Self Defense.

[thorfinn]

the_christian's recent self defense incident has prompted me to post some stuff about self defense and legalities and ethics thereof, with some digression into "why martial arts?". I've done so in various scattered comments in other journals before... but I haven't posted in my own journal about it before.

The two predicates of the ethical dilemma regarding self defense go:

1. Some people do attack other people.
2. People have a right not to be attacked.

... Err... So now what? Hrm. The question really is then, given the above two predicates, what is it ethical for the "potential victim" to do to avoid being attacked and injured?

Options range across the map:

• nuclear hand grenades for everyone
• lethal violence is okay in all circumstances where you feel you're under threat
• "do as you were about to be done unto"
• non-lethal violence is the only acceptable response
• escape must be your first recourse, and then and only then one of the above...
• escape is the only acceptable response, ever

Self-defense legalities are an attempt to strike a balance, and in most countries that I know of, they mostly boil down to "You are allowed to immediately respond with approximately the same level of violence as you truly believe you are being immediately threatened with, and you must immediately cease as soon as you believe the threat is dealt with". In non "immediate threat" situations, you are generally required to escape, because it is reasonable to assume that escape is possible if the threat isn't "immediate". This is pretty much "escape is first recourse, then do as you were about to be done unto".

That does lead to the odd edge case, like one highschool kid who regularly claimed to know "deadly martial arts" and was believed, threatened to kill some other kid, including nasty handwaving. "Victim" promptly pulled a gun and shot "kung-fu" kid dead. Reasonable self defense, even though "kung-fu" kid actually had no skill beyond watching too many chop-socky movies...

I happen to think that the laws in this area have struck a pretty good compromise. It's beyond reasonable expectation to believe that it's always possible to escape... It certainly isn't always possible to escape. I've had this experience myself.

I was sitting upstairs in a 1980s model Sydney city train (the ones with the brown vinyl seats and the metal handles on seat corners for seat-flipping), with about half-a-dozen other passengers. A gang of about 8 youths wandered up the stairs, and proceeded to scatter themselves variously about the carriage. Somewhere in that process was when my peripheral vision tracking pulled my head out of my book, and I immediately slid rapidly into "huntmode" (eyes go into unblinking mode, and visual processing rate goes way up, and I track everything in the vicinity).

At that point, given the variously metal-cornered environment, and multiple potential attackers, I was fully prepared to start doling out maximal unlimited violence if something started, because if eight guys try to beat on one in that kind of terrain, the one is under threat of lethal injury, even if the multiple attackers don't intend to cause it. The gang leader seemed to be wary enough to not want to start something with someone that clearly was in target tracking mode, though. He came and sat in a seat outside of arm's reach... and I said, "You're welcome to the money in my wallet, but I want the wallet back", in a flat, ultra-calm tone. He let me carefully hand over my wallet, which he proceeded to pull the all of five bucks cash I had out, then gave my wallet back to me. Very sensible fellow. If he'd been at all uncareful and made any sudden threatening motions, I suspect that very bad things might've occurred, very very fast, and several people may well have died, myself very much included as a possibility.

That's the closest I've ever come to needing to actually strike somebody (in a self-defense context, anyway), and I'm very glad that's as far as it's ever gone. Paradoxically, though, that I have not needed to do so is because I am prepared to respond, if I have no other options. Running just isn't an option in some circumstances, and the best defense is not necessarily a good offense, but is, instead, the clear presentation of the readiness of a good offense. If I'd been meek and cowed, or tried to attack, in the above situation, I would've almost certainly been beaten up and then robbed anyway. Calm, ready, prepared to respond if something actually starts... That's the right defense.

And it works - I have used similar approaches in other "situations". People won't generally attack someone who looks like they are tracking them and are fully prepared to respond to violence. If you back away and just "run", then you're likely to trigger a "give chase" response... Humans are pack animals, and will give chase just like pack animals. If you "fire up", and stare at the potential attackers, and carefully walk away, whilst clearly tracking... They think twice, and usually just don't.

Of course, the problem is, your "preparedness" has to be real, unless you've learned how to fake sincerity. That's where martial arts, or a reasonable amount of self defense training comes in. You need to be confident that you can do something if someone jumps you, even if it's just "defend yourself sufficiently well for the few seconds it takes to create an escape route".

How much time and effort each person is willing to spend on gaining skill in that area, and whether it's possible or worth gaining that skill, and whether the correspondent risk reduction and other side benefits are worth the time and effort, well, that does have to be an individual decision, because people's contexts vary, a lot.

To relate this whole thing to world politics for a moment... I don't have a problem with self-defense for countries either. But there really has to be a genuine and real and present threat. That's what bugs the hell out of me regarding Iraq... Iraq did not present any kind of credible and real threat to US or world security, and that was clear in advance, let alone in present hindsight regarding the "intelligence information" that was used. By all means, the US needs to defend itself against "terror organisations", but bombing the hell out of "rogue state de jour" is not the way to go.