Caveat: This post is mine and mine alone. I the author of this blog assure you, the reader, that any of the opinions expressed here are my own and are a result of the way in which my meandering mind interprets a particular situation and or concept. The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of other martial arts and/or conflict/violence professionals or authors of source materials. It should be quite obvious that the sources I used herein have not approved, endorsed, embraced, friended, liked, tweeted or authorized this post.
Self-defense is about exposure. You must expose yourself to the many facets that make up the system of self-protection through self-defense in order to achieve a higher level of security necessary to remain safe from violence.
First, you need to learn about violence. Most of us are never exposed to “Real Violence.” We tend to be exposed to a vary narrow part of the whole that is violence. Education on violence can be achieved academically, to begin. That academic knowledge is necessary to achieve proper exposure to violence in self-defense that is physical in nature, not just academic.
There are are a variety of ways to be exposed to violence. Some of it through reality based no-bull type training and practice. Some of it through actual experience, usually those are folks who work as professionals such as Police, Emergency Response Teams, Corrections Officers, Military, Bouncers, Security Professionals and so on. For those of us who are not normally exposed to violence we have to get our exposure in other ways and train our mind-state/mind-set in order to achieve “Actions” that will avoid and preserve our safety and security in the full spectrum of self-defense.
Mr. Massad Ayoob spells out some of the things one should expose themselves to in order to prepare for the possibility of violence and application of self-defense. One of the “Things” Mr. Ayoob expresses in his book, “Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self-Defense,” he explains how exposure (my term, not his) can actually open the door to court/trial evidence admittance because you, if you end up being prosecuted, can only get evidence admitted if you were exposed to it so that it would apply toward any person who knows or knew what you knew at the time could be expected to reasonably do and so on.
“Lethal Force (or deadly force; the terms are interchangeable) is the degree of force which a reasonable and prudent person would consider capable of causing death or great bodily harm.” - Massad Ayoob, page 20, “Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self-Defense”
The key here is reasonable and prudent of a person like you with the knowledge you have at the time of the event. Although Mr. Ayoob’s book is about the use of lethal force by the armed citizen it goes into many aspects in explaining levels of force as well as types of forces that you may encounter that would justify your application of a certain level of force. In other words, he goes on to explain in his own way those aspects of self-defense in his own way much like Marc MacYoung and Rory Miller do in their books on violence, force decisions, levels of force, articulation, and so on.
Back to exposure, what made me take on this particular topic is Mr. Ayoob’s explanation that his exposure, or his examples exposure, to a text that has graphics that you acted the way you did because you flashed back to those pictures and text then pictured yourself or your loved ones ending up like that resulted in your level of force necessary to protect and secure your and your families lives, etc.
Note: I may not be doing the service level to Mr. Ayoob’s book so take my post as a recommendation to get and read his book along with Mr. MacYoung’s and Mr. Miller’s so that you “Get the full and complete picture” of violence and self-defense.
What it boils down to is if you truly want to learn self-defense you have to expose yourself to everything you can to achieve a fuller understanding of what it is and what it causes and what it is you have to do to achieve SD. It is NOT about the cool kung fu technique you learned in the dojo but about all the “Before’s, During’s and After’s of Violence.” It is about achieving the exposure that will allow your attorney to introduce evidence that you had knowledge of before, during and after the incident so that you can say that you did this because of this and it was appropriate and within the confines of the law as well as the moral and social acceptable standards one can prudently and reasonably expect anyone “With your knowledge” would need to do to survive violence.
Bibliography:
Ayoob, Massad. “Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self-Defense”Gun Digest Books. Krouse Publications. Wisconsin. 2014.
Addendum quote to clarify: "If we did not know it at the time we took the action for which we are being judged, we are unlikely to be able to use it in our defense in court. Be trained! Training is discoverable, and therefore introducible to educate the jury." - Massad Ayoob, “Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self-Defense”
Addendum quote to clarify: "If we did not know it at the time we took the action for which we are being judged, we are unlikely to be able to use it in our defense in court. Be trained! Training is discoverable, and therefore introducible to educate the jury." - Massad Ayoob, “Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self-Defense”
Primary Bibliography of Self-Defense:
MacYoung, Marc. "In the Name of Self-Defense: What It Costs. When It’s Worth It." Marc MacYoung. 2014.
Miller, Rory Sgt. "Meditations of Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence" YMAA Publishing. 2008.
Secondary Bibliography of Self-Defense:
Ayoob, Massad. “Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self-Defense” Gun Digest Books. Krouse Publications. Wisconsin. 2014.
Goleman, Daniel. "Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition [Kindle Edition]." Bantam. January 11, 2012.
Miller, Rory. "ConCom: Conflict Communications A New Paradigm in Conscious Communication." Amazon Digital Services, Inc. 2014.
Miller, Rory and Kane, Lawrence A. "Scaling Force: Dynamic Decision-making under Threat of Violence." YMAA Publisher. New Hampshire. 2012
Miller, Rory. "Force Decisions: A Citizen's Guide." YMAA Publications. NH. 2012.
Miller, Rory Sgt. "Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected." YMAA Publishing. 2011.
Elgin, Suzette Haden, Ph.D. "More on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense." Prentice Hall. New Jersey. 1983.
Elgin, Suzette. "The Last Word on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense" Barnes & Noble. 1995
Morris, Desmond. “Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior.” Harry N. Abrams. April 1979.
Elgin, Suzette. "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense" Barnes & Noble. 1993.
Elgin, Suzette. "The Gentle Art of Written Self-Defense" MJF Books. 1997.
Maffetone, Philip Dr. “The Maffetone Method: The Holistic, Low-stress, No-Pain Way to Exceptional Fitness.” McGraw Hill, New York. 2000 and more … see blog bibliography.
My Blog Bibliography
Cornered Cat (Scratching Post): http://www.corneredcat.com/scratching-post/
Kodokan Boston: http://kodokanboston.org
Mario McKenna (Kowakan): http://www.kowakan.com
Mokuren Dojo: http://www.mokurendojo.com
McYoung’s Musings: http://macyoungsmusings.blogspot.com
Martial Views: http://www.martialviews.com
Shinseidokan Dojo: http://shinseidokandojo.blogspot.com
The Classi Budoka: https://classicbudoka.wordpress.com
Wim Demeere’s Blog: http://www.wimsblog.com
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