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Old 12-29-2006, 12:25 AM   #51
Kevin Leavitt
 
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

Iriawan wrote:

Quote:
If we are talking about safety and security, it's not going out there and be a hero or going out there to be the winner of some sort of competition whether it is in real or imagined
No to me it is about having a set of values and convictions and standing by them. Things such as all men are created equal and believing in the dignity and self worth of all people. Names Ghandi, MLK, and a few others come to mind.

Marching down the street in Birmingham...now that is getting real on the streets!
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Old 12-29-2006, 06:21 AM   #52
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

Quote:
Kevin Leavitt wrote:
... to me it is about having a set of values and convictions and standing by them.
IMHO, conviction is true internal strength.

"It isn't the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog."

Lynn Seiser PhD
Yondan Aikido & FMA/JKD
We do not rise to the level of our expectations, but fall to the level of our training. Train well. KWATZ!
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Old 01-12-2007, 05:37 AM   #53
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

Hey Kevin, great post!
Giving me a lot to think about.
I'm still experimenting/exploring non-aggression and non-violence. Taking it and seeing how it can apply to me as a soldier and what I do. I'm not sure how much I can say on here but I was in a situation where I feel Aikido and the exploring of fear and stress actually enabled me to save someones life. I was confronted with someone doing something they shouldn't and about to pull the trigger and kill them but I recalled reading about fear and how when your scared you tense up and get tunnel vision. I did my best to relax, breathe and take the whole situation into perspective and I was able to control my fear and find an alternative way of controlling the situation.
Still, when I think of what can solve a fight I hear my old (army) instructor.
The only way you're going to solve a fight is VIOLENCE VIOLENCE VIOLENCE.
It still has a lot of truth to it even considering my above example.
Picture this scenario I went through.

Quote:
If you confront violence with violence it doesn't necessarily fix the problem. If you avoid the problem it doesn't necessarily fix the problem either.

There is a dilemma!
You're driving up a road in a convoy when all of a sudden you feel a knot in your stomach. Your not sure why or what it is but something is wrong. All of a sudden you here a loud thump and look to your right and see a puff of smoke, a second later an RPG flies 5 feet in front of your truck. More RPGs start to sail out from the treeline and machine guns start firing off at you, tracers pinging around. Your convoy is in an ambush.

Easily a situation where violence is the only answer. We returned fire and tried to create as much violence on our end to keep their heads down long enough for us and the trucks we were protecting to get out of the kill zone. I don't see how violence could be avoided in that situation. I think the same goes for fights. I'll try to avoid a physical fight as much as possible up to and including backing down or walking away and looking like "a wimp". If someone crosses the line and assaults me then I'm going to try and use violence to overwhelm them and catch them off guard and put them under control. I argue with myself is it better to absolutely control them so they don't have a chance to hurt me or should I do my best not to hurt them while defending myself even if it means I could get seriously injured in trying to keep "us both safe".

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How do you deal with a school yard bully? If you beat him up and humiliate him, does it solve the problem? If you avoid him does it solve the problem?
I think, perhaps sadly, in most cases of this a school yard bully needs to be confronted and "beaten up" before the problem stops. Avoiding them only elects more punishment.

And Justin you DID completely take Kevins comment out of context, were you seriously curious about his comment or did you know full well what he meant but tried to twist his words?

If you're hungry, keep moving.
If you're tired, keep moving.
If you value you're life, keep moving.

You don't own what you can't defend
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Old 01-12-2007, 08:38 AM   #54
Kevin Leavitt
 
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

Hey Grant....thanks for sharing.

How do you apply aikido principles of non-violence and harmony in a combat situation as a soldier?

It is challenging for sure, however, I don't think impossible.

I think we have to think in a much bigger perspective than the immediate threat we face.

Aikido at it's best in harmony and balance. Harmony and balance come from the alignment and attunement of mind, body, and spirit.

I will have to go back and dust off my Mushashi a little bit, but I think he hit it on the head. A warrior must be complete. He must make the appropriate decisions at the right time with all the input and information that he has.

How clear that information is to the warrior depends on perspective. You have to prepare yourself and lead a balanced life. Train hard, and make sure you are well prepared, mentally, spiritually, and physically.

If you are distracted, mentally, physically, and spiritually tired you cannot make clear decisions.

If you did not take care or your relationship with your spouse back home properly, then when you are downrange things will be worse. You may be worrying about this as you proceed down the road on your patrol, you may miss that vital piece of information that is between life and death.

Budo is not always about facing direct violence and being able to resolve that issue, but a much bigger once that is much more influencial and long lasting.

I think that there were many, many things that les to the actual engagement of violence that occurred, how can we expect to peacefully resolve it in a matter of seconds or minutes all the time?

I think Budo prepares us in a much greater way for peace and harmony than all the small battles and struggles we face.

I think there is much in Mushasi's writings to ponder concerning this.
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Old 01-12-2007, 11:03 AM   #55
mriehle
 
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

Quote:
Grant Wagar wrote:
I think, perhaps sadly, in most cases of this a school yard bully needs to be confronted and "beaten up" before the problem stops. Avoiding them only elects more punishment.
I basically have no problem with the rest of your post. When you are faced with unreasoned, unreasoning violence, sometimes (usually?) your only option is to return it in kind. Even then, though, it's really about surviving and stopping the violence rather than vengeance (or should be).

But schoolyard bullies are a different situation, IME. If you beat up the bully, you'll generally just be faced with another - possibly several - bullies. Basically, you enter into a bully competition. No one ever wins in such bully competitions. Sooner or later, you get your head handed to you.

But I have several students who've dealt with bullies and ended the problem, at least of the bully beating them up.

The two cases where I know the story (I just found out about at least one other case and I don't know the whole story and probably never will) my students didn't beat anybody up. They simply foiled an attempted attack. The bully didn't get hurt, neither did my students. But the bully was embarassed.

Even then, though, the embarassment wasn't about being "beaten". It was about getting himself into a situation which he didn't control. They're all about control.

In both cases where I actually know what happened, bullies (multiple in one case) attacked, my student simply turned out of the way of the attack and the bullies fell down. Okay, yes, it was kokyu nage - sort of. The bullies didn't get hurt, so their friends wouldn't intervene on their behalf.

You know, on some level, this is really where we should be thinking when we're thinking self defense. In a conflict involving a knife or gun or really any other attempt to seriously injure or kill you, there is a lot of luck involved and you can only ever hope to reduce the luck factor, not eliminate it. Moreover, most of us never have to deal with such an attack and if we do we're likely to have to do things we aren't going to like.

But the drunk at a party. Or the schoolyard bully. These are credible threats for real people. More than "are my skills adequate to the task", is the question, "will my skills make the situation worse".

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Old 01-13-2007, 01:56 AM   #56
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

Hey Michael,

I'm really surprised at your point of view on bullies.
Maybe it's due to overruns personal experience and how we judge those but in almost ALL of my experience with bullies almost all the time walking away or not standing up for ones self physically only resulted in further abuse.
It seems like an Aikido myth about the whole embarrass said individual without hurting them and they miraculously.

Quote:
But schoolyard bullies are a different situation, IMO. If you beat up the bully, you'll generally just be faced with another - possibly several - bullies.
Disagree. In my experience bullies are often the alpha male type with a bunch of submissive guys following him around. Any time I've seen a bully get beaten up (or have confronted the guy myself) never have I seen his friends jump in or become bullies themselves. Think about it. The guy their intimidated by just got beaten by someone, chances are their not going to try and take the alpha male spot. If anything, which I've seen plenty, the bullies followers will almost before the other guy.
Some people are born followers and their just doing what their hardwired to do-follow.

If you're hungry, keep moving.
If you're tired, keep moving.
If you value you're life, keep moving.

You don't own what you can't defend
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Old 01-13-2007, 03:11 PM   #57
mriehle
 
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

Quote:
Grant Wagar wrote:
walking away or not standing up for ones self physically only resulted in further abuse.
It seems like an Aikido myth about the whole embarrass said individual without hurting them and they miraculously.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I didn't say "walk away" or "not stand up for yourself". Just don't beat 'em up. My students who've successfully dealt with bullies simply dealt with the attack without violence. The bully didn't get beat up, but neither did my student.

So, in at least one case, said bully wound up suspended from school and my student suffered no repercussions whatsoever.

Beating them up is only one way to remove their control of the situation.

Quote:
Grant Wagar wrote:
Disagree. In my experience bullies are often the alpha male type with a bunch of submissive guys following him around. Any time I've seen a bully get beaten up (or have confronted the guy myself) never have I seen his friends jump in or become bullies themselves. Think about it.
I have. Repeatedly. More often than not.

In fact, I've seen a simple fight turn into six guys ganging up on one kid because he dared to throw a punch in a fight.

Quote:
Grant Wagar wrote:
The guy their intimidated by just got beaten by someone, chances are their not going to try and take the alpha male spot. If anything, which I've seen plenty, the bullies followers will almost before the other guy.
Some people are born followers and their just doing what their hardwired to do-follow.
Yeah, I've heard this line as well. Then I got beat up by the "followers". I've known other people where it turned out the same way.

But, worse, I've seen the situation where someone has beat up a bully and he goes off and whines to his big brother who is sure that his little brother couldn't have started the fight. Wanna guess how that turned out?

The key is to take away their control of the situation. Beating them up is one way, but I contend it's not the best way. It certainly isn't the only way. Properly applied Aikido turns out to be, IME, a superior approach. In an ironic twist, it really does work best if you successfully defend yourself without hurting the bully.

I picture the conversation when he goes to complain to the big brother:

Bully: "He beat me up!"

Brother: "You don't look beat up. Are you trying get me in trouble?"

Bully: "But..."

Brother: "What? Quit bothering me."

Or it could just be that because you don't get into the game of who can beat who up that nobody feels like you're worth their time after that. Whatever it is, it seems to work.

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Old 01-16-2007, 01:56 PM   #58
nalu
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

Interesting topic.
In my area there has been a large push to address the issues of bullies and bullying. The direction I have taken is to promote the mindset that bullying is actually a sign of weakness. The bully never (rarely) picks on someone stronger than themselves. When this idea is presented to a classroom, they can begin to see that if bullying is truly weak, then bullies are weak, hopefully leading to, "do I need to be afraid of someone who is that weak?". The idea being to promote the classroom mentality, that if they all stand up to address the issue of bullying, they can control the bullies.
Basically, everyone wants to win or be a winner, I believe the secret is to teach what winning and real strength are. Is it that "strong" to pick on someone weaker than you. Of course this is just the baseline premise, but it has been well received in school systems here. I also tie in the principles of Aikido and how they can contribute to conflict and such.

My apologies for the lengthy post
Thanks
Mike
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Old 10-16-2016, 03:04 AM   #59
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

I think the problem here is a lot of people think reality is sport fighting, they don't understand real violence.

In reality you are going to have the odds stacked hard against you. You can train all you want at what ever flavour of the month martial art and you will just get beaten by someone who cheats with weapons or numbers.

Fighting is like trying to put a fire out with petrol. It just doesn't work in reality. You will either get your ass kicked or go to jail. There is no 'line' that gets crossed where you decide you can finally use your lethal martial art.
It's a continuum of escalation that you are either contributing to, or you aren't.
As if you are going to get the other guy to 'tap out' and he will shake your hand and say well done. He will just get you back later and 'cheat'.

What is required are techniques and strategy to allow you to escape. What is the point of jiyu waza? Is it to look cool and beat up a bunch of people at once? Fighting one person doesn't 'work' let alone a whole group of people.
I used to feel like I had failed when I didn't throw someone with a technique. But it's only failure if you consider that the goal. The goal should not be to fight and beat the other person, but to not get hit or grabbed yourself.

I used to question why Aikido doesn't have 1 on 1 randori, but now i believe it's because it doesn't make sense when you consider it this way. It doesn't make sense to test Aikido against other styles, because their rules dictate that you have to fight and beat them.
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Old 10-17-2016, 06:33 AM   #60
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Re: Get Real/ On the street

Quote:
;348373 wrote:
I think the problem here is a lot of people think reality is sport fighting, they don't understand real violence.
Just want to clarify, when I say 'here' I'm not referring to the people on this thread, but the topic itself. Sorry but I meant to post this elsewhere.

Last edited by SlowLerner : 10-17-2016 at 06:46 AM.
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