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Theorist: a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based; an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action; a supposition or a system of ideas to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
Swift-Silent-Deadly: Marine Force Recon motto, told to me by one it meant they move swiftly much in relation to the Botd Cycle to get inside the enemy's loop while approaching silently not in a face to face confrontation but in a manner so the enemy is dead without ever realizing a Marine was on the hunt leading us to "Deadly."
In combat, to defeat your enemy sometimes means you have to kill and there is no fair fight but to approach in such a silent way the enemy does not know you are there the to swiftly kill in a manner that gives you total advantage and little exposure to the enemies deadly intent.
It is not a fight, not self-defense but a combative dominance o take the swiftest deadly advantage so silent neither the target nor his men know of your presence till that moment of realization he is defeated and dead.
Marquis of Queensbury Rules:
Area of Operations: area's of combat’s deadly ground. Where military service in war is conducted.
Fighting: usually a means of communications where grave bodily harm and death are NOT the goal. Harm and death are usually an accidental result of a fight where one may fall, etc.
Fighting comes down to a business model of, “Cost-vs.-Benefits Analysis.” Now, many would say that this is a stretch regarding karate and martial arts and in a very direct sense, it is, but indirectly it has a huge deal to do with karate and martial arts when it comes to conflict and violence be it defense or offense. You really do have to consider, in your training and practice and applications, the costs of going physical and the benefits of the same because those results will have a huge impact on how and why you train and practice karate, martial arts and self-defense (or any combination thereof).
In a recent set of postings somewhere out there in the wide uVerse someone stated that from reading my work they decided that my experience, even in the military, did NOT involve fighting. So, that got me to thinking and I posted a story on some incidents in those early years, i.e., late sixties and first half or so of the seventies, and that analysis drove my synthesis of theories to this post about fighting.
Fighting most often if not entirely is about a perception created over the years through media productions where drama and fiction dictate that fighting. We assume from our perceptions of our inner world to the outer world that comes in through our sensory systems. If we don’t live in an environment where violence is a part then the only sources of violence, if you will, comes from participation contests and/or media driven information such as movies, television and books, etc. It also stems from those same factors as the teachings of our Sensei who often have the same or less experiences in fighting or rather violence than we do, there are relatively few who have the type and degree of experience and experiences to relate that to teaching self-defense.
About fighting, when most martial artists, karate-ka and other discipline say, “Fighting,” they have a particular assumption to what that is and it does not include its legality. I see it personally as a perspective of sport oriented contests with rules. As to street fighting, it is about rules in one instance and about no damn rules in another. Broadly speaking, social fights tend to still adhere to rules often assumed by the individual in the fight while broadly speaking, asocial fighting is bout no FRIGGEN RULES. Is that actually fighting or is it more about dominant violent actions on a surprised unsuspecting person with little damage to the attacker and all the damage to the recipient. It becomes a fight only if that recipient is able to come back from the precipice and put up a defense then it is self-defense - up to a point, think Marc MacYoung’s self-defense square. It can pass out of the square and once again shift from defense to fighting. Guess what, fighting except in very narrow requirements as to the law and the legal profession, is ILLEGAL!
So, when someone says that the fighting experiences, regardless of how they come to that conclusion, is more about that persons personal. Perceptions to their own experiences where if you don’t compete and have not had street fighting/defense experience, even self-defense in their eyes may or may not be perceived as fighting because of the sport orientation, etc., you are not a fighter.
The experience I look to today is not fighting experience but a much broader view as in self-defense, i.e., the full, complete and comprehensive self-defense system that you can learn about by reading Marc MacYoung’s basic book on the subject titled, “In the Name of Self-Defense.” In short, my mind is that experience dealing with all kinds of conflict and violence up to and including dealing with both social and asocial types of monkey antics to predatory process/resource stuff. Not many can lay claim to such expertise who teach self-defense.
In truth, if you have dealt successfully with say, verbal violence, to situations where you avoided, deescalated, escaped-evaded and actually restrained or defended physically, etc., folks who went violent on you then you have experience fighting violence and conflict. Now, it comes down to the spanning of that experience across the spectrum of conflict and violence as to the level or degree of experience(s). Every single male I have known over the last forty plus years all have experience dealing with conflict and/or violence at one lever or the other but very, very few at the levels I would consider adequate to teach the discipline/subject yet we have hundreds to thousands of black belt karate-ka and martial artists out there professing vehemently and with dogmatic belief their experiences are THE experiences they need and you seek to learn the discipline and self-defense.
This is why in the last ten years or so I have come to believe that I have limited experience and a lot of knowledge with some semblance of understanding toward conveying at least an academic form of self-defense in karate and martial arts but since I don’t feel that my experience level is such that I should not teach, but refer, those seeking such knowledge, understanding and ability to those who have that level. From where I sit today, there are few and very few who can take up that mantle to teach. It is like I can get you to a certain level where your knowledge and understanding puts you in a place where your personal search becomes more valid and you can better see the wheat for the chaff in finding adequate and appropriate teachings, instruction and mentoring.
Now, as to violence of the physical kind, when one says fighting in the asocial arena I understand that my defense is an offense that has no rules, does not involve the Marques of Queensbury rules or any rules what so ever and it comes down to my belief that you must use the Boyd-Cycle for speed. I am reminded of the Force Recon motto, “Swift, Silent, and Deadly.”
I remember being told by a Special Forces that he advocates, and I assumed all Recon Marines advocated, that your enemy would not know till they were seeing the light that they were even under attack. This old WWI type set the line, make a line in the trenches, jump up as the enemy jumps us and charging one another face to fact type this is just plain stupid. We did that in the Civil War as well making lines and lock and load and aim and fire and rotate the next line and so on, stupid is as stupid does.
Fighting is a communications tool, it is a sport and it is about competing between males for status, ego and identity. When one fights it is usually to force the other person to accept their particular whatever and that whatever leads to this because of things like ego, pride, status perceptions and most of all identity.
Yes, violence such as the EBD (first read in Rory Miller’s books, Educational Beat Down) are used but in a lot of cases not necessary in many modern social tribes or groups but it still exists even if it is a slap up side the head to get your point across. It is not meant to cause grave bodily harm or death, but convey a message yet many still make the assumption that fighting is the end all experience you need to validate your proficiency in karate, martial arts and self-defense.
If I have something I need to convey to someone involving physical violence you can bet I am not going to face them directly, challenge them and then square off and go fist-to-cuffs, they are not going to know I was even there because I would swiftly and silently find them in their weakest most vulnerable state without witnesses and then apply a degree of violence to hurt them badly but that is not self-defense and nor truly fighting, is it?
If all you have is your fighting skills what ever that may be as your validation toward experience in conflict and skills then honestly, your skills and experiences are lacking a great deal necessary to properly lead and teach and mentor others on this discipline. You can fool yourself by saying you are a warrior, a fighter and an expert karate-ka and martial artists with a twenty-first level of red belt but in truth, you are really lacking what it really takes.
I use a quotation from a person I see and believe has the level of experience and ability to teach this stuff as a personal reminder as well as a paradigm shifting reminder that things like fighting as currently perceived isn’t really fighting or of and about conflict and violence - it is just one very small and narrow view of a much bigger thing.
Here is that quotation:
Quote Open:
When you begin to feel like you are a tough guy, a warrior, a master of the martial arts or that you have lived a tough life, just take a moment and get some perspective with the following:
- I've stopped knives that were coming to disembowel me
- I've clawed for my gun while bullets ripped past me
- I've dodged as someone tried to put an ax in my skull
- I've fought screaming steel and left rubber on the road to avoid death
- I've clawed broken glass out of my body after their opening attack failed
- I've spit blood and body parts and broke strangle holds before gouging eyes
- I've charged into fires, fought through blizzards and run from tornados
- I've survived being hunted by gangs, killers and contract killers
- The streets were my home, I hunted in the night and was hunted in turn
Please don't brag to me that you're a survivor because someone hit you. And don't tell me how 'tough' you are because of your training. As much as I've been through I know people who have survived much, much worse. - Marc MacYoung
Quote Close.
Bibliography (Click the link)
p.s. use the quote list above as a start, if you have not experienced the list item at least once don’t put a check mark and if you have not at least check marked about three quarters you should evaluate your teaching credentials, etc.
Example Experience: In 1979, a Staff NCO held duty office at the company aboard the Marine Station Camp Hansen Okinawa. It was a Friday night so the possibility of drunks, etc. and rowdy home sick Marines getting into trouble is high. Look at duty at the company a bit like a bouncer at a bar but with hidden alcohol in lieu of open beverages being served in a bar.
About 1200 hours two you Marine enlisted approached the duty desk to inform the Staff NCO on duty there was a fight out back between the two barracks. In between there is a grassy area, wash racks and was lines for doing laundry by the local Mama-san’s. They said everyone was out there while two young gung-ho Marine enlisted were fighting.
The Staff NCO got up, gathered up the duty log, a pen and a chair. All three, with the two other Marines leading the way, headed out the back door to the wash area. There were about thirty or more Marines yelling and egging on the two fighters, two groups formed on each side as associated to the barracks they lived in and according to the two fighters, one fighter representing one group and so on.
The Staff NCO simply set the chair down in a seemingly neutral place far enough away from the crowd and the two combatants, opened the duty book and started making notes, i.e., the you know - what, when, where, how, why and especially the who of things.
The two Marines reporting the incident looked at the Staff NCO kind of dumbfounded than asked, “Staff … pause … aren’t you gonna stop the fight?” The Staff responded, “No, too dangerous, the fighters would turn on me and the two groups might escalate their involvement and charge in to help their fighter.” After a few minutes the groups took notice of the Staff NCO taking notes and observing and the murmurs started until finally the lull in the participation of the groups caused the two fighters to notice and before you know it, the fight stopped and all participants - fighters and the crowd - stopped, looked at the Staff NCO and then started to walk off quietly toward the barracks. The Staff NCO also allowed the fighters to separate and head to their respective quarters - all is well that ended well.
That is conflict and violence experience! It isn’t what some would call fighting experience but it is experience and it is about conflict and violence. The situation could have escalated if the Staff NCO got involved and didn’t handle the fight break up properly to the moment and situation. It could have changed in an instance and the Staff NCO could have been jumped by the crowd. You might say, not a Marine against a Staff NCO but remember that it was a Friday night and a lot of alcohol was involved.
This is experience in fighting, defense, and self-defense but it didn’t require that the Staff NCO nor the crowd become violent at any level, it was a form of deescalation where the crowd and fighters simply dispersed and the rest of the evening was quiet and peaceful, that is experience and the kind needed to teach this stuff, not the only kind but one small part necessary to achieve a goal in karate, martial arts and self-defense.
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