How your attackers have the advantage
Or, Moses and the smashed tablets
It’s often by surprise. Unexpected. But then there are the times when you can feel it coming. Either way, the thing is…
Your attacker has three advantages: They know when, where, and how.
How do serious martial artists defend themselves in these kinds of circumstances? What with it being so unpredictable, so willy nilly?
Techniques versus principles
A beginner Jiu Jitsu student ends up learning over 500 techniques to achieve their first degree black belt. That’s a lot to learn. And while there’s a great deal of value in learning techniques, the point here is not to suggest that it takes mastery of hundreds of techniques to be effective against attacks.
Rather, techniques, while extraordinarily important in teaching Jiu Jitsu, are really only the playground upon which to learn and practice principles.
Principles are very different than technique. They are different than values. Seen through the eyes of the seasoned martial artist, principles are the only guideposts that have any truly meaningful relevance.
Principles are so fundamentally applicable in so many and diverse situations that we could take a single universal principle and apply it to 10,000 situations. In other words, we don’t really need to learn 10,000 techniques to defends ourselves. Rather, we need to practice and burn in just a handful or so of really great principles.
Occupy Wall Street, and the missing unified voice
I demonstrated back during Occupy Wall Street.
I was out on the streets. But even before I stepped out there, it was obvious there were far too many factions with interests that were far too diverse and splintered.
Other than everyone saying, “I’m really pissed!” it was clear that crafting a unified message was going to be an overreach. It wasn’t that all those diverse interests weren’t valuable and important. But there were far too many of them, and each of them were far too shrill for the organizers to achieve unity, to achieve a single voice.
How do you achieve a single voice?
By focusing on principle, not by waving a boatload of singular hot buttons. By focusing on values that cannot be denied versus death by 10,000 ‘techniques.’
It’s much easier to remember one thing than 10,000 things
I recently stated that, “It’s far easier to motivate people and get them to remember and practice a single, solid principle, than to wear everyone out trying to coordinate their 1000 issues and 10,000 interest groups.”
Bruce Lee said it his way, “ I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
A clear Jiu Jitsu move, in this context, would be to focus people on the left — and on the right — on positive, enduring principles, such as fairness. Truly effective principles unify people, they don’t divide them.
Think about the term ‘fairness,’ as an example. Most people, regardless of gender, age, politics or religion would say that it’s important to be fair. It does not matter if you are in the Red Church, the Blue Church, or no church. Fair is fair, to everyone except cheaters. Which means that most people are fair.
In transactional politics, as in most relationships, fairness matters. At least to a certain degree. Which suggests that any time we can get agreement, that’s a positive step.
I’m not saying that ‘fairness’ should be the new buzzword or the new guiding principle. I’m simply using the term to illustrate the concept. If we can find the correct common denominators, we can use principles as the fulcrum to bring about change, we can use principles to bring the world a message that unites both left and right.
Who can say they can’t benefit from better Balance in their life?
When a new student walks into the Jiu Jitsu dojo for the first time, they are introduced to their first universal principle: Balance. Whether they are a weak and timid individual or a strong and assertive personality, there has been never a single person who didn’t agree that they couldn’t benefit from better Balance in their life. That’s why Balance is termed a universal principle.
Moses and the smashed tablets
There is an old myth about what actually occurred when Moses descended from Mount Sinai. The traditional story has him becoming enraged with the Children of Israel on his first descent, smashing the stone tablets into bits.
Frustrated, he climbs up again, chisels away and re-descends, this time with the Ten Commandments intact. Everyone assumes that the tablets he smashed on his first journey back down the mountain were the Ten Commandments.
The myth says, “No, not really.”
What Moses really smashed the first time were not the Ten Commandments, but rather a set of guiding, universal principles. The story goes that the reason Moses smashed them was that in that moment of outraged anger and frustration, he realized humanity wasn’t ready for something so advanced and valuable as universal principles. So he climbed back up the mountain, this time returning with a set of easier to understand rules and laws. Something more suited to barbarians.
Are we finally ready for universal principles?
