Too Simple

Teaching new material tonight. That always feels weird going in. Not so much worrying about whether people will like it or not, or the usual bullshit stagefright thing. It's mostly when people ask for something or I see an obvious hole, the program always feels too simple to teach.

"Facing Violence" is doing pretty well and getting good reviews... but did anybody NOT know that self-defense has ethical and legal dimensions? That avoidance was a skill that needs to be practiced? That bad guys attack differently than training partners? Seriously?

In almost every class I'm almost embarrassed to point out that it is easier to beat people up from behind. There are giggles, but always several who have not really practiced it, who don't even realize how their learned strategy is derived from dominance displays (which kind of require fighting eye-to-eye.)

Logic of Violence is merely an exercise in examining a problem from the viewpoint that drives it. We all do this every day. There are nuances and details that people who don't spend time with criminals might miss, but humans think like humans. Apply your mental tools to the threat's problems and you will come up with some things very close to the threat's solutions.

I'm proud of ConCom, but on at least one level it is just a taxonomy, just putting labels on things that every person sees every day. We have made important connections. Just as an example, in every long-term relationship I've seen, the couple have at least one argument that they have word for word periodically. That one observation leads to some pretty cool inferences. But once the program is laid out, it's just stuff that every person does and sees every day. Once you see it, you can act with far more skill and intention... but I wonder why people don't see.

Self-defense is what happens when you are losing. Everybody knows or should know what losing feels like, should know that part of losing is not having access to the resources you rely on when you are winning or even. Anyone who has spent thirty seconds thinking about this grasps it. Anyone who has a background in any kind of movement art and gives a little effort to understanding bad guys can start coming up with some solutions. What feels to me like ten minutes of correlating known data will be two hours of class tonight.

So I keep expecting every last student to look up and say, "Well, duh."