Apostates

This is going to be complex.

One of the tenets of Conflict Communications is that people belong in groups.  We are all members of at least one and usually many groups.  Whether that is a tribe, a school, a tradition, a family, a club, a profession or something else.  People don't survive well on their own-- either physically or psychologically.

Groups have rules.  You can call them mores (pronounced moray, like the eel) if you want to go all anthropological/sociological.  A group without rules isn't a group. NOT because rules are the bedrock of social control but because rules are the bedrock of identity.  Dietary laws may or may not have had survival value in the past.  The fact that they continue even when they do not is a sign that their primary value is one of identification.

There is no identification value in common sense.  Any society that survives will value, for instance, trust within the group and productivity.  No society will survive that doesn't value self-preservation (and this is one to look at because what someone says they value or what a group honors, like martyrdom, doesn't actually happen all that often.  The words and the music of many cultures are not truly in accord.)

This means the identity value is in the silly stuff-- the stories and myths and ritual.  A Christian is not defined as someone who is meek and kind to others and honors his parents.  A Christian is defined by the belief that a man-god got nailed to a Roman torture/execution device and quit being dead three days after being buried.  

You can follow every law and rule and live with what people might call perfect Christian ideals, but if you don't believe that piece, you can't be a member of that group.

So every group has mores that are arbitrary if not down-right weird, because those are where the group identity rises.

And this is where the edge-walkers come in.  I can't speak for everyone, but one of the things about almost dying is the way it clarifies things.  Lots of things are bullshit and once you see that, once you see the value of breathing when someone has tried hard to stop you AND you see the inevitability of the end-state of not breathing, your identity doesn't come from labels and rituals.  Maybe, in the end, your identity doesn't even need to be.

So loving your neighbor makes sense, because there is only so much time to get loving in... but heaven doesn't matter.  Heaven is not good or bad or true or untrue.  Heaven DOES NOT MATTER.  The rituals and the myths do not matter.  If I like you, what do I care about the patch on your shoulder or which party you vote for or where your ancestors came from?  If your waiken has forbidden you from eating birds, other than some menu switching, your myths don't affect my friendship (or dislike) for you.

When the edge-walker gets to this understanding, he is neither fish nor fowl.  He does fit into a tribe, in his own mind.  He values what he values- the good works and the people themselves.  He does the right thing.  He will give his life to protect these people, myths and all, and will not feel slighted or ashamed to do it.  He is one of them, on a deeper level than they can probably feel because it is not a matter of ritual and the random chance of birth.  The edge-walker chooses.

But he will no longer be accepted as one of them.  Without the rituals and the myths, the trappings, he cannot be identified.  "Because he serves us and will die for us does not mean that he is one of us."  He hears it rarely, but sees it again and again.  This is the separation, one of the most unexpected and disturbing things if you spend too much time on the edge.

Drills

Nanowrimo did not eat my life.  I'm sort of looking for an excuse, but I can't even say I've been busy.  I tend to blog more on the road than when I'm at home.  Must like it here or something...

The book was effectively done at 38k words two weeks ago.  The challenge for Nano is write 50,000 and I'm not sure the book can support that and I don't want to cheat and  write on a second book for the word count... so I'm still expanding with just under four days.  7000 words to go, which is well within reach for one day when I knowwhat needs to go on paper.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the list of chapters thus far:

Introduction

Evaluating Drills

OS: The One-Step Series

OS1: The One-Step

OS2: Four Option One-Step

OS3: The Baby Drill

OS4: Slow Man Drills

OS5: Dance Floor Melee

OS6: Frisk Fighting

OS7: Environmental Fighting

OS8 The Brawl 

B: Blindfolded Drills

B1: Blindfolded Defense

B2: Blindfolded Targeting

B3: Core Fighting

B4: Blindfolded Infighting

D: Dynamic Fighting

D1:Dynamic Fighting

D2: Sumo

D3: The Hole Against the Wall

D4: Moving in the Clinch

D5: French Randori

F: Fundamentals

F1: Maai With Weapons

F2: Offlining

F3: The Targeting Drill

F4: The Lock Flow Drill

F5: Initiative

F6: Advanced Ukemi

F7: Pushing

GM: Ground Movement

GM1: Roll-over Drill Phase 1

GM2: Roll-over Drill Phase 2

GM3: Roll-over Drill Phase 3

GM4: Roll-over Drill Phase 4

GM5: The Wax On, Wax Off of Groundfighting

GM6: One Up, One Down

GM7: Blindfolded Grappling

PM: The Plastic Mind Exercises

PM1: Animal Styles

PM2: Fighting the Elements

PM3: The Other 

IW: Internal Work

IW1: Centering

IW2: Eating Frogs

IW3: The Game of the Stones

IW4: Lists

IW5: Slaughtering and Butchering

IW6: Ethics and Glitches

IW7: To Save My Children

IW8: The Predator Mind

IW9: The Articulation Exercise

C: Combat Drills

C1: Takeouts

C2: Multiman

C3: Break Through

C4: Bull in the Ring

C5: The Reception Line

C6: Scenario Training

WW: World Work

WW1: The Clothespin Game

WW2: Ten New Things

WW3: Stalking

WW4: Escape and Evasion

WW5: Counting Coup

WW6: Dog Handling

WW7: Global Awareness Exercises

WW8: Legal Articulation

WW9: World Building Exercise

 Should probably add an afterword and I'm toying with an exercise to evaluate training to finish up, but this is the skeleton of the work.

Re-Thinking, Maybe

I’ve written before that martial arts can never be a way of life, not for me. Then I started working on the damn book of drills and maybe I’m seeing it differently.

Of the nine sections, three are almost entirely mental: Internal Work, the Plastic Mind Exercises and Working with the World. What does this mean?

Some catch it intuitively. I think that Maija and Edwin and Kasey know what I am doing even when I am struggling with defining and understanding it.

Here’s what I know:

I live in a world, a big world full of many things. Much of the world is dangerous and almost all of the world is beautiful. You can’t separate the beauty from the danger. You live in the world and, as humans, we can separate from the world… but we can’t separate from and effectively function in the world.

Martial arts or self-defense or what-have-you may or may not be something you do for the dangerous parts of the world. It might just be fun. But at very minimum, in my mind, it must be something that you do with and in the world. Otherwise it is fantasy and separation. At best masturbation. At the worst, unpleasant sweaty addictive masturbation that you believe is exactly the same as real sex.

So it’s critical when learning this (whatever this is that I teach) that you play in and with the world. That you study the world. And because you are part of it, that you study yourself. Not the imaginary self that is constant and true and good. The fluid self that changes when you are hungry. The one that you become when you are afraid or elated. The self bleeding on the edge of consciousness and the self in the cold dark places.

Learn to see. Learn your own mental plasticity and how much you can control that: how much you can choose, moment to moment, who you wish to be.

Touch the world, taste it, smell it. If you ever need to break somebody, it will be one of the most real moments of your life.

How to Read a Book

Asher writes (intermittently, lately) about teaching.  In a recent conversation, I asked him to do a series on how to learn, how to be a student.  Maybe it will bear fruit...

An example:  Once, and only once in my life, did I get a short class on how to read a book.  It wasn't about reading for pleasure, but about maximizing comprehension and retention.

Read the introduction and the table of contents first, then the glossary.  Read the endnotes (all, if they are organized at the end of the book; chapter at a time if they are organized that way.)  If there is a chapter summary or 'discussion questions' at the end of the chapter, read those next.  Skim each chapter noting pictures, reading captions and noticing all words in bold.  Read the sidebars.

Then you begin reading the book.

There is a classic teaching style: tell the students what they are about to learn, teach the material, then tell them what they just learned.  By telling the students what they are about to get, they have a huge head-start on internally organizing the material and identifying what is important.  This system does the same thing with a textbook.

When I was taught this, there was an immediate improvement in understanding, retention and test scores.  And it pissed me off:  Why wasn't this taught in grade school?  Why in the hell did I have to wait for college for a five minute class that improved the quality of my academic life so dramatically?

I want to go in different ways with the rest of this post:

• What I think all students should be taught as young as possible: How money really works; advanced first aid; preventative medicine; the scientific method, experimental design and enough statistics to know when they are being manipulated... much much more.
  
• Other tricks and tips for learning, such as the most basic rule: If you don't know, ask someone who does.
• Throw away comments or short snatches of information that changed life drastically.
• There are things like breathing and walking and living that almost everyone does and very few people do at a conscious level... very few learn to do them really well.  What goes into learning to live well?

Maybe later.  Maybe not.

Off to work on the drill manual.

Notes:

I'm working on the calendar for 2011.  If you want a seminar, workshop or private lessons, contact me.  If you're on my e-mail list, expect something soon.

I did a short talk on Anti-terrorism for a local college Thursday.  Definitely not my specialty.  The good news: I actually have a huge amount of data. The bad news: Almost all of it is under confidentiality agreements and I couldn't use most of my primary sources.

Talks coming up Monday and Tuesday at another local college: one on investigative interviewing, the other on roots of conflict.

Teaching another Savvy Authors on-line course starting November 29th.  This one is on Use of Force policy.  

Suspension of Disbelief

One of my close friends is a writer, martial artist, and is exploring some aspects of teaching. After the con we were discussing, as we are wont to do, martial arts, self-defense and teaching methods. I told her of a recent experience where I had declined to do a drill because it had no tactical use. It would only be ingraining a bad habit.

She said, "Beginning training requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief."

Suspension of disbelief is a term authors use. When you read a novel or watch a movie, you have to participate. Not everything will be correct. If the characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy had had 3 digits of IQ, it would have been a twenty minute movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jet Li fight scenes don't follow the normal rules of physics or physiology. Most horror movies wouldn't work without a cast stupid enough to go into the basement alone and too stupid to turn on the light...

Part of the audience's job is to actively ignore the small problems. When the plot holes become too big or the characters too stupid or (my pet peeve) when the plot hinges on the stupidity of characters presented as intelligent (The remake of "The Thomas Crown Affair") the suspension of disbelief is said to be shattered.

Obviously, every member of the audience will have a different threshold.

Check me on this, because it seems intuitively obvious to me and I can't find a counter-example, which either means I'm right or it is too much a part of my identity and is one of my blindspots:

Suspension of disbelief has no place in a valid teaching.

There are some things you will be taught that you can't test right away. Engineers learn the math it takes to build a bridge long before they ever build one. But no place in that learning process will they look at the teacher and say, "This doesn't make sense" and the teacher won't be able to explain why it makes sense and exactly how it works.

If you have to suspend disbelief, if the instructor has to say, "Because it's better this way" and can't say how or (a martial arts classic) you are told that something that simply doesn't work (like hand blocking an attack from a much larger person) will magically start to work after a few years, one of two things is happening:

1) The instructor has no idea what he is doing. He is simply parroting things he has been told but doesn't understand himself.

2) Or what you are learning is fiction.

Suspension of disbelief has a legitimate function in fiction. If you are required to suspend disbelief, you are dealing with fiction.

Like I said, check me on this. My gut says if I have to pretend things make sense, they don't make sense. I am being lied to.

And yeah, I see other aspects of our society where I can apply this rule.

Cons

Science Fiction cons, specifically.

Cons are not, obviously, my natural environment. Raised mostly without a television. Don't read fiction (much-- a few special requests from close friends). Not particularly interested in dressing up in costumes and my life is interesting enough that pretending to be a dead guy (vampire or zombie) really wouldn't be an upgrade.

But my lovely wife writes and serves on the group that sets up our local convention, Orycon. So I go and, by dint of being published and knowing a little about things that often make their way into fiction (violence and bad guys) I wind up on panels. It's also fun because I get to see friends (Steve and Kai post here sometimes; Bart is always a treat and a few others...) and meet people.

Secretly, I enjoy being the grumpy guy who doesn't read fiction. Perspective.

I have friends here, but I never feel like I fit in. Very much an outsider. That changed a little this time, and that was a big insight: For the last couple of years, Bart and I have been having fun, talking about shared experiences-- two outsiders. This year, Bart brought a special friend and I found a critical mass effect. Two of us are two outsiders... three of us and I started to feel like a separate group. Started looking at the 'others' a little harder, a little less sympathetically. I am far more polite as an outsider on my own than as a member of an outgroup... Good to know, good to feel.

The 'put into words' award: Sometimes you find the line between person and monster when you cross the line. That never makes it right, but crossing the line once is recoverable.

Experimented with a way to teach and explore violence, letting groups of people imagine/create societies to solve problems...and in the process they discovered ritual murder and raiding; war cultures and war for cultures where that is not natural; brainstormed ways to deal with those who become good at war; and decided how to deal with those who broke the social rules...mostly without losing the person as a resource.

Had a very powerful cognitive dissonance at one point: There is a panel about writing across identity lines. Authors are often nervous about writing different cultures, races, genders and classes. They are afraid of getting it wrong, whether wrong is defined as stereotyping or unrealistic details. The people on the panel were good, sincere and experienced. I think I was on the panel as someone who had spent time blending and coexisting with other cultures.

The moderator cautioned newbie writers to actually talk to people of the group they wanted to describe, "If you don't, you are working from things you have only read, which might be second or third hand from other people who have only read about the problem."

Hit me at two levels, the first is that I think this is what has happened in most fiction with fight scenes and crime and motivations and a dozen other things. Very few writers have ever sat down with a bookie in Little Italy...almost all have seen The Godfather, and other movies derived from The Godfather.

The second is that almost every reference mentioned by the panelists was (with only one exception I remember), fiction. Hmmm.

Good time, met some good people. Some time with good old friends. Lunch with Steve Perry. Dinner with Mike Shepherd Moscoe. Kai, Mark, Sonia, Bart, Nisi and some new friends. A few people seen in passing: Mary Rosenblum, Leah, CS Cole...

Very tired.

Old School

I was listening to a song today. It was a bit of a spoof, maybe but the music is good, the vocals are outstanding (Frankie Laine) and some of the words. the song was the theme to Blazing Saddles, and the words that got me:

He rode a blazing saddle

He wore a shiny star

His job to offer battle

To bad men near and far

There was a time when people generally recognized that there was good and bad in the world. People were raised with enough of a grounding that most agreed on the basic behaviors that constituted good or bad. And it wasn't enough to try to understand or sympathize. Bad had to be fought. Wherever bad men did bad things the only hope has always been a good man or good woman who will stand up and stop them. Offer battle. The bad guy may back down, but force or the credible threat of force is the only thing that has ever stopped someone bent on violence.

I have my personal definition of bad and evil. A bad guy will hurt someone to get what he wants. Evil will hurt someone even if there is nothing to gain. It's simple, but it works for me... until you get into the whiny bullshit that hurt feelings are the same as being injured or that someone not giving you stuff is the same as someone taking your stuff away.

But there I go, being old school again.

First Ever Guest Post

Bad Billy G, Bill Giovannucci sent an e-mail with something he'd considered as a reply to an old post. I think it stands alone.

Bill teaches Uechi-ryu karate in Quincy, MA. He's also a nice guy. And laid me out with a football tackle in an Active Shooter scenario a month ago.

Bill Writes:

I’ve always thought most people were crazy, myself included. I don’t think its because normal is relative, but because 'Normal' is obviously not true. It does not exist anywhere else but in our shared descriptions of the world. People will often define their own reality as truth. Entire cultures are constructed around shared ideals, but they are not automatically true, just
a way to convey meaning. Why it happens in people is explicable in psychology I suppose. I’m not sharp there. What is happening though, is a flaw in the reasoning process. Beliefs take hold without ever involving other views and active world experience. We know people can literally think ourselves into believing anything is true.

Our job everyday is to make sense of the world. We are immersed in it with others like us, but each trapped in our own little head. It’s scary. It is not comforting to be acutely aware of that all the time. We seek to assign meaning, to understand and organize all the information in order to connect and perceive ourselves, our world. We eventually learn to trust our created meanings because it is too much work to constantly evaluate the accuracy and nuances of our perceptions. We fool ourselves into thinking we've figured it out all the time.

Two posts ago Rory got me thinking deeply about perspective in this way. That was a popular post. I think the only way to acquire new knowledge is to make sure you never really believe you know everything about anything ...I think Socrates. In this, the things you are certain of are convictions. They will always be passing your active tests because you have chosen to observe your active experience in the physical world. Principles, because they can be recognized as commonalities, repeated and tested are key to granting advantage to your knowledge base. It is dangerous to believe in something if you do not fully recognize its working
principles. But, the more you can find them the more intuitive you become. It will be easier to understand new stuff, to recognize what is valuable to your Way. You know if it is something to take or discard. You won’t be as inclined to hang onto things you don’t need because you know you will be able find them again easily. Perceptions get sharper.

Learning humility probably helps. We don't value or employ that gift nearly enough. People with a healthy degree of true humility tend to have accurate personal realities and other ambitions than claiming righteousness. They keep from losing heir way, unlike those a bit lost inside themselves without real perspective. Other folks misunderstand, or maybe choose to accept personal and shared ideals as true and never perceive contradictions as even relevant.

There are theoretical ‘levels of understanding’. I forget them exactly. We switch between these as we process. If you watch, it is noticeable and noteworthy that most people never operate beyond a certain level of understanding about who and what they are within multiple layers of context. We cannot avoid it because we need immediate usefulness of casual thought. It is easier than the effort it takes to get out there and think of everything from every possible perspective all the time. And, if we do know to do it, it is still work to construct a belief system based on both reason AND active experience. Also, as with physical skills, it is essential to maintain your perspective to be sure it is has not become irrelevant.

On the Table

Maija wins the contest.  I am almost 20,000 words into a drill and exercise manual.  I hate it already, but that is just my normal reaction to my own writing.  It's covering some interesting material, I think, and has more mental exercises than many martial artists may have been exposed to.

Gearing up for Orycon next weekend.  It should be fun, and I'll be on at least one panel with Steve, which is always a blast.  I also have two early morning Fight Club solo presentations and I'm working out a new (experimental) way to get people without a lot of history or experience to visualize different forms of violence.  Motivation, context and goo.

Great news-- One of my LAs (translator) from Northern Iraq has received his special visa.  I'm his sponsor, so Dlshad will be coming to live with us possibly by the end of the month.  I'm excited, but we have to rush on converting K's office to a guest room.

Will be starting to put together the seminar schedule for 2011 by the end of the month, basically contacting people who have expressed interest and seeing who wants to lock in a date.  I expect to do a lot of traveling next year... (BTW, if any readers are interested, contact me.)

Johari Window

This came up earlier. I don't know if the Johari window is still taught in introductory psych courses. It's a fairly simple concept.

Imagine a square. In that square is everything there is to know about you.
Imagine a horizontal bar in that square. Above the bar are the things you know about yourself. below that bar are the things you don't know about yourself. There are a million things you don't know about yourself. Some are obvious: how you will act under pressure you have never experienced; things you have never learned to see. Some bring up some deep denial: all the things you think are cool but annoy others; all the times you are playing to an imaginary audience as you interact in life.
Imagine a vertical line in the square. All the things on the left are the things that others know about you. All the things on the right of the line are the things that they do not know. You deeper dreams and fantasies and history and...

It is important to realize that others know things about you that you do not. Who you think we see and who we actually see are not the same and often the person on the outside sees more accurately. the one on the outside doesn't see the voices in our heads making excuses and creating false explanations and rationalizations. They just see what we do.

So the window divides into four quarters, the relative size of each section different for each person:

The things that only we know about ourselves.

The things that everyone knows.

The things that others know and we do not.

The things that no one knows.

On that level, the quest in life is the same: to open the window and see as much about ourselves as possible. We can't see our own blindspots and it is only through friends (or sometimes enemies) that tell us what they see that we get anywhere on our quest.

Loving and Caring

I've looked for this story off an on for years.  It was right on the edge of the internet age, something I read in the local paper.  It disturbed me much at the time and still does.

Police were called to an apartment somewhere in the metro Portland area.  Neighbors had noticed a smell.  In the apartment they found a baby, maybe two years old, wearing a disposable diaper packed with waste.  Bowls of milk and stale peanut butter sandwiches were on the floor.

The mother, it seems, was afraid her new boyfriend would leave her if he found out she had a child.  So she didn't tell him and when they went away for a weekend or a week, she would put out bowls of milk and plates of sandwiches.  And put on a clean diaper.

She was indignant that she was charged with child neglect, even more indignant at people who said she didn't love her baby.  As near as I can remember she said, "Of course I love my baby.  Anyone who has seen us together will see that!"

I'm going to make a value judgment here: Immature people confuse their feelings with the world.  And feel that the feelings are more important than the physical world.  You feel a swelling chest and your throat gets dry when you see your main squeeze.  Must be true love, so it's okay if you slap her around occasionally. Bullshit.

Feeling good doesn't make an action good.  People who feel pretty damn good about themselves (anti-social and narcissistic personality disorders, for example) leave trails of broken hearts or broken bodies behind them.

It hit me hard in New York City.  Everyone I talked to loved the The City.  They gushed about it.  They told me all the ways it was wonderful.  

Not once did I see a single person, except for me, pick up some trash.  It may be wonderful, but it was filthy, with people throwing bales of advertising leaflets to the wind and puking in the streets.  A lot of people expressing love, no one showing simple caring.  Is it really love if it never involves lifting a finger to help?  Or is it the natural self-centerdness of people who can feel their emotions and decide the feeling is enough.  "I feel love, so I don't need to express it."

Thoughts tangle here-- people who have never volunteered to help in a major disaster but need therapy for that disaster, even though they weren't there and knew no one who was.  People who express a rage about a group or political party, but they express a rage about the other's rage that they only imagine, sublimely showing that they are, at a very deep level, what they claim the other to be.  Is it their righteousness that makes their animosity and bigotry acceptable in their own minds?  Or do they simply not see it?  People who want to be loved and appreciated and feel oppressed when asked what they have ever done that is worthy of appreciation...

Dark thoughts, perhaps.

Self esteem, self love, increases violence in people who are already violent.  Of course, the counter argument is that high self-esteem that increases violence isn't self-esteem at all but narcissism. Tomayto, tomahto.

November 2010

This is looking to be the quietest month in some time.

I'll be at Orycon 32 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Portland, OR November 12-14, mostly doing panels for writers but with some play time.  I'm going to experiment with a new format for getting people who live largely in their heads to envision different types of violence and play with the physical aspects.

There will be another Savvy Authors class on-line, this one on Police Force Policies.  It will draw heavily from a book under consideration at my publisher right now.

Other than that, I'm free.  Which means some relaxing home time.  It also means I'm more available than ever for private lessons and local workshops.  I like doing nothing, but I really prefer doing something.

------------------------------------------------

Enough with the business end.  This is the kind of stuff I think about on long drives:

Poetry involves tweaking grammar and convention so that the lines have patterns.  The patterns reflect or complement each other.  This is meter, and it is one of the artistic pleasures of reading poetry.

Rhyming is arranging the poem so that the last syllable(s) of the words in each line or in a specific pattern of lines sound the same.  Alliteration is starting each word with the same sound.

Do people born deaf catch these aspects when they read poetry?  When someone's native language is sign, is there an equivalent art like choosing words where the right hand is in a particular position or location at the end of a line (visual rhyming?) Or tweaking the grammar so that there is a rhythmic visual pattern (meter)?

I don't know anyone who was born unable to hear... and I would love to ask these questions.  That would be a fascinating conversation.

Steve's Street Cred

Steve posted on his blog and I got contacted, blah, blah, blah... Steve and I thought it would be good to use it as a jumping off point for some thoughts. The italic stuff will be mine, the regular text is Steve's original post.

Right off, this isn't a debate or an argument. Like any two people, Steve and I see things differently. We also guess about what the other sees, feels or means. There is a lot of potential for learning in the gap between what the guy outside and the guy inside the skin see.

A bit more on the violence thing. Most of you here will assume that when I post such things about the reality guys, I am talking about Rory Miller and Mac and the other hardcore dudes like that.

You're right. I am. But it's not meant to be derogatory when I offer it.

And I know this. Steve understands and respects differences in perspective. I don't think he could write convincingly if he didn't

A couple thoughts to clarify things ...

I like Rory, and I believe what he teaches is valid and valuable. I've reviewed all his books, given them raves.

This is mutual...except for the valid and valuable, since Steve writes fiction after all... (joke).

I also believe that what he teaches is mostly geared for, and aimed at, people who are apt to find themselves in scuffles regularly. It's from and for people whodeliberately put themselves in harm's way. Soldiers, cops, bouncers, folks who go forward knowing things are about to get active.

No. Not at all. And this is a huge disconnect. The hard-core operators know this stuff. According to e-mails, what they really get from my work is 1) a feeling that someone else 'gets it'. Even within the operator world, it can get pretty isolated. You can be a qualified operator and never be activated. You can be activated and never see trouble...and some people, through luck or inclination or whatever see a lot, and it makes them think. there's comfort when you find other people are thinking the same things.

2) I seem to put things into words that they know on a gut level, and that's comforting too and

3) The words make it easier to teach to rookies.

But pretty much by definition, if I blow someone's mind, they weren't an operator.

As Rory has been all those things and has not-walked-but-run into the room as the shit hit the fan, I might be excused for thinking that's where he likes to play. I think he gets bored if somebody is not shooting at him -- and barely missing.

He has specialized knowledge, worth diamonds to people who need it. As he points out, he does violence for money.

That's a long way from where most of us live. It colors one's world.

Absolutely. I'm not sure if this is the place to express it, but there is no way to get the cumulative experience of violence while living a peaceful life. It does color my world. But the people who won't experience it more than once or twice in their lives will never get the underlying factors, will never even get the adrenaline under control enough to see what happens in so few encounters. Someone who has had sex a hundred times just understands it better than someone who has only had sex once. And way better than someone who has only fantasized about it. It doesn't mean that the lessons can only be understood by gigolos and hookers.

We want him on the wall. We need him on the wall. But on one level, I get the sense that he mostly wants to swap stuff with the other guys on the wall. (You might can add serious martial artists to the teaching pool, in that they are willing to pug in practice, and thus aren't completely against the idea of thumping or sticking somebody, should the need arise. People who could never hurt a fellow human being even in defense of their own lives don't seem to be good candidates for reality fighting.)

Absolutely true... for me. Because I get my learning from other guys who have been there. I really can't learn anything useful from someone who has only imagined my world. So, absolutely, I prefer to spend time with operators. Experienced martial artists, not so much. This may be my perspective but many of the 'experienced' are so choked with delusion that it is almost detrimental to talk to them. Back to the sex analogy, collecting belts or collecting porn aren't that much difference. Thirty years of memorizing centerfolds still isn't having sex. (man, I am going to get so many hits for this post off of perverts doing google searches). There are some exceptions, pure martial artists who can improve my body mechanics, but they are damn few.

When he's talking to guys like me, chair-sitters old enough to be his father, or people who hike a long detour to avoid the mean streets, he has to dial it down. We need to know about it, to be sure. We might need some of it someday, and it'll be worth diamonds if we do. But "might" and "surely will" are two different horses.

This is another disconnect, cause when things go bad it gets binary very fast. If you have basic common sense, you probably won't need it, but if you do (home invasion, workplace shooting, Bonding GMD) you will need it all, and probably at a level greater than I do. For me it is a surely. For civilians, it is a possibly... but if the civilian needs it the stakes and the obstacles will both be astronomical. There is no middle ground here.

Big attitude change from "this might happen" to "whenthis happens 'cause it's gonna."

And that creates an incentive to train smarter, (or, if you want to look at it this way) allows civilians to train stupid and it won't matter a lick...until it kills one or two.

Here's where I keep coming down to it: I can't tell you what it's like to be a soldier, cop, or bouncer, because I've never been one.

I think it's hard for Rory to tell you what it's like to be a civilian, because he's never been one.

Sounds cool, but nope. One of the neat things about our society is that there are no castes. Every cop has been a citizen. Every soldier has at least been a high school student. I was the shy science nerd. Mac was the hippie studying library science at Maharishi Mahesh University. We all, at one point, had our first fights. My training was world-class...and I was largely unprepared. What I do with my teaching, is to try to let people in on the stuff that I didn't get from martial training. The holes that left me unprepared. It is a huge list.

So my classes aren't mostly composed of cops and soldiers. There are a few and I think it has more to do with camaraderie than anything. But the majority are what you call serious martial artists who are just coming to terms with the fact that they know almost nothing about violence. They have spent decades honing a tool to be used if they are ever faced with violence, and they don't know what an assault looks like, or how to see one coming or what the opponents and attacks they will have to defend against even look like. How do criminals get you alone? How is a knife really used? How does a predator find out where to set up his ambush? What's the fastest way to tell a dominance game from a predatory interview? How do criminals get you to lower your guard? What does it feel like to kill or cripple another human? Why do so many people freeze and what can you do? What does adrenaline really do and how do you compensate for it?

So many questions and most people go their whole martial career and never ask them. That's what I do. Cops know this stuff.

Long Ago, in a Galaxy...

When I started in martial arts, there were lots of hints about mystical bullshit. When you got to your blackbelt level you would gain powers that weren't quite like the ones on TV, but really close. So I was told (often, it was one of my obsessions) that all expert martial artists learned to heal as well as destroy... but the people making that claim had somehow never got around to learning that part of it.

There were secret strikes that could only be divulged after your character was tested, but no matter how tested you were it wasn't quite time...and then you might happen to overhear the person withholding the information ask his instructor, and you might even hear him get the same run around. The mystical knowledge wasn't there.

But people want it and they want it bad. People really like magic. And if enough people want something, someone will supply it for money or sycophants or just for ego. And the cool thing about supplying magic is that the people buying it will do all the heavy work, suspending disbelief.

So I was attracted to instructors who not only could do things, but could explain it. If the instructor had amazing skills and his students sucked, he either couldn't teach or was deliberately withholding...and if the instructor sucked and the students thought he was amazing, it was a religion, not a self-defense class.

Brent Yamamoto and Kris Wilder, under the tutelage of Hiroo Ito, are doing some amazing stuff. Stuff that harkens back to the legends I heard as a wee beginner. It's not mystical. It is structure and slaving (in the engineering sense) small motions to big muscles. Applying bone rather than muscle. They are doing the things that the internal stylists talk about, but because they are learning and not parroting, they can apply them moving and even fighting, something I have seen rarely in internal stylists.

And they can teach. Their students are picking it up. Applying it.

My reductionist side wants to take it down even further, but that can wait.

For now, I know two men in the Seattle area, NW Martial Arts in Bothell and West Seattle Karate, who are teaching some of the things that the instructors in the eighties pretended to know.

--------------------------------------

Billings, Montana this Saturday. I'll be going through Spokane Thursday night if anyone wants to meet on the route.

A Little Contest

NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, begins in ten days. The challenge is to complete a book of at least 50,000 words in thirty days.

My writer's group will all be on board, and so I will as well, with the caveat that I don't (generally) write fiction.

So I'm kicking it out to you. We'll make it a contest. You suggest in the comments what you want me to write about next. I'll pick a winner and give myself thirty days to write the first draft of that book. If it falls into a category that my regular publisher will be interested in and it holds up... the person who suggested the subject and title will get a signed copy. If it doesn't fit that category, I'll do it as an e-book and e-mail a copy to the winner.

So, since there's a chance that multiple people might want the same subject, you have to suggest a subject, a title (especially since I suck at titles) and leave enough information in the post that I can contact you (or at least give you a shout out) so I know where to send the results.

New Thing

With immense thanks to Steve Perry, I uploaded my first e-book last night at Smashwords.

It's the (much expanded) lessons from the Savvy Authors/RWA class on Violence for Writers from a few months ago. The formatting and uploading were surprisingly easy. The first cover design rocked, but unfortunately I don't have rights to two of the pictures (a friend-of-a-friend's picture from the al-Sadr Hotel bombing in Baghdad and one of a particularly bloody cell extraction)... but my lovely and talented wife came through with a nice cover.

If I get the time, I'll have to add it to my regular website and maybe put a paypal button right here for direct access.

Off to Seattle in a few hours for the two day seminar there. There's still room if anyone is interested. Details are at the usual place.

As Kai kindly pointed out, here's the link to the specific book:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/27439

You can read about a third of it.

Nostalgia

I'm going to write the post now and set it to show up tomorrow. I do have a lot to write about the East Coast, but the blog is for me and there is other stuff echoing in my head right now.

Lunch today with an old friend and a new friend. I spent most of it catching up with Sean, listening to the changes at the old agency; the mistakes and politics and much of it, it seemed, was about broken people. Some good news, as always. Good people shine in shitty situations... but others seem to enjoy making shitty situations worse and murkier.

Then I stopped by the range to see another old friend. I should have expected it, but there were many old friends there. I caught them on a break so we were able to talk for a few minutes. The nostalgia hit hard driving home. These are extraordinary men* doing a dangerous, difficult and thankless job. They are the best of everything it is to be a man: intelligent, dedicated, trustworthy, courageous. MR will have his doctorate soon, may have it already, and teaches at a local college... at the same time he has been a father figure to new officers, a tactical operator and a fighter. Each of them is a story like that.

I know these men as efficient fighters; cold, level-headed planners; and good, friendly people. Dedicated family men. Those who have been thrust into the position are leaders. Not managers, but true leaders. Every last one of them has risked serious injury again and again to help others, and often the people they were helping are the kind of people that most civilians pretend not to see when they ask for lose change, or get outraged when they hear of their crimes.

I miss it. I miss the job and most of all I miss these people. If brother was a matter of choice, MP and SC would be my brothers. I hope my son grows up to be the kind of man that BW projects so effortlessly. If I were to be stuck in a room for years with one voice to talk to, it would be MR.

*Just so happened everyone there was male... trust me, the ladies who do this job can more than hold their own in every way.

Synthesis

Pieces of what follows will be from memory, so please forgive if the quotes are not exact.

RJ Nash, in "Condition Black" notes that the most common attack (male on female) is for the man to merely display a weapon, make a threat, and put his hand on the victim's upper arm and lead her away. It sounds so docile, so unlikely. Who would go along with a mere threat? Why wouldn't she simply...

Teja Van Wicklen, of Devi Protective Offense consistently finds the words to make things real: "It's not like screaming and bullying. Guys don't get that. He can hurt her and she knows it, but he says, 'I know you're afraid. Don't worry. Just don't fight me and I won't hurt you. I promise.' And she chooses to believe him even though she knows it's a lie-- an unsolicited promise is always a lie-- but she doesn't see another way."

Teja makes it personal, makes it real. I teach it dry, academic: Predators want you in your social brain. As long as you are being social, thinking you can control or at least influence the outcome by social skills (talking, bargaining, appeasement, flattery...) the predator knows you are both safe and completely predictable. If you are in your thinking, human brain, you might be smarter than the threat. If you are in your reptilian survival brain, there is no limit to the harm you might do. If your attacker can keep you in your social/monkey brain he knows that he is safe.

When I teach that the first hit after you break out of a freeze is done at half power, it is an observation. No one hits hard in their first strike of their first fight, not when they are surprised. For some unknown reason, it is almost always a tentative, half-power, powder puff. Almost more a signal of intent than a strike. I tell students that and caution them against it.

Teja talks of the consequences: "She tries to fight, but that first hit is half power, like you say, more struggling than fighting and he hits her back, hard. She's never felt pain like that and she is afraid to try again... and he says, again, 'Just don't fight me and I won't hurt you.' She has to believe it because it seems like the only chance she has is to believe he is telling the truth."

There are aspects of problems that I can never fully understand. We are all wired differently, all have different experiences. Teja is fast becoming my Subject Matter Expert for women's self-defense issues. Partially because she sees it so clearly but even more because she can explain it in a way that gets through.

A Few Tired Notes

I'm tired. My voice is shot. It's been a long not-quite-three weeks.

Basil Kemble came through with the venue like a champ and turned out to be a very cool young man. A lot of history and insight in a relatively low number of years. He'll be one to watch in the future.

This trip has been a journey on a lot of levels. New friends. New places. Finding commonalities with instructors who I really admire. Finding some new ways to put things into words, thought and action. This-- learning and exploring-- is what life should be, at least for me.

Some of it is a blur. In a sleep deprived haze on a train I wrote almost three pages of notes on the first two weeks. I could write as much on the last two days as well. Almost as much, anyway. Far too much for a single post..and as usual, I forgot to even take my camera out of the bag for the seminar today.

As always, so much we didn't get to...but so much that we did. I think a lot of people got a taste of the things I rate as important: how violence breaks down; that efficiency is the point of training; that they can measure their own efficiency; a little bit of what is in this world...

But no one got more than a taste. The big question, the one I will never have an answer to, is what will they do with the taste? I saw a few learn something, be impressed by the increase (in power or efficiency or tactical use) of a thing, and then go right back to moving just as they had done before. Most adapted, but some didn't and that always comes down to the teacher. How do I reach him? How do I explain to her?

I can argue that the student has responsibility for what they learn, I tell them to take that responsibility and own it... but when I am the teacher the responsibility is on me. Not because this is true, but because it is the only part of the equation I can control...

But what will they do with their taste? Hopefully research and learn more. Question. Healthy doubt. Move for effect instead of approval. Never separate judgment from application: "Just because this will work, does that mean it is the smart thing to do?" Will they keep the precious distinction between knowing how to fight and knowing when to fight?

Jack Hoban was a treat. It was a privilege to join his class in New Jersey. I loved what he said about filling space and seeing space; that technique was the absolute least important aspect of fighting-- many things.

But he taught something that blew me away. Ethics is integral to combat. It's a big section of the next book since if you train without regard for your personal internal beliefs, you will freeze. Force law and policy is the study of the ethics of violence.

A few times in my life in a major fight, I've focused energy as a care taker, tried not to hurt the threat, tried to talk him down in the midst of a struggle. Give him a face saving way to end things without injury. In the middle of a fight it has always felt extremely high-risk. I don't like the bad guy to have time to think. But it has worked very well. For me.

It never occurred to me to try to teach it. Too high-risk, and when it worked I was never really sure why. Jack Hoban teaches it. That in the midst of a fight, you can do what is best for both of you. I thought, for a jail-guard thug, I was relatively compassionate. I'm not even in the ballpark of what Jack is doing.

Cool. New levels. New paths. New mountains.

The Better Half

Once upon a time something very bad was (possibly) going to happen. I called home and asked for my gear bag. Ten minutes later, K dropped the bag off at a potentially unsafe place. She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t ask for reassurance. She never tried to make anything about her. “Call me when it’s over,” she said. Nothing else.

The perfect operator’s wife.

I realized today… during all the cool stuff: the hours, days, weeks and months of training; the fights and tactical ops; the time spent in Iraq and Ecuador… K made it all possible.

Somehow, the house keeps going. The first week I was enroute to Baghdad, the truck broke down, the pump went out that supplies water from the well, the dryer died. All handled. Kids and animals, acreage and small farm, livestock, the rambling house with all the books. K keeps it going. The kids are strong and smart and beautiful. Not my doing, I wasn’t here enough.

It suddenly hit me today that I only know half of the story of my own life. For every thing that I have done or experienced, someone was always taking care of the other half.