Malum

There's been some talk of charging members of the Bush Administration with war crimes for their conduct during this Global War on Terror. Talk like this generally disturbs me mostly because my experience with it has shown less malicious intent and more a staggering level of naivete and general incompetence. Were we to begin criminally prosecuting for those sins, there would be no one left in Government-- particularly the State Department. However, I want to address these charges seriously because I do not want to make the same mistake those on the opposing side of this issue are so quick to make-- which is the suspicion of nefarious motives. So let's look at this issue seriously and from several levels.

First, if we are to discuss criminal behavior, we must define it. Simply put, criminal behavior is any behavior that is contrary to the law. That's a simple definition and a good working one but in our complex world, it really tells us next to nothing about how to actually behave. In the modern world, academic definitions are mostly useless. Definitions must give you a capacity for action or they are meaningless. Saying that criminal behavior is contrary to the law is such a definition. Under whose law? Which jurisdiction? What is jurisdiction for that matter? Before this devolves into legal minutiae, I want to bring a broad philosophical point about law. Generally, we believe that laws are necessary for groups of people to live together peacefully. By each person accepting some restraint, everyone gains a measure of security. With this in mind, it becomes ridiculous to believe that laws can give us anything. They cannot. They can only take things away. They are limiting and as such should be limited. We are born free and have rules instilled in us through learning and culture. However, as different as people can be, we are also very much the same. I certainly have more common with a Touareg tribesman in Northern Africa than I do with my Maltese puppy. As humans we share the same basic needs.

Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.

Broadly, our laws protect against two types of evil: malum in se and malum prohibitum. "Malum in se" is the type of evil we all can instantly recognize. You see it and no matter where you're from, you unquestionably know it as evil. "Malum prohibitum" is regulational evil-- as when you break the speed limit or fudge a little on your taxes. It's bad because the powers that be say its bad-- not because it is necessarily "evil."

Within a set legal structure such as a nation-state, malum prohibitum and malum in se are relatively interchangeable. There may be differences in punishments but it is just as a likely there won't be. (In California, you can do 8 years for murder and 20 years for selling drugs.) Within this nation-state bubble, you can impose whatever standards you wish because the State is the monopolizer of force and the final arbiter for its legitimate use. However, outside of this bubble, the State cannot wield any power because it doesn't have the force to enforce its edicts.

Now, this seems a very pedestrian idea of the law. Can it really be so base? The Romans believed that "justice" was simply what you could compel. In 2008, things aren't that much different. We tip toe around Muslim sensibilities because we're afraid of the violence they might bring to bear. Force, now as always, is the ultima ratio.

Aristotle said that courage is the first of qualities because it is the quality that allows every other to be born. Without courage, nothing happens. No beauty, no art, nothing. In order to have these beautiful things, we must carve out a place in the wild world where these softer qualities can flourish. They cannot exist in nature. True, nature can be beautiful but it is far more often terrible, unyielding and intransigent. Historically, we have always given a special few the right to step beyond our societal norms to protect us from what might burst our little bubble of security. And not to push the metaphor but is is apt. Whatever agreement we have all made to maintain some group security is remarkable fragile. Look at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. However, well-bred and genteel, we are but a step away from savagery.

Civilization is fragile. We, in the West have already gone through our Dark Ages, and we were lucky enough to come through it intact. There is no guarantee that we would do so again. Because of this-- civilization (and specifically, our civilization) must be protected at all costs. We must be able to sacrifice it all to protect it because without it, there is nothing. True, the administration made mistakes and overstepped in a few areas but to punish them after the fact, instead of merely correctly the mistake is foolish and short-sighted. Fix the problem, not the blame.

Simply put, if you prosecute all the men who risk everything-- even eternal damnation in the afterlife-- to protect our society, how does anyone expect to field such men in the future? Why would I risk everything to defend a Country willing to throw me in jail after it's done with me? Better I should try my hand on Wall Street. It is already hard enough to get smart, capable men to chose a life of poverty, danger and obscurity in service of the country. Start prosecuting them and you'll soon have none. And all the media-types, professors and pundits who are clamoring for their heads will make but a speed bump when the barbarians are at the gate.

Wesley is a Girl's Name, Right?

For a long time, I have tried to give GEN Wesley Clark the benefit of the doubt. He served our Country honorably as an Army Officer. However, any respect I may have had for the man has totally evaporated with his latest attack on John McCain. Substantively, he says that McCain lacks executive experience. I think that a dangerous knife to pull because it cuts both ways. Obama has even less executive experience and less experience overall. If you take a hard look at his record, you see he has done nothing. People have complained for 7 years that we've had an inexperienced President. We expect to remedy this situation by electing an even more inexperienced one? How does that make any sense? If you were picking the CEO of a company-- pretty much any company-- you wouldn't pick Obama. Can you imagine the Board of HP installing an untried and untested manager to run the entire organization? If you were seriously ill and you could afford it, you wouldn't get some first year doctor even if he did go to Harvard. You'd find the best, most experienced man for the job. Why is it so different with the office of the President?

But that's not really what really pissed me off. Gen Clark said that being shot down while flying a fighter doesn't qualify a man to be President. That's typical of a man who has shied away from actually taking gunfire his entire career. Typical to want to downplay something he would never have the courage to do. It's all well and good to get a "kick ass" reputation on the courage of other, better men. Let's look at this clearly. I'll give Clark the benefit of the doubt for argument's sake and agree that getting shot down in a fighter doesn't qualify one to be President. But surviving years of torture and keeping faith with your men does. Organizing your men so that they might survive and keeping the fellowship necessary to survive such an ordeal does too, Just ask COL Bud Day. And not taking a trip home to safety without your men certainly qualifies him to be President. I doubt GEN Clark would have the fortitude to make the same move. If such bravery, honor and commitment doesn't qualify someone to be President, then nothing does. Certainly nothing Obama has done.

The fact of the matter is this: there is no job in the world that prepares you for the Office of the President. It is On The Job training like nothing else. The experience necessary isn't the experience in running such a country which no one but former Presidents have. No, it's experience of the world and how things work. It's the ability to see thing clearly and to have the courage and conviction to stand up for what yo believe regardless of detractors. John McCain has proven over and over his has such experience even if you do not always agree with his positions. Obama, for all his nice words, has proved nothing. GEN Clark, even less. For either of them to criticize the character of John McCain is a joke. And GEN Clark should be seriously ashamed of himself.

The Coward's Bargain

My students reached a new level this week. After a year of muddling about, they have finally reached the point where they can engage each other definitively and with malicious intent. They have learned how to increase their emotional content without losing their structure. They can now move with authority to exploit their opponent's weaknesses. Most importantly, they are no longer making the "coward's bargain."

Perhaps the "coward's bargain" irks me so much because I was guilty of it as a kid. It shows itself by a forced courtesy. Apologizing to someone after you have it him as if you were genuinely sorry. It's truly pathetic. Such an impulse does not rise out of compassion. It is born of fear, plain and simple. An apology is meant to blunt the sharp edges of a reprisal. It is using society's norm to take advantage of a situation. It makes me sick.

Think about how much we do this in our lives. We apologize not because we genuinely feel regret. We apologize because we fear repercussions. We know we acted wrongly and fear what might come as a result. It means no more than the mea culpas of a criminal when he stands before the judge at sentencing.

I recognize that this impulse is the birthplace of courtesy. When I shake your hand, I am offering my weapon hand to show you that it's empty. As I often like to say, there is no place in the world more polite than a gun convention. When the expectation is that everyone is armed and has lethal capability, courtesy becomes the norm. But we have taken this too far. Courtesy means something in a society where violence is a possibility. When courtesy is the norm, it becomes a defense for the deceitful. We hide ill intent behind kind words today and think nothing of it. Hence, our litigious society where we parse words and attempt to obfuscate their meanings. When there are no lethal repercussions, spin becomes the weapon of the day.

In the martial arts, we learn to dispel this. You see that the "coward's bargain" gets you nowhere because it exists only in your head. LTC Grossman noted in his book, "On Killing," that in WWII, only 1 out of 10 soldiers actually shot to kill. The rest made the "coward's bargain" which in that case was "if I don't actually try to shoot anybody, nobody will try to shoot me." In countless wars before that time, the primary role of NCO's were to ensure that the men actually fought.

This truth about human nature disturbs me greatly. When we have power over our fellow man, we behave horribly. Take the Stanford prison example where common people who were placed as guards slowly developed habits of cruelty that was incongruent with their everyday behavior. But when our opponent can fight back, we aren't so brave or so cruel. We wither and make a false claim of morality. Is this human nature? Is this what we are doomed to be?

I think martial arts are a way to train this base impulse out of us. Through hard training, I think we can become genuinely compassionate when we do not have to be. We can afford to be gentle because we know we are strong. This strength is where human dignity begins and it is the only place where it can find its foundation.

Knowing...

I'll tell you what I don't like. I don't like it when people try to make the other party feel dumb to bolster their arguments. I'm with Hume on this. I don't think reason can account for very much. An answer you arrive at through reason may or may not be better than one you get at through faith but whatever the case, it often has nothing to do with the Truth. Reason and Faith are for things you do not know. If you know, you would not require either of those tools. It is always a mistake to apply abstract reasoning to reality as a whole. And when it comes right down to it, it still requires a bit of faith to believe that reason will provide you with the best solution. It's not necessarily so and never can be given its very nature.

I had this conversation with someone who was a recent graduate of Berkeley's philosophy department. Either she slept through most of her classes or the program itself was seriously suspect. I couldn't believe her lack of understanding in some pretty basic modern philosophic principles. We talked about the thought exercise involving the rising of the sun the following day. Like it or not, you cannot be sure that the sun will come up the next day. Perhaps you say that the Earth revolves around the sun and that it will continue to do so. Why do you believe that? How do you know? Is it because the sun has come up every other day? Well, that's poor thinking because the fact that it has come up every other day has nothing to do with it coming up tomorrow. Believing it will is a matter of habit. Knowing is a matter of past experience. Reason and faith are for future events. It is likely that the sun will and it makes sense to live your day assuming as much but that's not the point. You are still taking it on faith, like it or not, that it's going to happen. In fact, the very act of using reason-- especially the principle of sufficient reason-- requires a first leap of faith.

I'm not particularly interested in either of these things. I'm interested in knowing-- the kind of knowing that comes from experience. When I teach my students, I expect them to take nothing on faith except the faith that they have to have in me as their instructor to do some potentially dangerous and definitely uncomfortable things. After they do what I ask, they will know. Before that, it was just a guess. They could reason all they want about how they would deal with a particular situation and what would be effective. Or they could just do it and see what actually happens.

In our society, we have taken the position of the rationalists. We think that reason is the answer for everything. It is not. A well constructed argument can never prove anything beyond the fact that it is well constructed. It has nothing to do with the Truth. Reason is inherently destructive. It's good at poking holes and discovering foolery but it's hardly creative. As I like to say, logic will give you all kinds of reasons not to do something. It takes faith to create. I know many people like this. In fact, San Francisco, with its high percentage of intelligent, well-educated people is filled with many many folks who are unhappy and contributing nothing-- certainly nothing compared to what they have been given. I have a friend who is like this. He's incredibly intelligent but in a vicious way. You can't convince him to do anything or to every push himself because he has explained away everything into nothing. His arguments are always coherent and well-thought out but his intelligence offers nothing to his community around him.

If I were to call him on this, he would give me all kinds of reasons of why this isn't the case and I would not be able to defend my position against his barrage. But even a casual observer would have to agree with me. Arguments are just words and words are ether. People make the mistake of confusing words with Ideas which do, in fact, have weight and substance.

As always, I bring this back to the martial arts. I have, throughout my life, run into many notebook warriors who could argue me to the ground about the intricacies of technique. The conversation would go like this.
"What would you do if I did this?" To my answer they would say, "What if I did..." ad infinitum.

My favorite answer to this line of questioning came from one of my instructors who answered such queries with, "You can do whatever you want. The question is, 'Can you do it?'"

And that's it, isn't it. You can't answer those kinds of questions verbally. A person can always concoct some situation I haven't had to deal with. You have to put it on the mat and that's why I love the arts. It's one of the few places where you can call somebody on their bullshit in a definitive way. You can't talk your way out of getting punched in the face. You either dealt with it effectively or you didn't. Once, when I was working with a military unit, a local instructor came out to our training and tried to challenge what I was doing. He said that my knife techniques were ineffective and that he could take my knife away without suffering any injury 10 out of 10 times. I, of course, offered to have him demonstrate and he agreed. We met in the sand pit and lined up across from each other. I asked if he was ready and when I replied that he was, I immediately drew my live blade.

He backed up immediately and started stammering. He said he wasn't going to demonstrate against a live blade. He might get hurt. I replied that I thought that he had 100% confidence in his technique. He quickly started backpedaling and left the pit saying that I had misinterpreted his words-- the final defense of any academic. What did he think we wre doing? Having a epistemological debate? I wonder if academics would be so forceful in pushing their positions if there was such a cost for being wrong?

Finally, this brings me to Senator Obama. I'm sure he know a lot more than me in quite a few areas. But it's becoming increasingly clear that he knows nothing about foreign policy. What he uses instead of a strong argument is a condescending tone which seems odd to me since he has no foreign policy experience at all. To use Kennedy and Khrushchev as an example to depend his stated position of treating with Iran and Ahmahdinejead shows that he really doesn't understand the importance of that meeting. First of all, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a direct result of that meeting and Khrushchev's reading of Kennedy as a weak man. Secondly, the Soviet Union was a country with rational leaders who had a lot to lose. The leadership of Iran has shown itself to be highly irrational and we know they are actively working towards what they believe will be Armageddon. Comparing those two situations and regarding them as similar is something a senior in high school would do. Such an opinion would get laughed out of any decent first year political science program.

Bottom line-- you either know or you don't. Reason and Faith will never replace knowing no matter how strong they are. And arrogance based on something as flawed as human reasoning? Well, that's hubris and don't we always seem to pay a cost for that?

The Existence of Evil

I had a great conversation with my friend, Lee Smith last night. Lee's a writer and a great one. He's currently writing a book. I don't know what it's about but I'm guessing it has to do with the Middle East. He's spent a lot of time there, most recently living in Beirut during the unpleasantness a few years ago. Lee's not only a great writer but a serious thinker and I'm tremendously lucky to have him as a friend. To me, he is the best example of journalistic ethics. He seeks to understand, not just tell a story and I always have an interesting conversation when we get the chance to talk.

Last night, I was on Facebook. Lee is my only friend on Facebook. I only signed up so I could have a single source to read his material. Anyway, while I was logged on, I got a instant message from Lee. This caught me by surprise mostly because instant messaging isn't something that I normally. Plus, it was around 0500 where Lee lives in DC. Anyway, I gave him a call and we had an interesting chat at that late hour. We talked about a lot of things but the topic that really stuck in my mind was our conversation of Evil.

He asked me if I thought that a person could believe in the existence of Evil and be secular at the same time. What an interesting question. I never really looked at it that way. I guess I would consider myself secular but I don't deny the existence of God. My God is the Spinozan God who is relatively unconcerned with the day to day matters of my life. He has created this wonderful world and if I can't negotiate it, well, that's my problem, not His. (I like the Spinozan idea of loving God without ever expecting him to love you in return) This has never really collided with my secular beliefs, though there are times that it does. I'm again referring the Straussian notion that our internal conflict (in the West) is a struggle to reconcile out Hellenic cognition with our Hebraic morality. I used to wrestle with this idea mightily. Finally, I was beaten by this Angel and I found (through Spinoza) a way I could honestly believe in both without sacrificing my sense of wonder and gratefulness and my good sense and rationality.

So my answer to Lee would be quite simple. Believing in the existence of the "DEVIL" doesn't mean that I don't believe in science. Like someone once of said of Mussolini or Hitler (I'm not sure which), the regimes of those men made evil banal. When we use our secularism to tamp down our repulsion of evil, we discard the God-given gift of higher reason and deny the best of our humanity. In the movie, The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey's character said that the greatest trick the Devil ever played was to convince the world he didn't exist.

The thing is this. I can't prove to you through logical theorems that the Evil exists. If you haven't experienced it, there is simply no way for me to convince you that it does. It's like trying to explain "sweet" to someone who has never tasted anything "sweet." You can't do it. It's a matter of first principles. Now, not every anti-social act is evil. Evil isn't the absence of good or the absence of virtue. Evil is the presence of Evil. Is is positive (not in the moral sense but in the existential sense). It is not the lack of something but the presence of something more. You know it when you see it and it is undeniable.

It is like the notion of "swing" in jazz. You can't define it verbally but you know when something "swings" and when it doesn't.

Americans have a really poor understanding of this-- especially our academics. I think that is the residue of Marxism that makes us believe that everything boils down to materialism. That's simply not true. I think this is because America is a safe society in ways that we cannot measure. Our youth take risks that youths in other countries would never dream of because we have network that will care for them in ways that they take for granted. Conservatism is not a longing for the old ways. It is a philosophy based on the hard-won experience that being wrong is very costly. The levers that academics and social scientists are so eager to pull are attached to human lives. A cogent and cohesive system of beliefs is nothing if it ends in human misery.

We take virtue for granted because we take safety for granted. The basic lawfulness of your average American is the end result of man's combined learning in ruling since the beginning of civilization. Your average American obeys the law not because he is scared of punishment but because he believes it's the right thing to do while at the same time forgetting that this belief is the true benefit of being an American. We have some basic notion that being good works out in the end. But what about all those countries where people do not feel that way? Take practically any city in Asia and you will find people unconcerned for the body politic. I wonder if we could act so virtuously if our safety nets were not in place?

Our "virtue" as a people, such as it is, is a convenient one, based on the conditions of safety provided to us by better men. Yet even in a society such as ours, Evil does exist. Secularists want to write it off as mental defect or psychological abnormality because doing so, gives us the idea that we can eventually defeat such behavior at its roots-- that we can event a pill that gets rid of Evil. That will never happen and I'll tell you why. God's big joke is the the very thing that makes up our human dignity is what debases us as well. Our ability to take a stand a say "No! I will die before I allow this!" is the same impulse that would rather fight than give up it's old ways. Remove this instinct and you have sheep, not men.

Good and Evil are this impulse in action in two diametrically opposing viewpoints. The very same thing that makes a hero makes a villain. At the same time, i don't believe that it is relativist which is which. Some systems are simply different while some systems are in reality better than others. You cannot tell me a system of beliefs that condones the stoning of women for the crime of being raped is on the same moral level as ours. Principles apply to everybody or they mean nothing. If we are to believe that everything falls victim to relativism, then nothing has meaning at all. That may be true but my experience of the world would seem to counter that argument.

So I have attempted to give you reasons for an understanding that I originally stated cannot be achieved through language. You simply have to see it and in American society, you are unlikely ever to so the vast majority of our citizens have no rational idea of how to combat it while our intelligentsia refuses to believe it exists. That we haven't already lost the battle is a testament to the enduring power of virtue. I'm torn with hoping that everybody gets to experience Evil so they would value what we have as a people and the protective instinct to shield people from it's existence.

Lastly, I want to say something about the language of virtue. I'm a victim of the East Coast Intelligentsia (which provided the bulk of my higher education) and because of that, I am uncomfortable using words that evoke morality or virtue. But I am more and more convinced that we have to use those words because what they represent matters and if we fail to talk about them, we will lose them and in doing so, lose our chance for real human dignity.

Not your Average Observer

I've been working with my group class on awareness. I don't frame that word in new age mumbo-jumbo. I don't particularly care for academic definitions of concepts. Definitions (especially for something like "awareness") should give you opportunities for action. This is particularly true of "awareness."

I've been pretty successful a as a negotiator in my life. I do especially well in high risk environments where most people are taken off their game. Somebody once asked me what I thought was the secret of my success and I finally decided, after much reflection, that it was because of my experience in fighting. When you fight, the first ting you must do is size up your opponent. And the great thing about fighting is that you get immediate feedback to whether nor not your assessments were correct. Plus, the cost of being wrong is high. Years spent doing this allowed me to observe even the smallest things that would be missed by most people, particularly when they're under stress. My observer gets better and sharper when I'm under stress. Something I credit my training with. Now, even when I meet people socially, I go through that same sizing up. I may even them push them on something to see how they react. I then file that information away in case I need it later. Often, I'm more aware of a person's actions than he is.

I explained to my group class like this. Every person has two broad sets of sensors: internal and external. Internal sensors are the ones with which we determine how we're feeling and such. External sensors give us information about the outside world. These two set of sensors are inter-related. You have no measure to empirically judge the accuracy of your internal sensors so you try to make your external sensors as accurate as possible and hope that some if it bleeds over. Interestingly enough, this has no meaning to those people who only see external events through their internal sensors. Those people, to me, are the most unhappy because the world treats them very differently from how they think they should be treated.

But broadly, let's say that you have 100 point of mental and emotional energy you can allocate to your sensors. When it's peaceful and you have time for reflection, you should put 80% of the energy into your internal sensors. However, if you are subjected to stress, it should be the opposite. You should put 80% into the external sensors. The thing is, it is human instinct to do exactly the wrong thing. When you apply stress to the average person, they put all their energy into their internal sensors which takes away their ability to alleviate that stress.

In our class, we train to retrain this instinct. When we apply stress (through sparring) I want my students to gather information about the outside world. The better the gathering, the better decisions they can make. The point is to make it instinctive. Blood pressure goes up and you're instantly putting energy into your external sensors without having to make the conscious decision to do so.

Only be being armed with accurate information can you formulate a good plan. My negotiations generally were successful because I was able to assess the situation more clearly than anybody else. I was able to cut through the emotional fog and address the real issues. It wasn't because I was smarter or had a better plan. It was just because I saw more clearly.

My Mea Culpa.

I do my best to keep my blog from being overly self-indulgent. I realize the inherent contradiction in that statement as there is nothing more self-congratulatory than a personal blog. Against that accusation, I have no meaningful defense. I could say something ridiculous about intellectual exploration or codification of my thoughts but the reality is really much more mundane. For some reason, I think people would benefit from the way I think. The only thing that keeps this from becoming an exercise in pure hubris is the fact that I recognize all the many mistakes I have made and will continue to make. I am tremendously imperfect but I sense in the martial arts a methodology for addressing those imperfections and character flaws. So, instead of continuing with this lame disclaimer, I ought to get to my point.

When I was 16 years old, I had a very vivid dream. It was around 17th century Japan, during the Tokugawa Shogunate. In this dream, I was the Shogun's Assassin. In Japanese culture, this position was one of great honor. It was generally given to the best swordsman in the land. Beheading someone with a sword isn't an easy task. In fact, too many mistakes during beheadings (which led to undue suffering) led to the creation of the guillotine-- putting the job in the hands of a machine that could cut the same way every time. The Shogun's Assassin was traditionally the "kaishaku" of last resort or a dueling second. If the Emperor thought you had to die, you were given the opportunity to retain your honor and your family's holdings and position but committing seppuku or ritual suicide. Now, disemboweling yourself with a short short required a fortitude most people didn't have. In order not to cause them any embarrassment, the kaishaku would cut the person's head off before he screamed, saving his honor. This wasn't as easy as it might seem. The swordsman had to perform a perfect 35 degree cut, the angle that would allow for a clean cut between the jawline and the upper shoulders. However, he had to leave a piece of skin at the very end so that the head would not roll off into the audience in an undignified manner. If the swordsman screwed this up, he would killed himself so there was great pressure to do this correctly.

The thing about this dream that sticks in my mind was how it made me feel. I can still remember very clearly that sense of melancholy produced by it. I remember feeling very proud that I was given the honor of representing the Shogun but I also recall feeling very sad that my skill involved taking a life. I asked myself in this dream whether it was worth being really good at something if your found that skill to be fundamentally repugnant. I had only been training the martial arts for 10 years at that point and I wasn't up to really digging into the Truth of my dream but I think I was on to something then that I am only beginning to understand now.

I have devoted 31 years of my life to hurting people. Spin it however you like-- at the core of it, you will find this Truth. Perhaps you know the story I tell everyone-- that the arts and my profession were the results of my mother's abuse at the hands of my father and my inability to protect her. Maybe I've told you the story of how I trained because I wanted to protect her and how I feel like am every time I defend someone otherwise defenseless. I suppose there's some truth to that. But really, I just wanted to be strong. Weakness, to me, meant suffering all manner of indignity. Strength meant the ability to say, "No! I will not allow that." But I think I've engaged in what all warriors eventually engage in-- trying to ennoble and dignify something that is horrendous. Unfortunately for me, I happen to be pretty smart and well educated so my justifications are elaborate and convincing regardless of their lack of authenticity.

So I've said it. I wanted to be strong. Then I was injured and I could no longer be strong. Was all this training for nothing? I did not have the fortune of dying gloriously. I was confined to a hospital bed and at the mercy of just about everybody. My worst nightmare had come true. I had spent my entire life focusing on how to be strong so I could ultimately self-reliant. Now, I needed everybody and everything. Most distressingly, I needed their charity.

What made me most sad was something an ex-girlfriend said to me once. She said that when it came down to it, she was physically scared of me because of my physical abilities. That really disturbed me. Here was the woman I loved telling me she feared me-- not at all what I wanted. Because of the situation if which I was raised, I have always been very careful about my interactions with women. I make it a point never to resort to even a threat of physicality and I hardly, if ever, raise my voice. So much so that this stoicism has been confused for apathy by many a woman. It's not that. I'm just well aware of how slippery that slope is and I understand what I could potentially do if I were to ever lose my temper. So, I don't and it's as simple as that.

What my ex didn't understand is that it was because of my training and my fighting that she could trust me never to hurt her. I would never lose my temper no matter how she behaved because I have had years of study and practice at controlling those feelings. Most men tamp down their demons so that when they surface, they do so at their own bidding. I'm not like that. I know my demons well so I'm able to lead them and have them aid me in my endeavors. My old boss once told me that I was like a stock dog. If he didn't keep me busy, I'd tear up all the furniture in the house. I can't disagree. I know that's true. Nothing is more destructive than me, bored. But I think demons are like that. If you don't let them out to play once in a while, they will tear up all the furniture in your house.

I'm not a good guy. If I think you deserve it, I'll break your arm and go have lunch. But at the same time, you can be sure that I won't accidentally hurt you or worse, lose control and do something I can't take back. At least that's been the case up to now. Training and fighting has given me an understanding of myself and my fellow man that I think could have been gained no other way. Having sized up so many people to fight, I can pretty much get any person's number in under 30 seconds. Simple truth no 1. You can't hide who you are in your body. If you are a keen observer and know how to look, you can learn everything you need to know about a person by the way he walks and carries himself. Truth No. 2. If you don't have this skill, there's no way I can convince you it exists.

Example. When Craig started training with me, I told him he was too tense. He couldn't feel it. He thought he was relaxed. Now, a year later, he realizes that I was right. Now he can fix it. As a teacher, I don't fix your flaws. I merely point them out and force you to look at them. Fixing them is my student's responsibility.

Being a fighter is an odd thing. The power you get from it is enticing but the price you pay is steep. I'm not talking about the physical. I'm talking about intellectually and emotionally. You learn things about your fellow man you'd rather not know. It's that way, at least for me.