people put on to feel superior. So let's walk out the modern interpretation.

Number one, there ain't no sheep. Humans are amazing predators. Tough, adaptable, capable of learning at a whole new level. It takes a metric shit-ton of brainwashing to convince children that they are supposed to be weak and that passivity is a virtue. That social conditioning has happened, and it has been successful, but it is not natural. If you want to look down your nose at anyone and think they are weak, that's your arrogance, not truth. If they find the right incentive and throw off their imaginary leashes, not only will the meekest person you know give you a fight, your will prevent you from seeing it coming.

And here's the big one (hat tip to Terry Trahan.) Sheepdogs aren't good guys. They don't work for the sheep. They work for the shepherd. They don't keep the sheep safe from the wolves because it is the right thing to do. They keep the sheep safe from the wolves so the shepherd can butcher them or shear them on a precise schedule for maximum profit.

Still feel like a hero, Mr. Sheepdog?

Two things in my mind, going opposite directions. You are not sheep. You are mighty. Your ancestors pretty much conquered the world at half your size and half your brain size and nowhere close to your access to information. With sticks and chipped rocks and opposable thumbs and communication and teamwork, humans spread. Humans became the apex predators on this planet. Almost all of the species we used to dread are now protected as endangered, a testament to both human power and human compassion. We, as humans, are anything but sheep.

Yet we are being treated like sheep. And we tolerate it and in many cases beg for more. Look at your paycheck. How much are you being fleeced for? How much of your productivity does the shepherd take? Did you consent? Did you negotiate?

Evil corporations? Oil company profit on a gallon of gas is roughly three cents. Taxes (state and federal, in my area) are 48 cents. Production, purification, delivery for three cents... regulation and control for 48. Which is the fleecing?

I know this is going to get some knickers in a twist. Do the math. Who provides the things you appreciate? Who pays for your labor? And who controls your behavior and siphons off from your labor? Who are the shepherds that are sheering you? Who has (and to what extent do you give them) the power to butcher you?

The Coaching Chisel

Kasey likes to say that when you apply the chisel of reality to chip away the inefficiencies, what you end up with will look pretty similar. Or words to that effect. He says it better.

Here's the deal. Coaching is the process of making people better. Doesn't matter what you're coaching. But we (most people, including me) have this subconscious default that better=more. So in this stupid subconscious conspiracy, the student wants to learn more-- cool techniques and nifty strategies, and we want to give them more-- power generation systems that stack so that the effects compound, for instance.

And sometimes, especially for beginners, that's okay.

But if fighting is an art, it's stone sculpture. You have to chip off everything that is not what you want. That probably made no sense. Let's try again.

Coaching the one-step (lots of one-step at VioDy, so it's fresh in my mind) there are four (at least) levels of coaching. (It was six by the time I got to the end of the article.)

The first level is no coaching at all. Fact is, fighting and surviving are natural and only extremely brainwashed people need to be taught how to hurt a human body. So we deliberately set up the first few rounds so that the students have fun and play with a part of their nature they've been told they don't have. We still have to coach for safety stuff, but playing without implanting skills first demystifies the process a lot. Students aren't here (wherever hear is) to learn to fight. They're here to learn to fight (and see and apply judgement and articulate decisions and...) better.

Second level is asking questions. Giving the students a leg up on self-coaching. You are the only person inhabiting your body (I hope) and you are the only person at the center of your own action. No outside coach can possibly see or feel as much as you do. You must become your own best coach. Asking questions, especially about training artifacts that come up, gives students permission to use their own input and to step into a place that's scary for most beginners: "Damn, some of the things I've been taught are wrong. Worse, I knew they were wrong and went along because an authority figure told me to do it that way? What else do I have to test for myself? Everything?" Yeah, pretty much everything.

Third level are the "skill builds." Take the student out of the game, work on a specific skill, like leverage and leverage points, and put them back in the game with the new knowledge. Let them experiment with the new* tool or perspective in coordination with the skills they already have and their natural movements.
*And some of these skills can seem new, but very few are truly new. We use leverage all the time, every day-- how you hold a steak knife, a hammer or even a pencil are all expressions of leverage.

Fourth level, and where most of us as coaches spend most of our effort late in a seminar: Blindspots.
If you can honestly see what is in front of you, most of the time the most efficient solution becomes obvious. But all training sets up templates for how one sees, and things outside the template become invisible. Boxers and kick boxers don't see knee pops. They can physically see the same thing a silat player sees-- "My knee is very close to the threat's knee." But it's not on their mental list of tools so they don't see the affordances in what they observe.

Aside-- This is a huge weakness with technique-based training. When you get stuck (say in a pin or a lock) technique-based training requires you to have a specific escape for that specific hold. If the hold is new to you, you're screwed. First time I encountered knee-on-belly, I froze trying to run through all the escapes I knew. I didn't notice that his base was a narrow line that I could pop him off balance. I didn't notice that there was a big gap I could just slide out of. I was trying to remember instead of see, and memory is not an optimal brain function for fighting.

So the essence of fourth-level coaching, at least for this drill is simply, "Stop. Go back one move. Did you see...?"

Fifth level is the chisel. It's weeding out any unnecessary movements. A lot of it can be summed up in "closest weapon to closest target" but there is more there. Why does almost everyone instinctively pull back before a strike? What little power you gain is far offset by the time lost and the warning given. When going for an o-soto-gari outside leg sweep, how often would it be more efficient just to drive your knee through his rather than go all the way around for the sweep?

Efficiency, in every physical endeavor, is about getting to the end result with the least (effort, time, motion) possible. The best runner moves less than the second best to get to the same distance. The best fighters finish thing quicker because they waste less motion.

Oh, and there's a sixth level of coaching. Monitoring the student's emotional state while they one-step or spar. With a little practice you can see a lot. Memories. Hesitations. Internal monologue. Successes they have been punished for. This sixth level can be valuable for integrating physicality, thought and emotion.

Esoterica From VioDy II

And this really isn't esoteric. It's not even that subtle. It just really disturbs some people for some reason. A few years ago, in Germany, circumstances forced me to reorganize a bunch of material on the fly. The reorganization became: Escape, control, disable.

Basically there are only three legitimate reasons to go hands-on. Either you need to escape, to disable the person (usually so that you can escape) or you need to gain control of the threat (usually a consideration for professionals.)

This came up a lot at VioDy. Randy had added one when he was teaching Context of Violence: Acquiesce. In that context, it can be seen as four options. You can choose to try to escape, to try to disable, to try to control or to just go along with the bad guy's program. That's a legitimate choice, too. If you have made that choice, you made it with the information you had in the moment and that was the option that seemed to have the best ending. If you are reading this now, it worked. It might have sucked but you are alive. It worked. Never let any armchair quarterback tell you that you survived wrong.

Those are four options, but I'm going back to the three original goals.  Said earlier that the mindsets, the tactics, the techniques and even the physics are different, and largely incompatible, between the three.

One example, and because we're talking about energy and physics, it might earn the label esoterica.
In all but a very few cases, if you want to disable someone, you need to direct kinetic energy towards his core. Mass and structure both act as tamping (just like when setting up explosives) and more damage happens. If you punch into a threat so that the force is going away from his centerline, the force bounces off. If you strike into weak structure, the structure gives and your force goes into motion, not damage. To do damage you strike into the threat's mass and structure. (Except for rotational damage, breaking the twigs or sprinting into the base, but even those have an element...)

So for disabling, your force generally needs to go towards the centerline of the opponent. That is the one direction that your energy can't go for escape. There are exceptions for this, too (some wedging and back-whip power generation) but escape requires putting kinetic energy into the empty space. In other words, you don't run directly into the bad guy, because that would obviously be stupid.

And control. It's impossible to escape from someone you are holding in a submission. The strategies, tactics, techniques and force vectors are incompatible. I can use many control techniques to disable-- takedowns and locks require very slight modification. But the disabling is either using gravity or putting force into/through the technique. Most controlling is done by working the vector in circles and on the perimeter.

A good leg sweep hits the leg as far down as possible with the hand as high as practical. Raise the leg's point of contact and lower the hand's and your leverage decreases. Elbow leverage point, knees, head-- all periphery and all central to control. In an oseikomi pin, I'm not trying to hold down your center of mass, I'm using my limbs as chock-blocks under your corners; using my mass to make dead weight at the edges of your body you need to move. Corners, edges--periphery.  Grrrrrr. This is the hard one to do in word pictures.

But the force vectors for escape, control and disable are very, very different. Often, so are the mindsets, the tactics and the techniques. Only principles hold through all three and even with principles the emphasis shifts.

There is a fourth reason to go hands-on. That's to prove you are better at fighting. Which turns out to be just as incompatible with the main three as they are with each other--a half-assed blend of the main three goals.

Esoterica After VioDy Prime

Just got back from VioDy Prime in MN. Technically, I did four weeks in Europe, came home for long enough to wash clothes and repack (about 10 hours) and then flew to MSP. And did VioDy. And got home last night.

It was the best VioDy so far, and I rank that on a combination of smooth and deep (try to ignore the '70s porn music now playing in your head.) Smooth-- things happened on time; each lesson played off of and set up other lessons. Deep-- people changed and you could see them change.

If I was going to write an AAR, that's where I'd start. If I was going to write for advertising, that's where I'd start and end. But I'm more selfish than that.

This year brought together a stable of five extraordinary instructors-- Kasey Keckeisen, Randy King, Tammy Yard-McCracken, and Terry Trahan. And me. I love this gathering for many reasons but one of the biggest, and selfishest (if that's a word) is because this group makes me better. Better at thinking, better at teaching...

So, not talking about the seminar at all, I want to walk out an expansion on a thought.

There are a handful of principles. I define principles as those rules of physics or physiology that make other things work. If it is a principle, it applies to striking, grappling and weapons. If it is a principle, there are no exceptions.

I don't know if what follows will be useful to many people. It is a way to organize information you may already have, and I can find a lot of use in this organizational scheme, but your mileage may vary. It might be too esoteric for most people.

Almost all of the principles can be organized around multiple dimensions.
One dimension is yours, mine, and ours. You have a structure. I have a structure. When we clinch up or one of us grabs the other, we have a structure. I can use my structure to damage you better. I can exploit your structure to force you into a worse position. And I can use your grip to slave your skeleton to mine so that what I do with my structure affects your structure, because we have become a unit.
Same with balance. I'm a bipedal creature with a center of gravity and I can stabilize or exploit the destabilization of that. You, likewise, are a bipedal creature with a center of gravity and I can alter and exploit that. When we clinch up, we are both of the above but also a quadruped with a shared center of gravity, and I can exploit that as well.

The second dimension. Offense or defense. Defensively, I can stabilize my base so I'm hard to throw. Offensively, I can sacrifice my balance for a drop-step.

The third dimension-- positive or negative. These words have operational definitions in this context. Operational definition means the word has a very specific meaning that may not match the common usage. In this context, positive means present; stability means absent.

Structure is the positive aspect, void the negative. On balance is the positive aspect, imbalance the negative.

A structured dropstep (positive structure, negative balance) is one of the easiest and most effective offensive uses. Relaxing and drop stepping away from the strike/into the void is a defensive use of negative structure and negative balance. Dracula's Cape is positive structure and negative balance in both an offensive and defensive mode...

And so on.

Any kind of intellectual organization of material is pretty much useless when the rubber meets the road. Including this one. But the intellectual understanding comes into play when you are analyzing something that happened and when you are figuring out how to pass it on. At the instructor level, I'm perfectly happy to do a class on Structure and Void. That's useful for instructors.  For students (who should rightly be thought of as end-users) the key is to design a fast-moving game where exploitation of any principle (yours, mine, ours; offensive and defensive; positive and negative) has obvious, tangible effects. It just becomes an obvious way to move.

I'll probably write about the seminar later. Maybe publicly. But this is one of many things I'm processing and here is where I like to process.

Not sure how long these will be available, or how useful they will be to anyone who didn't attend, but createspace has copies of the VioDy Prime Workbook available.

What It Is

For any of you who are really familiar with my stuff, this isn't a concept (In the Building Blocks/Principles/Concepts mode) but rather a meta-concept. The looking glass. So far, I think I've only really written about concepts in the Training Journal and in some class handouts. "Concepts" is my catch-all phrase for the way understanding changes. At one point in my martial career, I wouldn't have understood that a 'fight' and an 'assault' were different and largely unrelated things. Now the concept seems so obvious that I have to work at remembering that some of my students may not understand a difference exists.

The meta-concept is the "Looking Glass." A reference to Lewis Carroll's book. You cross a threshold of experience and things that made sense in a certain way now make sense in a different way. When you were eight years old, girls were icky and there were girl germs and love was stupid. And love songs were stupid and poetry about love was stupid... right up until you fell in love for the first time. You stepped through the looking glass and even though an eight-year-old could tell you were being stupid it didn't matter. Because the logic and reality of one side of the looking glass no longer applies.

Falling in love. Having a child. The death of a parent. The death of a close friend. Your first fight. Your fiftieth fight. All are thresholds, and once you cross the threshold the way you think and the way you see the world changes on a fundamental level.

"Let it go." "Forgive." "Just get over it." From one side of the looking glass, this is worthless, meaningless advice. But everyone who has crossed that particular threshold has, at some point, decided to let go. From the other side of the looking glass, it is simply obvious.

"Put him down." "He never gets a move." "I own every beat in the rhythm." These are simple tautologies on one side of the looking glass, near-impossibilities on the other.

One of my friends has a metaphor for power generation. "Spill the tea." I'm close enough to the threshold to see it, but nowhere near close enough to use it.

When someone gives you advice from the other side of the looking glass, just because you don't get it doesn't mean it's not true. Conversely, when you cross a threshold, it doesn't make your new truth truer than the earlier truth. Just different.

My Politics. Part I

People seem wired for a certain amount of drama. No matter how good things get, most people have to see the current times as challenging, or bad. The need to see things in a certain way or at a certain level justifies a shit ton of bullshit rationalization.  So, meta-level, this is how I see things:

The world is better than ever before. In the US, poverty doesn't mean what poverty means. The poorest people I know own computers that would not have been available to any government at any price in the 1970's. If you are reading this, you have access to a computing system that didn't exist not that long ago. You cannot believe you are poor if you have  access to a system that no one in your grandfather's world could have imagined. Measure. Do you have access to hot water, ice, food from multiple continents despite any season and more knowledge than you could mine in a lifetime? Then you are a god, beyond what any Roman emperor could access. and you live in a golden age.

There is an old saying about academic politics: The politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

Here's the deal. Since the mid/late 1800's, we have an ideal. We are all products of our culture and early education, so shift this 200 years in any direction and it might make no sense, but here goes:

• People matter. 
• Equality is important. 
• Individual liberty is important. 
• People can continuously improve. 
• Society can continuously improve. 
• A legitimate government serves the people, it does not rule the people.

And, for as long as this ideal has been held as pretty much universal, there has been a constant tension between liberty and egalitarianism. They are mutually incompatible. If you allow maximum freedom (liberty) there will be wild disparities in possession, friendships... anything you care to measure. Conversely, there is no way to have egalitarian outcomes except by controlling individuals. Yes, I am aware that there is an entire branch of political philosophy devoted to proving that there is no antagonism between freedom and equality. Any six-year-old can shatter those pathetic arguments.

A quick and dirty way to phrase this, imagine a basketball game: If you value liberty more than equality, you want the rules applied equally to the two teams. If you value equality more than liberty, you will believe that any score that doesn't end in a tie is prima facie evidence of unfairness and you will continue to tweak the rules until all games are ties.

In the dawn of the 21st century, we forget that "poor" used to mean "starving" not obesity. Not that long ago, poor people in  North America couldn't read, and now they have access to free Harvard courses. That a (personal example) an eight-year-old bottom of the line economy car can outperform the hotrods we dreamed about as children.

Bringing it home, people are tribal. They seem to need an 'us' and a 'them.' The less actual difference there is, the more vicious and heated the rhetoric needs to be. Communist, fascists and socialists were never enemies because they were different. They were always enemies because their policies appealed to the same people. They were similar enough to compete for resources. Civil wars are more vicious than other wars because of the similarities between the sides, not the differences.

And this big, scary divide in US politics right now? It is really simple. We agree on almost everything... except where we should strike the balance between individual liberty and equality. And because that is such a relatively minor point, tribalism demands that we get vicious about it.

Tribalism demands. We needn't obey. (Obviously) I'm heavy on the individual liberty side. We don't need to agree. We both want people to be happy. I believe that unfettered opportunity will have that effect for more people and, as an aside, that a few people pushing the envelope changes everyone's potential. If you believe stuff makes people happy and managing the output of stuff will make more people's lives better, you aren't my enemy. We just disagree.

Killing the Sensei

In the Criticism≠Teaching post I wrote about students who have been so conditioned to criticism that they criticize themselves when no one else does. They even criticize as a habit when they have done nothing wrong. I advised you to kill that voice in your head, and a few people asked the very reasonable question, “How?”

I can’t give a definitive answer. The voice still bubbles up for me, sometimes. Especially when I write.

But here are some strategies I’ve used:

First, distinguish between external and internal criticism. External criticism comes from other people. It may be wrong, misguided, actively designed to sabotage you… listen anyway. The more you want to find a reason to ignore or deny it, the more important it is to listen. If it is bad advice, you should be able to explicitly and dispassionately articulate why it is bad. But be careful. There’s a reason why watching for your own cognitive biases is a lifetime commitment.

This post is really about internal criticism. Do you know why an outside copyeditor is necessary to a professional writer? Because you can’t catch your own errors. If you knew how the word was spelled, you would have spelled it right the first time. Yes, there are clumsy finger errors, etc. Quibbles. The point is, you generally don’t make errors you recognize as errors. Almost always, the decision you made in the moment was the one you judged to be best in that moment, with the information you had and the time you had to think. If you think of something better, cool. That’s a learning experience.

One example. Just a synopsis, it would be really long to type. Climbing with a partner. His jumar (ascender) got jammed. Halfway up a slippery cliff. Rope wedged in the same crack as the jumar. Starting to get cold and wet. Only decision I could see was to unhook and free climb to get above him and work from there. Shitty climb on slippery rocks with no protection and a 40 foot fall.

It worked. Six months later I thought of an easier, safer solution, and I was kicking myself for not thinking in a few minutes of something that took a half year of unadrenalized pondering. Sigh.

Examine effects, not feelings. Most people’s problems are second or third order. Writing the essay is the primary problem. Worrying about the grade you might get is the secondary problem. Worrying about what people will say about your grade is tertiary. A big piece of ‘non-attachment’ is ignoring the secondary and tertiary concerns. Which is actually easy, because the primary problem/solution is usually physical and real, as opposed to both emotional and imaginary (and if it’s going to happen in the future it is imaginary in this moment.)

Be in the moment. Related to the last one, but I get very specific about this. I mean to be in your senses. Look, listen, smell, touch, taste. Don’t look and then start an internal dialogue describing what is right there. Look, don’t describe. Listen, don’t judge. Live, don’t interpret. I know that’s hard, but it is really powerful.

With a lot of attention/practice/mindfulness, you can do this with your internal states as well. This lets fear, anger, love, rage, annoyance, self-doubt—all that stuff— move through you without sticking. You can feel anger without becoming angry, and love without becoming stupid.

Think less. The less time you spend thinking in words, the easier the last two points become. Meditation, solitude, hunger and fighting are some of the paths I’ve found. Those are in order, from easiest to hardest, but also from least to most effective.

After Action Debrief. I’ve written about it here XXX link XXX. I f you’re going to have a critical voice in your head anyway, you might as well train it to be useful. In a nutshell, the AAD is just three questions: What happened? What went well? What could I/we do better next time?

That’s it, but you have to be strong enough to say, “That went about as well as it could have.” Let yourself have your wins.

Focusing pain. Sudden sharp pain tends to clarify your mind and order your priorities. Give yourself some pain if you are too much in your head. Snap your ear whenever you catch yourself in your critical head.

There are more strategies that work. Remember that your brain can and should be exercised and disciplined, just like your body.

Math and Passion

One of the things that has been bugging me lately. I have several close friends who are very passionate about certain issues... and they are wrong. Simply wrong. In some cases, the issue they are excited about doesn't exist. In a few, the words they use do not mean what they think they mean. In a very few cases, the words that they use originally meant the exact opposite of what they think they mean. Black has become white; dogs are cats; freedom is slavery.

Where do I get the right to say that they are wrong and I'm right? Fair question. This is the way my brain works: These are people I care about and generally, but not always, that means I admire their intelligence*. If they believe X and I believe Y, I assume I'm wrong. I then, depending on the question go to first sources (like the actual court case). Or go to the data (the Bureau of Justice Statistics, commonly). Or design an experiment (Who is more hateful, X or Y? Let's type "All x should die" and "All y should die" into google and see who is talking about killing most.)

I think that's pretty solid. Confidant that it is far more than the people I am disagreeing with have done.

But here's the question, and it's really two three questions.
1) Should I even bother to tell them I disagree? I know a few sense it, but as long as it stays submerged, the friendship continues fine. Understand, they are usually passionate about their position-- one even said it was important enough it was okay to be wrong. I can't even wrap my head around that, largely because I'm not passionate about the positions. I am relatively passionate about the path to those positions.
2) If I decide to have this disagreement, how? Facts don't actually sway people. For that matter, if we agreed on an experimental design and their position was mathematically proven flawed, my experience is that they would double down. And never forgive me.
Oooh. There's a third question.
3) Most of them are happy being passionate. It may come across in words as feeling outcast and beleaguered and under constant attack, but that belief makes them feel special and gives their life meaning. If someone is wholly invested in their enemies as a core of their identity, is pointing out that their enemies** are imaginary a dick move?

The challenge here is not winning the argument. My ego doesn't need the strokes of winning. The challenge is preserving the friendship and, possibly, helping a few friends avoid a path that will be hard to recover from.




*There are other virtues I admire besides intelligence. No one has to be perfect or superior in all categories to be my friend.
** And this is a really fine line because there are always a few real assholes. There are millions of good christians, but the 70 (or less) members of the Westboro Baptist Church make the news. There are tens of thousands of people working to make a better world, but the loudest, shrillest and stupidest two percent become the poster children for 'Social Justice Warriors.' As long as that worse 2 % or 70 individual or whatever exist, the enemies, just barely, miss being completely imaginary.

Criticism ≠ Teaching

The last post was laying the groundwork for this one. I thought starting with the universally acknowledged evils of micromanagement would make this post more palatable. Instead, Danny Martin gave a very capable defense of an unpopular and nearly indefensible position. Truly well done.

Jumping into this anyway, because it is important.

Criticism is a shitty teaching paradigm. Telling people they are doing things wrong, even telling them what they are doing wrong is literally worse than useless: Useless teaching would leave students unimproved. Criticism actually makes the students worse.

This will probably be a hard sell. When I came up through the (primarily Japanese) traditional martial arts, stern criticism was the standard teaching method. I've even had an instructor say, "Only perfect is good enough." And I was cautioned not to praise students because it would make them lazy. In the law enforcement world, right after I was promoted a senior sergeant told me, "Do you know why you'll never be a good sergeant? Because you don't understand that everyone is lazy and dishonest and our job is to catch them and punish them." Her crews were consistently poor performers because they spent more time watching their backs around her than doing the job.

But it's only a hard sell because we are all so used to it. When something is shitty, being the norm doesn't make it less shitty. We know criticism is poor teaching methodology.

Why is it bad? Let me count the ways.

1. It's all brakes, no engine. Criticism stops behavior. If that behavior isn't replaced with a better alternative, improvement can only happen by luck.
2. Criticism almost always works off the wrong metric. The instructor judges a strike (for instance) by whether it looked right. In striking, looks don't matter for shit, it's a kinesthetic skill.
3. Criticism, especially of the wrong metric, is usually arbitrary. The coach may be looking at foot placement one minutes and hand position the next, may focus on a minor problem in stance and miss the big problem (something that would result in injury) in the hands.
4. The instructor's reaction becomes the student's metric. Not whether the technique worked, not how much energy was delivered, but whether they got yelled at or not. Getting better, when you are measuring improvement by the wrong metric, is nearly impossible.
5. When the student is anticipating the instructor's reactions, the student is thinking. Cognitive processing is too slow to use effectively in a hand-to-hand conflict and thinking about irrelevant things is worse. Excessive criticism makes your students slow.
6. When the students are driven to avoid criticism, it pushes them from a gains maximization to a loss minimization strategy. In other words, they are no longer trying to win, they are trying not to lose, and that is usually a very weak, passive and reactionary strategy when the shit hits the fan.
7. And to compound point six, the game they are trying not to lose isn't even the right game. They are worried about what sensei will say, not working to put the bad guy down.
8. At the extreme end of this, when everything is criticized, the only strategy left to the students is to do as little as possible, to become as passive as possible. The condition is called, in psychology, "Learned Helplessness." Constant criticism creates passive people, which is another word for victims.

And we know the answer to this. From behavioral psychology or modern teaching theory or MBWA (Management by Walking Around.)

1. Reward even small improvements. It doesn't have to be anything big, just a "Good job" or a nod. Just as people decrease behaviors that are criticized (punished) they increase behaviors that are rewarded. Rewarding small improvements creates a vector toward further improvement.
2. Tell the students what to do. Avoid telling them what not to do. "Avoid telling them what not to do" is only seven words but because of the double negations 'avoid' and 'not' it is tons less clear than "Tell the students what to do." Positive statements are clearer than negative statements.
3. Don't criticize bad techniques, replace them. Instead of telling someone her stance is wrong, show her where her feet should be and explain why.*
4. Use the right metric. If you are teaching strikes properly, it will show on the heavy bag.
5. Let nature judge. A lot of the wrong ways to do things hurt. That's why they are the wrong ways. Improper hand positioning hurts your wrist when you punch the heavy bag. A canvas bag will teach you when your punching angles are off. All the wrong ways to do a break fall hurt. If you use the right metrics, you almost never have to criticize because the world takes care of that for you.

One of the most annoying training scars I see are students that are so used to being constantly criticized that they criticize themselves. They handle a scenario brilliantly or snap into a counter-assault technique against multiple simultaneous attacks, and you can see it in their eyes, sometimes even their lips move: They are chewing themselves out for some tiny detail that didn't even effect the outcome. They are so used to being criticized that they have a tiny sensei in their heads telling them they did it wrong. No matter what 'it' is. No matter whether it was wrong or not.

That's bullshit, and if you have that little voice in your head, kill it.

*Quick note on explaining. I find it very useful to explain the underlying physiology or physics that make something work. If the principles are true, they apply everywhere and if the student understands the principles, he or she can adapt them under stress. That said, the principles work. They have visible effects. If you have to explain that something worked when it clearly didn't, you're wrong. You aren't explaining, you're attempting to brainwash.

Micromanagement ≠ Leadership

I think it was Machiavelli in his Art of War that said "The greatest reward for a fighting man is simply to trust him." That resonated. I'd worked for a long time under a variety of people put in leadership positions. Just being in the position doesn't make someone a leader. The true leaders, the ones that inspired loyalty and dedication, had alls aid, at some point, "You've got this." And let me handle things on my own.

Machiavelli (if I'm attributing it to the right person) specifically applied it to fighters. I don't think that's necessarily true--everyone takes micromanagement as an insult. But it's more explicit in dangerous professions. A firefighter I know is incensed that he has to spend more time in each report documenting his PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) than his job. He showed me one report-- nearly half a page of what equipment he put on and in what order. Barely four lines on extracting the subject from the wrecked car.

When you are entrusted with life or death decisions, being treated like a child throws a huge mixed message.

So here's the deal. If you are a micromanager, you aren't a leader. You aren't even a shitty leader. You're a busybody who likes to feel important by interfering with better people than yourself. If you have employees who need to be watched every second either you need to hire adults or, more likely they aren't the problem.

When you get the micromanager who always finds fault, it is something else. If everything a worker does is wrong, no matter how closely they follow policy or even if they were just following the last set of orders, what's going on isn't even management, micro or otherwise. It is straight-up victim grooming. Creating a field of passive people for the manager's games.

I doubt if most micromanagers realize what they are. Humans are excellent at rationalizing and it's easy to reframe micromanagement as "Being explicit" or "I'm a hands-on guy." But on the tiny chance someone reads this and sees through their own bullshit and decides to change... it won't be easy.

No matter your intentions, all those years of micromanagement have instilled in your people the idea that you don't trust them-- and that they can't trust you. They will literally assume that you turning over a new leaf is a trap. That you will give them enough trust to show some initiative and then will ruthlessly punish them for that initiative.

This easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you change your behavior and don't notice any benefit for a day or a week or a month, it is easy to revert. The reversion just becomes further evidence that your attempt at change was insincere.

Note: Going out of my lane a little, but setting up for the next post, which is about the teaching equivalent of micromanagement.

Olympian

You are amazing.
When I die, these are the things that I will have wished I said and possibly the things you would have wished to have heard. I'm thinking of my son right now, but that's just a focal point. If your dad (or whoever) had the words, these are the words that need to be said:

You have never disappointed me. You might have felt that, but know it was never so. When you were born, I held in my arms a perfect example of perfect human potential. An awe-inspiring bundle of possibility. Innate power and potential of cosmic proportions.
In Greek myth, the heroes were half gods. Heracles, the son of Zeus and a mortal mother; Aeneas the son of Aphrodite and a mortal father. This is how I see you, how all humans are: Something incredible and powerful and heroic. Supernatural in your birthright.
That is how I see you.
If you sensed disappointment, it was never with you, but with the world. You have had to make compromises; we all have. And I may have sighed because the choice you made was not the choice I wanted, since I wanted to see you as a pure and perfect god. But the choices you made were pure and perfect, given the information you had and the priorities you placed. I might have wanted you to stand above the world, but you were neck-deep in the world, protecting the weak, calculating the consequences. I had a Socratic, imaginary ideal-- you had a gritty reality. You made your choices based on that reality. You made the best choices you could, and I love you for that.
I wish that you could see yourself as I see you. The strength, the growing wisdom, the compassion, the insight. You are mightier than you can possibly imagine.
Walk in the world as an Olympian. Nurture your strength and cherish the strength of the minigods all around you. It is a beautiful and complex world, and you are an integral part of that beauty and complexity.
Be.

Impossible

Sometimes you get a request that is just flabbergasting. If that's a word.
"We want an unarmed defensive tactics system for our officers that works the same for all officers regardless of size, gender or age, that will work on all threats regardless of size, strength or mental state and has zero risk of injury to the offender."
"You realize that's impossible, right?"
"You don't have anything? We'll keep looking."

The latest. A request for comprehensive self-defense training but with absolutely no element of violence. This one is tempting. Not the material. As requested, it's simply stupid. It's the students. The people who want this do home visits on people who are in the system. Often alone, this student base has daily contact with a population that frequently have criminal records and a history of violence. These are kids (adults, but at a certain age, everybody starts to look like a kid) going into harm's way to do good things. If anyone needs a comprehensive program, these are the people.

Naively, I alsoused to believe that there was always a non-violent solution, but even then I realized there wasn't always time to find that solution. I was wrong. There are people who enjoy hurting others, and only force or the threat of force will stop them. Predators who can't feel closure without pain. Really bad guys who need to see someone break. People who honestly believe that acceding to a verbal solution is an act of cowardice.
" You boys have been real nice, but I guess now it's time to make you fuck me up." When I asked, "Why?" later the old man said, "If I went to jail and didn't fight, I wouldn't be a man." People satisfying needs with pain isn't limited to the BDSM world.

Realistically, the big gains in SD are in the non-violent soft skills. Recognizing and avoiding dangerous places and people. Recognizing when an individual is setting you up or weakening your position. Escape, evasion and de-escalation. Usually, by the time things go physical, it's pretty desperate. This isn't how to out-fight a fighter, but how to deal with a bigger, stronger threat who chose the time and place and conditions (weapon, numbers...)

This isn't a Disney movie. Things can go very bad. The belief that there is always a non-violent solution creates blindspots and vulnerabilities. If any belief is that precious to you, you will fail to recognize and respond to the exceptions. People don't train for things they don't believe in. It is a belief that makes one voluntarily both blind and unprepared.

You all know this. But some people don't get it. More accurately, they refuse to get it. Teaching the impossible isn't a new problem. It starts with education. Over the years, I've found a bag of tricks to get people to see. That's why I use Maslow, and where the distinction between aggressive, destructive (including self-destructive) and assaultive behavior comes in. Why we discuss ethics explicitly. Personal clarity between what people want and what people need.

Whoah. Damn. Rewind and erase. I just strawmanned all over myself. Shit. All the objections and blindspots I just talked about? Realizing... You don't see these in the field. EMTs, nurses, police, corrections, security, even the people manning the desk at the local VA-- every last one I've talked to has recognized the need for something truly comprehensive. They're usually the ones who contact me. The impossible demands have all come from desk pushers, people who write and protect policy. People who live in idealistic abstraction of the real world.

Unfortunately, they tend to be the ones who control what the line staff get.

Not to self: Remember not to confuse institutions with people.

Misfit Toys

This is a message to someone special. Might be you, might not.
It's all good. Remember watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer all those years ago and the Island of the Misfit Toys and you thought, "That's me" ?  Me too. And it's all good.

Don't like who you're supposed to like? Care about things other people think are too small or too big? You dig into history while the people around you parrot what their peer group says? Fuck 'em. Seriously, fuck 'em. No one is trying to make you better. They're just trying to make you more like them. That's how they define better-- conformity.

Not that long ago, a friend wanted to introduce me to one of his people. I asked, "What's he like?" R said, "He's broken, but he's broken our way." R is one of the most effective individuals I know, even if he is broken. Because he's broken my way.

It's all good. We are all misfit toys. Find your family-of-choice. Cherish them deeply and protect them fiercely. Be proud. You may be a broken toy in this strangely plastic hothouse world, but when that world shatters you are the one who will function. They still won't like you, but they will need you. And that is something.

Happy birthday, HM

Tea with the Dark Wizard

Coffee, really.
Last weekend taught a full two-day seminar dissecting principles and application at Randy King's KPC Self Defense in Edmonton. Taking each of my eleven principles*, digging into it as much as time would allow, then playing and experimenting. It does no good to have something you intend to use in chaos just as a mental picture. You have to play with anything to understand it. You have to play with it to make it a part of you.

It was the first time organizing the information this way and teaching it all at once. It was some pretty deep water. The feedback was solid. Randy said it best, albeit in nerd speech: "I think I just leveled up as an instructor. This will help me steal the magic better."

Aside-- Stealing the magic. Ever run into an instructor who could do things you simply couldn't? Not talking the bullshit magic stuff like chi balls. Setting so he couldn't be lifted (structure) or push you across the room with almost imperceptible movement (structure + line and circle + balance). It's just good physics, but often the really good instructors can't explain what they are doing so they have real trouble teaching it. Understand the principles and you know what to look for. You can learn the good stuff they can't articulate well enough to teach. The stuff that looks like magic.

One of the attendees was Rick Wilson. Rick is the 60+ year old guy that the jocks are a little worried about playing sumo with. The guy who has studied traditional stuff and rejected traditional stuff and come full circle to find the body mechanics behind the traditional stuff. Smart. Really deep base of knowledge.

At some point, I think it was after InFighting last year, Dillon started calling Rick the Dark Wizard. His body mechanics are that good. And this is coming from Dillon...

Anyway, Randy and I had coffee and burgers with Rick. Good talks. About teaching, communication and writing. Trying to find decent answers to shitty and deadly situations. And in the details got yet another system of power generation to work on. Multi-directional joint expansion. I just started playing with joint expansion at all but here's yet another can of worms. Also Rick's "clamp" which is definitely going to improve my explanation of bone slaving (which is one piece of structure.)

Good times.


*Everyone should have their own list. Mine happens to have eleven. There are many good ways to organize information

Boundary Setting

I've described boundary setting in both ConCom and Scaling Force, but I was recently informed that I haven't written it down quite the way I teach it. So here goes.

Setting a boundary is not a negotiation or a conversation. It is a very different communication mode than most people ever use. This is why most people find it so hard, and why most people can safely ignore your boundaries. It is not enough to know the pattern, you have to practice. And the real practice is not in learning the pattern, it is in sticking to the pattern.

The pattern is simple:

1. State boundary
2. Repeat boundary (Louder)
3. State penalty
4. Apply penalty

That's it.
"Back off!" "I said back off!" "One step closer and I will knock you on your ass!" Knock on ass.

"Go to bed." "I said, go to bed!" "If you do not go to bed right now, you will get a spanking and I will put you in bed." Spank and carry.

The example in Scaling Force:

“I’ve told you to leave the door open when you come into my office.”

“What’s your problem? Are you afraid to be alone with me?” Trying to joke, trying to make the boundary setter defensive. Do you see the predator dynamic here?

“Open the door.” Simple, direct statement. No argument, no reasoning, nothing in the voice that could turn it into a question. One of the worst phrases is “I need you to do X for me” as it places all the power on the threat and sounds like a plea on two levels, “need” and “for me.” Do not use this tactic when dealing with potential predators. It’ll backfire.

“Whatever. I wanted to talk to you about…” Disregarding “no” or pretending to ignore boundaries is a huge red flag that you are dealing with a predator.

“Open the door.” Staying on message.

“Geeze, can’t you stay on the subject?” Again, trying to shift blame/responsibility, implying that the predator is the one who wants to get the job done and the potential victim is hung up on something minor.

“Open the door or I will file that complaint. Now!” The only thing added to the statement of boundaries is the penalty. “Now” acts as an ultimatum. Once you take this verbal step you must be ready to act on your threat. If the threat ignores you (some will, most won’t) and you fail to follow through, you will have marked yourself as easy meat.

------------------------------------------------------------------
I normally avoid the words always and never, but this one comes close. Deviation from this pattern turns the boundary setting into something that is not boundary setting. If you need to set a boundary, doing something else rarely works.

It's hard to stick with the pattern because we aren't used to it. If you explain the reasons behind your boundary, it's now a conversation, not boundary setting. The conversation may work, but what comes out is an agreement, not a boundary. Agreements require the consent of all involved parties. You set your boundaries around the things that are more important than other people's consent.
Exception: You can make the reason (provided it is simple, not too personal, and doesn't invite follow up questions) the introduction to step 1, e.g. "You're too close. Back off." NOT "Back off, you're standing too close." NOT "I had a really bad childhood and when people with beards get within arms reach of me I sometimes have panic attacks so back off." You get the idea.

If you just keep repeating the boundary, it's a broken record and meaningless. No one respects it. Empty noise.

If you state the penalty but can't bring yourself to apply the penalty, it's just posturing, an empty threat. Not only does this erase the boundary, the person now knows you to be just an empty threat. All of your boundaries disappear.

If you skip the two middle steps, you aren't setting a boundary. The first statement was a warning. It's a different thing.

You can pretty accurately gauge the level of predation that you're dealing with by how they challenge the boundary.

"Back off." Most normal- and normal in this context means someone with no ill will towards you and no language barrier or mental issue that prevents them from grasping that this is a declarative statement-- will back off. They might be bewildered or upset, and will probably ask for an explanation, but they will respect the boundary. You can explain a respected boundary if you choose to, just be aware that damn near everyone assumes that knowing the reasons gives them the right to break the rule.

Socially awkward/language barrier/mental illness/drugs may just blow by step one, but step two stops them.

Predators however have three common responses to step 1, "Back off" One is to open their body language, soften their voice and gently violate the boundary while asking you a question, "Honey, why do you want to be like that? You aren't afraid of me, are you?" The second is to turn it back on you, try to trigger a common social guilt that makes you feel bad for setting your own boundaries, such as, "What, you got a problem with (ethnicity, gender, religion, any of the hot-button labels.)" Or, "You think you're so special you can tell me what to do?" The third is to trigger a monkey dance by demanding the third step, "Oh, yeah? What are you gonna do about it?"

Step two tends to stop the low level predators as well. All of the common predatory responses to the first step are trying to divert you into a predictable social script. If you fall for them, it shows you can be manipulated and more important, those scripts are predictable. Ignoring the hook and going for the second step means you are hard to control and unpredictable. Most predators will give it a pass.

Real world notice #1: Sometimes, you'll be setting boundaries say, at work, where there is a long term relationship. This guy might be a creep and you need to set boundaries, but you also have to work with him, maybe for years. Some of them will flirt with the edge of the boundary and try to turn it into a game to see if and when you will cave.

Some predators will push to step three, mostly to see if you have a step three or just go into broken record mode. Once you have stated the penalty, you have revealed that you do in fact have a plan to deliver consequences. Even the more serious predators back off here unless they are sure they can get away with it. And are willing to cross those lines. If the rapist knows he has to kill to keep you from reporting, he has to make a choice.

Real world notice #2. A lot of self-defense is taught as if the incident will happen in a sterile laboratory environment. The sexually aggressive creep at the office didn't back off until step three. That's pretty predatory. But he did back off, so win! Yay! But never forget that assholes are very good at punishing people for standing up to them, and this is a long game. The creep will tell everyone willing to listen how unreasonable you are and how petty and how you were going to write him up just for standing there... It's a long game, but you can play a long game, too.

Attempted Brain Dredge

Sometimes I hate not thinking in words. Usually it's a superpower. But right now I'm struggling to explain something that I see as...gestalt is the best word I can come up with. Stayed up all last night trying to find the words. Sometimes words would bubble up and I can explain a piece of it, but sometimes the words open another tangent that's relevant.

Roughly, meaning is important. Syntax is the effective ordering of symbols to deliver meaning. Grammar is an attempt to codify syntax to make it both easier to deliver meaning and easier to detect sloppy syntax. Until grammar becomes it's own thing.

Roughly, fighting is to have an effect to serve the goal. The principles (leverage, structure, etc.) and building blocks (power generation, strikes, takedowns etc.) are the means to achieve that goal. "Form" is an attempt to codify the principles and building blocks. Both to make fighting easier to teach and to make it more efficient. And it works, until form becomes it's own thing separate from effect.

Good grammar is never wrong, exactly. And it's never wrong to punch with good form. This is (sort of) axiomatic because because good form is supposed to be what a punch with perfect body mechanics looks like.

This is where I hit the wall. It's an image, partially visual, mostly kinesthetic in my head, but the words that surface are a mess:

Communication can happen with absolutely no proper grammar or syntax-- Think comforting an infant. And fighters can be devastating even with no recognizable form and shitty body mechanics. A 2x4 upside the head doesn't need a lot of skill. But that in no way means you should eschew skill. A 2x4 plus good body mechanics is better than a 2x4 with shitty body mechanics.

It doesn't hurt to comfort an infant using grammatically correct phrases, unless your focus on being grammatically correct makes your language stilted and unnatural. Then the kid will get weirded out. It doesn't hurt to fight with good form, because good form is just good body mechanics. Unless you are so focused on doing things "right" that your movements become stilted and unnatural and you get your ass kicked.

A focus on form, whether in grammar or fighting, can cover up a lot of ignorance. If I can't refute your arguments, I can make fun of your spelling. If I don't have any real understanding of how the human body works, I can focus on form the way I memorized it-- knowledge memorized substituting for understanding. With understanding, I can teach you to hit harder, with knowledge I can teach you to look like my sensei did when he was hitting hard.

When form/grammar become it's own thing. This is looking like a universal. Grammatically correct nonsense is still nonsense. Punching air while looking right is still punching air. We create these systems to make things better, to make a specific goal easier to accomplish. Whether that goal is conveying information or knocking someone down. But in almost every case, certain people are drawn to become masters and keepers of the system, and to them, the system becomes the goal itself. Has there ever been a piece of great literature that was grammatically perfect? I'm sure Shakespeare had someone correcting his grammar. In fighting and SD, these are the couch sitters that will tell you you survived wrong.  Universal-- I'm thinking of ways that bureaucracies originally designed to solve problems become self-perpetuating machines, sometimes at great cost. Cough*Rotherham*Cough.

And that's even assuming the form is based on what we think it is. Kicking with the instep is less likely to injure your target and more likely to injure you than kicking with your shin... but it makes a slapping noise that is much harder for a referee to ignore. "Ain't" was a forbidden word in my grade school. Not because it was unclear, but because our teachers wanted us to sound like s specific socio-economic class.

Like A Scientist

I've been struggling, for years now, with not being in sworn service. It shows up here on the blog, but it's more evident in the times I can't or won't or don't write. In private conversations. Or staring out over the horizon.

Teaching is fun, and (on paper) life is amazing. Four countries this year already and a new one day after tomorrow. Of the classic travel lines (Arctic and Antarctic Circles, Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, Equator and International date line) I've crossed all but one in the last six months. Amazing home, ardent love. Life is amazing. But for the last few years it has felt muted. Dull. Adrenaline makes life feel more real, and none of this ever has or ever will feel as real as going head to head with a bad guy or heading off a riot.

K and I are experimenting with new things this year. Simple things mostly. Have had most of a week to talk to Toby and spent the night before last in a sleeping bag without a tent north of the arctic circle. I feel transition coming on. A good one.

We all age and change. And, can't speak for everyone, but I suspect it's common-- there's a tendency to focus on an image of the past. Sometimes it works out. I trained so hard in martial arts because long after it was true, every time I looked in the mirror I saw the tiny, scrawny kid, the smallest kid in the redneck school. But most of the time, it's almost like we focus on whatever will make us feel worse. Or maybe it's just me.

Bragging alert: At my peak, I got the physical fitness awards from both Army BCT and the Academy. I could do over 110 pushups in 2 minutes, did a 10:50 2-mile, hand-over-hand a 10.5 mm climbing rope. At 5'8" I could jump and grab a basketball hoop and once kicked the net. That whole time, I thought I was weak and small.

And whining alert: Now over 50 years old. Lots of injuries over the last fifteen-- knee, elbow and shoulder dislocations. Long term effects of concussions. Some arthritis from broken fingers. Bones out of place in feet and ankles. Spine acting up making the hands spasm and go numb...

I've been looking at the past as a lost thing. News alert, the past is always a lost thing. Can 55-year-old Rory ever be 25-year-old Rory? Of course not. Trying to get back to a past physicality is just as toxic as a violence survivor who thinks that who they were before the incident was the "real" them and measures their progress by how far they retrogress to that "real." It's bullshit. It's a bullshit way to think. It's.Not.Useful.

 Can 55-year-old Rory ever be 25-year-old Rory? Nope. But, you know what? Nobody has any clue what 55-year-old Rory can be. No one knows what the limits are. It's never happened before. This is something to explore, not to plan. I've done the fighter thing. And the teacher thing (Don't worry, I'll continue that for a bit). The next transition will be to scientist, experimenter and explorer. What's possible? What's fun? Already feel my inner world shifting. This is going to be an interesting ride.

Scales and Interactions

Anything in the human world is a complex interaction. I have a history, a set of assumptions, a suite of facts and things I want to believe are facts, communication habits and patterns, etc. And so do you. Somewhere in the interplay between our complexities, we communicate. To a degree.

And almost everything is on a scale. Clarity of communication can be non-existent or poor or good or very close to perfect. And the clarity can be impaired at either end (I can write poorly or you can read inaccurately) or in the middle (radio static.) And clarity can be deliberately manipulated. I can choose to lie or be obscure, consciously or not. You can choose to hear something other than what I said, consciously or unconsciously.

At some point, and it's probably on a scale, choosing (manipulating) your own perception becomes the superpower of reframing.

All of this means there are some very important things that will never have a clear answer. Where is the line between education and brainwashing? Deep training changes the student at a fundamental level, and with changes that big, informed consent is impossible. There's an arrogant answer that as long as you teach "the truth" it doesn't matter, but all educational systems have believed that their mythology was objective truth. Do you really think you've evaded a trap that has caught everyone else?

Where is the line between toughening up and abuse? I feel very privileged to have had my childhood. I like who I am, and my childhood gave me the tools to function and stay sane in some relatively nasty conditions. My wife thinks my childhood was "horrific."

If you embrace the power of reframing, the recipient can literally decide if an event was good or bad, can choose the effect the event has on his or her (or my own) life. Except, what about the cult member who is perfectly happy in a life of isolation, deprivation and control? Why is it okay for me to reframe my childhood as a positive thing, but not for another adult to reframe his experience as 'joy in service?' When does reframing shift from empowerment to dodging? Where is the line between assistance and enabling?

At what point does my cheerleading ("I got over X, you can too!") Become disempowering ("So why haven't you got over it? What the hell is wrong with you?")

Speaking about this becomes murky, because not everything that is deliberate is also conscious. There are many people choosing to be assholes that never let that decision rise to their conscious mind where they might have to face responsibility. What's the best way to interact with someone who chooses to lose when I want the person to be successful?

To some extent, this is all mental masturbation. And a by-product of magnification. You can look at anything with too fine a lens and the problem becomes impossibly complex. Too coarse a lens and the problem is too blurry to see. There's a sweet spot.

Living as a human is an action. You'll never cover all of the angles, so you learn what you can, get as good as you can, and act. Over-analysis leads to inaction. Never pretend  that the complexities don't exist, however. That's one of the ways you get people doubling down on failed solutions.

Denying

The longest fight I have ever had lasted over an hour. At no time was I in any danger.

The thing was, we were dealing with an inmate who wanted to hurt himself. Lighten up for even an instant on pressure and he would start slamming his own head into the floor. Lose a grip on his wrist and he would try to gouge his own eyes.

In most situations-- self-defense, combatives, whatever-- you have a goal. Get to safety. Get the bad guy in cuffs. Whatever. In almost every case, the threat's goal is irrelevant to your goal. If the threat wants to play with me as a toy or see what someone looks like as they die or get enough cash for the next hit of meth or heroin or crack, that really doesn't affect my goal to get home in one piece.

Get this: most of the time your goal is NOT to deny the threat's goal. Most of the time your goal (go home safe or threat goes to jail) are antagonistic to the threat's goal purely as a side effect.

But, rarely, your goal is to deny the threat's goal. Your focus shifts from winning to denying the threat his idea of a win.

This is strategically dangerous. One of the golden rules of tactics is to never play the threat's game. But when you are trying to deny the threat his definition of the win, you've already ceded most of your strategy. There is no pro-active way to work from this paradigm. When your goal is denying the threat's goal, you have already let the threat define the goal. The threat controls the battlefield and has the advantage.

In long-term conflicts, "denying the opposition" has a more profound side-effect. Once you define yourself by your enemy, you can never win. Labor/management.  Israel/Palestine. To defeat your enemy would cause your raison d'être to die. And thus, you.


Note for a future post: positive versus negative, in definition and goals.

No Bullshit (Virtue)

Saw an ad offering "No Bulls**t" self defense training. That's laudable. That's the goal. For that matter "No bullshit" should be a goal for training and talking and thinking and living. But it's not that simple. The no-bullshit life is a goal, but if you ever think for one second that you've achieved it, you've just started bullshitting yourself.

We all have biases-- biases in the way that we perceive, process, think, plan... You probably know some of your physical habits (when you cross your arms, is the right or the left on the outside? Are you left or right eye dominant? Which shoe goes on first?) but not all of them. You probably know even fewer of your mental habits. And even fewer of your perceptual habits (hint-- I bet if you examine the last several big meetings of strangers the handful of people you remember will have certain things in common.)

The bullshit never goes away. Humans know surprisingly little. We have a lot of stuff in our heads, but the things we know to a certainty is a very small subset. And many of those are useful, but incorrect. The sun doesn't actually rise in the East, the sun is stationary and the earth spins...and that's not true either, because the sun isn't stationary, nor is the galaxy.

I'm never certain how much bullshit has crept in. I can't be. If I only taught the things I'm 100% scientifically certain of, all of my knowledge could be summed up with "1+1=2 as long as you limit it to inanimate objects; and things with a higher number on the Mohs scale will scratch things with a lower number."

When I teach a technique, I can be fairly confidant because I've used it. But really? Take a throat strike. I've used it exactly once. Spectacularly successful. Would absolutely use it again in the same situation... but if I read a "scientific survey" trying to extrapolate from a sample of one I'd laugh my ass off.

"No Bullshit" isn't a state. It's a scale. And a process. And that makes it one of the virtues.

We tend to have a binary way of looking at the world. Is a thing good or bad? Hard or soft? Right or wrong? I find that immature. Most things are scales, not states. Not good or bad, but better or worse. End state thinking leaves no room for improvement. "Excellent" can be improved on, "perfect" can't.
If you did a move well, you can get better. If you did the same move right, you can't.

Calling something a virtue recognizes that if it is a scale, it can also be a process. Virtuous people are not the ones being good, they are the ones striving to be better. Every day. "No bullshit" as a virtue is a commitment to challenging your own assumptions, back-tracking your beliefs to first sources. It isn't the contentious skepticism of trying to prove people wrong to score points, but to cut away all of your personal wrongness to continuously build a stronger foundation.