Philosophy

The problem with philosophy in self-defense is that it’s the wrong philosophy.  I do not mean that the opinions are wrong, I mean that the subject matter is not really self-defense philosophy.  In armed self-defense—which few people actually teach, but I am considering weapons instructors broadly—the primary focus of the training is on safety.  In my state, most of the people carrying guns around for “self-defense” have gone through an 8 hour class on firearms safety.  The main purpose of this class is to teach people how to safely operate a firearm on a shooting range.  It really instills a healthy respect for the capability of a firearm to do damage.  This on many occasions scares people into not carrying the gun.  This is not self-defense philosophy, it is sports mentality.  Shooting is a sport, and you take your equipment to the field in a bag, you load your ammo, and then you consciously engage your brain to switch to the task of shooting.  As I have written many times, the biggest threat in an ambush is the confusion.  Training to shoot when your brain is actively engaged only in shooting, not distracted by anything from the target, is not really training for self-defense.  It is good training for marksmanship, but marksmanship is only the very basic first step in self-defense shooting.  Sports and self-defense have nothing to do with each other; many people understand this in unarmed self-defense, but don’t recognize the same thing is happening in armed self-defense.

This is because they start over-focusing on the tool (the firearm) and forget the fundamental lesson of weapons training: I am the weapon!  The gun, the knife, the sword, the car, the aircraft carrier are not the weapon, the people operating these things have to be the weapon.  When people go from the martial arts mat to the shooting range, they lose a certain aggressiveness.  People believe the tool will make it easier to protect themselves.  That is only half true.  A gun makes killing an enemy physically easier than doing it with your bare hands, but it is still mentally as difficult.  Training in what the Army calls an “Admin” attitude—as opposed to a “Tactical” attitude—gets people complacent.  They are not complacent to range safety; my point is that range safety makes people complacent to the very unsafe experience of a gun fight.  It is a very confusing, chaotic and frightening experience.  Training to calmly stand on a range, take a deep breath, let it out, and slowly squeeze the trigger of a pistol to where it surprises you will allow you to hit bulls eye targets, but has nothing to do with training you how to defend yourself with a firearm.  In fact, it may actually make you less capable of defending yourself than somebody who does not go practice just marksmanship.

Weapons-based martial art systems usually teach the wrong philosophy as well.  A great example is teaching stick fighting to fight the opponent’s sticks instead of attacking the opponent.  Now, there are exceptional teachers out there who teach to use batons to break through the opponent’s guard and bash his scull in with a baton, but much of stick fighting is putting sticks in a ring to fight each other.  That’s not self-defense.  Or, training people to use a knife as a defensive—as opposed to offensive—weapon; cutting hands and arms to keep distance, trying to fence with it in essence.  Knives are good for stabbing people or slitting the throats of sentries; they are not a dueling weapon.  But, we start (I used to do this too), teaching hand to hand combat concepts with a blade instead of just stabbing the enemy until he’s dead.  Again, dueling is a sport mentality.  It was one hell of a sport back in its day, but it was still a sport.  That is not the right philosophy either.

Of course, traditional martial arts, by definition, totally teach the wrong philosophies for people who want to learn self-defense.  One, they teach a sport philosophy for fitness rather than self-defense.  Two, they teach to always walk away (“never throw the first punch”), the mindset of The Karate Kid’s Mr. Miagi.  Three, they teach eastern religions as a part of their martial arts.  None of these things is necessarily bad, and as I have said in the past, the study of traditional martial arts makes a more complete person.  But, these are passed off as “self-defense” and they are the exact opposite.  They are monastic tenets that come from the religious institutions involved in the founding of traditional martial arts.  These are not the concepts you need to master if you want to survive a deadly-force encounter or a real—not sport—self-defense situation.  These are pacifist philosophies, or at least mild-mannered-monk philosophies, that do not fully appreciate how to survive an ambush.  Ultimately, they are designed for self-mastery and not personal protection in the physical realm.  They teach some excellent conditioning skills, regarding how to use the different parts of the body as tools, but they don’t really train people to be the weapon.

Ironically—proving my point—I have said these things to people who are very good martial artists and they challenge me to a match in the ring.  I have always accepted on one condition: I would accept the challenge if they let me enter the ring with the things I carry every day for self-defense.  No really great martial artist has yet accepted my counter proposal.  That is exactly what I mean when I say that, in combat, winning is cheating.

If you are unprepared to kill somebody to protect yourself or somebody you care about, you are nothing but a victim waiting to happen, and you should stop reading this blog now.  If you are still reading, I will attempt to explain what the philosophy of self-defense really is.  It is combat.  Essentially it is doing whatever is necessary to get home to your family.  Combat is not a sport.  There is no such thing as a fair self-defense engagement.  Self-defense is violence.  You have to be the most violent in order to seize the Initiative, and remember that whoever has the Initiative at the end of a fight is the winner.

A real self-defense situation is one where the outcomes are life or death.  So, the real philosophy of self-defense is the same philosophy we teach soldiers facing life or death situations in combat.  You are either the winner or you are dead.  Beating the shit out of somebody is not self-defense.  Getting the shit beat out of you is also not self-defense.  Self-defense is when you stab the guy beating the shit out of you, kicking you in ribs on the pavement, ten times in the femoral artery until the blood stops spurting.  That is self-defense.  The philosophy behind it is the deeply held belief, in one’s core, that I am going home no matter what.  When you start from that belief system, then—and only then—all of the skills and all of the tools you learn how to employ in the physical realm of violence are useful.  The tools are added to a solid foundation in the actual philosophy of self-defense.  Self-defense is combat.  It may be interpersonal combat, but it is still combat, and the only way you survive in combat is getting the Initiative and keeping it. 

Now, does that mean that the only option you have is killing?  No, that is not what I am saying; what I am saying is that the person who is willing to kill to save his life has a better chance of surviving combat, regardless of how much violence he had to apply, than the person who is willing to get into some martial arts tournament.  You can use whatever amount of violence it takes to seize and maintain the Initiative.  But, if you are not willing to use lethal violence, then you are giving a violent criminal—who is perfectly willing to be lethal—an advantage over you; you have a weakness that can be exploited.  Now, we all have physical weaknesses; some people are stronger than others, some people have physical disabilities and limitations, that’s not what I’m talking about.  I personally have had way too many orthopedic surgeries in my life to want to get into a jiu-jitsu match on pavement.  What I am is a combat veteran who is perfectly willing to cheat my ass off to get home.  I am perfectly willing to kill a violent criminal who tries to hurt me or somebody I care about.  My physical condition might mean I lose, but I will not lose because of mental weakness.  If I die, I will die trying to kill the bastard and take him with me.  If you don’t have that mental fortitude, the willingness to be the most violent, then you will lose to those who are willing to be the most violent.

What frustrates me a great deal about modern America is that even people learning how to fight, are not learning about combat.  I firmly believe that the rise in terrorism in America since the 1980s is directly attributable to the pacification of our society.  In the 1950s, American men understood far less about fighting than MMA teaches today, but they understood far more about combat than the average martial artist is taught today.  Or what the average CCW holder is taught in an 8 hour safety lecture; the purpose of a gun fight is to be really dangerous, not safe.  So, we as instructors need to start training people in the philosophy of self-defense, the mentality of kill or be killed, instead of training them to be really athletic victims in life or death encounters.