Most warrior traditions have, as part of their training, the development of the war face -- an intimidating, if not terrifying, visage. A furious look with eyes bugged or scrunched, brows furrowed, mouth wide to bear teeth, sometimes even a protruding tongue. It's designed to let the enemy know you mean business and get them to crap their pants before you set to work on them. Ofttimes it's combined with a blood-curdling shout, growl or scream. (This display of aggressive intent can also help 'psych-up' the user, as human emotion and the physical expression of that emotion are a two-way street; that is, while being happy makes you smile, smiling makes you feel happy.) Such displays are, however, a ridiculous waste of effort.
The war face is an attempt at communication. As you all know, in violence we're not trying to communicate anything to anybody -- we just want to shut off a human brain. Not frighten it, or let it know how angry we are, or how maybe this time we really really mean it and we're coming over there to get serious actually maybe this time. It's dragging social convention into violence. If you bark and snarl at a serial killer, he'll stab you in the neck while you're busy trying to intimidate him.
We don't want to communicate -- we just want to interface with targets as hard as we can.
On the mats, there are a lot of people who think that looking mean shows they mean business -- that you have intent. Nothing could be further from the truth. When I see people making the angry face, I know they're really afraid. They're trying to cover it up with a modified fear face. But they're not fooling anyone but themselves. I can tell someone has intent not by the look on their face, but by how they're interfacing with targets. Period. Either you're moving like a predator or you're moving like a timid forest creature. Sometimes it's like a cornered forest creature, all angry snarl and desperate speed. The squirrel trying to convince himself it's okay to take the peanut out of the proffering hand.
Recently, at the San Diego Center, I had the pleasure of seeing a positive example of what I'm talking about:
We had two new people getting a demo and some assembly on at the Center. At the end I asked Luke (Instructor) and Bruce (Group 2) to roll through some free fighting to show where all that target assembly ends up. Luke was absolutely savaging Bruce (as often happens when we know we're on stage), delivering a beating that was both brilliant and ugly at the same time, literally doing things I'd never seen (or dreamed of) before. I felt the warmth of a predator's appreciation.
And then I looked at Luke's face.
In the midst of all that furious action it was the singular dead spot. Flat. Slack. He looked, for want of a better term, bored. Only the eyes were alive, intent on each target in rapid succession.
As it should be.
While it warmed my heart to see such perfect execution, I could only imagine what such an apparent incongruity looked like to the uninitiated. Chilling, probably, as everyone can recognize the lack of compassion, or communication via the angry face, the human component set aside for a moment of base savagery. It was the face of the serial killer -- emotionless, done with talk, here now only for the purpose of violence.
And it says, to the initiated, far more than the angry face ever could.
Labels: competition, intent, Intimidation, San Diego Training
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