The Art of Avoidance (work in progress)

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

Let’s start with a short version, become a threat profiler! Understanding the human nature from our freeze, flight and fight responses from as far away from conflicts and their violences is critical to success in avoidance.

To advance the skill-set of avoidance:

• increase your situational awareness;
• how to do that is the real question you need to ask yourself because it is not well understood especially in the self-defense karate communities.
• Proactively seek out potential threats;
• how to do that is the real question you need to ask yourself because it is not well understood especially in the self-defense karate communities.
• Create and maintain a bias for action;
• give yourself permission up front long before your forced into a conflict with violence because you need to realize and accept that you can and will go the distance within social and legal parameters to achieve self-protection. 
• Create a threat prevention strategy.
• how to do that is the real question you need to ask yourself because it is not well understood especially in the self-defense karate communities.

Intuition: when a person has significant experience and knowledge, which guides that person’s subconscious thought processes. Develop your intuitive abilities, i.e., how to do that is the real question you need to ask yourself because it is not well understood especially in the self-defense karate communities.

Principles:

• freeze response?
• how does that aspect of nature and human instinct work and how does your training and practice stack up against that and finally, is your training and practice able to manifest an appropriate response in line with the freeze response? 
• Flight response?
• there is a reason fight is second and actually should be third, who knows why because it may just be ease of rolling off the tongue to remember. I like flight, avoidance if you will through fleeing or escape and evasion; then freeze if appropriate and as a last resort - fight. 
• Fight response?
• how to do that is the real question you need to ask yourself because it is not well understood especially in the self-defense karate communities. Remember that you have to apply your skills properly and at appropriate force and methodological levels according to current social mandates as well as all the legal system requirements, laws and mandates (don’t forget that jury instructions are different). 
• Human universals?

Situational Awareness Principals:

• Kinesics: body language.
• Biometrics: autonomic responses.
• Proxemics: interpersonal spatial interaction.
• Geographic’s: environmental patterns of behavior.
• Iconography: expressions through symbols.
• Atmospherics: collective moods and emotions within an environment.

Kinetics are critical to proactively identify threats. This principal involved both conscious and subconscious body language. People give off signals through postures, gestures, and expressions that communicate emotions and possible intentions. 

Biometrics are those uncontrolled and automatic biological responses to stress that manifest through the body and are critical to perceiving and understanding a person’s emotions both state of and changes.

Proxemics, group dynamics, that tell us about the group collective through interpersonal distance and by our ability to determine relationships and possible intentions based on how the environment they occupy is used. It is about how a person’s behavior relates to those around them. 

Geographical is about perceiving interactions of people to the environment such as how they move about within their surroundings and as to familiarity to the environment vs. lack of familiarity.

Iconography allows one to perceive and understand the person and/or group symbols that convey beliefs and affiliations. Symbols also let us know of one’s group unity, allow easy and immediate recognition and communicates group beliefs to others.

Atmospherics are about perceiving and understanding collective attitudes, moods, emotions, and behaviors in a given environment and/or situation. It is about detecting, perceiving and understanding the emotional social atmosphere and acting on the changes of a possible threat exists. 

The critical concept to understand in regard to the after of a threat is an ability to articulate effectively the why and what for one does what is necessary and required in a conflict especially if it cause the use of force in self-defense.

Words, proper and appropriate and relevant and in regard to conveying why of the social and legal rules were applied matters to avoidance and after if things go hinkey in a conflict.The ability to describe and quantify what you observed tends to validate your decisions because it is based on grounded, valid and legal grounds.

The ability to describe and quantify what you observed tends to validate your decisions because it is based on grounded, valid and legal grounds.

Human Nature:

• Creatures of habit;
• patterns, rhythms and cadences, etc. 
• Lazy; 
• the shortest route is often the quickest and remember occum’s razor because it is valid just for this reason. 
• Lousy liars; 
• our body language always tells the truth so when we lie to those well trained it is obvious so when you start to study the situational awareness principles it will become more obvious. 
• Will run, fight, or freeze; 
• nature, it is natures way of human survival that spans not just our species but every living species of our natural world. 
• We telegraph intentions; 
• the way the brain operates along with the concept of the OODA and the natural time delay of signals received, processed, and passed along to appropriate outlets takes - time. 
• Predictability; 
• habits make predictability and the principles of awareness in this article set that tone for - everyone. 
• Can’t multitask;
• our brains process singular individual signals and do so much like a computer processes zero’s and one’s so fast it seems like multiple processing. There are steps that must be taken regardless and you cannot bypass any of them and if you shorten them for expedience sake you will suffer the consequences. 
• Generally clueless; 
• think about this one and it is explained in detail in the reference material. 
• Do not do very many different things; 
• feeds off our need to create and use and stay with habits that work well for us and our survivability.

Human behavior is broken into the situational awareness principles. 

Remember, if something does not ‘feel’ right, it probably isn’t. To respond well in a situation know when to make a decision, know what decisions are appropriate and efficient, and train those decisions so when it comes time to act, your acts are immediate and spontaneous.

Expert Avoidance Skills:

• See patterns;
• See anomalies; 
• See the big picture (Situational awareness); 
• Create opportunities and improvisations; 
• Detect possible future events from previous experiences;
• See differences others cannot; 
• Know your limitations.

I felt no additional comments were necessary in the avoidance skills provided because you can already visualize how these fit and relate to other aspects of the art of avoidance. I highly recommend reading the reference book with a few caveats like:

• it is a book for and by the military and that is different;
• the language and verbiage must be adjusted to fit a civilian way for self-protection; 
• the actual way to use the principles must also be adjusted to fit our social environment and beliefs;
• don’t let the most excellent presentation in the material fool you into assuming it can be directly moved into the martial art self-protection systems without change accordingly. 

Van Horne, Patrick. “Left of Bang: How the Marine Corp’s Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life.” Black Irish Entertainment LLC. June 13, 2014. 

For reference and sources and professionals go here: Bibliography (Click the link)