I'm Being the Bad Guy

I feel like a blue meanie.  Normally, I like initiative.  Normally, I think I'm pretty good at finding the common ground and getting dialogue and change.  Not this time. This time I just want to cut my losses and move on.

The problem child came to me through at least two other people who tried to work with him and failed.  First impressions are pretty positive- intelligent, friendly, tries to be helpful.  Over the weeks it has become abundantly clear that every last one of those virtues can be perverted into a vice.  Super intelligent guy... but absolutely incapable of accepting that he has no knowledge of the specialized field we work in. None. Nada. Zip.  Since he can't accept that, he just keeps trying to help.  Like by telling the specialists how to do the job.  Or explaining to others what is going on when he doesn't have a clue himself.

Very, very friendly... which means he has no boundaries, and that doesn't work when you are surrounded by criminals, officers and soldiers. He is completely incapable of understanding when he is getting on someone's nerves even when he is explicitly told.  If you say, "You're getting on my last nerve. Get out of here and leave me alone."  He won't- he will sulk and whine and demand attention.  That was the last straw with the last team he worked with.

And helpful?  He's pleased and honored to make command decisions for you and tell everyone else what you've decided. Without asking you. Just to be helpful.

My usual tactic with this is to be very explicit about what I am doing, what I am saying and why.  Communication is about passing information.  The information is important, the method or my feelings or your feelings are secondary... but your feeling will affect how you listen, so they become a part of the question.  Basically, I use a completely different communication style with a young, eager, up-and-coming junior leader than I do with an old political player who is jealous of his position and worried that someone might know something he doesn't.

I explained the reasoning behind this, pointed out how much progress I've made in some dead zones.  My little friend says, "No. You complicate things too much. You should just talk the way that makes you comfortable."

"But they won't listen."

"Doesn't matter as long as it is easier for you." Which, of course, means easier for him.  Better to fail easily than to win if it takes effort. The pay is the same either way.

I had to give the 'expectations speech'- a list of behaviors expected and lines not to cross and the consequences.  I'm hoping he will listen, but I would place a large bet that he will alternate between sulking and sucking up for several weeks.

On the good side, he's inspired me to write an article on how to utilize an interpreter.

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555th post, according to my dashboard.

55th review on Amazon and the latest is by Bob Orlando.  My head swelleth somewhat.

Stuttering at the Finish Line

I hate everything I write.  Not usually, just now. 

That a sure sign I'm getting to the end of the piece.  It's partially the writing- each identifiable part of the language is leaping at me:  "See spot run." Hits me as VERB(predicate)-SUBJECT- VERB(accusative)... GODDAMN IT! WHERE'S the OBJECT of the sentence? An implied 'You'??!!? Damnit!

It's also physical. The bench I like to write on which has always been just fine was too short yesterday. The keyboard wobbled. Other things suddenly seem important.  I should be beyond playing games with myself and in some things I am. Writing isn't one of them.  What I do will affect a few people. What I write could affect many.  If you write (or paint or perform music or even fight) for others, you are putting your soul out there.  Out to be judged. Possibly to be hammered.  Almost always by people who have never taken a similar risk.

It's not a big deal.  I'm a big boy and if I'm not pretty comfortable with what I have to say I keep my mouth shut. My unconscious is less mature and has its own reasons. When "Meditations" came out it affected my life. Mostly in positive ways but in a few very negative ones.  The monkey part of my brain cringes at the negative. Whatever.

It's go time. A last little push, feedback from some first readers, then re-write and possibly co-opt some research help (it sucks being this far away from my library).

It's Just Life

Last week was dust storms. Yesterday was so clear that the mountain and the shrubs on the mountain looked like they were cut with razors for a drama backdrop.  Today, at noon, the sun was almost directly overhead in an inverted bowl of impossibly clean blue.  All around, 360 degrees, exactly two fingers above the mountains that surround this valley, were scattered white clouds in  a ring.

It was so beautiful that it looked fake, impossible. As if it was all a show for my benefit.  Don't look for the man behind the curtain.  You might see him. Or there may be nothing but howling wind and void.  Still... today was a beauty that no artist would dare put in a painting for fear of being called "too symmetrical" and "unnatural".

Last night was sad songs and missing people I love.  Yesterday was funny- looking for some "yellow vipers" that "jumped right over my head" in a storage area.  Snakes in that storage area? If I was a snake I'd hide out there.  I was more skeptical of the jumping story. On the other hand, I've seen an ostrich in a sweater around here, so who am I to judge?

I evidently got an offer so ribald and improper that my translator refused to translate, just turned bright pink and stumbled all over himself. I need a new translator if I'm missing out on the funny stuff.

And, adding to the list of frisbee and skipping rocks, I may have introduced another pastime to the region- shooting rubberbands.  Strange to meet a man who has worked in an office most of his adult life and had not only never shot a rubberband but never seen it done.  I wonder what is missing in my home environment that would be just as obvious to him if the roles were reversed and he was the stranger.

The Estate Sale

We got our challenge coins today, shiny little bits of metal to commemorate the mission.  Something we will always be able to hold onto and say, "Yeah, I was there."

Al put it in perspective: "When they hold my estate sale there's going to be a shoe box full of this stuff and the bidding will start at two bucks. For the whole box."

Yeah. Think about that. Everyplace I try to take it brings up other things.  Mostly wise, few very comfortable.

But I get a sly smile thinking about a grandkid packing the box and saying, "Mom, what is this? Where the hell did grandpa get all this stuff?" And then sitting back and listening to stories, feeling the weight of the coins or the rings or the stones...

Anyway- Happy Father's day to those who have earned it. Love your kids today.

And Happy Solstice.  Enjoy a long, sweaty, healthy summer.

A Working Professional

Steve just posted something.  It might not appear directly relevant to the stuff I discuss here, maybe, but something in it resonated and it is running parallel to a lot of things that go on here.

"I'm a working pro, I've been involved in half a dozen major universes, doing TV, books, comics, game tie-ins, all like that, I've never spilled the beans before and it would be professional suicide to do so now. Why would you think I would?"

That.  Right there.  I am a working professional.  I get paid to deal with bad guys or to teach other people how to deal with them in high-risk environments.  There is a small chance on any given day that a citizen will get ambushed or targeted by predators. I put myself in that environment. For money.

A working professional in  Steve's profession knows about 'the bible'.  I know about P&P.  P&Ps change and are just as different as bibles; force laws change state by state by country by ROE. 

Steve gets impatient when a newbie writer who has a few Creative Writing classes and some time in a critique group under his belt starts telling the old man how to do it, or telling Steve that he's wrong.  Or that the leader of his writer's group has sold a couple of stories so the newbies opinion is just as valid as Steve's.  Too many aspiring writers take the classes and do the critiques groups and never have careers.

Same same.   Your years in a class or the people that you know who have won competitions or the fact that one of your fellow students or instructors has prevailed in an assault won't impress me.  I could make a list to parallel Steve's above- I've worked booking, max and psych, been ambushed and conducted tactical operations; survived attacks with knives and faced down shotguns, gone hands on in facilities, on the street in homes and in war zones ...  I made a conscious decision to quit counting my Uses of Force at three hundred and that was over ten years ago.

Professional writers don't think about writing the way amateurs do.  Maybe that goes for everything that clearly has hobbyists and professionals.  You do anything long enough, well enough, you start learning things that a hobbyist can't know- which editors hate stories that begin with dialogue; which religions and ethnic groups don't flinch when they see a knife.

And you can write, as Steve did, long pieces that are obvious to you but new and valuable information even for people who consider themselves 'writers'.  Also, as a working professional, you have a better insight into when someone is being stupid... and sometimes it buys you a plane ticket to Hollywood or a chance to statistically show that something your officers need is good, safe and cost-effective.  At least you get funny stories, even if only the other professionals really understand them.

Thanks, Steve, for showing connections. That is always good.

Hurt Me!

Bullshitting after class one day with some of the students, one of them (hey, Bryan!) said, "I knew I found the right place on the first day when I walked in and you were yelling at one of the women, 'Don't just stand there! Hurt me!'"

It seems that I say that a lot more than I should have to. 

We pretty it up and get into some deep denial, but martial arts is about hurting people. Breaking them.  We can tack on a philosophy or pretend that we are kicking people in the head to access some inner peaceful monk, but that's a shitload of rationalization and mental gymnastics.

Then for safety reasons and social reasons and most insidious of all to protect the illusions of rank and mastery and proficiency, everyone practices NOT hurting each other.  Some practice so well that after years of training in a martial art, they are better at not hurting people than they are hurting them.

That often winds up as the first big hurdle with new students. Hurt me.

I'm not stupid about it and we don't go out to tear each other's heads off continuously, but they have to know. Not just how it feels to let go, but what they must feel first in order to let go.  So I put on armor (and/or position pads or telephone books) and let them unload.  Hurt me!

This kind of training has its own objective feedback.  You know you have a deeply damaged student when he or she hits the padded bad guy and looks back to the instructor to see if it was 'right'. Possibly the classic example of 'making sensei happy'. Right is knocking the wind out of me or knocking me back or, even better, knocking me flat on my back.  It's right there, objective, undeniable.

It's not hard. Power generation, power stealing and structure combine even at low levels of proficiency and a small woman can break bones. If she lets herself.  You get her to unload just once so perfect that she sees the look and hears the rapid suck of wind and right then, you ask "That was fun, wasn't it?"  Because it is. Especially for people who have too much social pressure to be victims or who have come to believe that they lack power, to see it, to feel their own power opens up possibilities.

Another thing, and I say it a lot, "You know how to hit. You've been practicing. Now forget all that and just hurt me.  Don't think about your form, just think about knocking me on my ass." One little mental tweak and almost all hit much, much harder.  With the bonus that this brand-new mental tweak is miles closer to where their mindset needs to be if they ever have to hurt someone.

Good day today.

Doing Nothing

One day off this week. Spending 10 hours in 110 degree weather mostly in armor- somehow yesterday didn't feel like a day off.

So today, nothing. Playing chess on the computer, reading, watching mindless videos. No work outs. No Arabic calligraphy practice or language tapes.  Haven't swung the boken around or written anything substantial. Just this and some correspondence.  Tried to nap, but I'm not that good at sleeping any time.

Short walks. Seeing how friend's books are selling on amazon.  There is ice today and I regret that gin and tonic can't be found here (actually, I know where to find the gin, but whether I call it 'tonic' or 'quinine' the mixer is unavailable).  Picked up some margarine at the PX on our long trip yesterday.  It's weird. Like drinking water out of a glass I had not realized how long it has been or what a simple luxury it can be.

Relaxing is good, a day doing nothing occasionally is good for the soul.  I think I might be able to do it for two days, maybe three, before I started to go a little crazy.

Ramblings

Because I can...

Just after sunset in Northern Iraq, Kurdistan, and my belly is full and the stars are out...

You don’t want what’s in my head. You may think you do. You don’t. I know some things. Things about me, about the world. Things that normally get called some pretty high falutin’ names. 

 Martial artists, especially, think that they want this stuff. Some have spent years training wondering “Could I really…” and “What would it be like if…”  

They think I know. A few think I can tell them. I wouldn’t even if I could.  What I know for and about me might never be true for you.   And it would be only words.   One of the things I know is that the words don’t matter.

So I go the cheap route.   I tell stories.  I drill skills.  Try to show a few people how to learn, how to think.  That’s easy, really.  The physical is easy.  I try to tell them what they don’t know- that the parts that are easy are the small stuff.  You’ll never be good enough not to die. Everybody dies.  

If you know, you will never be sure. Sure is for the uninitiated.

Played with someone today- he's possibly the best instructor I have seen in the country. A damn good man, a good fighter (and the way I rank that it means something very specific.  He has survived... stuff) In close quarters unarmed stuff he was like a toy, a puppet.  That's artificial, we were cognizant of not hurting each other and weapons were off the table, though we both had them in easy reach.... still.

Outweighed by over a hundred pounds and the threat gets the first move at close range and I don't even have to fight, just steal his balance so that he can't move in any direction without setting himself to faceplant on concrete. I'm not fighting anymore, just physically making others incapable of fighting.

I want to spar with Mac.  That means I am on some kind of threshold.  I feel that Dave Sumner is still the best fighter I have ever studied with (sorry, Rener; sorry Mr. Lewis) but Mac can stop action and say, "About eight moves ago, when you did X, your eyes changed. What were you feeling? What were you thinking?"  He teaches more and at a deeper level than anyone I know.  One of the few, maybe the only one who can directly teach spirit and awareness.

Hisssssss everyone teaches spirit! But they don't. Most can't even see it. Or when they do they go piddling in their little pants and run away. Mac can not only see it, but make you see it- good and bad.  You can't improve what you can't sense.

Speaking of seeing what you are seeking and piddling in your pants and running away... but that's not a story for public consumption...

There is nothing special here.  I am an ordinary, average guy (OAG).  When I was younger I was far faster than average and somewhat smarter than average and that gave me an edge, but that is all.  Partially through curiosity, partially something else (it changed as I aged) I just started doing things.  They happened to be the things that other people sometimes dream about.  They were the kind of things that caught my imagination when I devoured Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard.  I learned a lot and it triggered more curiosity and I went deeper and learned more... but in the end I am an OAG who has done some things... and can no longer stomach reading fiction. 

The 'something else' that changed:  Late at night, driving through Bend I heard a scream and bailed out of the car searching on foot to find what was the matter, who was in danger.  My cousin in the car was shocked. Everyone thinks about doing something but he considered it pathological that I actually did.  People think about it. Some, maybe most, fantasize about it.  But if no one does anything, there will be far too many innocent women and children bleeding.  My cousin made it clear that  it was cool to dream about (watch it in movies, read it in books, lull yourself to sleep fantasizing) but in the eyes of the normal world it was crazy and stupid to actually do anything.  That sickened me, but if it was left to the crazy to do what needed to be done, I'd be as crazy as I needed to be. 

It's all words.  Anything I write is academic.  In the morning (it's  about 2000 here) I'll strap on a gun and go to work.  Then I'll take the gun off for the real work.  That will be real.

Asking

When I first read "On Killing" by Dave Grossman, I was deeply impressed.  Here was a guy who admitted that he had no actual experience whatsoever, that he was 'just' an academic- and he proceeded to tackle some of the hardest problems in human behavior: how people act and react in combat.  In an academic fashion.  Very cool.

It's hard to research because you can't experiment on this: taking a matched random sample and putting half in a control group where they take a test and the other half get attacked with axes... that's just not gonna pass the ethics committee.  Self-reporting is notoriously unreliable as a research tool. Even more so considering what stress hormones do to perception, memory and cognition.  Then there is really weird stuff, enough of it documented reliably, (filmed or witnessed by others or put together by the forensic guys afterwards) that a lot of what we 'know' about action and reaction, limits of human strength and endurance are revealed as assumptions that don't always apply.

The book was good enough that I started collecting the sources in his bibliography.  I was pretty disappointed with some of them.  One in particular was written after WWII by an REMF.  After the infantry had taken and secured an area he would go in and question the natives for intelligence.  Somehow, probably at cocktail parties after the war, he convinced his friends and himself that he was a warrior par excellence.  He had been there. He had done that.  I have a pretty good guess what the infantry thought of him.

In the introduction he asked the real question.  He was talking to a French woman after the liberation, after the war. She said the war had been horrible.  But she also said that she had never felt as alive since.  In that was the real question- why do we do this? I'm not asking what makes humans fight.  I can think of dozens of things worth fighting for and I pity the shallow excuse for a human that has nothing in his life worthy of that.  I'm asking why other things pale in comparison.

I've jumped out of planes. Vision quested.  Made love with exotic, beautiful and skilled women. Fallen off cliffs. Created fire.  Flown a paraglider. Bottomed caves. Spent weeks alone and days away from all sign of people.  Been close enough to touch a moose and touched a deer.  Been present at birth. Saved a life.  Sipped fine scotch on the shoulder of a mountain under the aurora borealis. Snorkeled with sea turtles and scuba'd with spotted eagle rays.  Felt the grace of infinite beauty after nearly drowning...

None of those were quite the same as successfully taking down someone trying to kill me.  Some of them were very intense, just as intense, but not the same. (Aside- when people tell you there are many paths to the top of the mountain, be skeptical.  There are many different mountains.)

Why is the human animal programmed to feel this intensity?  And do we somehowknow (some of us? All of us? None of us?) about this edge before we ever experience it?  Is that what really drives the propensity for boys to play with toy guns?

I don't know, and the REMF* who wrote the book got the question and ran from it.  IMO.

I don't have a lot to say here. I know the question better than the answer. There's just one things that's easy to confuse- after the incident or after a series of incidents, there is (for everybody? Some people? Just me?) an incredible ordering of and insight into priorities.  In other words, you start to recognize a lot of bullshit, especially your own.  The attachments.  That's cool, but it is separate from the battlejoy. That is its own thing.

* Not being obtuse here- I'm about 14,ooo miles away from my library and the title I remember got thousands of hits.  I would name the book and author if I was sure to get it right.

Fear No Man!

Here's a link for you:

Llap-goch, the secret deadly welsh art of self-defense.

When I first ran across this about twenty years ago it was attributed to the Monty Python crowd but I could never confirm that and it doesn't look like the right media for them.  Did the Flying Circus ever do anything with print.

When you're done laughing, think harder- about promises you have been made or (horrors) made yourself.

Double Imaginary Bell Curves

People think weird.  They have an emotional/social/mythic ideal that is sometimes more real to them than reality.  Much of it is naive (using the world in the social science sense as uninformed).  The myth thing plays heavily in martial arts and self-defense: we have an image in our minds of what a martial artist or self-defense expert looks like and the image is often from central casting.

That runs dead on into a 'bell curve' image of what violence is like and a matching 'bell curve' image of what you need to prevail.  Those ideas are terribly wrong- flat out wrong and potentially fatally incorrect.

Most people don't hang out in war zones or work in jails.  Some take this to mean that my level of violence will be higher than theirs.  True. My baseline will be higher.  But my awareness of where I am and what I am doing, the tools and commo and teamwork are designed to match that level.  I'm not worried about the stuff I'm prepared for.  Like everyone else, if I get killed it will be by the stuff way off the baseline.

This applies to training hugely and it applies in both directions- fit martial athletes, the image that pops into our heads when we think of martial artists or self defense experts are the least likely to be victimized, least likely to need the skills they train... and when they are killed it is by something outside their baselines, trusting their kick-boxing skills until the gun they didn't see tears a hole through their innards.

Fit twenty year-olds don't need a lot of skill to be a handful in a fight. Give them the confidence to go in and permission to cut loose and they can do some damage.  Pile skill and experience on top of that (and be careful that you don't unwittingly remove the permission to cut loose) and you have a very dangerous person.  These are the people least likely to need self-defense skills.

The people who need them, the ones most likely to be victimized are the timid, the unathletic, the unaware... exactly the group least likely to seek out training.

"I'm good enough for what I'm likely to run into," he said, "I don't need to train for your environment."

It's not true and it is terrifyingly blind... yet it is true.  He is likely to run into exactly nothing in his life.  He is adequately prepared for that.  But violence comes in something closer to a hockey stick distribution than a bell curve.  It probably won't hit this kid. But if it does he will likely need skills and ferocity well beyond what I've needed.

There's an assumption in there- I give him enough credit to believe that he will walk away from the ones he can walk away from and that he won't go out of his way to create a violent situation.  Most of the low level stuff, the Monkey Dance stuff takes two to play.  So he's also prepared for that, for the stuff he could walk away from.

The result of false bell curves, naive beliefs:

• The people who most need the training are the least likely to seek it
• The people most likely to seek it, the athletes, are the ones most able to make a bad system work
• People train for things that don't happen or for the most avoidable
• They use an imagined rarity as an excuse to limit their own preparation

This shouldn't bother me. Most people train to bolster their fantasy life far more than they train for survival.  I understand that.

One more- when someone says, "I don't let negative energy into my life, I don't have to worry about this stuff."  They are using false reasoning. It will seem true more often than not because in this society and this time most people's lives will never be touched by extreme violence.  It is one of those things that is safe to believe until it isn't.  Then it becomes catastrophically untrue.  Or the converse, "Thinking about violence causes violence."  Not true, obviously, though experiencing violence will damn well make you think about it a lot.  It is an excuse to stay in a mental comfort zone. Nothing more.

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Complete aside.  Kami's story is out!!!!

Growth and Perspective

I wrote about this years ago on some martial arts bulletin board, but it deserves another look, mostly because I've take another step.  Strange how the step you are on seems like the highest sometimes...

Martial artists go through specific stages in their careers and they stop at the stage that fulfills their needs.

The novice gets into the style, they learn to move, learn whatever the style has initially to offer, get into the basic techniques. Everyone goes through this stage. Some stop here. I think we all know someone who has gone to green belt in five styles.

Collectors- This is the stage where people hunt for new techniques, new ideas. They seriously crosstrain, go to seminars. There are belt collectors and kata collectors and trick collectors. They obsess with expanding their "tool kit", their repertoire.  Not all collect the easy, small things- some are driven to amass upper belts and teaching certificates.   There are different reasons to be a collector- an insatiable curiosity; a true love of the depth and complexity of the arts are good reasons. Insecurity and a gnawing need to fill imaginary holes with imaginary skills are some of the bad ones (IMO).   The ones at this level are usually considered serious martial artists.  A fair amount of the famous names in martial arts are right here.

A few go beyond that, though. I call them the strippers.  Sometimes a collector learns through bitter experience that it is hard to find a tool in a big, cluttered, tool box.  Sometimes they get exposed to the idea that there is this thing called practicality that is separate from coolness.  Some take a look at the roots of what they study, the history and find that it was meant to be simple and effective and somehow that has been twisted into complicated and flashy. A few realize (often because they are entering a career where it is no longer a subject of fantasy) that violence is harsh, with high stakes and its own rules and they need something simple enough to be quick and adaptable enough to give them an edge in situations that they never imagined.

The strippers are driven to streamline their stuff. Simplify, simplify, simplify.  At the same time, they need to understand a couple of things. They need to understand the problem they are training for and also the underlying principles-  what makes things work? To be fast, the principles must be practiced and internalized.  Internalize the principles and the techniques are irrelevant. (Not that they don't exist or won't be used, but they cease to take up space in your head and arise naturally from the situation.)

Some strippers focus on a handful of high percentage techniques.                                       Many, at this level become obsessed with mindset.

People at different stages will see martial arts and self-defense differently. The stripper stage, especially when it is triggered by real survival concerns, becomes a 'means to an end'.  Unlike a collector, they do not see themselves as martial artists and MA as part of an identity they value, they see their combative skills as a tool that may allow them to survive long enough to protect their true identity, the one that breathes.

A collector sees an infinite series of possibilities. The stripper may see them too, but he is focused on the goal and chooses the fastest, safest way to achieve it.

Strippers happen, but they are relatively rare. In the martial arts, at least.  Lots of martial arts are based on 'systems' sometimes with capitals 'THE SYSTEM" and it's not generally welcome when a good practitioner starts taking a system apart and putting it back together smaller and tighter.  Stripping is something it is easier to do alone (out of context, this entire post should be hilarious- strippers tossing toolboxes and doing their things alone...) so many of the strippers become ex-martial artists.  Still fighters, but on their own, different.

That's a little expanded, but pretty close to what I wrote all those years ago.  I had the humility at the time to say that these were the stages I had seen and there might be more.  But it was a false humility, because I hadn't seen (more accurately, if I had seen one I didn't recognize it) who was clearly doing things beyond the stripper stage. I thought I was on the top step.

Here it is, the next step, and maybe here it isn't.  It may be one of those things where you pass a threshold and there are many ways to deal with it.  There may be only one way to the door, but many options on the other side.  One more caveat- it is very hard to accurately see yourself or to see where you are...

Given that caveat, I've been applying that stripper methodology to almost everything. I'm still learning a lot, playing around in cultures and skills...  but it all boils down. What are the principles?  How true can life be? How much bullshit can be jettisoned?  It's an interesting place to be.  Odds are the next stage will be something very cool.

So Special...

Finishing up the first draft of the next book. It's almost ready to go to the first readers and right on schedule.  For the most part, I think I pegged it.  There are enough stories and enough logic in it to get the main point across- force decisions are different than other decision processes.  Higher stakes than most people will ever make, made faster and with both less information and less reliable information, yet made by the same basic model human that buys a car or manages a checkbook.  And these decisions are shaded not just by physics but also social conditioning and morals and ethics and laws (sometimes very different things) and politics and both personal and public perception.

It covers training and experience which interact with each other and produce the human who will make the big decisions.

I'm happy with the first two-and-a-half sections (the book has two full sections and two smaller sections that fill in some information gaps.)  The stuff in the first two-and-a-half section is important information, good stuff to know.  With luck it will add some perspective or -gasp!- actual information to debates about police use of force.  But in the end, that's all words.

The last partial section is about action and brings it all back to the reader, and I am running hard against the human nature wall.  People like who they are. They may not think it, they may not say it, but if "just bein' me" becomes a burden or dangerous, people, except for the most ego driven or stupid, change.

When some idiot's wife asks or tells him to slow down and he speeds up and snarls, "I drive like I want!" he's just being an ass. He sees a patrol car in his rear view mirror and suddenly the big man who does whatever he wants drives like a little old lady.  People who say they don't change DO change if they perceive the stakes as high enough. But they don't like it and they resent it.

It's human nature to prefer everyone to change to accommodate you acting the way you want.  Most of us understand that there are limits to this and it is a two-way street.  Those that don't understand this become criminals.  I'll go so far as to say that most acts defined as crimes are simply what happens when you think you are too special.  Too special to conform to rules, to special to work to buy things, too special to be told "no."

Usually when I write I can subconsciously read like a naive reader and have a pretty good feel for what buttons I am pushing.  With this short section, I can feel defensive walls coming up.  Up to this point, the book has been largely anthropology- how the strange tribe known as police think and why it makes sense in their world.  In this section it is a travel guide- this is how to act when you run across a member of this tribe.  Simple stuff, in a way. Never force an officer to make a quick decision.  Show your hands.  Reason, but don't argue and if you can't tell the difference keep your mouth shut.

But here, when it gets personal (not just advising some random imaginary criminal to keep quiet but specifically YOU, if something happens to the point that officers show up, especially with guns out, DON'T ARGUE WITH THEM.) Suddenly, defensive walls go up. Because people like themselves. The most unreasonable people I have ever met felt that they were completely reasonable, even logical. They shouldn't have to change. The public servant who gets paid from their taxes should have to change...

Cool, except you see the logic when force is used on someone acting just the same as you... but it's not you... so you're special? 

If I can navigate this communication pit (and it may be entirely in my perception. One side effect of spending so much time with criminals is that I sometimes see their sense of entitlement and ability to rationalize as more prevalent in the general public than it probably is.)  If I can get this through to people it will be powerful. Just the ability to see yourself from the outside, to see when you are acting like a criminal or like a citizen or like a protector, can be a huge stimulus and guide to personal growth.

This is a throw-away section. It wasn't in the original concept for the book, but it has the potential to be the most important part.  It's also going to be the hardest to communicate. Things have prices.

System Work Versus People Work

Note well- I am not talking about Martial systems right now.

Which has more value?  Which is the better use of time and resources?   Training individuals?  Or creating a system (environment, standards, processes, expectation) under which those individuals work?

To an extent a good system can function despite bad people. That's one of the real purposes to creating a system or a set of policies.  On the other side good people can do great things with a bad system. (And that piece does apply to martial arts, FWIW).

Extraordinary people, good or bad, can exploit a system, good or bad, for their own purposes.

An absolute monarchy is a totalitarian dictatorship, but sometimes the power is used to create school systems and hospitals.  Some use that power (and, here's a mindtwist for you, does a dictator have more power than another type of ruler or only fewer constraints on the same  power?) for the good of their people.  Others use it to gratify their egos or satisfy personal (or very public) desires.  Good people can do great things with systems that are not inherently great themselves.

And well intentioned systems, like the Americans with Disabilities Act or FMLA or Medicair are often and easily exploited by bad people.

I've always been a training person working within well-established systems. The few times I've been in at the start of something new and radical (CERT, the Mental Health Team) we did fantastic, earth-shaking stuff, but we still had to work within a system, and sometimes the system had automatic checks to prevent any part from outshining the rest too obviously.

This last little bit, though, I've been working with systems in what seems like fairly virgin soil.  There will always be issues with implementation and institutional inertia and all that, but I am still pleased and surprised.  A good system makes everything easier,( even training) because you are training to a standard that makes sense from the ground up and serves a specific, tangible purpose.  Some of these systems, like the After Action Debriefing, have huge continuing payoffs with very little effort.  You can create a system that is self-improving.

The strange part is that it is so easy.  If you really know the problem and know your resources and keep a few simple rules of information management in mind (like "what's the goal" and "who is the end user") you can hammer out a system, sometimes to a problem that seems complex, very, very quickly. How quickly? Depends on the problem and the process, but it frequently takes me longer to write down the proposal than to outline the process. I type slow, though.

Both are important, but good systems makes it easier for people to be good workers. Good people compensate for glitches and bugs in the system, and good workers can move between different systems and adapt quickly.

So add this to the list of very cool things from my time here: systems design was one of those secret things jealously guarded by the wizards in the black tower. Turns out it was easy and I never, ever would have been suffered to find that out back home.

Workarounds

If what you are doing isn't working, do something else.  That goes for life, but in my usual focus, staying whole when someone wants you broken, it is critical.  It requires skill- you have to have a repertoire of things to switch to. It requires judgment- sometimes what is not working is a particular technique, sometimes it is a whole class of techniques.  Some people shrug off body blows and some seem to completely ignore heavy strikes, even to the head and even with impact weapons. (Someone will want to argue this. Feel free. In my personal experience I've taken a crowbar to the back of the head with no effect whatsoever and had to deal with an inmate who had received a full power blow from the infamous lock-in-a-sock to the center of his forehead and proceeded to beat the shit out of the guy who swung it.) It gets weird out there.

That judgment loop feeds back into repertoire- if your training has concentrated in one class of techniques, such as strikes or locks, and that class is off the table, it will be a harder switch than if you have facility with strikes, takedowns, locks, gouges and strangles.  (FWIW, the shime, the vascular strangles, are the ones that I haven't seen anyone show immunity to, though I have seen competitors with extremely strong necks who were very hard to get one on quickly).

Tying back to the nature/nurture thing from the last post, and one possible answer to Narda's question.  Someone may not be able to do something because of either an actual incapacity (not strong enough, for instance) or an experiential deficit (doesn't know how) or a glitch ("oooh. I could never do that, that's horrible!").  Some glitches are conditioning- "Ladies don't fight." Some glitches are choices or self image issues- "I'm not the kind of person who..." And some are training artifacts, things that were taught and are believed that limit ability, "If you hit him here he WILL go down."

Each of these problems has several ways around it, and here is the mimicking thing again- just as it is hard to tell conditioned fear (you can psychologically damage a child or adult to make them afraid to act) from physiological fear (some people dump more stress hormones for less stimulus than others)- when you work around them you get to different places that look the same.  The hormone dump problem yields to stress innoculation and the person gets less chemical fear; the conditioned one wasn't getting the same hormone dump to begin with so once he has to learn to fake fearlessness (being brave and acting brave, in practice are the same, both using will to do what must be done despite fear) he will look very much like the rest of the students.  Both are now acting 'brave' and affecting the world in similar ways but the internal states and the ways to get there are very different. 

Workarounds

One of the 'rules' of classic consim is that students aren't allowed to lose. This doesn't mean they never get their asses kicked.  What it means is that they are not allowed to quit or declared beaten or dead. The scenario goes on until they find a way.  Given enough time, you can almost always find a way.  Sometimes it takes a little coaching.  That is what training is for- to put in the time now so that we have a touchstone when we need it, so that we can spend hours and days working out a solution when the stakes are low so that we have it at our fingertips when the stakes are high.

I want to go off on a tangent here: people are used to fairly quick success. Time and again I have seen people work on the hard survival problems for a little while (like close range knife defense) and when they decide it is hard, they dumb down the problem and start practicing against easy attacks that rarely happen.  Too often this is driven by an instructor who feels his authority is based on having an answer.  Unless it is just a hobby or material for your fantasies, train for the hard stuff.

You can look at most training as a series of workarounds. Power generation is a workaround for weakness, as is application of leverage. For that matter, using a tool.

There is more, though.  Some extraordinary practitioners (like Loren- hey buddy) habitually take injuries as opportunities to practice succeeding.  Loren knew damn well that just because he was injured, sometimes badly, had no bearing on what the world might throw at him. He had to do his best to get the optimum effects with what he had to work with.

Scott has had me work drills with techniques not allowed or only one specific technique allowed to win. I like students to train blindfolded or with an arm or sometimes both out of action.

Those are just some ideas. Workarounds, adaptation, is another skill. It is very important, but rarely directly addressed.  Dave Sumner used to define 'ju' (the essence of jujutsu) as "tactical adaptability."  Flexibly adapting to what the world threw at you in order to prevail.  The art of advantage lies in the ability to solve the problem from many different angles.

An Old Draft- Just Found This

Taught a class on mental illness and crisis communication the other day. There were other instructors too, going over subjects like community resources and therapy and psychotropic meds. One of the instructors, the one with the Ph.D. after his name, got a lot of questions. One of the questions was the big one: where does this come from? What makes people crazy or criminals or both?
The nature/nurture question.

I sometimes doubt how relevant it is. For self-defense, in the moment of assault the reason the person is assaulting you, what led to his life of crime, is one of the least important pieces of information. When it comes to changing lives or preventing the problem it is important.

Maybe. It's popular to say that nature/nurture is a mix, that neither is definitive, that they interact. It's undeniably true, but also a cop-out. One of my favorite anthropology teachers unabashadly would say, "Nurture. You give a Masai newborn to Inuit parents and in twenty years you get a tall, skinny, black eskimo." It's very important, culture and upbringing. But there is a base, too.

I don't want to talk about just nature and nurture. There are a lot of things in human behavior that can have similar effects but completely different causes and, thus, different solutions. Almost every diagnosed Axis I mental illness has a personality disorder (axis II) that mimics it. Schizophrenia and schizotypal PD; OCD and OCPD. In the Axis I stuff, chemicals are out of balance. Something is broken. The Personality Disorders, by contrast, are pervasive patterns of behavior.

Which is more manageable? Changeable? The organic problems may be inborn, more a real part of the self than any behavior, yet someone with schizophrenia will do almost anything to be 'normal' and 'healthy' and an Anti-Social Personality Disorder will pervert almost any attempt to help him change, feeling perfect the way he is despite the wreckage of broken lives trailing behind him.

Essentially, you can have (almost) the same problem from two different directions.  Where it comes from, nature or nurture; chemical imbalances or choices, might have little bearing on the effects, on how it damages lives.  But it can have profound effects on how the individual perceives it and how, or if it can be treated.

Originally written on 23April08 right after Mental Health Team training

Random Thoughts on Teaching

I'm going to be talking out loud here, just pondering, speculating.  

It's possible to complicate things by simplifying them.  A human is a human. Each piece of a dissected human is technically simpler than the whole human... but simplifying in that way doesn't really help you deal with the human.  Same for techniques and some of the fighting skills- some, like entries, are actually diluted by breaking them down into their component parts.  The spearhead is a structured motion- a single action that provides a "golden move": damages the threat; protects you from damage; betters your position; worsens his.  It can be taught as separate and distinct things that you do with your left arm, right arm, hips and feet... but it isn't easier to learn that way, or more versatile or more effective.  It is slower to learn AND you then have to unlearn the steps to make it a unified action, to make it work.

Does this complication work for anybody?  It is easier for the instructor, but only if he is just repeating what he was taught in the way he was taught, as if it was something he memorized, not something he understood.  It's not easier for the student. I can teach the unified move without a word of the student's language very quickly.  The break down can take half a day with native speakers.  Just odd.

All the best instructors are good at things that don't work.  Don't work for other people, I mean.  I've been very successful with small joint locks on big, aggressive threats.  For most people they are a low probability option.  JA hits people in ways that for most people who aren't genetic freaks would result in crippled hands (the exception to the big bone/little bone rule is an individual, not a system or technique).  MC has been highly successful with a technique that completely violates what we know about action/reaction times. (That's not that uncommon, with a lot of ring sense there are things you can see coming, but I don't count on that ability and try to avoid teaching techniques that require it.)

I think this whole concept of Awareness Based Training, the model that Mac and Sean and I set up for the agency really changes the whole concept of teaching. The assumptions are different, not the "I know something you don't know" that typifies the standard instructor/student relationship.  You do know. You know or have seen almost everything that you need. You maybe just didn't notice or didn't draw the connections or didn't give yourself permission to exploit your knowledge.  You know what a splint is for a broken arm, right? Intuitively, you know the principles that splinting works from... so you already know not to grip the wrist itself when you are trying to bend it. You already know.

If there can be fighting without fighting, why not teaching without teaching?

Good Day in the Gravel

Had the privilege today of watching a fine teacher.  He delivered a complete Use of Force class in about four minutes as a lead-up to an introduction to pain compliance DTs.  He was perfectly clear about what he was teaching and what he wasn't teaching. He delivered what the students needed in a way that they could understand., respectful of both their needs and their inexperience.

Then he stepped aside, to let his junior instructors teach.

It was good to watch. Two of them were extraordinary, not just good teachers, but good leaders. They had their group active in a matter of minutes.  Consequently the students in that group got many more reps than the others. Hmmm- good teachers compound learning: better teaching and less wasted time.  I worked with the group with the weakest instructors, they seem surprised that I would be uke for a 'mere recruit'.

I know how hard it is to step aside and let someone else teach. We talked about it, observed, threw in some suggestions. Discussed things and improvements from our different points of view.  A full day in the burning sun (hadn't planned on it, I'll be crispy tomorrow).

A good day in the gravel.  Green grain blows in the wind (who ever thought this country could be this green?)

Expansion

I've gotten some response on the last post, some by private e-mail.  I need to reset the focus.  Some of the respondents were talking about the primacy of mindset and speculating on why it is so rarely taught.  That's important, but it wasn't the point at all.  This is about epistemology and identity and how people protect their mental images (self and world) subconsciously.

So the examples- "12 pounds of pressure" and "nose bone through the brain".  The point isn't the myths. The point was that with very few exceptions, what most people believe on either side of either issue, is largely hearsay.  Steve has actually looked at the skulls and talked to people with some expertise.  Several notches more valid than any source I have.

So, if you have an opinion on either of these, yes or no, what was your source?  Unless you have examined a skull or applied twelve pounds to your knee or lined up 100 people for precision teisho-zuhki practice at full force it is at best an opinion.  These were softball questions, easy stuff.

Then we get into things that, if you are a martial artist, you have seen again and again and again.  Things that if you examine have some pretty scary implications for what and how we teach.

Beginners are more dangerous than experts.  More people are hurt by beginners than by senior students.  There is a lot of scrambling to deny that one and the best 'reason' is control. First, control in this case doesn't equate exactly with functional precision.  When an expert throws a full power punch and doesn't hurt you he has done one of two things- he has either aborted the power or missed.  Pulling punches is missing, people!  So it is a precision of failure.  Perfect, flawless, failure.  Years and years spent training to do the opposite of what you need to do if you ever really use this stuff.  

You can argue that this is a dojo thing, that confidence makes the seniors more vulnerable in class but if it was 'for real' their years of polishing technique would surely prevail.  I don't think 'for real' goes that way. This is anecdotal, but most practitioners have a story about a senior rank in their school getting badly beaten.  That's interesting, for what it is worth... but every instructor I can think of has one and sometimes several stories about a student who was attacked (not went looking for trouble, not playing in a bar brawl, but ambushed) and did great with only one or two lessons.  There are issues with this epistemologically- anecdotal, the sheer number of beginners versus the relatively few seniors, the fact that blackbelts getting beat and beginners prevailing make cooler stories than the other way around.

Still, you dodge this observation at your peril.  No, you dodge it at your students peril. A certain percentage of everything is bullshit.  How many of your training hours are doing nothing more than polishing a turd?  And could that be the real reason that beginners are more likely to hurt you, because they still remember that it is about damage and haven't collected enough turds to polish?

Mindset.  This comment got the most responses, and it is pretty solid. We know what a huge difference mindset can make.  With even a little research, we know what some of the most effective mindsets are.  Those are almost categorically opposite of the mindsets espoused in most of the martial arts I have seen (if they even address the question at all).  Why?  Could it be like bushido and chivalry, codes that arose in times when the need for warriors was fading and society wanted some way to leash the dogs they needed just a short time before?  How much of training is less about empowering than about leashing?

This hits a lot of buttons, but some people don't even notice it when they slip into denial. I have a friend who is convinced that deep down he is a killer because once, when he was a child, he felt so much rage that he wanted to kill another kid. The uncontrollable feeling from long ago still holds him in awe. He has spent much of his life 'controlling his beast.'  I hear the story differently. Everyone feels that way, most never act on it.  Like most people he assumes that the greatest feeling he has ever felt must be as great as anyone has ever felt.  Real killers are the ones who kill with far less emotional charge than that, who respond with violence to minor annoyance, let alone a seething rage.  Many people feel this, "deep down I have a dark beast" and most who seek to control it are just putting a leash on a chihuahua. 

I have a personal belief that animals, including humans, do things for reasons. In humans, the reason is not always what the person believes it to be.  This loops back to fear management.  For most people it is not important whether their martial training will help them to survive. They think it is, of course, but it is about managing the fear. It is more important to believe themselves strong than to be strong.

I think this is the motivation behind normally observant, intelligent people not noticing this stuff or excusing it when it happens.  Probably also why these beliefs are so consistently reinforced- no one wants their world views rocked, especially when they have invested so much time and effort into the illusion.

Things That Make Me Go Hmmmm....

It’s hard to tell how deep bullshit goes. Really.  You hear someone say, “Twelve pounds of pressure will break a knee.”  He believes it because someone he trusts said it.  A little thought (or experimentation- put a 12 pound dumbbell on your locked knee) and it is pretty clearly bullshit.  People who believe it, believe it. People who know better think the people who believe it are stupid.

“A palm heel can drive the nose bone into the brain.”  Same dynamic…except how do you know it doesn’t?  How many times have you tried?  Logic might work. I’ve heard people say that there is no nose bone, the nose is all cartilage.  Did they never feel their own nose?  Ever use the little ridge of bone at the base of the septum as a leverage point?  "There is no place to drive the bone, if it exists, through the skull…" but I have heard that there is an opening for one of the facial nerves…

Again, and understand this here- I’m not saying which is right or wrong. I haven’t done it myself and I haven’t examined enough real skulls to make a guess. What I am saying is that in many cases not only belief, but denial of belief, are eqully based on hearsay.  Not on facts, not on experience.  For some reason denying a belief automatically has more credibility than perpetuating one.

We hear things and we believe them, but sometimes we see things and ignore them, things that could have some really deep implications.

Here are some things that make me go “hmmmm” in martial arts training.  They may be nothing, but I suspect some of them have some pretty powerful effects.  I want to thank Bobbe for getting me thinking about this, or at least pushing it in this direction.  Here are a few:

You are more likely to be injured by a beginner than by a blackbelt.  This fits my experience and I’ve heard it stated by instructors in many different styles. So, hmmmmm.  What does it mean?  If someone training to break people becomes less likely to break people the longer he trains, what is the training really instilling?   Here's a scary, bizarro world thought- is it possible that MA training is specifically designed to pull teeth?  To make the students safer and easier to control?  

The obvious counter argument is that the advanced student, the 'expert' merely has more control.  Possible.  Safety habits are still habits, you fight the way you train… blah, blah, blah.  If this is true, that you fight the way you train, then the hours of practicing NOT hurting people will make that your default when you need the skills. The habit of control in the dojo is still a habit. You practice pulling punches and you will pull punches. You simulate using pepper spray by pressing on top of the safety and saying, “SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS” you will do it in real life and the crook will give you a very strange look (right, Sean S.?)  And, from the other side, I can't recall ever hearing a boxer say that you are more likely to be hurt by a beginner than a pro. 

The utility of skill at all.  Take this one with a huge grain of salt because it comes from someone who has spent decades honing skills: Attitude is far more important. No skill will help you if you freeze for too long.  Sanford Strong’s research in some of the worst-case scenarios (abduction rape/murders and home invasion torture killings) indicated that attitude, specifically the decision to make the bastard pay no matter what it cost, was the single biggest factor in survival.  Not skill, not size.  Ask anyone who knows what they are talking about this question- “Which would be more dangerous to fight, a 200 pound blackbelt who was afraid of getting hurt or a ninety pound housewife who didn’t give a damn if she was killed as long as she took you with her?”  Even Jeff, (the guy who trains unbelievably hard to do some very dangerous things and demanded an extreme level of precision under stress)- well, he’s the guy who said, “Violence of action trumps technique.”

So it’s not just me, Jeff is another training junkie who thinks attitude and ferocity are more important than precision or skill (are precision and skill the same thing? Measurements of each other?).  This is where people with agendas get their panties in a twist:  Neither Jeff nor I have ever said or ever will say that training is unimportant.  Ferocity and skill are in no way mutually exclusive.  It’s just that a timid technician will reliably lose to an untrained lion.

Training to maintain calm in the face of violence.  Maaayyyybeee. I can do it, but it is nothing like the peaceful calm I feel when I am luxuriating in bed in the morning.  And it's something that came from experience after the oh, 20th or 50th Use of Force. The ten years of training before that did absolutely nothing for adrenaline control in my first few fights.

 So what kind of calm are they training for? Do they even know?  How many different mindsets have they experienced in others and in themselves and which mindsets have they felt when someone was trying to kill them?  Blind panic works sometimes and a ‘flight’ response in the right direction  can sometimes do more damage than a ‘fight’ response.

So, tying back to the last point, why isn’t more emphasis placed on training ruthlessness and ferocity?  Not the imaginary ruthlessness of visualizing what your knife could do to flesh but instilling the habits of driving it home and ripping it out and moving on.  Not the flowy, peaceful harmony of an imaginary Shaolin but the beautiful, cold, precision of a hunter. Is it taught so rarely because it is a complete unknown?  Could the natural mindsets of battle be a complete mystery to people teaching fighting and self-defense?  Does that bother anyone else?

Or is it because they don’t know how to teach it?  Or is it because the magical thinking of, “We train to stay calm in the face of violence” is enough of a talisman and the real thing might upset the magic? Or, most damning, is it a fear of creating a student that they can't dominate?

What are they training for anyway?  Often, in a MA class, I get a ‘when would I use this?’ moment.  Sometimes because of legal justification, but sometimes just because the situations where it would come up seem so very unlikely.  Weapon defense techniques are a big one for these moments, but I have spent hours practicing technique from seiza. I even know how to bow in armor.

I try to be pretty specific when I teach. I know lots of ways to take someone down without hurting them because that was my job, but really, unless it’s your job, there’s not a lot of use for that.  Outside of that, when I talk about self-defense, physical self defense, that is a whole different animal. That is pure survival in situations where one or more humans has worked hard to make sure that you have the minimum possible chance of survival.

Afraid and overwhelmed and in a bad position are kind of the basic starting positions for self-defense. (aside: real self defense is all about avoiding this. Physical self defense is what you use when that has failed).  

The techniques need to be based on gross motor skills, have to be married from the get-go with accessing the appropriate mindsets, and must be based on flexible principles or you will be overwhelmed in the chaos.  Lots of it has to be taught from the body out instead of from the brain down.

So what are they (or you) training for? I’m all for fitness and preserving culture.  I like fun, and there is very little more fun than clanging steel in a safe environment.  But when it goes to where I am going (and most of the people that seek me out for training want this piece) it is about violence. Hard, scary, personal, dangerous, messy.