Self-defense a very "selfish" term. You and your friends are in trouble. All you are thinking is "yourself". How about to "defend the weak to against the strong?"
Anti-Grappling Techniques...
- Thread starter Kababayan
- Start date
That would qualify as self defense that's not a fight, yes. Likewise, deescalation techniques and situational awareness could well be considered valid self defense. Self defense also has a very specific meaning in court. So you can have self defense that isn't fighting, and fighting that isn't self defense.
Steve
Mostly Harmless
At risk of oversimplifying, not everyone has adequate healthcare. So they end up in the er . we also have doctors who have overprescribed opoids which has created a lot of drug addicts. And we have a long tradition of not doing very Well treating mental illness. There's a lot of people out there self medicating. I'm not doing the topic justice but I'm trying to type on a phone. Hope this makes some sense.
Steve
Mostly Harmless
So they aren't synonymous?
Steve
Mostly Harmless
It is different. If we had universal health care it might not be.
Martial D
Senior Master
Earlier, you mentioned precision, which is also something I find important.
The most important thing of all , in my observations, is precision of language. I've always been a huge fan of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and he once famously said "The limits of your language means the limits of your world", to which I would add the clarity of your language means the clarity of your world. So for me, I tend to boil my terminology down until its clear and concise.
So when I encounter weasel words and terms like 'self defense' (weasel as in, hard to catch or nail down, not a pejorative), I tend to boil those down too. For me the words 'self defense' are quite evidently meaningful. (to defend yourself from harm). For this to be a condition at all there must be impending harm.
I just draw the line for this at the point of actual incoming harm(incoming!), rather than scale it back in time. Once you start scaling it back from there there is no real distinctive line at which to stop. (ie the just staying in all the time comment) and the word becomes rather useless for describing anything specific.
I do realize some people like to scale that line back. For some self defense starts the moment you step out your door, for some its when you start to feel uncomfortable, for some it starts when there is a verbal escalation, etc etc. For me none of that involves actually defending yourself, as there is no immediate danger.
Depends on context, obviously. I'm not sure why this is so difficult for you.
Unless you're just trying to argue for the sake of arguing?
drop bear
Sr. Grandmaster
You and your gang go out, get off guts and fight some other group.
You both wind up getting messed up.
And so both go to hospital.
Surprise round 2
Steve
Mostly Harmless
It takes two to argue. I think you’re the pot calling the kettle, honestly. Do you like arguing for the sake of arguing?
It makes me chuckle, because I’ve been saying functionally the same thing in every post, and you just can’t help yourself. I think my point has been very clear throughout this exchange.
Martial D
Senior Master
Yes, there are serious cultural differences between Canada and the USA lol
Steve
Mostly Harmless
And Australia. Those guys are nuts!
JR 137
Grandmaster
You haven’t met me
I would think everyone was staring at me. Not in a paranoid “oh no, they know I’m high!” way, but in a “this MF keeps staring at me” way. When I was stoned, time moved very slowly. So even a glance seemed like forever.
Young and stupid and stoned me couldn’t handle someone eyeballing me*, so I’d start a fight.
I stopped smoking pot because of that. One time in college at my fraternity house, I let my guard down and told myself I’d be fine. It was our alumni weekend. I went after one of the members of the founding class. He ran away in a comedic way. Several guys grabbed me and more or less locked me in a room with them until I was ok. Seriously.
Then another night I thought I’d be ok again. I was talking to a friend of mine when I happened to look at a nice looking young lady about 10 feet away from me and said “what the F are you looking at?” She replied “I was checking you out, but forget it” and walked away.
So not only was it getting me into fights, but it started keeping me from getting laid. And like most every guy I know, it wasn’t like I was getting so much that I could afford to turn down average looking women, never mind good looking women.
That was the last time. Never again. No further motivation needed. I didn’t do it that often anyway, and it wasn’t like I lost interest in alcohol, so no big loss.
Yeah, everyone laughs when I tell them that. I haven’t met anyone else who has that reaction to that drug. When I drink, I’m like most people when they’re stoned. What can I say, I’m just weird.
*Older and less stupid me still doesn’t do very well with being stared at, but I’ve got a lot more control.
FriedRice
Master Black Belt
Yeah b/c this was in a gym and not in some dark alley somewhere with no witnesses. Not saying it didn't hurt him, but if I got hit in the nuts and was in pain, say at a degree of 5/10, I'd still stop the sparring to recover. Why should I go through pain for and possibly lose/tap out to a White belt? Even at 4/10 pain. 10/10 may be incapacitation, but will it really be the same as a head KO if the Blue's life may be on the line in said dark alley?
Same deal, it was in a gym and just sparring. Why should he even go on after you headbutt him. No doubt that pure BJJ'ers are usually quite wimpy when getting struck in the face accidentally, but their toughness should be pretty decent at Blue to keep going in the streets.
This is a hard question to answer and I may have a decent answer. I've trained at the same BJJ/MMA gym for over 10 years, and I'm talking about religiously 4-6 days a week. From my observations, there are rarely many who trains both striking and grappling. Once someone gets established in BJJ, ie. Purple+ (or even Blue)....then they'd rarely, if ever go over to Muay Thai and be "the noob"....and vice versa from the MT side not going over to BJJ. So we really never find out if those BJJ higher belts can really take a punch to the face and not fold over easily.
But I've seen it once, in all of my 10+ years there and for a period of over 1 month even. This was when 1 of the fighters was starting his Boxing program at our gym and the Master, who's mainly a BJJ-for-life-only, kinda guy....ordered all of his top BJJ students to train in this Boxing class to give this Fighter some needed encouragement. The previous Boxing instructor (who was much better), usually only had 2-3 students.....and this gym's BJJ program is usually 20-30 students per class that's 6 days a week, 4x/day. These BJJ-only guys of Blue and up, did not enjoy getting punched in the face. But they still took this beating for a month at least. Those of us who trained MT or MMA were making it miserable for them. After that, they all went back to BJJ only and I can attest that only 1 or 2 cross trained for the next 6 years up until now.
The thing is though, they were getting clobbered by trained MT students and fighters, so it's not the average turd on the street who's untrained and throwing haymakers. This doesn't answer your query 100%, but I'm pretty confident that BJJ only does get you good enough for average street SD....b/c not everything's going to be life or death.....usually it's just a sloppy fight for a KO, then the winner stops rather than go to prison for murder. My data = 4000+ videos of real street fights, categorized and studied, on my hard drive, collected from 15+ years at least. Street fights and attacks are rarely like in the movies...if anything, they're closer to a sporty match w/unwritten rules.
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