Rory Miller's Blog, page 49

Big Mess

I like messy. That's good, because messy is the natural environment of life. We don't become humans in pristine test tubes but in liquid-filled icky wombs. Some people learn facts in well-ordered classrooms, but it pales besides the applications that they learn in the wind and weather and interference of the real world.
Life is messy. Conflict and violence are supremely messy-- and I'm okay with that. When you try to learn how to deal with violence (the essence of messy chaos) in the pristine setting of a training hall, you're missing the point. You (or your instructors) limit the chaos so that the solutions are cleaner and clearer so that you will feel more certain and safer. That's wrong. Hugely wrong on many levels, because the heart of violence is in the mess.
If we have seen, time and again, some of the world's most well trained martial artists in a real fight rolling on the floor throwing wild punches, where is the value in pretending that doesn't happen? What about getting really good at rolling on the floor and throwing wild punches? If you are going to go all cave man anyway, why not become the Michelangelo of cavemen?
Which isn't to say that there is anything wrong with martial traditions or techniques. Most work just fine... but only for the person who has adapted to the chaos and fear and adrenaline. If you are in denial about those, not only will you fail in accessing your awesome martial arts skillz... but you won't even succeed in fighting like a coordinated chimp.
But in that chaos, if you accept it and then embrace it, are an infinite number of tools and opportunities. The world is a big place and full of many things. Almost all of those things are gifts if you learn to see them and use them. The cluttered floors and cramped spaces of the real world are obstacles and shields and striking surfaces, if you embrace them. They are hazards if you ignore them. The wild attack pattern, whether of a drunk or someone trained differently, are easy to misdirect if you use them... and pathetic excuses for getting your ass kicked ("He attacked me wrong!") if you do not.
Even failure: once upon a time I was demonstrating a headlock escape on Andre Scott. Dre was a bodybuilder, enormously strong, an effective and well-respected sergeant...and the technique was totally ineffective. What I had been taught didn't work with a body-builder who 'posed' and turned his head away. So I had to look at what was right there, and what was obvious in the mess was faster and more efficient that the trained technique.
IF you can work with chaos, IF you can work with variables, IF you can see what is in front of your face and adapt to it, you can do amazing things.
If not, if you insist that the world conform to your sterile training, you will likely fail.
Messy is fun. Embrace the mess.

The Living Room

Sitting in the Living Room, a restaurant/bar in Boston. It's on the edge where the North End meets the waterfront. It's dead quiet this time of day, rocking at night. A good place to sit on a couch, drink coffee, and get some work done.
David sent me the galleys for "Facing Violence". Almost done today. Some quibbles with words and punctuation, realizing how much more I know about some of this stuff (especially legal articulation) than made it into the book... That's fine, in a way. Makes the seminars more valuable.
I very much like the section on avoidance and de-escalation, particularly dealing with dangerous ground and cultures or subcultures where you don't know the rules. One of the people who read an early draft shared the other day that the section turned out invaluable in a certain country in Africa where he was working. Book won't be out for seven months and it may have already saved a life. I'm pretty pumped. I did my happy finger dance.
Later tonight, meeting friends at a Narghila bar in the University District. All-day classes tomorrow and Sunday. The scenario day looks full. Right on the edge of too many. Hoping we don't get walk-ons, because I hate turning people away. Note to self: Scenario days shouldn't have the location posted.
Still plenty of space for tomorrow, however, the 'easy' day. Several are repeats as well, so I'll work in more of the advanced stuff I'd planned for Sunday. It should work out well.
K had a brilliant idea. Her belly-dancing classes have usually been set up as a limited days/weeks/hours class for a specific period and a specific purpose, e.g. a Monday and Wednesday nights from 1900-2000 for eight weeks (16 hours) to learn Algerian Tribal Dance Basics. Something like that.
It works around a lot of the issues I have with long-term training. It makes it easy to be modular: Eight hours for Conflict Communications. Four hours for violence dynamics. Menu of building-block classes at one hour per item. Specific immersion classes.
The idea deserves more thought, but it's something I could see doing as a regular thing. Take advantage of the good parts of dojo training while avoiding many of the problems.
Needs more thought.

The Three Golden Rules

Mac came up with the Three Golden Rules long before I was hired. By then, they were teaching them at the state academy. I found out, recently, that these are new thoughts for cops in other regions.
1) You and your partner go home safely at the end of each and every shift.2) Get the job done.3) Liability free.
The rules are dreams, of course. The only perfectly safe way to do the job is to avoid doing it...and some officers are skilled at that, whether it is answering the call for back-up a little late or finding a quiet place to 'patrol' or getting a desk job and moving into admin. There is no way to completely avoid liability, but the triple play of making good decisions, executing the decisions properly and writing good reports works wonders...
Still, if your training, your tactics, your policies and your equipment must serve these three rules. If you're training will get you killed or sued it is BAD training. If it won't get the job done, it is BAD training.
Sometimes the order gets perverted, and this is an abomination: when fear of lawsuits stops you from doing the job or you get injured because you were more afraid of the liability bogey-man than the rusty shank... that is so very wrong.
And when the perversion gets written into policy, when an agency or administration becomes more worried about 'managing perception' than getting the basic job done, at that moment they have changed from a useful and necessary thing to a leech. It takes only that one decision to change from part of the solution to part of the problem.
Does it seem wrong and maybe insufficiently heroic to put officer safety in front of effect? It's just math. This is one that people can write into policy until the sky falls down and never effect anything... because it is physically impossible to do the job from the grave. It's not just a cop thing. Same for medics and firemen and the people trucking in food after a major natural disaster. You can't do the job dead. Worse, every cowboy who recklessly gets himself in trouble draws resources away from the original problem.
There's a line there, a balance. And, like most people, I think my line is perfect. Those who value safety more I privately think are a little cowardly. Those who value safety less I think are reckless. I never met a lot of the later.

Enabling, Responsibility, Hunger and Insecurity

A couple of good comments on the last post that got me thinking- about complexity and reward and punishment and insecurity and hunger. This might seem like a tangent rather than a response. Let's see.
I'm reading "Life at the Bottom" and so far, it is brilliant. Brutal, dark...but important. I then went on Amazon and read the reviews of the people who hated it. That's always educational. The voices were pretty much universal: The author is blaming the victims.
Not at all, at least not as ...

Responsibility

No one cares about your safety but you. That's not really true. Your family and friends care. Sometimes I (or people like me) are paid to care… but when it comes down to survival it's only you.

People confuse concepts like "responsibility" and "blame." Further, they confuse victims and potential victims, and they blur these distinctions inside fuzzy head that sometimes can't tell the difference between the world that is and the world that should be.

In the world that should be, maybe...

Kris Got Me Thinkin'

Oakland was encouraging. Things I am trying to do got put into words better than I could. Then Kris called the other day. We spent a lot of time talking about how comfortable laziness can mimic blatant stupidity; that being a good observer was one of the most useful skills in any arena.
Kris, as he is wont to do, told me what I should be doing next.
He suggested a four-day curriculum. Maybe more, give or take. It resonated.
Ballparking here, just speculating:
Introduction day- same as my...

MindPlay

Part of this is about engaging the correct part of the brain...and paying respect to the parts that will be engaged despite your desires.
One of the biggest lies in self-defense training is "You will fight the way you train." No, you won't. Not the first time. You will try and there might be some resemblance but likely (assuming you don't just stand there, frozen) you will have a pretty severe dump of hormones. Adrenaline and stuff like that.
That means you will lose most of your...

Deep Water

I got the T-shirt from Robb Buckland of FEARS ltd. And I've been listening to The Blessing's "Prince of Deep Water".
There's no bottom to deep water. Nothing you can stand on. Nothing you can touch. It is emptiness, except for things that might eat you, things that live in the deep water. Things you can't see from the surface. You are small, and deep water is the Abyss. The thing that Nietzche was afraid to look into.
The depths are transformative. Whatever you were on land or in the...

Quote from Mariusz...

Last night Mariusz said:"...he said it was difficult. It might take twenty-five years and then your martial art would suddenly achieve a new level. I can't help but think that if something takes twenty-five years you are probably getting it despite the training, not because of the training."

Excessive Construction, Maybe

Sometimes (maybe this happens to other people) when I'm trying to simplify teaching methods I hear, "Maybe that applies to someone with your experience, but a beginner would never get it." Or, even, "Some of you guys who have been doing this so long forgot that you had to learn it."
There's good and bad in that, truth and fiction. Some of it is accurate, but much of it is defensive.
So, the truth- I'm shitty at teaching breakfalls. I've been doing them so long that I really don't remember...