Militant Beliefs Are the Enemy of Logic

The title says it all, we've really gotten into a bind in this country. There are just way too many close minded people with an agenda. I've always said if you look at the right then the left and you can define them then look in the middle where the truth is and ignore both. Militant beliefs are unreasonable and have no place in an intelligent society. I know I'm going to lose facebook friends because of this article but to that I say don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. Being open minded is how you learn and progress. We are way too divided on alot of issues. Let's look at some recent militant behavior and how harmful it can be.

Occupy vs The Police

Now most of this of course is internet trolls and the like that have been the biggest pain in the ass but lets look at bad examples on both sides. Now on both sides of this issue and believe me this could be a series of articles just on it's own. Both sides have intelligent people but those people aren't the problem. Now anyone who has a credit card knows how crooked Bank of America and Chase have become. They are disgusting and something needs to be done. So in the beginning Occupy was a great idea. The problem is they went about most things the wrong way. To a recap in New York they took a wheelchair bound lady hostage because she spoke out against them. In Washington they openly supported terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Al Quaeda even waving their flags in the streets. At UC Davis they had members attack police then blocked public roads and threatened police. When they were sprayed for doing so they edited videos to post on youtube and facebook to make it look like police attacked peaceful protestors. They defecated in public on police cars and assaults on each other a cases of rape were rampant. The fact is there were almost 500 separate incidents of violence committed by Occupy members in a very short time and they continue to do so. But anytime one of these videos gets posted you can't tell an internet troll that Occupy isn't peaceful. These trolls are gonna bash the police no matter what you say and they don't care about facts. You give them facts and they still deny them. The fact is Occupy had no structure so they couldn't police themselves. Some of these protestors were really good and intelligent people that had legitimate things to say but alot of that will be buried by idiots. On the other end of the spectrum to say there was no police brutality at occupy encampments is naive and delusional. Sometimes it was police brutality and some it wasn't. As a DT instructor I work hand in hand with police on training issues. I know that when the crappy training they get fails they revert back to thug tactics and that's were brutality soon followed by litigation comes in. I went on a police site recently and was watching a video where it looked like a cop in Oakland shot someone at an Occupy thing with a rubber bullet for no apparent reason. Now he may have had a reason but you couldn't tell it by the video and neither could anyone else on that site. Several officers were on a tirade on the site talking about how the guy deserved to get shot and how more should be shot like that. Even how all the protestors should be shot. Ummm this is the attitude they use to bash you. If you go out on the street with this you have become the very thing internet trolls say that you are. Don't be that the only thing you have to do is your job correctly. You have to remember to not personalize everything when you put on that uniform you disappear and instead your the face of your department and how the public views police. You can't allow yourself to be baited and suckered in to giving these people what they want don't be that way. Just do your job correctly and realize it isn't about you.

The Gay Marriage Issue

Honestly this isn't one of my issues I could care less but more and more when I turn on the tv I have to see something about it. It's getting run into the ground by the media and so I feel compelled to speak on it. I'll start with the militants against it that raise total hell about it. Now I'm not addressing the intelligent people who have a problem with it I'm only talking to the militants who are going over the line. First of all marriage is not a religious ceremony. It can be if you make it but in function it isn't generally. If it were it would have to be done in a church by a minister but a justice of the peace can do it. Even a ship captain can do it. If an atheist can do it( which they can) then it has nothing to actually do with religion in practice. So that argument doesn't really fly.  Outside of love it's about tax breaks and joint accounts, etc. Another point is that it's illegal in the US to pass a law giving any kind of preference to a specific religion. When you have a country passing laws solely based on their religious belief then somewhere your going to have the Taliban waving a finger saying," See I told you they were no different than us they're hypocrites." No one wants that I hate the Taliban. Yet here comes another point. Now me I'm heterosexual but the only difference between me and some gay guy is he prefers to do something different with his junk than what I do with mine. Since I'm not gay I don't do gay things and never really think about it. Now you have militants going around spending all their free time worried about what some man does with his own penis. My question is why are you sitting around thinking about some guy's penis? My inclination with common sense would be to say if your sitting around with your free time and doing this....your gay. So grab a sign and run right out there and protest against yourself. Now on the other side of the issue you have gays setting themselves back about a hundred years. I'm going to use something else as an example to prove my point. Now me myself I don't like sour cream. When I go into a restaurant if I order a baked potato or something like that I make sure to tell them not to put sour cream on it because I don't really like sour cream. Now I know people that really like sour cream and they can eat it if they want to but I don't like it so I'm not going to eat it. I don't have a problem with them eating it. Now what if I went to someone's house and they were wearing a shirt saying sour cream is the dream and flipped out screaming at me about how they got sour cream in the fridge and they were going to eat it and I couldn't stop them. I should accept the sour cream and deal with it. They were gonna put it on my plate and make me look at it no matter if I liked it or not. Well.. that would piss me off. It sounds silly but this is what alot in the gay community do and it damages gay people over all. In the United States we are a defiant people as it is if you push us we are going to push you back harder. This is the nature of our society. When gays do this stuff they become the very stereotype the others are fighting against. To me the person that has helped gay people the most in this country in Ellen Degeneres. Yes she's gay but everyone likes her. Why is she accepted and others aren't? Because she appears normal she isn't the stereotype she isn't trying to bash your head in with her gayness. She's just trying to live her life. Now Hollywood is very liberal in the media it will always appear as if the nation supports it but in the southeast and middle america we know that the majority doesn't support homosexuality. The best way for gay people to help themselves and their issues is to not be the stereotype. People in these parts of the country have to see that you aren't different from them. If you can accomplish that then you will progress miles and miles instead of small steps. Follow the example of Ellen Degeneres.

The Abortion Issue

I want to say a couple things first. Roe vs Wade will never be overturned. It was passed for very good reason. Back a long time ago when doctors weren't doing abortions girls were using coat hangers in back alleys to do it themselves and were dying. So the abortions were getting done regardless. Now some militants would say the girls got what they deserved. Well there's a flaw in that argument. Your pro life right? Then why do you care about the unborn but apparently don't give a damn about the born? When they come out of the womb it doesn't matter if they die? That's pretty inconsistent. You shouldn't call people murderers simply because they belief life begins at a different time than you believe. It just makes you look like a wing nut. I'm not saying they are right but they do have reasons they believe it. I'll give you a couple. Years ago a doctor named Bruce Lipton was doing experiments on cells at Standford. He basically proved we are a community of organisms not just an organism ourselves. Basically every cell in our body feels pain and possibly even has emotions. They react to stimulus. Just like a fetus. In other words, technically every time you get a hair cut by pro life standards you are committing murder. Every cell in your hair feels the same pain as a fetus. So this is why they consider a fetus a part of a woman's body and think she has a choice not because they like to kill babies. So you need to understand that. I mean you can only go so far with that propaganda where do you end it? Is masturbation murder too? It kills the seed of life. How about arresting everyone for murder during last call at a bar? Sure they aren't killing anyone yet but they have the intent. You see how silly this can get? If nothing more stop throwing around the word murderer like a frisbee. Now on the other end I think partial birth abortions are over the line that is disgusting. That is a fully formed human by then and to me yes it's murder. The pro choice militants to me have gone too far in that area and crossed a line. Pro choice militants also need to understand not every pro lifer is a religious fanatic it's an insulting stereotype. One of the best proponents of the pro life movement is Ron Paul. He's actually good for alot of things I like Ron Paul alot but he had a great take on it. As a doctor if a pregnant woman came into his office and he did something wrong and that baby died then he's responsible. He'll be sued for that. However if she just goes down the road and gets it done then it's ok. When Scott Peterson killed Lacy Peterson he went down for a double murder because he also stabbed the unborn baby. Now if Lacy Peterson just went down the road to a clinic and had an abortion she wouldn't bee charged with murder. He's got a great point there's a huge inconsistency with the laws in this regard. You may not agree with him but you have to respect what he's saying because it's not a militant perspective it's logical and intelligent.

In conclusion, militant speech is pointless speech that does nothing but serve the ego of the speaker and inflame the ignorant. It's only through intelligent and informed discussion that we can learn, grow, and progress as a society. An intelligent person will have a mutual respect for someone with a different belief that presents themselves in an intelligent way. Two militants on opposite ends have no reason to speak to each other because nothing will come of it. If people aren't communicating then things will only get worse. This is why militant beliefs are the enemy of logic.

A Lesson From The Past

    I was thinking the other day about the importance of feedback and listening to it if nothing more. Sometimes feedback can be crap and sometimes it's legitimate and can help your programs. Sometimes we get tunnel vision on something and an outside eye can bring new light. A good program is always developing and adapting. Being humble and dropping the ego will help alot too. This led to alot of other things to think about as well. It got me thinking about an incident years ago that I want to recount with you.
    Several years ago I was the Special Projects Director for the International Combatives Self Defense Association. I worked with the board and mainly the Director of Operations. I was teaching at a conference in Chicago I can't remember if it was Tinley Park  or Oak Forest (yeah I'm having a senior moment). Alot of the board and state reps were there as well alot of them heavy hitters  in their field. Hell we even had guys from Spain there.  My friend Fernan Vargas who was the Director of Operations told me hang around at lunch there was this guy that wanted to test to be an instructor with the organization he had this system he wanted to demonstrate.  I'd actually met the guy the night before and he was really cocky but he seemed like he knew what he was talking about. We all sat down at lunch and watched him do his thing. He was so sure of himself he basically phoned it in and thought we would be dazzled. When it came to the interview portion he found out otherwise. His program was basically someone attacks and you move in penetrating then cause injury. Alot of it depended on pressure points which he referred to as an electrical knockout. He was VERY arrogant and dismissive and disrespectful during the interview. He actually thought his ideas were innovative.
    First of all when asked to explain an electric knockout it was obvious he didn't really know what he was talking about it. For those that don't completely understand a pressure point is where at least two nerves intersect in the body and striking them sends the stimulus to the brain along more than one nerve channel hence it's more painful. How they are hit affects the outcome it has to be a specific way. Some have to be a certain time of day. When on drugs some never feel them and some never feel them regardless or only in certain areas. In other words a successful outcome is marginal at best and it takes alot of training to pull it off therefore it isn't a good fit for combatives.
    Second of all it was one of these systems that's overly simplistic. You move in and do something to a guy and he reacts a specific way that he's told to react to your attack so it works every time. Ummm...no. Different people react differently to different stimulus. You have to be able to adapt this is why overly simplistic courses don't work. Just because you kicked a guy in the nuts doesn't mean he's always going to bend forward. I've seen people fall backwards. I've seen people fall down. I've even seen some become even more pissed off and fight harder. This guy saw a video of a silly system then went and trained in it and thought he could be an instructor and we were just a bunch of goobers. You need experience to do that. You need to know how to put together an adaptive system and to do that you need research. Even experience though you need to have it isn't enough because you can't experience something for someone else. So this guy got brutalized by us and if he wasn't so arrogant  I'd have felt bad about it.  This guy wrote something later acting as if we didn't get it. Oh we got it! Then he GOT it!  My point is this guy's system will never improve it will always suck. He was too arrogant to think he could actually be wrong about something. If your training under someone and they don't listen to you my advise is to get the hell out of there because if their system isn't outdated then it will be shortly. You've got to listen to your people and drop the ego or pay the price for it.

The Structure of Learning

   As a training officer often when I speak with administrators on the phone I get asked similar questions. The main question I get asked in talking about our programs is how is my program different from others. It's definitely a legitimate question and needs to be addressed. Often in looking at what's available out there it all looks the same in one way or another so I can definitely understand why one of these officers would just say screw it they are all the same. I've already addressed problems with tactics in other articles I want to talk about a different issue today. I want to talk about learning and retention of knowledge. Though I'm still relatively young at age 38 I've actually been teaching for 17 years. I've ran public Dojos. I've taught at various conferences all over the United States and will soon be headed to Europe. This isn't about my bio my point is with teaching at all these conferences I've gotten to see alot of programs and with these administrators I've seen alot of the same problems.
    People sometimes think our programs don't have a structure yet nothing could be further from the truth. It's just a different structure than what they are used to seeing. You see the way most programs are set up you may start it at 8 am in the morning and work a module til 10 am. Then your going to take a short break and come back and work on something else until lunch. By 5 pm you've pretty much forgotten half of what you learned at 8 am. Your on to the next thing. You get your certificate and the end of class and the instructor hops on the next bus out and your left with a piece of paper and nothing more. This is all too common. It's important that everything flow together. When we start a program in the morning even when we move onto another section we'll come back to what we learned that morning to show how it flows with the rest of the course. This is important not only for just muscle memory but people need to see how everything works together. They need to see how everything is relevant to everything. Otherwise all you have is a bunch of random tactics you'll never be able to remember under stress. There's police programs out there that teach 160 tactics in 5 days. Some of those tactics may be good but it doesn't matter because the program is useless. The officer is never going to remember all 160 and they certainly will not be able to recall each individual tactic to use under stress when the frontal lobe of the brain shuts down during an adrenaline dump. The more options you have to make a single choice the longer it will take you to make that choice. That's just common sense.
     Another problem is going to be static training. Anything can work on a compliant subject walking through something. This is caused due to a lack of pressure testing.  Pressure testing is basically when you test something to see how it works under pressure. It would be one thing for me to tell you how to get to the store and demonstrated it. It's a different thing when you walk to the store a bunch of times and see for yourself. My directions could be wrong. You might find a shorter way to get there. There might be construction I didn't know about. This is a research problem. Most DT courses are martial arts based. This means there was an agenda to promote a specific ideal when the program was put together. That means it was tested just enough for the developer to prove in his or her own mind that it worked without properly testing it under actual circumstances. What happens during static training your memorizing tactics you aren't learning them and that is a huge difference. This leads me to another problem related to lack of pressure testing and learning. You see the fact is everything works sometimes and nothing is going to work everytime.
When you do static training you miss alot of angles. What if something goes wrong or the guys just get the jump on you. No situation is perfect. A person would have to be pretty arrogant and dumb to think they have tactics in a program that will work 100% of the time. It ain't happening. The students need to know this and they need to hear it from the instructor. Follow ups and failsafes need to be taught. The officers need to see these things from every angle and practice them dynamically so they are actually learning and not memorizing. Get in those positions now so you know your next move so it doesn't happen on the street or if it does then you at least know what needs to be done.
    Another thing that gets done at alot of these things is there's a test at the end. I went through this whole thing in martial arts as well. I understand the whole right of passage thing and that's fine but it most instances it's just another way of getting extra money out of the students. I mean if you see these people training everyday you know if they have it down or not. If you don't then you aren't paying enough attention. In a shorter version this is problematic for police courses as well for one of the same reasons I mentioned above. It basically forces the officer to memorize instead of learn. They get so wrapped up in not flunking that test and have to go back and tell the boss they flunked and cost the department money for nothing that they go into memorize mode and the learning stops.
    As educators this is our responsibility. The way things have been in the past can't continue and departments need to wake of and be aware of this and stop supporting these programs. The officers need to come first and you need to be aware of the environment that supports learning. It doesn't matter if the tactics are good if the officer can't retain them when they leave the course. If your a civilian it's the same thing this structure applies to you as well. Just memorizing muscular techniques isn't going to help you and it isn't going to be engrained when you need them. This is something I felt needed to be brought to light. Time changes and we need to change with it and if we can offer something differently in a way to make the public safer we need to do everything in our power to make that happen. For the ones that don't make these changes they are destined to become a museum piece serving no purpose but their own