Self-Defense is not "Fighting"

Part 2: The First Side of the Coin—Self-Defense is not Fighting

This brings me to the Self-Defense Industry, which makes a lot of money teaching people very bad philosophy.  I studied a system of fighting for a couple of years that was marketed as purely a real world self-defense system.  Like every other martial art I studied, the first thing they taught was a technique against a collar grab, but in this system you responded to it by gouging out both of the attackers eyes, taking him to the ground and stomping his head.  I loved this system.  It was the most “effective” system I had studied up to that point.  It really did teach you to defeat most common types of attacks in a matter of seconds…and then go to prison for a few decades for applying lethal force in a situation where it was completely unjustifiable according to the law.  So, that is one problem with the Industry, the “effective” systems—the “reality based” styles—are teaching people to kill or maim when somebody pushes them or grabs their collar.  Unless you are a ten year old girl about to get abducted, using lethal force (which is what maiming is considered in most statutes) is not justified when somebody grabs your collar.  It is not, legally, Self-Defense.  They are teaching massive over-reaction to school-yard type conflicts.

“Fighting” is fisticuffs or competition.  Fighting is not “self-defense,” which I define as the justifiable (according to the legal system) use of lethal force in a violent criminal encounter.  Recognizing the difference is one thing that the “reality based” systems actually get right.  But then they teach people how to crush throats and break necks in every situation where somebody takes a swing at one of their students.  Think of every Krav Maga video you see on youtube; they all start with a push and a punch, and the Krav guy uses some sort of lethal force (killing or maiming) in response.  That is not a defensible “defense” and it is going to land you in prison if you over-react like that.

Think about what a system is teaching you.  Are they teaching you how to punch and kick?  Or, are they teaching you where to punch and kick?  If it’s the former, they are teaching you how to fight, which is competition.  If it is the latter, they are teaching you a system of self-defense, and that is great if somebody is actually trying to hurt you.  But, it is worthless in a fight, an altercation that can be wholly avoided and defused by not being an egotistical prick, unless you want to go to prison.  You can’t crush somebody’s trachea because they pushed you at a bar.

I think it is a terrible idea to teach kids under the age of 18 a “self-defense system” that involves gouging out somebody’s eye, or stomping their spine in half.  The reason I am writing these is because I heard a parent the other day talking about putting his son into a Krav Maga class.  His son was between seven and ten years old.  You cannot entrust the capability for lethal violence into the moral minds of a nine year old!  We should teach kids how to fight, not how to kill and maim.  We should teach adults how to defend, and when it is appropriate to do so.  To “defend” means that you can apply justified lethal force in a truly dangerous violent situation.  In a criminal act of violence “Self-Defense,” is the legal determination which justified killing or maiming a predator.  Self-defense does not mean you can break a man’s neck because he grabbed you by the collar in a bar.  It means you can break a man’s neck because he put a knife to your collar, and offers to slit your throat in an alley.  A bar fight is not the act of a dangerously violent criminal; it is a school-yard conflict with egos vying for social dominance.  Teaching kids to use lethal violence in such a case is incredibly dangerous and patently immoral.  Further, adults using such tactics, designed to defend against a truly dangerous criminal, in an ego-driven pissing contest for social elevation/dominance, will get sent to prison for a very long time!

Self-Defense is not a bar fight!  Next: Nor is Fighting Self-Defense.