There exists today an epidemic, a crisis, a pervasive and powerfully negative phenomenon in self-defense. That phenomenon is raging ignorance, willful stupidity, and the intentional evasion of reality in the flight from cognitive dissonance. This would be bad, but perhaps slightly better than it is, if not for the fact that those most uninformed on self-defense seem to be the ones pontificating most loudly from ignorance.
We see this raging ignorance in both domestic and foreign-dominated websites at which “martial” artists dismiss, deride, or deny the utility of weapons like knives and firearms, substituting their culturally based hoplophobia, wishful thinking, and projection for the reality of weapons in the context of self-preservation. We see it in vulgar, childish Internet boards dominated by adolescents (and those who think like adolescents), where pontification from ignorance has been raised to an art form in which kids with little or no training and absolutely no grounding in reality presume to tell the world how very, very wrong are all those across the Web whose opinions and martial systems differ from those of the hectoring virtual orators. We see it in editorials published in newspapers and periodicals, in which people who know almost nothing about weapons, the martial arts, or self-defense presume to tell the world what the laws and society’s mores should and should not be, proudly parading their lack of knowledge in shockingly unsupported and even contradictory statements about the topics in question.
We see it in politics when politicians (such as New York Attorney General and Governor-wannabe Elliot Spitzer’s soon-to-be Lieutenant Governor, who has repeatedly introduced legislation that would punish police officers for shooting and killing assailants threatening the officers with lethal force) attempt to pass, or succeed in passing, legislation hostile to self-defense and empowering to society’s criminal element. We see it in our courts, when groups of backseat-driving Monday morning quarterbacks (in the forms of juries and judges) apply their collective 20/20 hindsight to judge and condemn the acts of citizens who have done nothing but defend themselves.
We have seen the reality time and time again: If you ever use physical force to defend yourself, especially if you use a weapon to do it, you can and most likely will end up in court to justify your actions, essentially guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of those who’ve never touched a weapon, never studied a martial art, and know less about self-defense than you’ve managed to forget in the course of your training.
It is this raging ignorance in self-defense that relegates so much potentially interesting and worthwhile discussion on the topic to the virtual garbage dumps of the Web, where intellectually masturbatory would-be experts opine from anonymity, their often vulgar and frequently animated avatars pulsing epileptically next to their underwhelmingly clever pseudonyms, criticizing anyone and everyone who dares to share earnest and substantive opinions about the martial arts and human survival. It is the most delicious irony of all that those who themselves so frequently hide behind the safety of their CRTs and LCD monitors, who so rarely identify themselves by name or have, to back up their own opinions, credentials anyone would find particularly impressive, are themselves the quickest to attack those standing up for what they believe.
It is these largely anonymous critics who demand to know why and how others presume to offer and to substantiate their opinions — while the critics have nothing with which to justify and substantiate their own statements. From within the shelter of a mob, it is easy to throw stones — but not so easy to stand clear and stand up.
The single biggest threat to the continued legality and promotion of success in self-defense in the modern world is this raging ignorance. It contributes to hostile legal climates, to hostile societies, to discouragement among practitioners, and to disinformation among students. Raging ignorance in self-defense is rotting the industry from within, too, with too few voices uttered loudly enough to counter it. Fewer still of those voices come from those who actually contribute to self-defense, providing material and ideas of value to those searching for such information.
No, it is far easier to sit behind one’s computer for hour after hour of the day (while speaking of one’s demanding training schedule and one’s refusal to compromise in one’s dedication to one’s physical conditioning and one’s no-holds-barred attitude), criticizing and condemning and screaming, as the Wright brothers ignore you, that it will never fly and should not be attempted.
There are times when I think this raging ignorance in self-defense is, ultimately, a terminal disease — one with no cure and no future, no hope and no prospects. It is, therefore, a measure of one’s convictions — one’s martialism — to determine to fight an impossible fight. It is a measure of one’s character when one determines that a war worth fighting remains worth fighting when its victory is unlikely. It is a measure of one’s psychological and even physical fortitude when one stands for what is true regardless of popularity, regardless of provenance, and regardless of petty punditry.
You can do nothing to fight the raging ignorance in self-defense. You can do nothing, that is, that you are not already doing. If you are part of the solution, you continue to apply an active mind to your training, refusing dogma and dismissing others’ agendas as you pursue success in self-defense. You embrace that which you can use and you discard that which you cannot. You apply logic and reason to the data of your senses. You understand your limitations and you seek to work past them to the best of your abilities, while understanding that you must so often work within them. You look around you and you see the rampaging, raging, roiling ignorance in self-defense that seethes and bubbles all around you in an endless sea of foolishness — and you keep right on paddling your way toward your goals. You are, as the old poem goes, the master of your fate, the captain of your soul. You are among the few who understand the pursuit of self-defense.
You grasp what it means.
You know why it is necessary.
If you are part of the problem rather than the solution, there is nothing you can do. Ignorance insulates you from yourself; you will not see what you do not know and you are not interested in learning. You are raging; you are rampaging; you are pontificating from ignorance. You are the mob, the tidal wave, the rolling fog that obscures all but has no substance to call its own. You are the uninformed and the unenlightened. You are the hopeless and you are destroying others’ hope in your flailing, fuming foolishness.
I have heard it said that there are two types of people in the world: There are people who think there are two types of people, and there are people who do not. Among both the former and the latter, there can be only the students and the stupid. The students learn; the stupid complain. The students ask; the stupid demand. The students contribute; the stupid opine.
Be a student.