Violence in the Wild Archives

Training to Wait & See

June 4, 2024/0 Comments/in Violence in the Wild/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

A frequent question we get is, “Okay, I get this whole violence thing, but what if—” and then it’s usually followed by something the other person is thinking of doing, trying to do, or just plain in the middle of doing. This is code for “I don’t want to get hurt.” Well, nobody does. If not getting hurt were something that you could reliably choose, it would be a central part of our training. But it isn’t.

The truth about violence is that you’re going to get punched, kicked, stabbed, whacked, and shot—whether you’re the “winner” or not. Any other outcome, e.g., you walked through it and put your person (or people) down and kept them there without getting a scratch on you, is pure luck. What you can realistically expect as the survivor is to limp out of there alive.

Accepting the reality of the situation ahead of time will save your life. It’ll keep you from quitting right at the point where things are at their worst. Let’s say you are trained in “knife defense”. And then you get stabbed. Your first thought will be omigod I screwed up which will lead to the result of screwing up—death. You’ll be thinking about the result of your mistake—I’m going to die!—instead of what you need to be thinking to survive, primarily take the eye.

Look at the difference there. We have an abstraction versus a concrete action. Which one do you want coming out of you when your life depends on it? It’s also important to note that the people who are best at violence completely ignore the “What’s he up to?” side of the equation; they simply put all their efforts into making violence one-sided, and keep it that way. They wade in and get it done, to the exclusion of all else. And so should you.

Success is our benchmark. We are going to do our best to model the efforts and behaviors of those who are successful at violence—in short, we’re going to act like the survivors. We are obviously not going to act like the dead (that goes without saying), nor are we going to model behaviors and action that we wish were present. Rather than accessing violence the way we wish it worked, we’ll look to reality for our training cues. This is a huge leap into uncomfortable spaces.

It would be really nice if we could impose our collective will upon violent conflict—if waving your hands a certain way meant you couldn’t be stabbed or shot. In a lot of ways, this is the definition of magic, and in many places such training is elevated to the status of superstitious tradition. You’d be best served to never forget that the intersection of magic and reality is often tragedy.

Instead of training the way we wish it were, we’re going to train the way it is. We’re going to start at the point of injury, and let the other person worry about waiting and seeing. They can wait and see what you’re up to while you do it to them.

Reality is a smog-belching bulldozer with the elves and fairy folk of nice ideas all broken and snarled in its iron treads. If you have a choice—and you do—then put yourself in the driver’s seat, and the other person beneath the blade.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

The Hardest Lesson

May 21, 2024/0 Comments/in Violence in the Wild/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

There is an issue in violence that everything we do in training points to, but very few people, if anyone, ever gets. We have paid lip service to it, talked around it, and indirectly hinted at it. Today is the day it gets dragged out into the open.

You’ve heard us say that the one doing the violence prevails, and you’ve probably seen this adage in action (hopefully only on video). You buy the logic of it, see the truth of it stitched across the entire swath of human history. But have you ever really thought about what that means for you?

In poker they say that if you sit down at the table and don’t know who the sucker is, it’s you. If you find yourself there, as the sucker, it’s best to get out before the first card hits the table. In violence, if you’re not the most dangerous person in the room, you’re the victim.

So really, the end-goal of all training, all the time on the mats, every last millisecond of leg dynamics—even reading this post—is to become the most dangerous person in the room. Period. Wherever you go, no matter who you’re surrounded by, you need to be the most dangerous person there. The One person who, if you were to be caught on video doing violence, would stand out for directness, ferocity, and brutality. The One obvious person in the frame who is in control, making everyone else want to get away from them—and breaking people at will. The One who would make even a casual observer blanch and crap their pants. You want to be the center of the storm.

Right now you’re nodding in agreement. You got it, this is nothing new. That’s you to a T. It’s where you live, it’s how you roll, because you’re dedicated to living an embarrassingly long life and dying in bed surrounded by your geriatric great-grandchildren with your third baboon heart beating in your chest.

Here comes the hard part, the hardest lesson, because violence has nothing to do with being dedicated to living—it has everything to do with being dedicated to hurting, crippling, and killing people. With being The One person there who wants to do those things more than anyone else in the room.

Who do we know of who pulled off this trick recently? That’s right—the most recent mass shooter.* His use of the tool of violence was stunning in its base utility—it was textbook. So much so it is now your required reading. He was everything I laid out above, the one you were nodding enthusiastically to just a moment ago. Feels different now, doesn’t it?

If you really got it, if you really understood what we’re up to and up against here, it wouldn’t feel different at all. You would nod, just not enthusiastically. You’d do it with a grim determination. See, it’s kind of cool to whisper to yourself, “I’m the most dangerous person in the room.” It puffs you up, makes you feel like the protagonist in a spy thriller.

The reality of that statement ain’t so nice—or socially acceptable. Because what you’re really saying is “I’m like the most recent mass shooter.” The center of the storm, with unflinching intent, making everyone want to get away from you rather than go after you, delivering multiple injuries per person, dropping them and then making sure they don’t get up. If you had read the preceding sentence before I mentioned mass shootings, you’d think it was pretty cool. You’d think, “That’s me.” But not now. Now you’re wrestling with it. Sickened by the idea. That’s why it’s the hardest lesson.

It’s not only hard to learn—most people don’t want to learn it. If you’re having trouble with it, then that’s your biggest problem with training for violence—not how good or bad your cross step is, or where exactly the spleen is or not knowing enough base leverages. Because if you walk into the room and you don’t know who’s the most dangerous person, it sure as hell isn’t you.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

*Virginia Tech shooting, April 16, 2007—32 dead, 17 wounded, with nothing but two pistols.

Kill It Simple, Stupid

May 7, 2024/0 Comments/in Violence in the Wild/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

Violence is simple.

How simple is it? We can answer that with two more questions:

1) How is it that untrained people prevail? and

2) How is it that untrained people prevail over trained people?

Because for all their blissful naïveté, the victorious untrained have a firm grip on the tool of violence. This fact stands because violence is much simpler than people would have you believe; it’s much simpler than you want to believe. The idea that violence is difficult and requires years of training—and that years of training will protect you from the untrained—are comfortable, comforting thoughts. I read somewhere once that the little lies we tell ourselves on a daily basis, the small untruths that shape our subjective realities, are what keep us happy. That the people who see the world and themselves as it “really is” are the clinically depressed. Accepting the simplicity of violence is an unpalatable dose of hard reality. To learn that you are never immune and that someone who is completely and conspicuously untrained can murder you is acutely unsettling. Even depressing.

If, that is, you’re a blood-bucket-is-half-empty kind of person.

I like to look at it from the other side—the blood bucket is half full, and I’m going to use him to fill it the rest of the way up. If violence is so simple that even the untrained can use it and prevail, then even a little bit of training is going to make you really, really good at it. And if you’re reading this, you’ve already had a lotta bit of training. You’re way better than you think, if only you’d let yourself be. (To wit: You know far more about wrecking people than a serial killer does. The only thing that could possibly hold you back is a lack of intent; what the serial killer lacks in technique he more than makes up for with a monomaniacal will to get the job done at all costs. But you already knew that.)

Violence is much simpler, even, than we present it to be. We have spent a lot of time teasing out the common elements and finding ways to communicate them to you. It comes across as a ton of material that people mistakenly believe they must master before they can be effective. For all that, we’re only ever really talking about the rock to the head… and what is the rock to the head but a big hunk of kinetic energy driven through a vulnerable target?

Everything else is just detail work, an exploration of all possible combinations and configurations for using your body as a human wrecking machine, with and without snap-on tools. Violence seems complicated if you think this detail work is required to be effective, if you think you need a black belt before you can seriously injure someone.

Forget everything you think you know about how it should go down: violence is you injuring people. It’s throwing yourself at them to break things inside of them—you are the bull in their anatomical china shop. Violence is you violating every tenet of polite society and destroying the only thing that any of us ever really own.

It’s simpler than you think because it has nothing to do with thinking.

Violence is all in the doing.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

The Absence of Choice

April 16, 2024/0 Comments/in Violence in the Wild/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

Violence starts where choice ends.

For social and antisocial interactions, this means you get to choose whether or not to be involved, and how deep your involvement will go. On the asocial side, you won’t have that choice. This gives us a nice, clean delineator between violence and Everything Else. As you’ve heard us say time and time again: if you have to ask, the answer is “no.” The reason we say this is because once you commit, your choices dwindle dramatically. Once you cross that line, you’re in it till you finish it. There are, to be sure, small choices to make—which target to wreck, when to stop—but none of them involve “unviolencing” him. Once you break that arm, you can never go back to just holding hands.

Make the choice you can live with. Be confident enough to be called a coward. I’ve walked away from situations where I was legally and morally in the right and no one present would have objected if I’d laid the jerk out. I’ve walked away while dodging ego-withering epithets and slurs to the accompaniment of the loud and obvious sound of my social standing being taken down a peg. (A whole peg!) I did this gladly because I was handed the luxury of choice and, to be quite frank, I just didn’t feel like it. “It” being the stomping, the screaming, and then having to do it to all his friends while getting punched in the head until I can’t remember second grade, maybe getting stabbed or shot or killed, or arrested and spending the night in jail, making bail, paying a lawyer and then getting sued. Not to mention having to look over my shoulder every time I stop to take a piss. All that crap is worth my life, but it’s not worth my time. Social standing is a manufactured illusion; losing it is nothing compared to the loss of an eye, or freedom, or your life. If your friends are truly your friends they will remain so; everyone else can go hang.

Asocial means you have no choice, or, rather, the choice is something decidedly unchoosy like “kill or be killed”. (Which one would you pick? Yeah, everybody picks that one, too.) Because it’s hallmarked by a lack of communication, asocial comes on without warning, without preamble, like lightning out of a clear blue sky. One minute you’re worried about which curry joint to patronize and the next you’re getting stabbed. You’re down to those small choices, like which target to wreck, and when to stop.

From a purely mechanical point of view, in social and antisocial situations he gets to choose whether or not a technique works. All of your sundry come-alongs, pain compliance, joint locks and submission holds fall into this category. If he decides you “got him” and gives up, all well and good. If he decides the pain in his elbow doesn’t matter, well, now you’re stuck holding a tiger by the tail. And your Plan B better be really, really sharp. Especially if the choice he makes is to take it into the asocial and get to the work of injuring you.

The mechanics of the asocial violent interaction can be summed up in a single word: injury. Injury removes choice from the equation. He has no say in whether or not his eye comes out of his skull or if his throat crushes. He has no say in how his body will move next. The physical laws of the universe, and how well you’ve employed them, are the only arbiters here. If you did it right, everything breaks. He may wish double-plus hard on a falling star it wasn’t so, but it’s not going to matter one whit. Violence is the absence of choice, and he’s just along for the ride.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Mechanics of the Sucker Punch

April 11, 2024/0 Comments/in Violence in the Wild/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

Disclaimer

There are serious legal and moral problems with injuring someone who isn’t trying to injure you or hasn’t otherwise threatened you with serious harm or death. For the sake of this discussion on the idea of the sucker punch, or otherwise taking people out from behind or when they don’t know it’s coming, we’re going to assume you are right to do it—that your impression of the situation is such that you believe inaction on your part will get you (and/or others) seriously injured or killed.

To injure or not to injure?

We all know what to do when someone comes after us—get in there and cause an injury, then repeat until satisfied. But what if the person hasn’t crossed the line physically, but has let it be known to you, overtly or not, that violence is in the offing? This is everything from a hijacker telling you to sit back down on an airplane, or a mugger making his demand, “Give me your wallet,” and all the way down to a simple, “You’re not leaving,” as you try to go out the door after a party. You may stand there a split second, taken slightly aback by the seemingly social interaction—he spoke to you with arms crossed, rather than hitting you, or even cocking back to hit you, or even laying hands on you at all.

Now what?

This is where the judgment call starts. If you decide to work it out with social tools, then go for it. I wouldn’t recommend it with the hijacker, the mugger could go either way depending on your personal read of the situation, and the jerk at the party is even less clear-cut.

If you want to go physical and start injuring them, it’s best to dive in and get it done as soon as you make the decision. Waiting around to see how it develops gives the other person more traction, control, and confidence over the situation—this is how one man with a blade can take over an entire room full of people. The longer it goes on, the more in charge he is. If you take him as soon as you realize it’s a bad situation, he never gets the opportunity to assert social dominance. For any kind of hostage-taker, the most critical portion is first contact with the potential hostages. This is where he’ll either get everyone to capitulate, or it’ll all go to hell for him. It’s your job to punch his ticket and get him to tell Charon you said hi.

Let’s backtrack a little and take a look at the realities of violent conflict for the average law-abiding taxpayer. In all reality, you’re probably going to be the one getting sucker-punched. Because you’re not out looking for it, on the hunt, prowling for victims, you’ll typically know it’s on because someone is trying to do it to you first. Your part in this is easy—if you can still think and move, you’ll crush their groin or gouge their eye (or maybe some of both). Anecdotally, this is how it goes: “There I was, minding my own business, when this guy comes out of nowhere and punches me in the head.” The next part is about looking at a target and wrecking it. “So I look up from the ground and see his knee as he’s stepping in and I rolled into him and broke it.” The rest you know. Or at least can guess. (They survived to tell their version of the story, after all.) This is how it will probably come to you: Out of the blue, when you’re sick or tired, or otherwise encumbered, when you least expect it—almost by definition.

When you’re walking around with your head up, bristling with confidence, you send an unconscious message. When you walk like you know how to break a leg, predators read it and go looking for the stragglers in the herd. Most of the time you’re avoiding bad situations by simply looking like you know what you’re doing. I’m not talking about miming being a badass or walking around like you’ve got an attitude—everyone can see right through that (except maybe people you never needed to worry about in the first place). If you end up around truly desperate people the scary ones aren’t the jumpy, theatrically hardcore types. They’re putting on an act the same way many prey animals try to look like predators in nature (there’s a kind of caterpillar that has eyes on its butt so it looks like a small snake, for example). No, the scariest people are the calm, quiet ones. Why are they so calm? Because they know they’re apex predators. Nothing hunts them, so why worry?

What about that weird middle ground, the halfway point between getting sucker-punched and the complete wave-off? We’re back at the party and the guy at the door crosses his arms and simply says, “You’re not leaving.” If you choose violence at this point, is there a best way to get into it?

As detailed above, the best way is NOW. You can throw out all pretense and concepts of technique and simply go for your target. Any defensive moves on his part are moot as long as you don’t play that game—if you’re going to compete with him, tit-for-tat, strike for block, then, yeah, he stands a chance. If you just wade in to beat him broken, that’s what will happen.

This is why we try to get everyone off of the idea of waiting, looking, and blocking. It’s a sucker’s game. For every two you block, the third one’ll get you. Out of all the video footage of violence I’ve seen, none of it—exactly zero—had anyone “defending themselves” successfully. The successful party was always—every single time—the one who did the beating. Or stabbing. Or whatever. The one doing it got it done. The one trying to stop it got done. Period.

So, if you’re worried about what he’ll do, you’re already on the wrong side of the equation. Instead of worrying, make him do something. Like lie down and hug his shattered knee.

That’s not to say there aren’t some interesting tactical considerations to take in executing an initial strike—there are, and we’ll be looking at them in detail, below—it’s just that they are minor and completely subordinate to the idea of wading in and causing injury first and foremost. Don’t get caught in the trap of “fancy”. Stick with what works because it works. Even if it seems beneath you in its simplicity.

Striking when they’re not looking

Alright, this one’s obvious. Just pick a target and wreck it. But everyone here already knew that.

Striking when they are looking

We’re back at the party. The man is standing between you and the door, thick arms crossed over his barrel chest. He just told you you’re not leaving and now he’s staring right at you, daring you to defy him. We’ll assume that other details of the scenario have led you to believe you are in danger (that’s why you were leaving, after all) and you want to get through him and out the door NOW.

There are two limitations of human vision we can exploit. The first is the fact that when you look straight ahead while standing, you can’t see your own feet. This blind spot is created by the lower part of your face, especially the cheekbones. So he can’t see anything that comes up inside a 45˚ angle off his cheekbones. This is why uppercuts work so well. Any low body shot will work, as well as strikes to the groin using hands/arms or knee/shin. If he’s looking you in the eye, he won’t see the boot to the groin until it’s too late. And here’s where we get into some advanced targeting because if you look down at his groin before you strike him, you’ll tip him off. Your targeting needs to be good enough that you know how to triangulate your foot into his groin based on where you can see his head is. (This ability grows from consistent of mat time with another human body, striking targets in all kinds of orientations. In the end you’ll know the human body as a mass of related targets so well that if you know where one part is, you can strike any other target you wish, without having to see it. This is why we push getting a reaction partner and hitting the mats regularly. This skill is a natural byproduct of that work.)

The second limitation of human vision has to do with the fact that we are predators. There are specific receptors in your eyes to detect motion across a static background. There’s wetware in your head that is specifically wired into these receptors to gage rate of travel and predict where the motion is going. What this means is that if you throw a big roundhouse motion, like a cowboy-style haymaker or other large overhand motion that breaks your silhouette and travels across the static background behind you, every human being on the planet is hardwired to see it, clock it, and intercept it. In the old days it would be to hit a bird with a stick; today it could be for him to simply get his hands up over his face and muck up your strike.

(As a side note, this is one reason people get killed by trains. It is incredibly difficult for us to judge the speed of something when it’s coming head-on. Laterally, across a static background, and we peg it. Coming straight at us, we’re not so good at. People walking on the tracks routinely misjudge the amount of time they have until the train is upon them—and the error typically kills them.)

So if he’s looking at you, don’t break your silhouette—use straight moves that go into the target from inside your outline. Stepping in and driving your fist into his solar plexus with your elbow in nice and tight at your hip fills the bill.

As an example of manipulating both limitations, look at a claw to the eyes. It should come up from underneath his vision and inside your silhouette, not from the far outside like an openhand slap.

And just to reiterate the Important Stuff:

It doesn’t matter if he knows it’s coming or not—get him.

Trying to play this like chess at 90 miles-per-hour will get you hit by the freight train of violence and send game pieces flying everywhere.

It’s not a game, so don’t try to play it.

Injure him NOW.

Manipulating social conventions

This is even more morally problematic, as we are now delving into the use of social tools to maneuver people into position for asocial opportunity. This is what the top-end, most cunning sociopaths are very, very good at—like the American mass-murderer Ted Bundy, for example. Everyone who met him said he was singularly charming; he typically used contrived social devices to lure victims into range (wearing a fake cast on his arm, or walking on crutches).

This may be morally rough ground we’re on at this point, but the misuse of social tools is brutally effective.

The most basic use would be the “false capitulation”. This is where you pretend to give up to get an opportunity to injure him. It can be everything from talking to him, “It’s cool,” or “Okay, you got me, I give up,” to simple body language, palms up, arms spread. Or a combination of the two to get you in close enough to strike while getting him to let his proverbial guard down. I know people who have done this, and it works great.

You can also talk to him to get him to look away. Ask a question and point, and as he looks, drop him. It’s a popular tactic of muggers to approach their victim and ask what time it is—when the victim looks down at their watch, the mugger strikes, having manipulated the situation to gain surprise.

A more advanced, and insidious, version is using your social tools to befriend him. Get him to close distance to shake hands. Then break him.

Of course, the big question on everyone’s mind right now is, “How can I keep from getting taken by these tricks?” The big one is to trust your gut†—people trying to hide something look like they have something to hide. This may manifest itself as small, consciously undetectable tells that you will pick up unconsciously. Your unconscious will then attempt to communicate with you by giving you a “gut reaction”—queasiness, butterflies, or other uneasiness. Trust your gut and act on it. Ask questions later.

To wrap up, there are some interesting tactical considerations you can exploit when going in first—when the situation is teetering on the razor’s edge between social and full-blown asocial. You can exploit the limitations of human vision to “hide” a strike and you can use social tools to manipulate people to your advantage—getting them to move, look away, or disregard you as a threat.

But all of these things pale in comparison to wading in NOW and injuring him. If he knows it’s coming and can see it’s coming that awareness will only work in his favor if you’re playing by the rules—if you are in competition mode. Then it will be a tit-for-tat exchange. If you wade in simply to beat him toothless and witless, then that’s what’s going to happen—whether he saw it coming or not.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

†And the hair on the back of your neck (or forearms). Piloerection—hair standing on end—is an unconscious threat response left over from when we were much hairier animals. This response is the result of ancient, unconscious brain structures recognizing a threat and attempting to make you look bigger, like a startled house cat.

Violence in the Antisocial Realm

April 4, 2024/0 Comments/in Violence in the Wild/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

The use of violence can have unintended consequences. Tearing into someone physically can end up killing them, even when you didn’t mean to. And if the after-the-fact circumstances don’t allow for killing, you can be subject to serious legal (and life-changing) consequences down the road. These consequences are the reason we do not recommend using violence in antisocial situations—wrong tool for the job and all that. It’s far better, in the short- and long-term, to disengage and get the hell out of there.

That’s all well and good, and in a perfect world things should be so clear-cut and easy. But we don’t live in that world, and they’re not. Those “unintended consequences” cut both ways—say the other person just want to “kick your ass” and you end up brained on the sidewalk as a result. Everyone ends up sad, and they’ll cry in court about how they didn’t mean it, it was all a terrible mistake, their life is ruined, etc. Fat lot of good that does you.

And that’s why I’ll never tell you to hold back and take a beating.

So the question is, how do you use violence in the antisocial arena?

The sad answer is, pretty much the same way you do in the asocial arena. You need to break things inside of them so they don’t work anymore.

There are a couple of important ideas you need to understand, and keep in mind, if you’re going to use that stick of dynamite to open your car door, after all:

Don’t pull any punches

You cannot “go easy” on them just because this started out as an antisocial situation. You have to strike them as hard as you can, every time, in a target, to smash it beyond functionality.

Go in 100% dedicated to tearing their head off

If your intent is anything less than full-bore, you will get less than effective results. If you don’t want to hurt them, don’t worry, you won’t. They may not be so kind to return the favor if given half the chance. You can’t afford to screw around—the only way their ribs are going to break is if you make every effort to do so.

This all-or-nothing approach will save your ass—it gets them to nonfunctional so rapidly and efficiently it’s over before you know it. This is where you have to take it, as soon as you decide it’s on; you have to finish it on your terms, immediately. You cannot afford to get drawn into any back and forth—you need to injure them, take control of the situation, and end it on your terms now.

Take one of my brother’s stories for example: the man was inviting him to participate in an antisocial interaction. Tony knew that that’s nothing to screw around with, and he was only willing to take it very seriously, by dishing out man-stopping injury. That’s where his reluctance stemmed from. But when push literally came to shove, my brother was unwilling to simply take a beating and risk injury for himself—and so he ended the situation with a single strike.

Non-lethal target selection (or tool switch-up)

You probably don’t want to start things off with a fist to the throat. Or a baton to the head. Or a knife through the solar plexus. In general, you’re going to want to stay away from targets and striking profiles you know to be lethal. Absent that, be sure to use tool configurations that change the nature of the injury (an open hand to the throat (choke punch) instead of a forearm; a forearm to the side of the neck instead of a knee drop).

But let’s be brutally honest here—don’t be fooled into thinking this changes anything, really—they could still die as a result (reference every “man killed with single punch” news story). What I’m saying is don’t do anything you know for a fact will kill them.

Understand that once you go physical, their conception of the encounter may change dramatically

Perhaps they were only thinking of “teaching you a lesson” but now they’re afraid for their life and willing to defend it with lethal force (pulling a tool or otherwise “getting serious”). If you’re going in with less than everything you’ve got, chances are you’ll screw up, lose control of them and give them an opportunity to, for argument’s sake, shoot you dead. Also, be aware that they may have allies who may come to their aid—be fully prepared to have to injure pretty much everyone in the vicinity.

Those last two issues, the fact that they could die regardless of how “careful” you are and the fact that your crossing into the physical plane can get you killed, are the chief reasons we don’t recommend using violence as a tool in antisocial interaction. More often than not, your life (losing it or changing it forever) just isn’t worth whatever it is you’re “fighting” for. Betting your life in order to win it back will always make sense—that is, in essence, what the asocial is all about.

The above issues are what you need to be aware of, in advance, should you decide to use the tool of violence in an antisocial situation. Whether because the situation has turned or spiraled out of “social tool” control or other factors lead you to act, you need to know what you’re getting yourself into and enter into that decision with full knowledge of the pitfalls and possible outcomes.

While I will never expressly recommend it, sometimes you are forced into a position where it’s either that or take a beating (or worse) that risks your own well-being.

What I will recommend is being smart about such things and hewing always to the idea of exhausting all options when given the luxury of a choice, and carving a path of destruction through the other person when you’re not.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

Sane, Socialized and Deaf to the Music

March 9, 2018/2 Comments/in Violence in the Wild/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

The truth about violence pervades the world like the music of the spheres — it’s out there, soundtracking the inevitable gyre of history — all you have to do is listen and you would know what the sociopath and the criminally insane know. You would be dangerous with nothing more than a little open-minded attention.

But you don’t want to hear it — you’ve been trained from childhood to process it as cacophony, chaos, noise with no rhyme or reason. It’s something only bad people do, and you’re not a bad person, are you? Of course not. So stop up your ears and chant “la la la” to drown out that ever-present, persistent beat.

Because otherwise you might figure it out.

You might know what the worst among us know — that it’s so easy you don’t even need to train for it, that everything between you and violence is imaginary. This is what dangerous people know. Dangerous people know they can go from zero to 90 in the blink of an eye — they can get up from that fancy dinner table and launch themselves through a broken thing because there are no physical speed bumps in capital-R Reality. All impediments to action are mere choices.

Now, outside of your attempted murder this imaginary stuff is wonderful; it allows us to cooperate with people we don’t know — it’s why there’s a flag on the moon — but it gets in the way when the other person has chucked it all in favor of pure physics and physiology. As Master Jerry L. Peterson said to me when we first met, “The difference between you and me is that I won’t hesitate the quarter-second you will.”

Being dangerous is easy. All you have to do is watch videos of dangerous people doing what they do, and then replicate that work on the mats. Get straight to it — ATTACK & INJURE — keep doing it until you’re done.

If only you could hear with Nature’s ear it would be that easy. Instead you get in your own way, you worry about imaginary things, you empathize with the victim and play desperate mind games to try and save them (yourself) though they be perpetually doomed no matter how many times you watch that video…

The good news is that we’ve done the translation for you, we’ve codified violence, made it trainable for “sharing monkeys” — it’s not just for the organically damaged or morally ambiguous anymore.

It’s important to note that while we’d like to take on aspects of the ambush predator (to become a “booby trap,” if you will), it’s not about the hardening of the heart or behaving like a sociopath in other areas of your life. Letting go of fear in favor of resolve doesn’t make you a bad person, no more than going to the gun range makes you a monster. It’s merely deciding, ahead of time, to ignore your social programming when you are faced with violence and have no other choice (because attempted murder only responds to action in kind)…

…and then training accordingly.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr

Training to Wait & See

The Hardest Lesson

Kill It Simple, Stupid

Violence in the Antisocial Realm

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