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Treat Everyone Like They’re Six Seconds Away from a Killing Spree & Other Philosophies of Good Neighborliness

September 24, 2024/0 Comments/in Kinder than Necessary/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

“Violence is the last thing I want to do, but it’s the first thing I will do.”

— Master Matt Suitor

Does knowing how to use the tool of violence inform your relationship with your fellow human beings? There are really two angles to come at this question from: knowing what violence entails (or “means”) and knowing how to get it done.

In terms of knowing what violence entails, i.e., the terror and ugly finality of it, the trend is clear: intimate knowledge leads directly to avoidance. The more one knows about violence, the less eager one is to get involved in it. Resolved, yes—eager, no.

This has a great deal to do with the narrowness of the tool, the fact that violence only does one thing: it shuts off a human being. The vast majority of your daily social interactions do not require this. It is unnecessary, therefore, to push social interactions in directions that could result in violence. Personally, I found I’m much more likely to capitulate and disengage by leaving the area, without a word, when confronted by someone with an obvious chip on their shoulder who has chosen me as the knock-off guy. Everybody wins—I sleep well, and neither of us gets a broken leg just because he was having a bad day.

My brother, Tony, tells a hilarious story in which a man accosted him by saying “Let’s fight!” and punching him (ineffectually) in the head. Tony thought about what that would mean—he saw himself breaking the guy’s leg and stomping a mud hole in him on the ground, and thought to himself, He can’t want that. So he said no. The guy persisted, again asking for a fight and punching Tony. Finally, my brother had it and shrugged, thinking, I guess that’s what he wants, and proceeded to make the guy’s head and feet trade places with a single strike. It wasn’t so much a “fight” like the guy was asking for as it was a “single man-stopping injury.” Tony knew that’s where it would go (and more importantly, that it could go either way); knowing how serious it was made him uninterested in going there recreationally—if he didn’t have to, he didn’t want to.

I find that I am possessed of a saintlike patience these days—somehow, somewhere, I developed the habit of giving pretty much everyone the benefit of the doubt. I do not begrudge those who are curt and prickly their public anger and annoyance. I just figure there are extenuating circumstances I’m not aware of and I have no desire to be the next point on the down-trending curve of their bad day. I do my best to treat everyone with patience and respect—and how is that different, really, from treating everyone as if they were six seconds away from a killing spree? I’d much rather be the control rod in the nuclear reactor than the ignition charge in their personal H-bomb.

This gets us to the second angle—beyond mere knowledge of violence and into confidence in how to get it done. Nietzsche said that courtesy comes from a position of power; I would say it comes from both the knowledge of, and confidence in, violence. Politeness flows from a desire to avoid violence coupled with the knowledge that if worse comes to worst, the skill is literally in the palm of your hand. Socially, you have nothing to lose. Rude people fear that courtesy is a sign of weakness, that something is taken from them when they wait their turn or let someone else go first.

Knowing how to get it done removes the uncertainty from the extreme end of the scale—the answer to “But what if he goes off?” is “I’ll break his leg and stomp a mud hole in him.” And so I find myself in the position of being resolved, but not eager. If I don’t have to, I don’t want to. If I have to, I will.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

Time to Stop Lying to Yourself

July 16, 2024/0 Comments/in Mindset/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

Experienced instructors are some of the most relaxed people I know.

The question, of course, is why?

When you have the mechanical ability to cause injury and couple it with the driving motivator of intent, everything throttles back and gets calm and easy—you’re not out spoiling for a fight or giving yourself an anxiety disorder by obsessing violently over every human being who brushes up against you.

This is what I was getting at in “Scenario-Based Training vs. The Hard Knot”. You simply cultivate the skill, and the will to use it, and then sit back and relax into the rest of your life. Should the need arise, you pull out the knot and brain people with it. Then you tuck it back where it belongs and get on with living. (I should note that I’m not talking about a ball of twine here—in my mind it’s an infinitely folded tessellation of agony, a world-heavy, fist-sized sphere from which no light can escape.) You don’t walk around brandishing it high over your head, mad-dogging all comers with a halo of purple lightning dancing about your enraged features. You tuck it behind a smile.

Without intent, without the implacable will to wield the knot, it’s not much better than yoga. Physically challenging, yes. A survival skill, no. (As an aside, it’s critically important to note that the criminal sociopath has very little training—a deficit they more than make up for with vast, raging reservoirs of intent.) So why do people have such a hard time with intent? And most importantly, what can you do about it?

People have a hard time with intent for a number of reasons: They suffer from a natural disinclination toward violence, they worry about what the other person will do, and they think violence is mechanically difficult.

The natural disinclination toward violence

Not wanting to physically hurt people is healthy and sane—but ultimately an impediment to survival when someone poses the question to which violence is the answer.

You need to get over the idea that anything we’re up to here is social in nature. This is why it’s so critically important that your mat time is as asocial as possible—no talking, no nervous laughter, no checking your partner’s face for feedback. The only time you should be looking at a face is if you’re taking an eye out of it.

I’m not talking about getting fired up and hating your partner. I’m talking about dispassion. Lose the emotional triggers—you’re not here to communicate, and raging at your partner (or their targets) is still communication. If you’re working with your “war face” you’ve kicked the social but are busy reinforcing the antisocial. What you really need is to get off the any-social, and get to its absence. That voidspace is the psychic storage shed for the knot.

Worried about what the other person will do

Let’s be blunt: Injured people are helpless. Ask anyone who’s done it. The first injury converts a functional person into a gagging meat-sack. Every injury after that is like busting apart a side of beef with your boot heels. This is why experienced instructors are so damned relaxed (and courteous, for that matter). This is also why they won’t hesitate to be the first one doing it. (It’s the ugly truth that no one wants to talk about—how people really respond to serious injury, about how when you cause one, you’ll know it because what you see next will stick to the inside of your eyelids for the rest of your life.)

What is the other person going to do? They’re going to break and behave like an injured person. They’re going to go to the worst place they’ve ever been. And you’re going to put them there.

The question you have to ask yourself is, will you worry about what they’re going to do, or will you make them worry about what you’re going to do? (Hint: pick the one where you’re in charge.)

On this same topic, you need to get off the whole “attacker/defender” merry-go-round. In any violent conflict there’s going to be, by definition, at least one person doing it to another. Be that one person. Decide it’s you, now, and every time after now. Out there it’s always your turn. If you must think in terms of there being an attacker, then it’s you.

Choosing to put yourself in second place is not the best strategy for a win, no matter how much we may venerate the underdog. In a “fair fight” or a contest, the underdog is the hero. In violence, they’re dead.

Quit empathizing with the dead person. You’re doing it because you’re nice, you’re doing it because you’re sane. In a social context, it makes perfect sense. In violent conflict your social skills and mores do nothing but prevent you from surviving. Empathizing with the dead person at the funeral is sane and normal. Empathizing with them while we’re all trying to decide who the dead person is going to be means you’re it.

Bottom line: decide who has the problem—is it you, or is it them?

Believing violence is mechanically difficult

Outside of the psychosocial issues, violence is really, really easy. We’re all predators, we’re all physically built for killing. Violence is as easy as going from where you are to where the other person is and breaking something important inside of them. The rest is academic.

How easy is it? General consensus says easier than free practice. You get to strike as hard as you can, follow all the way through on everything, you don’t have to take care of them, and it’s over so fast you won’t even have time to break a sweat or even breathe hard. The only hard part is giving yourself the permission to be inhumanly brutal, giving yourself the permission to survive. (I recommend you vote for you every time.)

Thinking that violence is mechanically difficult (and thereby trying to give yourself an out so you don’t have to face your own intent problems) is akin to thinking that swimming in the deep end is any different from swimming in the shallow end. Mechanically, it’s the same—swimming is swimming—the difference is all in your perception. In the shallow end, you can touch bottom and can save yourself from drowning by standing up. In the deep end you’re on your own—it’s sink or swim. So everyone thinks free practice is the shallow end; there’s no risk, you can always “stand up” when you get into trouble. That would make the street the deep end—no backup, no safety net, just swim or die. I’ll grant all of that as true. Just remember, always, that no matter where you’re swimming, mechanically it’s all the same. The idea that there’s a difference is an illusion that takes effort on your part to make a reality. Stop feeding the phantoms and just swim.

Intent—your will to cause injury, your drive to get it done—is completely up to you. You need to start thinking about it now, personally letting go of the things you’ve kept between the “you” you love because they’re a lovable, good person, and the “you” that can stomp the throats of screaming men.

We can only show you how to mechanically take someone apart—pulling the trigger on it is up to you, and you alone.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Scenario-Based Training vs. The Hard Knot

July 9, 2024/0 Comments/in Social-Asocial/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

When people say “scenario-based training”, it’s code for “all the crap that comes before the actual violence”. The yelling, the approach, the grabby man-dance. Of course, once the violence starts it’s all the same old, same old: injury, injury, injury. Pedestrian, predictable, and downright boring. All the stuff that comes before, all the stuff that people are fascinated with, is, for our purposes, a waste of time.

The lead-in to violence for any given scenario is typically antisocial in nature, leading to questions like “How do I deal with his behavior?” and “When do I decide to injure him?” You already have the skills to deal with the former—talk him down, capitulate, or get the hell out of there. As for when to tear into someone, that’s a personal judgment call you have to make in general terms ahead of time; in specific terms it’s based on your read of the situation. If you recognize a threat and you think you can’t live with it, then get busy shutting him off. If you think it’s something you can live with—merely antisocial in nature—then act accordingly. Use your social skills, or set a new 100-meter dash record, or tear into him as you will. In other words, act according to your comfort level.

This threshold will vary from person to person based on life experience. Some people can stomach all kinds of crazy antisocial behavior; others will brook no threat whatsoever. Either way, it’s a personal judgment call. This means your response to that stuff is up to you to figure out, for yourself, on your own time. We’ll hand you the tool—you have to decide when you’ll swing it.

Another reason people want all the upfront stuff is because they are not in a hurry to get to the wreckage. They’re afraid. They want to stay in the semi-social realm for as long as possible and want to hang onto the idea that they are the Good Guy. If we maintain an attacker/defender dichotomy, i.e., “He came after me, so therefore he’s the Bad Guy, which automatically dubs me the Hero,” we keep things nice and social. And for us sane humans, social equals comfortable. Remember, we have, as a species, a natural disinclination to violence; society wouldn’t function if it were otherwise. Violence turns our stomachs. People will go to great lengths to avoid discomfort.

Do you really want to spend your precious training time working within your comfort zone in contrived, antisocial scenarios, with only a small percentage given over to the actual work of violence? Or do you want to work where actual change occurs, the point where all violent acts become the same—the point of injury?

Look at it this way: we could waste your time by having you role-play stage productions of Serpico such that for every 20 minutes of mat time you only get two where you’re actually booting people. Instead, we have you experiencing violence for the full 20 minutes. Yes, half of that time is spent reacting for your partner, but you are still working where the buzzsaw hits the bone, at the point of injury. If you know what you’re doing you can actually learn more about violence while reacting than when it’s your turn. Ask anyone who’s been used by an instructor for a demo. It’s a difference you can feel. (Sometimes unfortunately so.)

Free practice is the only “scenario” you want to train in. To maximize your skill, you need to practice that skill. In this case the skill is injuring people; it stands to reason that you want to spend as much time as possible at the point of injury. That’s what free practice is. It’s you, changing everything in your favor, taking control of the man, the situation, through injury. What came before is immaterial—it has no bearing on what you’re doing to him. Did he yell? Or pull a gun? Did he grab you and knock you down? His ruptured groin doesn’t care. Neither should you.

Now, for all that, the single caveat: if your job is hallmarked by common occurrences that lead to violence (as in law enforcement or the military) then working those specific scenarios has merit. Car stops, room clearing; these scenarios are useful exercises for those who can expect to encounter them—but they’re pointless for the rest of us.

Here’s what it comes down to: use free practice to wrap and entwine the hard knot of skill within you, learn to use your mind as a weapon and your body as a tool for violence. Then you can walk the Earth free of “rehearsal anxiety”, free in the knowledge that if your current problem—no matter how it developed or came upon you—can only be solved by shutting down a human being, you know where the off switch is. And once you reach for that switch, all violent conflict becomes the same.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Knowing the Stakes and Acting Accordingly…

July 2, 2024/0 Comments/in Social-Asocial/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

…is a ton of crap.

Let me rewind a little bit.

The concept of the universality of violence is a key idea that we come back to time and time again, that is, treating all violence as equivalent, with no such thing as “dash”-fighting, e.g., ground-fighting, knife-fighting, stick-fighting, etc. The reason we have to keep coming back to it is because a lot of the time you don’t treat it as equivalent; add a firearm, for example, and you think the stakes are different, and you suddenly want your performance to reflect “how serious” you believe the situation has become. Sometimes you think it’s just social status at stake, or mere wounding. But when the knife or the gun comes out, then it’s different, right? Now you’re playing for keeps, and so you have to get serious. Now you know the stakes and want to act accordingly.

I call bullshit.

Let me put it this way: you really don’t want to know the stakes. You never want to find out if it was life or death, because you know how you’ll know? When they’re killing you, that’s how. That’s a stupid, behind-the-curve way to find out. It’ll be the last thing you ever know. At that point the information will do you no good.

If your mat time is focusing on the idea that your workout partner is “empty-handed” and so the stakes are a mere beating, you’re probably being sloppy with distance and penetration—letting them have too much of the former and not doing enough of the latter. Then, when you add a firearm into the mix, now it’s on, right? Everything changes, you have to tighten up, “get serious”, etc. You know what you’re really doing? You’re training to get yourself killed.

Every time you go physical it’s for keeps. Every time you yank out the fail-safes and go off on someone it’s serious. Every. Single. Time. You need to take every turn you get in training as the “real deal.” Treat your partner as if they were armed with a firearm, or a knife—because they just might be armed with something worse. They might be carrying what I carry:

A bear trap and a pack of wolves.

I never leave home without them. In fact, they’re with me constantly. Now, you might think I’m being funny or losing my mind and to that I would ask that you review any video you have of instructors free practicing. Notice that once it starts, there is no escape. The reaction partner doesn’t get the opportunity to do much of anything other than react, fall, and get torn apart.

This is what I think of when someone asks me if I’m a sheep, a wolf, or a sheepdog. (Actually, the first thing I think of is that I’m Homo sapiens, a human being, something much, much worse than any of the above. But then, we’re all human and probably far too close to it to see just how incredibly powerful an animal we are. Hands-down the apex predator of the entire planet. But I digress.)

So, if I have to pick a different animal, I’ll pick the way it feels when I free practice—like a bear trap and a pack of wolves. The trap set, powerful springs straining beneath a hasty cover of leaves and forest detritus, and a pack of lean, tawny wolves circling in the shadows. Once the trap is sprung, there is no escape—after the steel jaws of the initial strike splinter bone and sunder flesh, the wolves are free to tear the crippled person to pieces.

Why does instructor free practice look like this? Because the instructor knows the stakes ahead of time. It’s all or nothing, every time. And once that trap is sprung, there is no escape. Starting right now, here are three things you can do to get there:

– Throw out the idea that the stakes are variable.

Treat every turn on the mats as if your partner has a knife, or a firearm, or, worst-case-scenario, a bear trap and a pack of wolves.

– Be the bear trap and the pack of wolves.

Once you start, it’s all about you. They get to do nothing but react, fall, and get torn to pieces. They don’t get to stagger back. They don’t get to roll away. Get inside and stay there, right on top of them—the maximum distance between the two of you should never be greater than one step/strike. Ideally, you’ll be pretty much torso-to-torso the entire time. Make “there is no escape” your personal violence motto—and then make it a reality.

– Work on making universality a reality for you.

Violence is not a bunch of disparate things all duct-taped together into an unwieldy Frankenmass. It’s a singularity. It’s just one thing. It has a single use. You can’t dial it up and down, “go easy” or be nice. You do not inflict it upon the “unarmed” man any differently than you would an armed one. (Think about how dangerous you are, naked, with nothing but your bare hands and intent. As dangerous as a steel bear trap and a pack of hungry wolves, perhaps?)

You need to walk into every mat session with these three things in mind because you need to act identically in every violent situation—spring the trap and maul at will. Every free practice should feel the same—guns, knives, batons or not. If it feels different with the gun, if it feels stressful or “more real”, you’re missing the point when it’s not there—it means you’re not taking any of the rest of it as seriously as you should. The obvious, projected intent of the firearm is taking you where you should be all the time in your free practice. Buckle down, focus, and free practice to make the tool in the hand truly immaterial—get the job done so that it really doesn’t matter what they have, even if it’s a bear trap and a pack of wolves.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

It’s Not About Naughty or Nice

June 25, 2024/0 Comments/in Social-Asocial/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

It’s about what works & survival. Period.

I was recently reading an article on “self-defense” in which the author was speaking of violence as if you could pick and choose the level of seriousness of the interaction, e.g., if they just want to “kick your ass” you kick their ass back, not really hurting them, but teaching them a lesson. If they’re a little more serious, then so are you—and if they want to kill you, well, that’s the only time you’re going to use certain serious techniques and targets like eyes, throat, and so on.

This idea illustrates a fantasy disconnect between fighting and violence, one that deserves a fantasy name: I like to refer to it as “dialing in your Spidey-power.” (With apologies to Stan Lee & Steve Ditko.) It’s the idea that you can choose to hit someone with, say, 60% of what you’ve got—and that you’ll only ever hit someone with 100% when your life depends on it. It’s being able to look at an impending “fight” and say, “Well, they’re not really serious, so I’ll dial my Spidey-power down to 50%,” and then sock them hard, but not too hard, because, after all, you don’t want to kill them, right?

Here’s the problem: holding back can get you killed. There are many ways to hold back:

1) You can wait and see to try and suss out what their intentions are,

2) You can make certain targets off limits because wrecking them is awful (you’ll never hear me say otherwise)—like the eyes or breaking a knee, both permanent, crippling disabilities, and/or

3) You can “go easy” on them by not striking as hard as you can.

Any one of these leads directly to reduced effectiveness, poor results, and in the worst case, can get you killed.

The idea that you can suss out their intentions is a fantastical delusion. If you don’t have psychic powers (and my guess is… wait for it… you don’t) or know the evil that lurks in the hearts of men like the Shadow does, then you’re screwed. You’ll know they want to kill you because, well, they’re busy doing it. That is not the time to find out. In fact, it’s never a good time to find out, right?

Making targets off limits ahead of time (“I’ll never go after the eyes,”) will give you a hesitating hiccup if your next—and only—opportunity is that target. You will stop. And try to get restarted. If you’re lucky, it means nothing. If you’re unlucky, the opportunity is gone and you just got stabbed/shot/whatever (perhaps again) and you just better hope they got it wrong, too.

You always want to strike as hard as you can. Always—as hard as you can. “Holding back” reduces the chance of injury. Now we’re into the realm of slapping each other around, pissing people off, and delivering nonspecific, superficial trauma that is neither a persistent disability nor spinal reflex-inducing. It’s wasted motion that lets them know it’s on.

The author did believe, however, that in a real worst-case scenario a magical transformation would occur—that even though you’d been neutering and watering down your training by waiting, making targets off limits and slapping at them, you could suddenly rise to the occasion of your impending murder by crushing the throat or tearing out an eye with full force and effort.

That’s a neat idea, but it flies in the face of “you do what you train.”

So, to that point, how does the way we train serve you? It would seem, on the surface, that we onlytrain for the worst-case scenario, that to use what you know in any other situation would be like using dynamite to open your car door.

Let’s put it this way: the “worst-case scenario” encompasses and includes all other possible scenarios; going in purely to cause serious injury, put the person down and then pile it on (e.g., start kicking a “helpless” person on the ground) covers, handles, and takes care of anything and everything they may have wanted to do to you.

But the real beauty is that you can stop at any time. You’ll typically do this the moment you recognize that they’re nonfunctional. Let’s say you start out by breaking their jaw at the TMJ. You get the minimum expected reaction—they turn slightly, somehow keeping their feet. You come back with a shot to the groin and get a HUGE reaction, they go down face-first and try to curl up into a fetal position. You break their ribs and then strike to the side of their neck, knocking them unconscious. At this point you recognize that they are nonfunctional (to your satisfaction) and stop.

(Notice that I didn’t mention any techniques or tools—that’s because they don’t matter. Results matter.)

This sequence could have been different at each node of injury—you break their jaw and they spin around three times and lie down, out cold; you stop when they go fetal after the groin strike; you stop after breaking the ribs because as far as you’re concerned, your read on them is “done.” You also know how to carry it to a more final conclusion with a stomp to the neck or throat. But always as an informed choice—not out of desperation, and not after having been trained that it is “wrong” or morally less-than.

You also know how to start right off with the eyes, throat, or a broken neck—but again, as a conscious choice. If killing is what will see you through, you will kill them. If killing is not appropriate, you can still operate because you know where the line is. This is because you are trained in the totality of violence, understanding it for what it is—a single-use tool that does not have an intensity dial on it. You can’t make guns shoot “nice.” And what a bullet does is the purest expression of everything we’re ever talking about. All violence is the same.

So, what does this mean for you?

First and foremost, it means you understand that violence is not a plaything—you won’t goof off with it any more than you would with a loaded firearm. This is healthy. It means you won’t get sucked into stupid (antisocial) shenanigans thinking you can use what you know without any negative repercussions. It means you’re going to be smarter about when to pull it out and use it. This is going to save you tons of wear and tear, not to mention legal troubles.

It means that when you do use it, you’re going to use it the only way you can be sure it works—with no artificial social governors restricting what you can and can’t do. You’ll strike them as hard as you can to cause injury. And you’ll take full advantage of that injury, replicating it into nonfunctionality.

If we view this through a social lens it is savage, brutal, dirty, unfair, and very probably illegal somewhere. This was the essential thesis of the self-defense author. But the question you have to ask yourself is are you going to bet your life the other person is playing by the rules? If they are, well, then you’re a jerk, aren’t you? If they aren’t, you’re dead.

The moral of the story? Screw around with hand-to-hand violence the same way you’d screw around with a firearm—don’t.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

The Final Word in Context: Murder

June 18, 2024/0 Comments/in Social-Asocial/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

There is a baseline level of confusion about what exactly it is we do; confusion that I am, quite frankly, tired of hashing and rehashing. There are deep-seated biological, psychological, and societal reasons for this confusion—and so it is perfectly natural for it to persist—but as an instructor it frustrates me because treading back and forth across this well-worn rut doesn’t make you any better at doing violence.

The only thing that makes you better is getting the mechanics down pat—where and how to cause injury, and how to best take advantage of the results. Everything else is just mental masturbation that feels important because it tastes like philosophy with a little bit of work mixed in. You think you’re working—while avoiding doing any of the real work that will make you better at violence, namely getting a reaction partner and hitting the mats regularly.

And so I am going to flog a dead horse again today, but my goal is to flay it to the bone (or finally sell it off if you take the original meaning); I want to take it to its absurd, logical conclusion beyond which there is no more jaw-flapping:

What we teach is violence, which is what you need to do when someone wants to murder you.

So where’s the confusion? That seems pretty clear-cut. And that’s what I think, too. But then the questions start:

Why would I ever need to know how to kill someone?

Won’t I get in trouble if I use this in a bar fight?

But what if he’s got X and/or Y and he’s coming at me like so?

How do I do it to someone who knows what you know?

What if he does it first?

Or one of the other infinite facets of the question that tells me you don’t really believe that bigger-faster-stronger doesn’t matter. You want to believe, but you don’t.

Where does all this confusion come from? It arises because you think you know what you’re seeing, but you’re looking at it through the wrong mental porthole. When fists and feet are flying, you see monkey politics. You see competition. It’s all great apes working out dominance and submission. Don’t feel bad—you’re hardwired to recognize and respond to this. It’s only natural. Which is why I want to start the violence conversation off with one person shooting another person to death.

Watching one person kill another with a firearm won’t ping your monkey brain. It’ll go far deeper, down into the lizard-level, the primeval predator level. You’ll see it for what it is: killing. If we look at the underlying mechanics, we have:

kinetic energy delivered through anatomy, wrecking it

And now we have the perfect model to work backwards from. Keep the killing context, keep the wrecked anatomy in mind, and now look at other ways of causing that outcome. A fist, a boot, a pipe, a shin, etc., etc.—it doesn’t matter what as long as it’s doing the work that a bullet does, if only in a generic sense. So now if we line up a series of killings and look at them side-by-side—a shooting, a stabbing, a bludgeoning, getting hit by a car—we should be able to see the clear, underlying principles that govern all of these equally and immutably. Learning how to wield these principles is “getting the mechanics down pat” I mentioned earlier.

All clear, right? No—back to the confusion: you get the gun and the car, but you feel iffy about the pipe and the knife, and downright scoff at the fist, boot, or shin.

Why?

Because you read it with your monkey politics filter and think there’s something you can do about it. “I can’t dodge bullets, but I can block a punch.” This is the ultimate in hubris and sends you down a negative feedback spiral: If you can “handle” a punch, then of course they can “handle” it when you’re trying to do it to them. You’re pissing in your confidence reservoir and your training will look hesitant and spotty. And that’s exactly where your skill will go. You’re thinking that you’re fighting when we really want you doing something completely else.

We are trying to teach you how to kill murderers. Everything that fits that narrow model benefits you. Anything that sounds out of place or silly in that context is useless.

That’s why “murder” is the final word in context. Almost no one knows what to do when that’s what’s up. “Fighting” and “defense” are worthless in that arena—remember that defense wounds are found on corpses and tell the coroner that the person “fought for their life.” You’re not going to fight anyone for your life. You’re going to kill a murderer.

Armed with this new context, let’s look at the common questions:

Why would I ever need to know how to kill someone?

If that someone is a murderer, then ipso facto. It’s like asking, “If drowning can kill me, why train to swim in water?”

Won’t I get in trouble if I use this in a bar fight?

Yes. Yes, you will.

But what if he’s got X and/or Y and he’s coming at me like so?

Would you ask the same question with a gun or a steering wheel in your hand? Of course you laugh, but a crushed throat and a gouged eye don’t care if it was bullets, hood ornaments, or boots that did it. So why should you?

How do I do it to someone who knows what you know?

Injured is injured, dead is dead, regardless of talent or training.

What if he does it first?

Then you have nothing to worry about.

Bigger-faster-stronger?

The murderer doesn’t care—in fact, that’s one reason why he’s successful. And that should inform your thinking on the subject.

Here’s the bottom line: check yourself and stick with what matters. Is your question, your doubt, your worry rooted in the mechanics of injury or is it stuck in monkey politics, in “fighting”? Be honest with yourself. If it’s the mechanics, we can work on that, show you what to do and how to do it. After that it’s on you to hit the mats with a partner and take ownership of it. If it’s competition, monkey politics, or has anything to do with communication or changing behavior, then it’s immaterial and meaningless in the context of killing a murderer.

Because you don’t talk to, try to best, or even fight with murderers. You kill them.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2006)

Access the Meat

May 14, 2024/1 Comment/in Competition/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

Choosing the level of interaction in violent conflict.

One of the key features of the sociopath is that they see everyone as essentially the same—a piece of meat to be butchered. Sociopaths look at everyone this way, regardless of personality, skill, or ability: a big strong guy with a black belt looks the same as a sleeping child. The sociopath understands that both their skulls open the same way, their eyes yield to equal pressure, and they both die when their throats are cut.

The sociopath disregards the things that set them apart, and won’t waste time interfacing with their personalities, or the big strong guy’s black belt skill, or his massive muscles. They will only concentrate on the things that both victims are susceptible to. In order to use violence successfully, in order to have an equal chance of survival, so must you. Don’t get caught in the sucker’s game of interfacing at higher levels, of showing respect for the person, their skills, or physical power. Go straight for the meat.

The Four Levels of Interaction

As a person – social

This is trying to change behavior, mood, or motivation. This is where most people would like to keep the situation.

As a skill set – antisocial

This is trying to out-wrestle him, or out-technique him in a 90-mile-an-hour chess game. This is a duel in which the most skilled practitioner will typically win. It is “civilized violence” and seen as “fighting fair”.

As an animal (via strength, speed, stamina) – antisocial

This is pitting your strength against his, trying to out-maneuver or out-last him, going blow for blow—this typically looks pretty brutal and ugly. A lot of struggle where the best specimen prevails. This is seen as brutish, desperate, and decidedly “uncivilized”.

As a piece of meat – asocial

This is regarding him as a physical object beholden to the natural laws of the universe. Paying no heed to the person, the skill, or the ability. This is seen as almost universally “bad”—people who do this naturally are classified as “evil” in a social setting. This is interfacing with him as a thing that can be broken down and rendered nonfunctional.

It’s interesting to note that these four levels correspond to different ranges and comfort zones.

Interfacing with the person can be done from across the street, a distance from trouble where most people feel safe (they can always take off running if it gets out of hand).

Interfacing with his skill set is almost always done at a pace away, with the contestants circling to get a feel for their opponent’s skill level, feinting and parrying and otherwise dancing around. It’s all about giving yourself enough room to see what he’s doing and try to counter it.

Interfacing with his physical abilities is done skin-to-skin, but that’s as deep as it goes.

Interfacing with the frailties of the flesh is done beneath the skin—true injury is about disregarding the sanctity of the body and simply destroying it.

What-ifs, Buts and Maybes

The kinds of questions people ask during training can tell you a lot about where their head is at and at which level they’re stuck on. The important thing to note is that none of their worries have any impact on injury whatsoever.

The “Socialist”

The person who is uncomfortable with the whole idea of conflict will ask questions that dance around the issue from across the street, like, “How can I tell if he wants to hurt me?” and such.

The Duelist

People trained in martial arts usually get hung up on interfacing with his skill. They’ll ask the most what-ifs, like, “What if he throws a spinning back kick?”, “What if he counters my joint lock?” and “What if he’s holding the knife like this?” They are also overly concerned about defensive reactions like blocking and counters—both in doing it and worrying about having it done to them.

The Animal

Untrained people who can come to terms with the idea of conflict usually end up fixated on physical attributes. For smaller, less athletic people it manifests as worry about how they’ll fare against bigger, stronger, faster adversaries; big, strong folks have the opposite problem—they typically believe they cannot be defeated by “lesser” beings.

Sociopaths & Butchers

Almost no one shows up comfortable with injury as a starting point.

Another interesting thing to note is that progressing through the levels is not linear. Socialists don’t usually walk through the others to arrive at injury. They go one of two ways—either they dig in their heels and cram their heads into the sand and will never, ever cross the street, or they go straight from where they are to injury (though sometimes with a short stopover at the animal level).

Duelists are another thing entirely. It is often very difficult to wean them off of the idea that they need to respect and/or thwart his skill before they can be effective. If they do move on, it’s usually with a long stopover at the animal level. His skill bothered them before; now they’ve transferred that worry to his physical abilities. Those who have taken the long walk from skill to animal to injury are typically the most evangelical about the whole process. (As opposed to those who went straight from social to injury. They usually don’t see the whole experience as that big of a deal.)

Animals are easier to nudge into interfacing directly with the meat of the matter. They’re pretty close, conceptually, and they just need to be shown how to direct their efforts away from strong points and into the weak ones. (Instead of going strength-to-strength, go strength-to-eyeball.)

If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you don’t have a problem with violence in a general sense, that you’re not hung up on the social aspects from across the street. So where are your hang-ups? What are you stuck on? Are you worried about what he’ll do if he’s skilled? Or bigger-stronger-faster? Be honest with yourself. You’re letting yourself down if you lie—you’re not going to get any more effective that way.

If the idea of going after a trained Goliath makes you sweat (more than the usual, healthy amount, I mean) then you need to buckle down and study up on injury. Seek out photos of sports injuries (for broken joints and twisted, nonfunctioning limbs). Autopsy reports from non-firearm killings—especially where the victim was beaten to death—are illuminating. Troll the internet for videos of prison fights and violent muggings. Essentially, look for anything where the survivor is interacting with the other person as a piece of meat.

You’ll be repulsed and comforted simultaneously.

– 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.

Everyone’s a Badass

March 28, 2024/0 Comments/in Rabbit v. Wolf/by Chris Ranck-Buhr

(Note: Much of this revolves around intermale aggression, male power fantasies, and the paleolithic kabuki of male dominance rituals—but the message at the end is good for everyone, I promise.)

Human societies are fascinated with strength and power, especially obvious personal power: height, musculature, and a hair-trigger willingness to do violence are eternally impressive to us. We all desire what those attributes grant the possessor—to be respected, to inspire awe, and, perhaps, fear. When we are intimidated, we feel all those things acutely, most of all the gut-snarling fear. We feel it, and we want to make others feel those things, too. We feel it and realize we don’t want to confront the intimidating person… and wouldn’t that feeling be a very useful thing to project? Only if you want to take it to the physical, to have to use violence to back up your newfound badass attitude more often than you’d like. Intimidation is like juggling 13 double-edged swords and playing with fire simultaneously.

For our purposes we’re going to define “intimidation” as the antisocial process of going out of your way to make someone afraid of you. Most people take this a step further, not stopping at mere fear but going headlong into humiliation. Once they realize they’ve made someone afraid, they will typically push it and rub it in to humiliate the affected person.

(As an interesting aside, it’s a common truth that people who use intimidation as a social tool tend to do the things that intimidate them—they will project the behaviors that they, themselves, fear most.)

Why is intimidation so dangerous? Because it can get you killed, whether you fail or succeed. If you fail to intimidate the man, you have just escalated the situation—by saying, in effect, “Do you want me to hurt you?”—and now, unimpressed, he’s calling your bluff. If he’s the kind of guy who responds to threats with physical action, then it’s on. You just called it down upon yourself because you wanted to be a badass.

Usually, it’s not going to be a problem—if it went physical all the time very few people would do it, right? The problem is the people who get set off by this are the worst kind… and I hope I don’t have to tell you that choosing to escalate a screaming match to a life-or-death situation is asinine.

Let’s say you succeed in intimidating him. Mission accomplished, right? You put him in his place, you showed him (and everyone in earshot) who’s boss, you made him feel afraid. How could that possibly go wrong?

Yeah, I know—it’s a rhetorical question.

Let’s flip it around: He succeeded in intimidating you, he made you feel afraid. Maybe even made you feel afraid for your life. How do you respond? You know how to handle the physical side; you can take it there in a blink of an eye and shut him off. Maybe you just feel socially embarrassed and walk away. Or maybe you knock him down, knee him in the face and stomp on his head until he’s nonfunctional. Who can say? It’s going to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

What if you make him feel afraid? Most people will back down and disengage, usually while making even more noise than before. But there are some, the worst out there, who will take it as a threat and work to destroy that threat. They may go off instantaneously, or they may simmer for hours, days, months. In the long-term case, you probably won’t have the luxury of seeing it coming. And if you truly terrified them, they’re going to want to do things to even the odds—bringing accomplices and firearms, say. So, succeed or fail, intimidation can get you killed. It’s a sucker’s game.

“But Chris,” you say, “If I’m not intimidating then I’m prey!”

Let’s make a quick clarification here: the opposite of being intimidating is not the same as appearing meek, weak, or helpless—it’s simply not registering as prey. Looking like you know what you’re doing, that you are aware, yet comfortably unconcerned, is more akin to being socially remote. That is, you’ve got the NO SOLICITING sign out without being a jerk about it. Appearing unimpressed and unafraid is not the same as trying to be intimidating. You can project the confidence that you can handle yourself without threatening anyone.

A high order social skill? Probably one of the highest. And for many people, elusive. But it’s a lot less harrowing than running around being intimidating, which is exhausting and scary at the same time. I think of it like this: “Go out of your way to get to the rest of your day.” When in the social arena, be social, use your social skills, and treat everyone like people. In the asocial arena treat everyone like meat. Don’t confuse the two.

It doesn’t mean you have to be everyone’s friend, a pushover, or smile at daily human ugliness. It can be as simple as biting your tongue instead of spitting fuel on the fire. Of course, the hard part is if you’re successful, you’ll never know it. You’ll never even be aware of the trouble you’ve dodged—you can only know the trouble you’ve caused.

— Chris Ranck-Buhr (from 2007)

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