Rory Miller's Blog, page 26
October 19, 2012
Cop Night
I love teaching cops.
Teaching martial artists I am aware that most of them, from rank beginners to 'modern combat masters' are getting nothing more than a handful of details to add to their daydreams. A few (and they are damn few in any given class) will need it-- but they aren't the macho posturers. The shaved headed guy with the tats generally only has to worry about the situations he creates. It's the tiny shy woman who really had to work herself up to attend who will be on the radar of the predators. With civilians, THAT is who I teach for.
But teaching cops is special, and it is huge responsibility. You want to teach self-defense to a bunch of martial athletes and you can teach almost any crap you want. It will never be tested. Most training is only one step removed from an amulet. It makes you safe from violence in the same way and to the same extent as your crucifix keeps vampires away. It's 100% successful until it gets tested.
When I taught for my agency, I had access to the numbers. Roughly a third were assaulted in one year, roughly 10% hospitalized. When we changed the training to our new methods, those numbers dropped by 30%, but that was the baseline. And that's not "1/3 had Use of Force incidents." One third were attacked in a given year.
There are three kinds of training: Feel good training, liability reduction training and useful training.
Feel good training ranges from the lecturer who leaves the students feeling pumped and convinced they are 'warriors' to the hands-on training that makes people feel safer but does nothing to make them safer.
Liability reduction training is for the bosses-- they can either go, "Can't blame us, you were trained. Must be your fault." Or courses specifically designed to lower liability (like concentrating solely on lower levels of force) regardless of whether the system works.
For useful training, you must know the job and know the people and know your stuff. I've taken courses from people who were masters at what they could do and had no idea of the policy or law that we worked under. As such, a third of their stuff was ineffective or impossible to apply and a third would get me brought up on charges. They didn't know the job.
I've seen instructors try to play 'big man.' It may work with civilians, it may even work with rookies, but there is no faster way to earn the contempt of a room full of veteran cops than to talk tough. They know a punk when they see one. You teach different people in different ways. Adults vs children; pros vs. interested amateurs. If they don't listen, you can't reach them and they learn zip.
And you have to know your stuff. Further, your stuff has to work. Under pressure. Outmatched in size and strength. For the big officers and the small officers.
And there is an element of leadership to training as well. Consistently, good leaders push the power down. Every leader you have ever had that you truly respected trusted you. Told you that you were trusted. And you were given as much responsibility as you could handle. Being loud and aggressive and telling people they are wrong may feel like leadership, but from the outside we all recognize that an insecure prick is not a leader.
Got to play with some good kids (rookies) last night. Loved it. In the rambling conversation with their head instructor afterwards we talked about a lot of these things. Method of teaching, but responsibility as well. When your students are going into harm's way, teaching is much more like being a father than a professor. These are not underlings, but colleagues worthy of respect. Moreover, someday, on the worst day of your life when you hit the orange button or put out the call, these are the kids that will be coming to save your ass. You are literally training your own rescue party. Look down on them at your own risk.
Anyway, I loved the class. Deeply respected Herbert, the head instructor at the academy. Good night and it brought on some good memories.
Teaching martial artists I am aware that most of them, from rank beginners to 'modern combat masters' are getting nothing more than a handful of details to add to their daydreams. A few (and they are damn few in any given class) will need it-- but they aren't the macho posturers. The shaved headed guy with the tats generally only has to worry about the situations he creates. It's the tiny shy woman who really had to work herself up to attend who will be on the radar of the predators. With civilians, THAT is who I teach for.
But teaching cops is special, and it is huge responsibility. You want to teach self-defense to a bunch of martial athletes and you can teach almost any crap you want. It will never be tested. Most training is only one step removed from an amulet. It makes you safe from violence in the same way and to the same extent as your crucifix keeps vampires away. It's 100% successful until it gets tested.
When I taught for my agency, I had access to the numbers. Roughly a third were assaulted in one year, roughly 10% hospitalized. When we changed the training to our new methods, those numbers dropped by 30%, but that was the baseline. And that's not "1/3 had Use of Force incidents." One third were attacked in a given year.
There are three kinds of training: Feel good training, liability reduction training and useful training.
Feel good training ranges from the lecturer who leaves the students feeling pumped and convinced they are 'warriors' to the hands-on training that makes people feel safer but does nothing to make them safer.
Liability reduction training is for the bosses-- they can either go, "Can't blame us, you were trained. Must be your fault." Or courses specifically designed to lower liability (like concentrating solely on lower levels of force) regardless of whether the system works.
For useful training, you must know the job and know the people and know your stuff. I've taken courses from people who were masters at what they could do and had no idea of the policy or law that we worked under. As such, a third of their stuff was ineffective or impossible to apply and a third would get me brought up on charges. They didn't know the job.
I've seen instructors try to play 'big man.' It may work with civilians, it may even work with rookies, but there is no faster way to earn the contempt of a room full of veteran cops than to talk tough. They know a punk when they see one. You teach different people in different ways. Adults vs children; pros vs. interested amateurs. If they don't listen, you can't reach them and they learn zip.
And you have to know your stuff. Further, your stuff has to work. Under pressure. Outmatched in size and strength. For the big officers and the small officers.
And there is an element of leadership to training as well. Consistently, good leaders push the power down. Every leader you have ever had that you truly respected trusted you. Told you that you were trusted. And you were given as much responsibility as you could handle. Being loud and aggressive and telling people they are wrong may feel like leadership, but from the outside we all recognize that an insecure prick is not a leader.
Got to play with some good kids (rookies) last night. Loved it. In the rambling conversation with their head instructor afterwards we talked about a lot of these things. Method of teaching, but responsibility as well. When your students are going into harm's way, teaching is much more like being a father than a professor. These are not underlings, but colleagues worthy of respect. Moreover, someday, on the worst day of your life when you hit the orange button or put out the call, these are the kids that will be coming to save your ass. You are literally training your own rescue party. Look down on them at your own risk.
Anyway, I loved the class. Deeply respected Herbert, the head instructor at the academy. Good night and it brought on some good memories.
October 17, 2012
The Hungarian Crew
These are the guys I spent last weekend with.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
October 16, 2012
IMOM
I’m writing this on a train in Eastern Europe between Budapest and Prague. Don't know when I'll be able to post it. Probably most of you aren’t old enough to really remember the Cold War. You weren’t raised with an expectation of imminent nuclear apocalypse or inundated with stories of a shadowy underworld of spies and assassins who were just barely keeping the world from the brink.
Budapest and Prague (and Berlin, but that’s not on the itinerary this time) were staples of these stories. Messages passed in cafes and beer halls; secret signals; beautiful, seductive counter-intelligence agents; desperate knife fights in alleys; a satchel bomb always ticking down to zero…
Both are tourist towns now. Big, beautiful (but I am coming to find that ‘big city’ and ‘dirty’ seem to always come together). Cleaner and less depressing (I am told) than they were under Soviet control. The business of the day is business and people are working, studying and making connections.
It’s still cool to be here. One of those childhood fantasies (“I want to be a spy when I grow up”) almost fulfilled. Almost. No world to save. Extremely limited numbers of damsels in distress. Agents and operatives? Check, but significantly more talking, eating and drinking than fighting happens… and that’s cool.
So, in the International Man of Mystery qualifications category—Beautiful Eastern-bloc refugee wife.Keys to apartments in Boston and Athens.Metro tickets in the wallet for two coastal cities.Passport stamps that sometimes get me detained.Cover story? “I’m a writer, just in the country to do a little research…”And, most important of all, some very, very cool friends in some very interesting positions.
October 5, 2012
RGI Review
I've been letting things settle, thinking things through. The three day "Ethical Protector" class from RGI was good. Important. As far as I know, no one else is doing this. Jack and his crew are aiming their program at rookies. Not everyone there was-- actually most weren't-- but this is stuff that lays a foundation for a career free from burn-out. And that's huge.
Pick any war and most values we shared with our enemies. Courage, sacrifice, dedication. There is always a code of honor in some form. Given that, can there be good guys? Bad guys?
There is a poster I have seen on line-- I don't have the rights to it so I won't post it-- of American soldiers in Afghanistan taking fire while Afghani villagers hide behind them. The caption says "Bad guys use human shields. Good guys are human shields." That simple.
Are there good reasons to fight? To go to war? Yes, but there are bad reasons as well. RGI has laid out what constitutes good and bad, and it is surprisingly objective.
Most of the instructors are former marines. A couple, including Jack, were instrumental in the development of the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP). But it's not a physical class. There are a few physical techniques that are simple. More confidence building, I think than practical. And two workouts that are killer if you want to push (running, squats with a human body, body drags and the like in soft sand...) But much of it was ethics, communication and stories.
One of the thoughts behind "Campfire Tales From Hell" was that there is an important piece missing from modern martial training. Not just martial arts, but police academy and BCT. And that is sitting around the fire, listening to stories from the old vets. They know things that can't be really taught, but sometimes in a story, you can understand. Hearing someone you admire talk about fear and pushing through means more than reading a clinical description of the Survival Stress Response. There are subtleties and sometimes just some weird crap (intent literally changing someone else's behavior, for instance) that can be hard to process if you think it is new and unique.
So that was one of the beautiful things about the program. The method. Exhaustion, education, skills, stories. For every sit down class there was a stand-up physical class to give a break. The physical started with uber-basics. How to stand, how to move and maintain orientation on a potential threat.
The lessons were about ethics, respect and communication. Communication with the emotionally disturbed was taught by a Registered Nurse. General communication was taught be a retired NYPD officer who spent a lot of years in anti-crime. That man could talk.
The ethics part is unique, though. Powerful.
I've always been one of the good guys. There is a huge amount of psychic armor in that. But it is sometimes risky and dangerous. Not in the 'running towards danger' sense (although clearly that) but also in the, "I would rather quit this job than follow that order-- do I have the skills to take care of my family if I walk away?" sense. That gets harder if you have doubts that your idea of 'good' is any better than the person giving you the order. In retrospect, my instincts were dead-on. But now I have the words to explain why.
And that is the reverse of one of Jack's observations. Being the good guys, with an ability to explain beyond doubt why you were the good guys is powerful armor against PTSD. And if you fail to live up to that standard, you know what you did wrong and what you must become and how you must atone in order to regain your balance. As such, it is less a matter of teaching ethics than of clarifying them.
There are some language issues here. In "Facing Violence" I used a model taught long ago at the police academy: Beliefs-Values-Morals-Ethics.
Beliefs are the things you hold to be true.
Values are your subjective preference in true things.
Morals are the squishy general feeling of right and wrong derived from your values.
Ethics are your attempts to codify (rules and laws) your morals.
In the RGI lexicon, ethics means something different. Morals are right and wrong. Ethics are morals in action. If you know something is wrong, you are moral. If you have the balls to do something about it, you are ethical.
Both work for me.
Last thing-- There were a few areas where the training lost me. And it was just me, monitoring the other students it was some of the most powerful aspects for them.
Some of the stories were convincers, and I walked in already convinced that ethics has always been a part of my jobs and life. There is a qualitative difference going into a fight as a good guy versus a bad guy. So I drifted on those.
And pure exertion as a team-builder doesn't work for me anymore. Twenty years ago, yeah. Now it's just pain with strangers. Not the first time, won't be the last. Danger still works for team building.
I can quibble. Is the ethical underpinning innate or taught? My opinion likely differs from Jack's crew, but it matters very little. I think ConCom is better for that part... blah blah blah.
But this is important stuff.
Pick any war and most values we shared with our enemies. Courage, sacrifice, dedication. There is always a code of honor in some form. Given that, can there be good guys? Bad guys?
There is a poster I have seen on line-- I don't have the rights to it so I won't post it-- of American soldiers in Afghanistan taking fire while Afghani villagers hide behind them. The caption says "Bad guys use human shields. Good guys are human shields." That simple.
Are there good reasons to fight? To go to war? Yes, but there are bad reasons as well. RGI has laid out what constitutes good and bad, and it is surprisingly objective.
Most of the instructors are former marines. A couple, including Jack, were instrumental in the development of the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP). But it's not a physical class. There are a few physical techniques that are simple. More confidence building, I think than practical. And two workouts that are killer if you want to push (running, squats with a human body, body drags and the like in soft sand...) But much of it was ethics, communication and stories.
One of the thoughts behind "Campfire Tales From Hell" was that there is an important piece missing from modern martial training. Not just martial arts, but police academy and BCT. And that is sitting around the fire, listening to stories from the old vets. They know things that can't be really taught, but sometimes in a story, you can understand. Hearing someone you admire talk about fear and pushing through means more than reading a clinical description of the Survival Stress Response. There are subtleties and sometimes just some weird crap (intent literally changing someone else's behavior, for instance) that can be hard to process if you think it is new and unique.
So that was one of the beautiful things about the program. The method. Exhaustion, education, skills, stories. For every sit down class there was a stand-up physical class to give a break. The physical started with uber-basics. How to stand, how to move and maintain orientation on a potential threat.
The lessons were about ethics, respect and communication. Communication with the emotionally disturbed was taught by a Registered Nurse. General communication was taught be a retired NYPD officer who spent a lot of years in anti-crime. That man could talk.
The ethics part is unique, though. Powerful.
I've always been one of the good guys. There is a huge amount of psychic armor in that. But it is sometimes risky and dangerous. Not in the 'running towards danger' sense (although clearly that) but also in the, "I would rather quit this job than follow that order-- do I have the skills to take care of my family if I walk away?" sense. That gets harder if you have doubts that your idea of 'good' is any better than the person giving you the order. In retrospect, my instincts were dead-on. But now I have the words to explain why.
And that is the reverse of one of Jack's observations. Being the good guys, with an ability to explain beyond doubt why you were the good guys is powerful armor against PTSD. And if you fail to live up to that standard, you know what you did wrong and what you must become and how you must atone in order to regain your balance. As such, it is less a matter of teaching ethics than of clarifying them.
There are some language issues here. In "Facing Violence" I used a model taught long ago at the police academy: Beliefs-Values-Morals-Ethics.
Beliefs are the things you hold to be true.
Values are your subjective preference in true things.
Morals are the squishy general feeling of right and wrong derived from your values.
Ethics are your attempts to codify (rules and laws) your morals.
In the RGI lexicon, ethics means something different. Morals are right and wrong. Ethics are morals in action. If you know something is wrong, you are moral. If you have the balls to do something about it, you are ethical.
Both work for me.
Last thing-- There were a few areas where the training lost me. And it was just me, monitoring the other students it was some of the most powerful aspects for them.
Some of the stories were convincers, and I walked in already convinced that ethics has always been a part of my jobs and life. There is a qualitative difference going into a fight as a good guy versus a bad guy. So I drifted on those.
And pure exertion as a team-builder doesn't work for me anymore. Twenty years ago, yeah. Now it's just pain with strangers. Not the first time, won't be the last. Danger still works for team building.
I can quibble. Is the ethical underpinning innate or taught? My opinion likely differs from Jack's crew, but it matters very little. I think ConCom is better for that part... blah blah blah.
But this is important stuff.
October 1, 2012
Common Morality
One of the tenets of Conflict Communications is "Work from the common ground."
If you and I disagree and we only talk about points of difference, we entrench. The differences become not just opinions but identity tags. The search for the truth gets completely lost in the contest to prove who is right. It is damn near impossibly to change someone's mind by arguing. But sometimes you can do it by agreeing.
We all have common ground. We all eat and think. You're here, so I can safely assume that you read. I have never seen someone so alien or a criminal so depraved that we didn't share some common beliefs, some common values. And, consistently, if I spoke from those common values I could usually (not always, nothing works every time) get compliance, even active cooperation.
In hostage survival classes, they will teach you to 'personalize' yourself. the idea is if the bad guys know you have a name and a family, it will make it harder for them, emotionally, to kill you. In the ConCom model, the underlying principle is clearer:
In order for most people to use high-order violence, they must 'other' the victim first. They must create a string of rationalizations and tell a narrative where the victim is not a 'real' person. We butcher cattle, swat mosquitos, but tend to fight and struggle (inefficiently) with people. If the potential killer is in contact with the potential victim, he will drive the communication to the points of difference; "I fuckin' hate cops!"
And your job is to not be othered. To push the conversation towards everything you have in common, "This is just a uniform. It's a job so I can provide for my family. (Especially if you see a ring on his finger) What I really like is to go fishing (if you see a hat or bumper sticker with a trout) spend some time alone (if you sense he is a loner, otherwise 'with my buddies') and have a beer (if you smell alcohol on his breath.)"
Get the idea? That's how personalizing works and why, if you just follow the formula instead of reading the situation, it can backfire.
This is just a piece. I think ConCom has taken a huge step in creating a functional taxonomy of conflict. Found the underlying essence.
And I think RGI, in their ethical protector course may have pegged the underlying common ground for all morality.
More later. I'm tired and have lots to do on my first full day home.
If you and I disagree and we only talk about points of difference, we entrench. The differences become not just opinions but identity tags. The search for the truth gets completely lost in the contest to prove who is right. It is damn near impossibly to change someone's mind by arguing. But sometimes you can do it by agreeing.
We all have common ground. We all eat and think. You're here, so I can safely assume that you read. I have never seen someone so alien or a criminal so depraved that we didn't share some common beliefs, some common values. And, consistently, if I spoke from those common values I could usually (not always, nothing works every time) get compliance, even active cooperation.
In hostage survival classes, they will teach you to 'personalize' yourself. the idea is if the bad guys know you have a name and a family, it will make it harder for them, emotionally, to kill you. In the ConCom model, the underlying principle is clearer:
In order for most people to use high-order violence, they must 'other' the victim first. They must create a string of rationalizations and tell a narrative where the victim is not a 'real' person. We butcher cattle, swat mosquitos, but tend to fight and struggle (inefficiently) with people. If the potential killer is in contact with the potential victim, he will drive the communication to the points of difference; "I fuckin' hate cops!"
And your job is to not be othered. To push the conversation towards everything you have in common, "This is just a uniform. It's a job so I can provide for my family. (Especially if you see a ring on his finger) What I really like is to go fishing (if you see a hat or bumper sticker with a trout) spend some time alone (if you sense he is a loner, otherwise 'with my buddies') and have a beer (if you smell alcohol on his breath.)"
Get the idea? That's how personalizing works and why, if you just follow the formula instead of reading the situation, it can backfire.
This is just a piece. I think ConCom has taken a huge step in creating a functional taxonomy of conflict. Found the underlying essence.
And I think RGI, in their ethical protector course may have pegged the underlying common ground for all morality.
More later. I'm tired and have lots to do on my first full day home.
September 23, 2012
Big Question
Just finished the Bujinkan Camp.
Good times, good people. Largely due to Jack Hoban. Some of you have heard about my first exposure to the Takumatsuden arts...
"My black belt," he actually hitched his thumb in it and sneered, "Is in Ninpo. What you civilians call ninjitsu." Followed by an epic rolling session where the 'unbeatable ninja master' submitted at least forty-five times in less than thirty minutes. Epic is the wrong word. "Pathetic" would be giving this young shidoshi-ho more credit than he deserved...
Anyway, suffice it to say my initial exposures to modern ninjitsu were not positive. But I have since met some good people- Mariusz and Earl and several of Dale's students in SF are damn good people. I like Don (although some day we are going to have a serious talk about the view from the outside).
But Jack Hoban is something special. Former Marine. Disciple of Robert Humphey, who may have cracked the code on natural ethics. Good (maybe great) man and a good (maybe great) martial artist. I like the way Jack plays and I love the way he thinks.
Today I heard his theory on PTSD and PTSD treatment. It works for me, but in the conversation leading up to it there was a gem of a question. Not about PTSD but about people who are robust against extreme stress in general. The answer, almost universally, is love.
You can become addicted to the danger. Addicted to the feeling of reality and importance when you do big, dangerous and impossible things. But that is only unbalancing if that is all you do. As long as you come back to the world and put equal weight into loving something or someone who is good, you'll be okay.
So here's the big question:
Of those of you who have spent four hours or more this week training to hurt someone who is bad... did spend at least four hours being nice to the people you love?
Think about it.
Good times, good people. Largely due to Jack Hoban. Some of you have heard about my first exposure to the Takumatsuden arts...
"My black belt," he actually hitched his thumb in it and sneered, "Is in Ninpo. What you civilians call ninjitsu." Followed by an epic rolling session where the 'unbeatable ninja master' submitted at least forty-five times in less than thirty minutes. Epic is the wrong word. "Pathetic" would be giving this young shidoshi-ho more credit than he deserved...
Anyway, suffice it to say my initial exposures to modern ninjitsu were not positive. But I have since met some good people- Mariusz and Earl and several of Dale's students in SF are damn good people. I like Don (although some day we are going to have a serious talk about the view from the outside).
But Jack Hoban is something special. Former Marine. Disciple of Robert Humphey, who may have cracked the code on natural ethics. Good (maybe great) man and a good (maybe great) martial artist. I like the way Jack plays and I love the way he thinks.
Today I heard his theory on PTSD and PTSD treatment. It works for me, but in the conversation leading up to it there was a gem of a question. Not about PTSD but about people who are robust against extreme stress in general. The answer, almost universally, is love.
You can become addicted to the danger. Addicted to the feeling of reality and importance when you do big, dangerous and impossible things. But that is only unbalancing if that is all you do. As long as you come back to the world and put equal weight into loving something or someone who is good, you'll be okay.
So here's the big question:
Of those of you who have spent four hours or more this week training to hurt someone who is bad... did spend at least four hours being nice to the people you love?
Think about it.
September 21, 2012
The Paralysis of Hope
The myth of Pandora's box always confused me. It made no sense. After all, Hope was in the box filled with all of the evils and ailments of men-- famine, disease, death, jealousy, anger-- and in order to get the benefit of Hope, it was kept in the box, not let out to infect the world.
Even as a kid, I thought that didn't make sense. Why Hope included in a list of evils? If the evils could only affect the world by being released, how could Hope help anyone by being caged? Dumb.
But maybe not.
As long as I'm cataloging some dark thoughts...
In a drawn-out violent episode, the threat wants to keep the victim from effectively fighting. In a true blitz, that's not much of a problem. Close distance, distract, flurry attack. The victim tends to freeze. In a longer, drawn out, ugly scenario (think secondary crime scene and all that implies) an unconscious victim doesn't supply the necessary 'fun' but a conscious victim might well fight. And so the threat has to get control of the brain.
Not always, and don't take anything I'm writing here as absolute. I'm trying to set up a specific type of event to examine here..
Teja described it best (and I think we captured her little talk in the "Logic of Violence" DVD coming out soon.) The threat does a mix of savagery and niceness, making the victim think her only hope is in being nice and keeping the threat nice...and so the victim doesn't fight.
Her hope keeps her from fighting.
And it makes me wonder how many people over the millennia died without fighting when they desperately needed to fight. How many waited for rescue or prayed for intervention, and let themselves die? And how many prevailed when they realized there was no hope and fought with everything they had?
Were the Greeks saying that hope is the one evil you must lock up in order to fight the others?
Even as a kid, I thought that didn't make sense. Why Hope included in a list of evils? If the evils could only affect the world by being released, how could Hope help anyone by being caged? Dumb.
But maybe not.
As long as I'm cataloging some dark thoughts...
In a drawn-out violent episode, the threat wants to keep the victim from effectively fighting. In a true blitz, that's not much of a problem. Close distance, distract, flurry attack. The victim tends to freeze. In a longer, drawn out, ugly scenario (think secondary crime scene and all that implies) an unconscious victim doesn't supply the necessary 'fun' but a conscious victim might well fight. And so the threat has to get control of the brain.
Not always, and don't take anything I'm writing here as absolute. I'm trying to set up a specific type of event to examine here..
Teja described it best (and I think we captured her little talk in the "Logic of Violence" DVD coming out soon.) The threat does a mix of savagery and niceness, making the victim think her only hope is in being nice and keeping the threat nice...and so the victim doesn't fight.
Her hope keeps her from fighting.
And it makes me wonder how many people over the millennia died without fighting when they desperately needed to fight. How many waited for rescue or prayed for intervention, and let themselves die? And how many prevailed when they realized there was no hope and fought with everything they had?
Were the Greeks saying that hope is the one evil you must lock up in order to fight the others?
September 18, 2012
Punishment and Justice and Vengeance
The thing with a road trip is the very long, late night conversations. Sometimes my control slips or my guard comes down or whatever happens and I see things in a different way, with more emotion than I usually do. More empathy. That's neither good nor bad, just different.
Anyway, M was talking about victims who want vengeance. Who didn't seem to realize that the vengeance they wanted was wrong, that a bullet to the head was quicker that...
And I got it, in a weird way.
Justice is a hard thing to define. It's like fairness. There is one group that says that a fair basketball game is one with objective refs where all the rules are applied to all the players equally. I'm cool with that. That's the ideal, and subject to human error, but I like that.
There is another group, and one that seems to be growing, that seems to believe that a fair basketball game is one that ends in a tie. An uneven score is prima facie evidence that the game is unfair and it is the responsibility of the refs to apply the rules in any way necessary to keep the scores even.
I'm not cool with that. Not with the power dynamic, nor with where it has to end.
But both are valid definitions for fair. (I'm assuming you all understand the difference between truth and validity.)
Justice seems tied up with fair. Actions bringing commensurate responses. An ideal, but try to adjust it much past the 1:1 math of "an eye for an eye" or "blood for blood" of the old vendettas and it gets very ambiguous very quickly.
So we wind up with a justice system and an ideal of punishment that has more to do with the feelings of society than with altering behavior (punishment in the behavioral sense) or any recognizable definition of justice.
And I'm cool with that. Some can stomach the idea of state executions, some can't. When the majority can't, those are the rules we follow. Because the mores, the way things are done, are more important to a society than any particular piece of justice. Far less cool with it when I'm too close to the problem... but when I can be objective I get it and even when it was hard to be objective that was the job, and I did the job.
My personal belief is to scrap the entire idea of justice and treat crime as a public health issue. One chance to modify behavior. If that fails, remove the individual. Years ago, I read a story (My memory is fuzzy but I think it was H Beam Piper and it was SF) where the judge said something like, "I'm not ordering your execution because of what you did. I'm ordering your execution because you have shown you are willing to do what you did." That resonated. Some bacteria are good for you, some kill. As a public health issue, why treat a person who kills any differently than a bacteria?
But the vengeance thing.
Normally I'm with M. Rapist? Shoot him in the head. Quick. Efficient. Cheap. And never, ever will he victimize anyone else. And that's enough. For me.
But, combination of sleep deprivation and the company, I got a whiff of the logic of vengeance and punishment. Not real logic. The math actually doesn't work unless there is an afterlife or reincarnation. But I have heard evil men bragging, and reminiscing about how their victims begged.
The drive (remember this is sleep deprivation talking) is to bring things full circle, to closure. And that will never feel complete until the perpetrator felt what the victim felt. Until the victimizers learn the lessons of the victims.
Anyway, M was talking about victims who want vengeance. Who didn't seem to realize that the vengeance they wanted was wrong, that a bullet to the head was quicker that...
And I got it, in a weird way.
Justice is a hard thing to define. It's like fairness. There is one group that says that a fair basketball game is one with objective refs where all the rules are applied to all the players equally. I'm cool with that. That's the ideal, and subject to human error, but I like that.
There is another group, and one that seems to be growing, that seems to believe that a fair basketball game is one that ends in a tie. An uneven score is prima facie evidence that the game is unfair and it is the responsibility of the refs to apply the rules in any way necessary to keep the scores even.
I'm not cool with that. Not with the power dynamic, nor with where it has to end.
But both are valid definitions for fair. (I'm assuming you all understand the difference between truth and validity.)
Justice seems tied up with fair. Actions bringing commensurate responses. An ideal, but try to adjust it much past the 1:1 math of "an eye for an eye" or "blood for blood" of the old vendettas and it gets very ambiguous very quickly.
So we wind up with a justice system and an ideal of punishment that has more to do with the feelings of society than with altering behavior (punishment in the behavioral sense) or any recognizable definition of justice.
And I'm cool with that. Some can stomach the idea of state executions, some can't. When the majority can't, those are the rules we follow. Because the mores, the way things are done, are more important to a society than any particular piece of justice. Far less cool with it when I'm too close to the problem... but when I can be objective I get it and even when it was hard to be objective that was the job, and I did the job.
My personal belief is to scrap the entire idea of justice and treat crime as a public health issue. One chance to modify behavior. If that fails, remove the individual. Years ago, I read a story (My memory is fuzzy but I think it was H Beam Piper and it was SF) where the judge said something like, "I'm not ordering your execution because of what you did. I'm ordering your execution because you have shown you are willing to do what you did." That resonated. Some bacteria are good for you, some kill. As a public health issue, why treat a person who kills any differently than a bacteria?
But the vengeance thing.
Normally I'm with M. Rapist? Shoot him in the head. Quick. Efficient. Cheap. And never, ever will he victimize anyone else. And that's enough. For me.
But, combination of sleep deprivation and the company, I got a whiff of the logic of vengeance and punishment. Not real logic. The math actually doesn't work unless there is an afterlife or reincarnation. But I have heard evil men bragging, and reminiscing about how their victims begged.
The drive (remember this is sleep deprivation talking) is to bring things full circle, to closure. And that will never feel complete until the perpetrator felt what the victim felt. Until the victimizers learn the lessons of the victims.
September 15, 2012
Inspired by Kasey
Violence Dynamics seminar is winding down here in Minnesota. Hitting the road again in a few hours. Good and bad. The debrief on this one will be informative, to say the least.
Kasey got a whole day to teach yesterday—eight hours of strangles, chokes and neck cranks. Cool to be in a jurisdiction that doesn’t automatically assume that any force to the neck is deadly force. He’s a good teacher. Good movement, good relevance, good communication. And, most valuable to me, he gets me thinking… (this second, as Marc teaches, Kasey is condensing the violence classifications from “Facing Violence” into a few sentences for the one person who wasn’t here for the whole week.)
But, as always, the blog is about me. And ideas. And thoughts. Kasey triggered a cascade yesterday. The thought process goes like this:
Kasey says, “I’m a judo guy, and you can do this technique like a judo guy or an aikido guy or even a kung-fu guy. It will all look a little different but it will still work.”
And that triggers the idea of a plastic mind exercise where you work a single technique, but in the mindsets of different martial arts. Just to feel and explore the flavor. Each repetition or series will feel and work slightly differently.Hence- Plastic Mind Drill X: “Do it Like a (name martial art here)”
Earlier in the day, and playing with the officers Thursday, I was doing light sparring with one or both hands in pockets or with my coffee cup. Believe it or not, I don’t do this because I’m an arrogant prick or to show off. I do it for me. It forces me to think differently. It forces me to be more efficient. With your hands in your pockets you must learn to glide strikes with your elbows and shoulders and it really improves your tai sabaki. It also brings it to the next level where the glides unbalance as well and, with practice, gives you a taste of using some subtle anatomical weapons with momentum.
And so, a name to put on something we’ve been doing forever: “Subtle Disadvantage Drills”
So:“Do it Like X”“Subtle Disadvantage”
A few more:Osaekomi (I tend to use more Japanese after hanging with Kasey. The shared judo background makes for a nice shorthand.) Osaekomi is pinning. Pinning and escaping from pinning and preventing pinning are great skill building for one of the hallmark combative skills: Moving a body.
But, one of the key differences between a good grappler and a mediocre grappler (and I will argue, in a real fight, the difference between most people and someone who is really good) is the ability to relax. To simply relax. When I did a regular JJ class, we would usually end with rolling, and I would roll with all of the students in sequence until they were too tired to continue. Not a big deal. lots of judo, BJJ and a few JJ guys do this.
The reason we can exhaust a class isn’t because of conditioning or some magic skill. The better you are, the more relaxed you are, the less sugar and oxygen you burn the longer you can last. And that efficiency in energy conservation, IMO translates into efficiency in technique application.
So what about doing grappling drills and every so often shift the focus from skill building to relaxation practice? Meditating from the pin.
(I also noticed that a lot of people don’t get the idea of throwing their legs and using the dead wait to pull their own bodies through a turn. Hard to describe, but useful. Don’t have a specific drill for it though…)
Acting practice. We try to make the approaches and set-ups as real as possible. We want the students to recognize a predatory approach. Especially how predators try to act like non-predators. Conversely, in some situations (especially sexual violence with a medium or long build-up phase) the intended victim is going to have to make an approach and then execute a plan…and is likely to fail if she cannot disguise her intentions. Practicing acting with any build-up just makes sense. On multiple levels. “It doesn’t take a good actor to spot a bad actor.”
Elbow chisao- done this more often as a demo than a drill, but why not? Play with the basic sensitivity of sticky hands and work in the leverage and momentum skills of working the back of the elbow.
Lots of themes, here, and this is just thinking out loud. Relax. See opportunities. Integrate everything. Transition from your slow thinking mind to your faster, older brain. Training is not conditioning and what happens when you can improvise under pressure seems to be a different effect.
September 9, 2012
Beliefs Empowering Evil
Just wrapped up an on-line writer's course.
Near the end, I got a question:
"...what is your opinion of Ben Bova ’s recommendation to authors that their works not contain villains? He states, in his Tips for writers: "In the real world there are no villains. No one actually sets out to do evil. Fiction mirrors life. Or, more accurately, fiction serves as a lens to focus what we know of life and bring its realities into sharper, clearer understanding for us. There are no villains cackling and rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them."
My first reaction was frankly emotional:
Sorry. I had a guy in custody who cut open a two-year-old baby's
belly with a tin can lid and raped the wound. Mr. Bova is talking
about his world, not mine.
I don't mind emotion sometimes, but it's not that useful. So:
I think I was unfair in my first answer to this question. Let me try
it another way. No one believes that they are evil. Not Stalin, not
Hitler, not Pol Pot, and not some bastard who rapes babies. Every
last one of them has a justification. My emotional reaction to Bova's
statement was this-- just because some rapist justifies his actions to
himself, that in no way causes me, and shouldn't cause anybody, to buy
into his bullshit. Justifications are not real and the story you tell
yourself doesn't make actions good and when people pretend that raping
a baby is... "only people with problems, struggling to solve them"
they have no idea how encouraging and useful rapists find those words.
It does far more to encourage crime than the author can possibly
know.
So, let's take an example and, given the audience, the example is
writing fiction. I assume that you do it because you love it, that it
makes you feel alive. It may be the most important thing in your
life.
What if 99.9% of the world decided it was wrong? N-- it was evil.
You are, after all, lying. Telling and selling lies that doom
impressionable young readers into believing that there are really
heroes and true love and soulmates! You need to be stopped!
Would you give up writing?
That is how some of the process predators (the ones who commit the
crime for the pleasure of committing-- serial killers, serial rapists,
conmen, certain assaulters) see their crimes. The best thing in the
world and the benighted, ignorant masses in pure prejudice are trying
to put a stop to it.
Others just don't care or grasp that other people have rights or
feelings. One rapist/murderer told me that as a man, I should
understand. He always asked first and he only raped the ones who said
'no.' Where did they get the idea that a mere woman had the right to
say no to him?
A pedophile who didn't understand the difference between his shoes and
his daughter. He could do what he wanted. That's what 'his' _means_.
He thought we (society, the courts...) were completely unjust not to understand that.
There was a high-profile disappearance a while back. Not sure how
much I can share, but her father had been molesting her for a long
time. When the neighbor asked for a turn, daddy said, "I don't share
my meat." Exact quote. So the neighbor later abducted, raped and
murdered her.
One of the most violent felons I dealt with told me, "I just do what
everybody wants to do. The rest of you just don't have the guts."
The highest-end predators honestly think that they are better,
stronger and smarter than the rest of the world. And they prove it to
themselves by doing things others won't do. It's fallen into
disfavor, thankfully, but remember the push to increase children's
self-esteem a few years ago? The highest self-esteem scores are
consistently found in violent criminals and if you raise that esteem,
you raise the violence.
In each case, these guys will have a story where they are either the
good guys or the victims. All respect to Mr. Bova, it's just a story
and it's bullshit and it empowers them when we buy into the myth.
Near the end, I got a question:
"...what is your opinion of Ben Bova ’s recommendation to authors that their works not contain villains? He states, in his Tips for writers: "In the real world there are no villains. No one actually sets out to do evil. Fiction mirrors life. Or, more accurately, fiction serves as a lens to focus what we know of life and bring its realities into sharper, clearer understanding for us. There are no villains cackling and rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them."
My first reaction was frankly emotional:
Sorry. I had a guy in custody who cut open a two-year-old baby's
belly with a tin can lid and raped the wound. Mr. Bova is talking
about his world, not mine.
I don't mind emotion sometimes, but it's not that useful. So:
I think I was unfair in my first answer to this question. Let me try
it another way. No one believes that they are evil. Not Stalin, not
Hitler, not Pol Pot, and not some bastard who rapes babies. Every
last one of them has a justification. My emotional reaction to Bova's
statement was this-- just because some rapist justifies his actions to
himself, that in no way causes me, and shouldn't cause anybody, to buy
into his bullshit. Justifications are not real and the story you tell
yourself doesn't make actions good and when people pretend that raping
a baby is... "only people with problems, struggling to solve them"
they have no idea how encouraging and useful rapists find those words.
It does far more to encourage crime than the author can possibly
know.
So, let's take an example and, given the audience, the example is
writing fiction. I assume that you do it because you love it, that it
makes you feel alive. It may be the most important thing in your
life.
What if 99.9% of the world decided it was wrong? N-- it was evil.
You are, after all, lying. Telling and selling lies that doom
impressionable young readers into believing that there are really
heroes and true love and soulmates! You need to be stopped!
Would you give up writing?
That is how some of the process predators (the ones who commit the
crime for the pleasure of committing-- serial killers, serial rapists,
conmen, certain assaulters) see their crimes. The best thing in the
world and the benighted, ignorant masses in pure prejudice are trying
to put a stop to it.
Others just don't care or grasp that other people have rights or
feelings. One rapist/murderer told me that as a man, I should
understand. He always asked first and he only raped the ones who said
'no.' Where did they get the idea that a mere woman had the right to
say no to him?
A pedophile who didn't understand the difference between his shoes and
his daughter. He could do what he wanted. That's what 'his' _means_.
He thought we (society, the courts...) were completely unjust not to understand that.
There was a high-profile disappearance a while back. Not sure how
much I can share, but her father had been molesting her for a long
time. When the neighbor asked for a turn, daddy said, "I don't share
my meat." Exact quote. So the neighbor later abducted, raped and
murdered her.
One of the most violent felons I dealt with told me, "I just do what
everybody wants to do. The rest of you just don't have the guts."
The highest-end predators honestly think that they are better,
stronger and smarter than the rest of the world. And they prove it to
themselves by doing things others won't do. It's fallen into
disfavor, thankfully, but remember the push to increase children's
self-esteem a few years ago? The highest self-esteem scores are
consistently found in violent criminals and if you raise that esteem,
you raise the violence.
In each case, these guys will have a story where they are either the
good guys or the victims. All respect to Mr. Bova, it's just a story
and it's bullshit and it empowers them when we buy into the myth.
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