easy-digital-downloads domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/erikphillip/public_html/conflictresearchgroupintl.com/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6121There will be some scientific details in what follows. Feel free to ignore it. Unless you are doing research, the background science is not important. The concepts are. And you know what? I’m not a scientist, so don’t take my word on anything. Again, like Maslow, this is a model, not a theory. Many models … [Read more…]
I want you to do a thought experiment. Relax, take a deep breath, and answer a few questions. First, imagine that no one is going to help you and your children are in danger of starving. What would you be willing to do? Would you steal food? Would you rob (use violence or the threat … [Read more…]
Quick Maslow recap:The basic idea is that there are five states or levels of struggle. Each level must be addressed in order. The most basic level includes survival needs: food, water, shelter and protection from immediate dangers. If any of these are threatened, you don’t really care about much else. The second level is security … [Read more…]
For the record, I have totally gone off the lesson plan. In seminars, I usually do social violence first. Oh well. And I am getting back to this because I don’t want to lose the thread, not because I don’t have other things to write about. Those will have to wait, though. Let’s get started. … [Read more…]
Maybe that should be Uncomfortable Safety. Or something else. The techniques that fall under martial arts are basically heinous crimes except in a very narrow set of circumstances. We are playing at causing pain and suffering. You can choose to be mindless about that and see it as a fun hobby. But if your students … [Read more…]
Watched a highly ranked martial artist a while ago, and something’s been bugging me. He was smooth. He had a good explanation of what he did and why. He had a lot of little, subtle motions (subtle is not the same as fine motor skill, these were good) and some fighters I respect were impressed. … [Read more…]
Violence serves a purpose. Multiple purposes, actually. And the purpose it serves, the goals (and parameters) will drive how the violence occurs. The threat who wants money for drugs will approach differently than the drunk college kid trying to impress a girl and neither will be quite the same as the person from a violent … [Read more…]
There are three paths to being good. Being human, you can take multiple paths simultaneously. So maybe path is a really shitty metaphor here. But bear with me. And I’m not going to talk about fighting, at least not right away. A talented photographer sees the way a camera sees. For whatever reason, the eye … [Read more…]
Have to get this out of the way first. Most of the self-defense techniques I see taught don’t take into account the essential nature of an assault. Not just ignoring the fact that it is fast, hard and from surprise. Most ignore the simple fact that the bad guy doesn’t do just one thing and … [Read more…]
The other element in this equation is YOU. Violence is used for specific purposes. As such, it has its own logic. Incidents of violence are chaotic because you have multiple people in an adrenalized state that is unfamiliar to at least one of them. It’s not that violence doesn’t have rules, it’s that you likely … [Read more…]