Scared

I had a profound experience this Saturday. It was at kung fu, and the teacher had brought in a friend of his from a riot police unit to teach us a little about violence. After a little anecdote, he put us in an 8ft square and set us on each other. 2 on 14.

At my kung fu, they’re an intelligent bunch of people. Most of them are university-educated, and we have a few physiotherapists and a pharmacist scattered among them. When in the 14, you developed a pack mentality against the duo. Working together in a loose group, knowing what your particular target was, what you had to do for the pack. Real hindbrain stuff. Scary how quickly you can turn a group of educated, ‘civilised’ men into savages.

I went into the centre for the last round. It was chaos. If my memory serves me well, which I doubt, I got barrelled into from the side, and separated from G. Smart move by the pack, because G has an amazing amount of talent, and separating me from him allowed him to be surrounded, and taken down more easily. (As it turned out, G spent his time making a retreat towards the door, using members of the pack as human shields against the rest of the bodies). I remember being barrelled into by four or five bodies, which would also make sense considering how many would be needed to control G, and I went backwards towards the wall, though I never made it. I remember having guys trying to do a takedown, and never quite getting there. I remember making the decision “I will not go to the ground;” and that was being the extent of my actions. I remember I didn’t fight off my attackers. I remember I didn’t keep my hands up, I remember my vision was blurred, focusing on the back of A’s head, not on the broader situation. I didn’t see another member of the pack slide up on my right side and drill five punches into the side of my head. Game Over.

It scared me how badly I was beaten. I don’t get beaten that often, but neither do most people anymore. There’s this concept, the Prochaska-Di Clemente cycle for behaviour change. We were taught that “it’s important to tell people that relapse is not failure, it’s an opportunity to try new ways to succeed.” Bullshit. You failed. Why do people never learn anymore? There’s no longer any incentive. The lowest grade in schools now is an E. Whatever we learn is enough. Without struggle it’s easy to fake integrity. Without consequence you can get away with anything.

It scared me how badly I was beaten. A thought on the train home was to not go back. That’s easily accomplished. My life would be happier if I didn’t try to explore and learn about violence, I would certainly be better at many other more ‘normal’ skills, able to integrate better with most people in society. But I could not be content, living a lie. Lie is a good word for it. Lie means to tell a falsehood, to engage in a deception. I would be knowingly basing my worldview on a set of premises that I knew were false. I cannot do that. Chiron said that “people who talk about enlightenment as if it were a joy instead of an understanding…always have soft hands.” Soft hands are nice to the touch, but they have no utility. Afterwards, my teacher said “you were a victim of your own inexperience.” It was a nice way to word it.

How much can you really know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?” - Tyler