Modern
American institutions of education and socialization produce one thing
in greater numbers than any other profession: victims-in-waiting. Our culture has become so Anti-Violent that when violence finds average citizens, they are completely unprepared for it. I
always look back at the time after World War Two when America was
accustomed to violence and people knew how to protect themselves. The
uncomfortable truth that nobody likes discussing is that to survive a
violent encounter with a professional predator, you cannot be civilized. A true Self-Defense Situation, where somebody is trying to kill you, rob you, rape you or maim you, is not civilized. In
fact, I would define such acts of anti-social behavior as “the
abandonment of the social contract that allows civilizations to function
peacefully.” When that contract is abandoned, behaving with civility is dangerously absurd. The Greatest Generation understood this. Their
children, grandchildren and now great grandchildren, do not understand
that the breach of a social contract means the rules are literally
discarded. This is contrary to any training, education or
expectations most civilian members of the Baby Boomer, Generation X or
Millennial generations have ever received. They have not
been well prepared to deal with behavior that is anti-social;
anti-social (or sociopathic/psychopathic) behavior literally means
behavior against the nature of society. Professional predators exist purely outside of the nature of civilized society. The
effect of this is that the majorities of three generations of Americans
have no concept how to react to, or survive, situations that suddenly
abandon the rules of civilized society and turn violent.
The so-called “self-defense” industry does not have a very good answer for this problem, either.
This
is why they teach bar fighting (as discussed
here), because that is
physical violence within the arena of a social construct, and they don’t
have to address this problem within the mentality of three generations
of customers.
A situation which is actually adjudicated by
a criminal justice official as Self-Defense does not exist in an arena
of a social construct.
A true Self-Defense Situation
exists in the arena of anarchy—or combat—which are really the same thing
because anarchy will inevitably lead to combat.
Anarchy is the absence of the social contract, any social construct or any civilizing norms to control violent behavior.
Preparing
people to survive an encounter in that environment requires overcoming
generations of pacifistic socialization in America.
Socialization
defined in the true sense—adapting a person to life in a society—which
indoctrinates them to expect rules, constraints and protection from
anarchy.
How do we overcome that socialization?
This is the biggest challenge facing those
who teach self-protection, in which definition I am including every
combat veteran and every cop who has ever been in a gunfight, because I
believe to overcome the socialization of victimhood in America, every
cop and veteran has to be an instructor in this mentality. The
American Army has traditionally had a very good system for overcoming
that socialization; they use the veterans of the previous war to train
the recruits for the new war. And they train them as brutally as possible to prepare them for the absence of civilization one finds on a battlefield. But, how do you replicate that for the civilian world? People
who have been victims of anti-social behavior do not need convincing of
the threat, and they are frequent enrollees in self-protection
training; but how do we convince the potential victims of the need to
train to survive in moments of anarchy?
This is not something that can be trained
easily outside of the military system, where there is no quitting, and
the instructor literally owns your body. It is not a skill that can be taught, in other words. We
can teach people how to fight, how to shoot, how to be aggressive and
how to win, but only if they accept the necessity of learning those
skills. To accept the necessity of learning how to kill a
person with a screwdriver in an alley, one has to first believe and
accept that the alley is potentially in a state of anarchy. That
flies in the face of all the socialization, all of the systems of
government and all of the psychological defense mechanisms built up
inside every modern American to protect their “inner child” from the
truth. The truth is that somebody who is a productive,
functioning member of a society is also a victim-in-waiting for when
that society—rules, codes, laws, morals, norms, commandments, canons and
standards of behavior—disappears in a dark alley behind the barrel of a
Saturday Night Special. Acceptance of that truth is very difficult absent experience in anarchy. But acceptance of that truth is a prerequisite to any effective training in self-protection.
We can teach people to punch, kick, shoot
and even win in a controlled competition with the rules, codes, morals,
norms, commandments, canons and standards of behavior associated with a
society that loves bloody sports. But nobody can convince
somebody else that her life may be in danger if she walks down that
alley; for her to accept the truth, she has to accept the possibility
that the rules of the social contract can be discarded, and that is a
scary reality to live in for most people. But, once a
person accepts that truth, then he becomes very committed to learning
the skills necessary to survive such anarchy long enough to get out and
back to the social contract. Acceptance of the dangerous
nature of the world, and recognition of the tissue-paper-thin and flimsy
nature of the social contract, cannot be learned from a lecturer. It
has to either come from one’s socialization early in life—being raised
by a combat veteran for example—or come from a moment of clarity about
that flimsy nature of the social contract. Tragically,
most times that moment of clarity comes after the façade of civilization
is shattered and the person becomes a victim. What I want
is for every American to accept the truth about such dangers before a
professional predator drags you into anarchy as a victim. If
you do that, then you will never be a victim; you may lose in combat,
but it’s not because you will be helpless, like a victim.
Each student has to believe that the façade
of civility, civilized behavior and civilization itself can be snuffed
out—as happened in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina—with very little
effort from the anarchy-loving and entropy-driving universe. The
fact is every successful violent crime is against a person who believed
it could never happen to them; every foiled violent crime is attempted
against somebody who understands that it could and they prepared for it. The
only way to be the latter instead of the former is to accept into your
belief system the fragility of civility, and then train to survive the
moments of anarchy that follow its collapse. If you change your mentality, any combat vet or gunfighter cop can teach you the skills you need to survive those moments. But
if you don’t change your world view to acceptance—instead of denial—of
the dangerous world we live in, then studying the skills for decades
will not prepare you for anti-social predators and you will still be a
just another victim-in-waiting.
Step 1: Stop being Cleopatra, Queen of Denial. Accept that the world is a dangerous place.
Step 2: Get more dangerous than the world.
