There is no shortage of criticism to be found on the Internet. Stating any opinion in this medium invites the ignorant pontification of a legion of armchair experts, most of whom are woefully misinformed on the topics about which they choose to comment. Articles here at The Martialist have spurred a great many responses, some of which I found interesting or educational. Others, however, dropped my jaw to my keyboard in utter incredulity.
What I’ve come to realize is that there are a great many people participating in self-defense discussions and in the martial arts community who suffer from the opposite of the “reality based self defense” mindset that is prominent in modern combatives and contemporary martial circles. We could call these benighted souls exponents of Unreality Based Self Defense (UBSD) programs. They would be amusing if not for the fact that some earnest seekers of self-defense knowledge might listen to them without knowing better.
There is no better illustration of the UBSD mindset than some of the online statements made in response to some of my early work on “maintaining space.” The articles I published early on, on those topics, correctly described how todefend your personal space assertively by getting your hands up and creating distance with your body language. This protects the body’s centerline, one of the most important concepts in a number of martial arts. It also places the hands and arms between you and a potential assailant.
My old Wing Chun Kung Fu instructor and I once discussed an alleged “reality” defense system in which the instructor claimed there was no need to adopt a stance of any kind. One’s techniques could be delivered from any position, such as with one’s arms hanging limply at the sides of one’s body.
By contrast, that Wing Chun instructor once told me that he would discreetly bring at least one of his hands up if he perceives a low-level threat. (This looks to me like the posture of someone scratching absent-mindedly at his chest.) The difference is clear: the person with his arms hanging by his sides will lose the initiative in most cases. Reaction rarely beats action when facing an incoming strike.
A QUICK CHECK
Try this yourself. Have a training partner stand within striking range and punch you, while you attempt to defend with your arms hanging by your sides. Now switch roles. You attempt to punch him – but attempt to do it while he is in a “fence” stance, placing his hands between the two of you and staggering his body. After you’ve conducted this exercise, ask yourself which technique better protects you from getting hit.
The “fence.” This is body language that says,
“Whoa, buddy. Back off.” It is assertive without
being confrontational when done correctly.
You could take this a step farther with a tactical-folder trainer. Keep your arms at your sides and have your training partner encroach on your space. Try to deploy your knife to defend yourself before he can get to you.
I go into this because it’s a fairly basic concept that anyone familiar with the martial arts or “reality” self-defense should understand. Now we’ll look at two of the replies posted to an Internet discussion board in response to an early version of the Maintaining Space article. The first was this:
Rational people do not always feel the same as you. Anyone is a potential threat when aproaching [sic] you. I still think the hands up thing is a bit childish. If you keep your hands down at your side and do not go into the hand thing, you will already be prepared to transition to your folder. When you raise your hands you are showing fear and make yourself a potential target. I do not wish my potential attacker to read fear in my body language. I want my defence [sic] to be swift and without warning. The hand thing may work for you in your situations. But, I do not want to look like Austin Powers getting ready to try a Karate chop. Just my feelings.
I can think of no better way to encapsulate the UBSD mindset. The errors in this brief paragraph are fairly impressive. The author acknowledges the danger of allowing someone to violate your personal space, but then keeps coming back to his feelings about the situation. This brings us to…
UBSD PRINCIPLE 1: FEELINGS ARE REALITY
The UBSD exponent believes his or her feelings determine the outcome of a use-of-force scenario. These people actually believe what they want or what they fear makes a difference in what is. Reality, unfortunately, does not care what you think. Simply because you don’t believe everyone you meet is a potential threat, or because you don’t wish to “feel” paranoid about your fellow human beings, does not change the fact that threats exist. You may never encounter another human being who means you harm in the course of your life, but the fact is that there are people sprinkled among those who cross our paths every day who just might decide to use violence against us. The catch is that even though these people are a tiny segment of the overall population, you don’t get to know ahead of time who they might be.
This means you must be prepared for violence and remain aware of the disadvantage you face as a defender. The attacker gets to choose the time, place, and means of his use of force. The most important thing you can do in improving your ability to defeat aggressors is maintain your personal space. But, gosh, you wouldn’t want to look silly, would you? Golly, someone might say you look like Austin Powers (but ask yourself – what is Austin aping when he puts his hands out like that? He’s improperly imitating a specific posture.)
Morgan Atwood, an extremely knowledgeable young man and knifemaker who has contributed knife-fighting articles to The Martialist in the past, was blunt in his disdain for this attitude:
Ah, yes, that is a wonderful foundation for self-defense theory. “If I don’t look like Austin Powers doing it, it’s a good tactic, but if I look like Austin Powers doing it, it’s crappy.” I never really gave any thought to what I looked like in any sort of defensive posture or action, and frankly I don’t give a flying twizzler. I could look like Barney humping an elephant seal, and as long as it works I am not gonna care. But hey… my priorities obviously are different from yours. I figure that the pale kinda gray shade dead people get isn’t so cool looking, and neither is lying in the ICU with a breathing tube in you – but, I guess that doesn’t have anything to do with how immediately cool one looks, and ya know, one always has to look cool.
…Generally I can keep my distance from people, just standing back from them. If someone was aggressively closing on my space, I’d put my hand up. I’d rather put my hand up and let them know, “Hey, I am onto you,” than take a hit because I kept my arms at my sides waiting for them to act first before I acted in an “aggressive manner.” It’s not about saying “Hey, stand back, you are scaring me.” It’s about saying, “Look, pal, I don’t want you this close, and unless you want to get elected for that ass whipping your campaigning for, you best back up.” Screw fear. It’s not a fearful gesture and it’s not cowering. It’s strong and authoritative.
The “feelings are reality” principle is widespread in UBSD adherents and encompasses much more than this single example. Ayn Rand once criticized those who did not “believe in” objective reality. Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed, she quoted, or Wishing won’t make it so. What you want – what you desire and what you feel – makes absolutely no difference with regard to the realities of force and self-defense. Just because you’d rather not live in a world where all people who violate your personal space represent a potential threat doesn’t mean this isn’t true. You ignore these realities at your peril, for that reality invariably punishes those who blithely disregard it.
UBSD PRINCIPLE 2: FUNDAMENTAL IGNORANCE
More startling than the reliance on feelings (“There is no threat if I don’t feel there’s a threat”) is the fundamental ignorance displayed by UBSD exponents in general and that individual in particular. He actually thinks placing the hands up is “childish,” dismissing out of hand the need to maintain space. He also incorrectly believes that assertively defending your personal space is “projecting fear,” which one presumes will cause potential assailants (who aren’t a problem, obviously, if you don’t “feel” they should be kept at a distance) to leap at one’s throat at the first sign of bad teeth and a velour shirt.
This idea of “projecting fear” is flatly wrong; there’s no other way to say it. When you use body language to make someone back off, you’re being assertive, not fearful. You are actually using one of the aspects of space domination (forward drive), an important principle in martial arts and combative styles that focus on seizing and keeping the initiative in an encounter.
Fundamental ignorance of the mechanics, the legalities, and the logistics of realistic self-defense is the core of the UBSD mindset. It extends to every aspect of self-defense. If you’ve ever watched in horror as someone scoffed at the realistic use of force by stating, with an air of authority, that such reality is “paranoid” or that they’d “just do Technique X to avoid the problem,” you’ve seen this ignorance in action.
UBSD PRINCIPLE 3: FANTASY TECHNIQUE
The ignorance that characterizes UBSD exponents leads to the third principle: reliance on fantasy techniques that don’t work and that are built on questionable or obviously false assumptions and theories. The idea, for example, that keeping your hands at your sides makes it easier for you to deploy a weapon (such as a knife) completely disregards the need to keep an assailant away from you in the first place, lest he interfere with your draw or strike you before you can complete it.
Fantasy techniques encompass a host of inadvisable weapons defenses, high kicks, and alleged psychological ploys and deterrents, but the most obvious ones manifest themselves as a general attitude of overconfidence. Those who understand the reality of self-defense know that it is a gamble every time, that they must take every advantage (hence, “Fight Unfairly”) in the hopes of success. They do not wrongly believe that they can react “swiftly and without warning” when placed at a disadvantage by an opponent who has the initiative (and who has hands on you or weapons in your centerline). They are not arrogant enough to believe they’ll “control the situation” in a neat and tidy fashion, showing their assailant “respect” while trying not to hurt his person or his delicate sensibilities. They are not stupid enough to think that societal predators are swayed by acts of compassion, which such people view simply as openings provided by suckers.
The second sample response I wish to analyze here actually dovetails nicely with the fourth and final UBSD principle:
UBSD PRINCIPLE 4: MISPLACED COMPASSION
A human being who violently assaults you forfeits the respect for his sovereignty you would normally grant your fellow citizens. By displaying a willingness to violate the sanctity of your person, your attacker is committing an immoral act. Some of the strangest UBSD comments I have seen revolve around misplaced compassion, in which the UBSD exponent seems to assign more value to the life of the attacker than the to the life of the defender.
…[G]ame theory PROVES that two negatives are not a positive when it comes to social situations. If you comit [sic] yourself to social suspicion and fragmentation that’s what you will get. So the smart first order “defense” is to conduct yourself in such a way as to be a contributor to the social well-being of your community. Of course there are places where this is completely impossible, but not many.
To equate assertively defending your personal space with some sort of societal ill is so ridiculous that one almost doesn’t know where to begin in addressing it. To believe that conducting yourself as a contributor to society’s well-being is some substitute for self-defense against a violent attacker is worse than foolish. It is actively dangerous to the well-being of others. Is there any reaction to such pabulum other than a dropped jaw and a shaken head?
CHOOSE REALITY – OR ELSE
The reality of self-defense is that you aren’t always in control, you don’t always get a choice, and your feelings don’t matter. There are people in the world who mean you harm – and you won’t know ahead of time who they might be. You cannot be in a state of complete and total awareness at all times – which means you must assign your attention appropriately to threats that present themselves, profiling when necessary. You must defend your space. You must protect your person. You must train and you must train hard.
You must understand that to be prepared is not necessarily to be paranoid, to be mindful of potential threats is not necessarily to be aggressive, and to be protective of your personal space is not necessarily to be fearful. You must know the real limitations and applications of weapons and unarmed techniques, the mechanics and logistics of their uses, and the physical principles of effective, efficient fighting systems. You must be aware that those ignorant of these things will deride and dismiss the very real facts you impart and the very valid concepts you support – and that, ultimately, they will pay for their ignorant arrogance.
Natural selection constantly thins the ranks of the world’s UBSD exponents. Don’t follow them into extinction.