Abandon I like the word “abandon” and it has been coming up a lot, lately. There are three (at least) instincts when faced with chaos and danger. The most common is to try to control it. To minimize the chaos, to minimize the danger. To basically take chaos and and make it “not chaos.” Whatever … [Read more…]
… or phishing. One thing every predatory criminal needs is privacy. The quality of privacy depends on the type of crime. Beating a member of your gang that you suspect of breaking the rules might go better if the other members can watch, but you’ll certainly limit civilian and police witnesses. The quantity of … [Read more…]
Largely this will be a draft of an article for Conflict Manager Online Magazine. I’ve been doing a four part series there, the last three are the steps towards application (deriving your principles, a touch of adult learning theory, stuff like that.) So, background– You have to know your principles, understand them. And you have … [Read more…]
Technique-based training is concrete. “He throws a straight punch and you outside block, side step and throw an inside knife-hand strike. Go do a thousand reps.” It’s easy to teach. He does X, you do Y. Reps. But I can think of zero actual fighters who find this valuable (except as a business model). To … [Read more…]
Once Rob wanted to introduce a new member to our little play group. “What’s he like?” I asked, “How messed up is he?” “Oh, he’s broken,” Rob replied, “but he’s broken our way.” My world is full of beautiful but imperfect and even broken people. Rephrase. They are perfect, but they are perfect at being … [Read more…]
Living in a world of social media, where passion is considered on a par with information and where surrounding oneself with a coterie of sycophants passes for critical thinking and cherry picking sources is as close as most people get to being “well informed” I want to give Greg Ellifritz some kind of medal.Some background. … [Read more…]
Men and women are different. A lot of that is biological, a lot of that is social conditioning. And a lot is psychology created in the interaction of biology and social expectations. It doesn’t serve anybody to pretend it is not true. It also doesn’t serve anybody to pretend that it means very much. Different … [Read more…]
Philosophy. Nothing about survival or self-protection or self-defense or whatever you want to call it is difficult or unnatural. This is exactly the problem we were evolved to solve. Not being a victim is part of our deepest wiring. Mind, body and spirit have all the tools. This is not about forging warriors, this is … [Read more…]
Once upon a time, I’d elected to go into a cell and talk down an extremely agitated inmate, and it wasn’t working. One of the big keys to talking down people in altered mental states (bad drug reactions, stress that makes them temporarily out of control, or truly unstable mental illness doesn’t really matter much) … [Read more…]
How deep is your game?” has been coming up a lot, lately. Erik Kondo, a friend and one of the CRGI team wrote a draft article about becoming a skilled conflict manager. Everything he wrote was absolutely true, but everything could also be distorted or even used against you, if you only relied on the … [Read more…]