“How do you deal with a Jerk?”
That’s the number one self defense question I get from people who still don’t understand what we’re up to in TFT.
Invariably at a seminar (and at least 10 times a week via email) someone will pose this question to me:
“Tim, (then he describes how some jerk is pushing this guy’s buttons, then says) …I don’t want to kill the guy… but… can’t I just hit him to shut him up?“
Then the guy goes on to ask what targets are “safe” to hit to “hurt but not kill him.”
Well, I guess all my writing and speaking on the subject just isn’t getting through to these people. So I’m gonna share 2 videos with you now that I think will help graphically illustrate my answer. Hopefully this will do the trick.
read this entry »
…but if you’re walking at the end, it’s worth the effort.
David L. writes:
I have been an email subscriber for some time and have purchased one of your books.
Your guidance helped me avoid a potential social violent situation yesterday. I was in a restaurant eating lunch when another customer thought I was staring at him and his girlfriend. I overhead him make the comment that if “that mf’er doesn’t stop looking at us, I’m gonna…” He was about twice as big as me, very muscular, tattooed and overall scary looking. I ignored his comments and went about reading my newspaper and thus a potential conflict was avoided. This could have easily escalated but I remembered your advice about avoiding violent situations if at all possible.
What troubles me is I feel like a wimp. Do you think I handled the situation the right way and what could I have done had he chosen to escalate the situation to a violent level?
David,
First off, I want to congratulate you on a job very well done. You successfully navigated and defused a sticky social situation that had the potential to get needlessly ugly. Everybody got to get on with their day. Nobody had to go to jail, the hospital, or the morgue.
In the social/antisocial realm, this is an absolute victory.
But it isn’t easy, is it? read this entry »
It boggles my mind sometimes, how we can be as careful and clear as possible in making the case for surviving and winning in violence and still have it come out garbled on the other end.
But I suppose people hear what they want to hear, and if all your preconceptions about violence have you in the victim role, then all violence is about victimization. And fear.
I’ve always said I’d much rather teach the resolute than the fearful — people who are resolute take the tool in both fists and
get busy swinging it; the fearful need to be coaxed to even get near the tool. (I’ve had plenty of fearful people become resolute after exposure to the tool, but having to overcome that victim-mentality just adds a needless speed bump to the process.)
Seeing yourself first and foremost as the victim in violence
colors everything that comes after.
The simple idea of gouging an eye becomes you getting your own eye gouged out. You may not have considered it before, and now you’re aware that there are people out there — in this very room! — who not only think about it, but know how, and, most chillingly, are willing to do it. Again, fear finding fear, and growing.
Someone who approaches the tool of violence pragmatically realizes two things about a gouged eye:
- If they do it first, the situation resolves in their favor and,
- They themselves are not immune to such an injury.
Number one is simple enough. It’s what separates the winners from the victims in violent conflict. The real power, however, comes from number two. If it works the same on you, then it probably works the same on every human on the planet.
This base understanding — that violence is available to everyone and no one is immune — is simultaneously liberating and cautionary. It’s liberating in that you can stop worrying about what a badass monster that guy is, how mean he is, how dedicated, how big, fast and strong he is — his eyes are just as susceptible to injury as yours are. It’s cautionary in that no conditioning, training, or skill can make you immune.
It should follow then, if this training does nothing to protect you from injury — indeed, if there is no way to protect yourself from violence — that you should be very reluctant to use the tool. That’s just being smart about it.
If given the choice, the answer is ‘no.’ The luxury of choice gives you more options than just ‘injure’ — you can ignore, talk, or run. All three of these are brilliant social tactics, and I’m sure you’ve used them all to great success.
But they don’t work when you have no choice.
If you’ve already been stabbed because stabbing is what he’s up to, ignoring it, trying to talk to him or running only keep you in the victim-space he needs to get the job done.
We have never advocated using violence while social options are open. Violence is only appropriate when it’s either injure him or die.
This should be an incredibly rare event. About the same as you shooting someone to death.
If you’re smart, a full understanding of violence should make you literally go out of your way to avoid the avoidable. For the leftovers, that very small sliver of true life-or-death situations, you take responsibility for yourself through preparation. You consider the unpleasant, the awful, the unthinkable and learn what to do should you find yourself smack dab in the middle of it.
No one wants to swim to save their life. For all of us who know how to swim, only a small percentage have ever had to swim or die. If you’ve been there, you’re really, really glad you know how to swim. If you’re lucky (or smart) enough to never have had the need to save your own life by swimming, it’s a comfort to know you could. And only the stupid would willingly put themselves in that position for no good reason.
Victims are trapped seeing themselves on the wrong end of the tool, for violence is the tool of choice for victimizers.
The resolute understand that the severity and seriousness of the tool brooks no screwing around — pulling it out is only appropriate in the most dire of circumstances because there is only one way to swing it: in both fists, as hard as you can.
Chris Ranck-Buhr
A frequent question I hear has to do with the so-called ‘unavoidable antisocial situation’ — the belligerent drunk who picks you, you get the luxury of seeing it coming, but there is no escape. What then?
I invite you to read this tragic article about the recent death of a soldier under similar circumstances:
Soldier dies after bar fight over Jimmy Buffett song
My heart goes out to his friends and family — as someone who has lost a loved one to violence, I know how it feels. It punches a hole in your life, hollows you out, and nothing is ever the same again.
Also note that we had three similar incidents here in San Diego just last year — an argument goes to fisticuffs, and someone winds up dead. In all of these cases, that was not the intent of the activity. But that’s how it wound up. One life needlessly taken and innumerable others changed forever.
Regardless of what you may think, you don’t have to go there. Most of the time when people claim it’s unavoidable what they’re really saying is they don’t want to leave, not that they can’t.
Everyone gets the difference between the antisocial and the asocial, or at least when we paint it in bold strokes — the senseless and avoidable bar fight on one end, and home invasion/murder on the other. The answer to the first one is don’t play along — use your social skills to solve it, up to and including just plain getting the hell out of there. The answer to the second one is injury, injury, injury.
But what about that fuzzy part in the middle?
First, a couple of things about why it’s even a question:
1) You recognize that you don’t really want to hurt him, and this lack of intent pretty much defines the antisocial. You know violence is inappropriate in this situation and that even if you’re victorious there could be serious legal repercussions.
2) I don’t think you’re trying hard enough to get away. I think you’re still hung up on the ego of the whole situation and you’d really rather not leave. Whether it’s because you think others will think less of you, you’ll lose face or social standing, or can’t face yourself — you’ve still got ego tied up in it. And that’s a proven killer.
And now, some answers:
Q: Is it possible to ‘take someone out’ without hurting them?
A: Sure, as long as they’re a quitter to begin with. If they’re not, you’re in for a hell of a fight. And if they read the situation differently, you can end up in the hospital or dead. It ends up as a roll of the dice — most of the time people don’t die in bar fights. When they do, everyone’s really sorry. And while I’m sure the dead men never expected it, it only had to happen to them once.
If you’re interested in such things, pretty much everybody else out there trains for the antisocial. Just be aware that you’re stuck doing what you train, and it’s almost impossible to switch back and forth. It’s far easier to train for violence and then literally go out of your way to avoid the stupid stuff.
And as a cop friend of mine says, “It’s all stupid stuff.”
Q: Does violence work in the antisocial realm?
A: Yes it does. Like gangbusters. Regardless of the venue, from sport to competition to brawling to killing, breaking things inside of people is a show-stopper. And while you can go a long way by avoiding targets known to be killers — crushing the throat, breaking the neck, bouncing the brain off the sidewalk or kicking a downed man in the head — you’re still rolling the dice.
I’ve read at least one paper that discussed a fatality from a strike to the side of the neck, and heard tell of another, so you never know. You can go in to ‘just knock the wind out of him’ and end up giving him a heart attack, should he already be at risk (not something you could know just looking at him).
In the end, you risk your life whenever you break the physical plane. I won’t hesitate to bet my life when my life’s at stake — but it’s just plain stupid to bet your life when it’s about ego.
Go out of your way to get to the rest of your day. If that means there are establishments you just don’t go to because they have a reputation for aggressive antisocial behavior, then so be it. If it’s your kink to hang out in places like that, just realize you’re choosing to ignore the risk and it’s all on you.
Me, I’d rather not have my night — and a nice dress shirt — ruined by an antisocial run-in I was too ‘manly’ to avoid. Even if you ‘win’ chances are you’ll need stitches and a lawyer. And if you lose, well, it could mean your life.
For what?
Chris Ranck-Buhr,
TFT Master Instructor
PS. If you missed them, check out both my recent comments on the post below (just click on the ‘comments’ link, mine are near the bottom of the screen that opens up).
