Beware Gimmicks

Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

I have written about what experts refer to as, “glitches,” which are those things we have we are often blind too that hinder our skills and abilities in self-protection through training, practice and the applications we develop from the effort. Glitches are important because we often don’t know we have them or don’t know we don’t know we have them. 

Gimmicks, in karate especially, are those “tricks” we practice in the off chance we need our karate skills to self-protect and defend against nefarious people bent on doing us harm for either some resource we have and they don’t or some process like just beating the crap out of us. Most of what is taught as self-defense in karate and martial arts is NOT self-defense, not even close. They are business tricks that fool the practitioners into feeling and thinking they are learning is going to protect them from aggressions and violence. 

It is a game of inadvertently, in most cases, misdirecting practitioners often in the name of ego and economics. In advertisements it manipulates and misdirects others by attracting their attention yet has not real value in a world where reality is vastly different from what is invented and provided in the dojo. I refer to this as, “unintentional conning and misdirection by magic thinking to manipulate gimmicks as reality when reality is too emotionally and economically uncomfortable to deal with. 

Reality sucks, social reality is also chocked full of gimmicks that trick us into false sense of security, safety and comfort. It is meant to misdirect us into believing that we can and will live without aggressions and violences when human nature relies on levels of aggressive behaviors and types of violence that don’t result in the obvious violence of damage, grave harm and even death. 

We are exposed to such tom-foolery through the compliance and influence profession, those who put out ads to attract us, fool us and to trigger our natural drives to purchase things we really don’t need and the self-defense karate and martial arts industry is no different. 

For instance, ads that espouse and preach and proselytize: 

• You can be a bombshell in ANY tough spot;
• The TOTAL self-defense SYSTEM;
• You MAY have to REGISTER your hands with the local Police Department; 
• You will HAVE COMPLETE self-defense MASTERY in just 24 hours;
• Women and Teen Self-defense, Become Your Own Hero!;
• etc., etc., etc.

You see, we are actually socially influenced into the belief that we need this or that, we want this or that and we can and will pay what ever price to get it. In short, our social reality and education is consumerism, we are trained by the compliance and influence industry to consume, in short, to spend our earnings on trivial unnecessary and expensive things and we call that, “supply and demand,” when demand is our unconscious compliance to the influence principles used to PUSH us toward things through the use of compliance and influence gimmicks.

If you want karate and martial arts for what their true value is to us, there is no better product. If you want your karate and martial arts to be effective for true and realistic and relevant and dangerous self-protection then you will have to recognize the gimmicks for what they are and seek out sources, experts and professionals, who can teach you the stuff you need to know to defend and protect. 

Karate isn’t a true self-defense and protection system; martial arts are not true self-defense and protection systems; sport oriented competitive karate and martial arts are NOT self-defense and protection systems; military and police and other professions are not proper self-defense and protection systems and models; and you really do have to kill that glitch in your thinking and research and study and then find those authentic “sources (for no one source will do it for you)” who are expert and professionals in the reality of aggression and violence in both social and asocial violences, etc.

Bibliography (Click the link)