VICTORY, not SURVIVAL: Warrior Flow Combatives: It’s not a “Fight”

By Jack Kerwick

A friend of mine, who is not any kind of martial artist, recently expressed during the course of one of our many conversations a point of view that is all too common.  It is treated as axiomatic by most people and even among the vast majority of martial artists and sports contestants.

The viewpoint is this:

Warriors, i.e. those who engage in potentially mortal combat, must be athletic, i.e. muscular, agile, quick, big, and strong.  Presumably, then, warriors must be relatively young, and they must be men, for the young, generally speaking, are more athletic than the old and men, generally speaking, have all of these physical advantages over women.

It is unquestionably the case that, in a confrontation, power, size, and speed militate in favor of those who possess them over and against those who do not.  My friend, it became clear to me, wrongly assumed, as the vast majority of contemporary inhabitants of the Western world (and beyond) assume, that these traits are decisive advantages.  They are not.

There were still other presuppositions that were being made by my friend during the course of our exchange.  While referring to a childhood acquaintance of his who, at 40-ish, is now a Navy SEAL and in prime physical condition, my friend remarked that he would bet anything that on any day this guy who he has known for decades would “take” anyone in a “fight.”

It became clear to me immediately that, understandably, my friend’s thought is the product of a conventional paradigm that in turn has been shaped by a number of influences of which neither he nor most others who have imbibed it are aware.

Those who fail to see beyond this paradigm fail to grasp the insight around which the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes developed his whole philosophy way back in the 17^th century:

“Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of the body, and mind; as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is no so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he.”

Intellectually speaking, this means that there is actually considerable parity between men, “for prudence, is but experience; which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.”

When it comes to physical strength, Hobbes is blunt when declaring that “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest” (emphases added).

Those whose minds are locked within the conventional paradigm can’t see what Hobbes knew because the very logic of the conventional paradigm precludes it.  This paradigm derives from many sources:

(1)STATISM

Doubtless, the mystique that has been constructed around the State has brainwashed no generation as much as the present one into thinking that only commissioned State (government) actors—“Experts”—can capably, legitimately use violence, and only ever in ways and against those targets that these same “Experts” deem proper.

Statism would be recognized as the cult of sorts that it is had the guardians of its orthodoxy not been as stupendously successful as they’ve in fact been at hypnotizing untold numbers of people into accepting its myths and dogmas (like its Wolf-Sheep-Sheepdog doctrine).

In short, Statism has conditioned people into thinking that it is impermissible and maybe even impossible for anyone who doesn’t wear uniforms and symbols of State power to competently exercise violence against those who threaten them.

Statism has habituated people into believing that only State actors can be warriors.

(2)Fighting as SPORT

Statism has led to this second development.

In the modern world, the “martial” (meaning of, or pertaining to, war) has been excised from the martial arts as training for war has given way to training for competition (whether in class, the gym, tournaments, matches, etc.).

In other words, the training modality of martial artists (along with that of boxers, wrestlers, etc.) is predicated upon a number of assumptions concerning their opponents and a host of other circumstances regarding their fights that they can count upon in advance:

(a)Those who train in a martial or pugilistic sport know that they will square off against a single opponent;

(b)They know their opponent’s track record, his weight, height, reach, his strengths and his weaknesses;

(c)They know exactly the date, the time, and the place of their confrontation, and they know as well the kind of terrain on which it will transpire;

(d)Regarding (c), they know specifically that they will fight in a well-lit ring and on a smooth, flat mat free of rocks, pot holes, curbs, broken glass, and all manner of other debris;

(e)In knowing (d), they know that their match will occur under room temperature and that they will not have to worry about rain, sleet, snow, hale, and so forth;

(f)They know that their opponent will not be under the influence of mind-altering drugs;

(g) They know that absolutely no (artificial) weapons will be permitted;

(h)They know that they are forbidden from executing dozens of kinds of strikes and kicks that are simply too dangerous;

(i)Concerning (h), they know that they are forbidden from maiming and killing their opponents.

All of these suppositions are conspicuously absent from the training modality of warriors, those who train for combat on the battlefield, yes, but as well those who train for the purpose of self-protection and the protection of innocents within their proximity who are preyed upon by violent criminals.

Yet Statist dogma permits citizens who it doesn’t commission to use violence on its behalf opportunities to engage in violence as long as they do so within the constellation of safety regulations peculiar to sports or games.

(3)Misuse of the term “WARRIOR”

This should be sufficiently self-explanatory.  The conjunction of (1) and (2) has led to an indiscriminate use of the term “warrior” with respect to anyone who has been masterful in virtually any endeavor, whether physical in nature or not.  Practitioners of combat sports, certainly, but as well weightlifters, those who partake of aerobic exercise, and even those who pray faithfully, survive cancer, and simply prevail over travails in their lives have all been referred to as “warriors.”

There is no small number of good things that can be said about such folks.  And while a warrior should embody virtues that transcend those that make him a master of crushing into oblivion human predators, no one is a literal warrior who doesn’t train to accomplish the latter.

Real warriors, in other words, train to kill the enemy.  Inasmuch as the kinds of people listed above partake of no such training, they are not, strictly and literally speaking, warriors.

This means that they are not warriors.

(4)Media ENTERTAINMENT

Tens and tens of thousands of hours of imbibing film, television, and video game depictions of violence have led most people into thinking that real world violence is as choreographed as any of these fictional fights.  They’ve also led people into thinking that there is nothing in the least impractical about the telegraphed nature of the strikes involved in these confrontations.

The flashiness, the pizazz, the coolness of the male (and, with ever-increasing frequency, female) characters who thrill audiences with their theatrical moves have no counterparts in the real world.  The sights of Hutus hacking to pieces with their machetes Tutsi men, women, and children; Islamic terrorists beheading on live television hostages who they have declared “infidels”; Imperial Japan burying Chinese captives up to their necks and then unleashing vicious dogs to eat their faces; gang rapists penetrating their victims with crude instruments in every bodily orifice before shooting them in their heads and setting their bodies on fire—there are many adjectives that we can think of to describe these acts of violence, but “flashy” and “cool” aren’t among them.

Warriors train for real world violence, to defeat, to demolish these types of agents of wickedness, these human predators.   And “cool” has got nothing to do with it.

As USMC Lieutenant-Colonel Al Ridenhour, founder of Warrior Flow Combatives, puts it: “Cool will get you killed.”

No one knows this truth better than warriors.

(5)Adolescent “FIGHTS”

Simply put, since a good number, and probably most, boys have been in at least a fight or two, and since boys are especially susceptible to being impressed by images from the popular culture as to what a “fight” is supposed to be like, they’ve tended to fight in accordance with these images.

So, they call each other out and agree to meet in, say, the school playground.  Upon meeting, they square off, they “put up their dukes,” and then they proceed to take turns punching one another with their fists clenched.  They will also undoubtedly attempt to block some of those punches.  When one boy is down or otherwise gives up, the fight is over.

Long after some of these boys become adults, they continue to think that this is the template for a violent confrontation.  Only now, it is no longer the school yard, but, say, the barroom.

Here’s the truth: As far as violence is concerned, these men still think as boys.  Their mentality continues to be that of an adolescent.

Combat instructor Bradley Steiner once cited a Charlie Reese who offered as succinct and apt a characterization of “the truly dangerous man,” the warrior, as any that I have yet to encounter.  Reese notes that such a man “never fights.”  No. “He only kills.”  His explanation is to the point: “The truly dangerous man knows that fighting is what children do and killing is what men do” (emphases added).

This is the Warrior mindset.  Any “fight” that is prefaced, or is able to be prefaced, by time spent eye-fucking, shit-talking, chest thumping, man-dancing, dick measuring, etc. is a fight that can be avoided.  That more men do not avoid them reveals that, in a critical sense, they are not the men that they can or at least should be, for they are still thinking and behaving as boys.

At the very least, they are most emphatically not warriors, for a warrior is one who trains to regard fighting as the stuff of children.  There are few people who a warrior could kill with greater ease than the loud-mouthed asshole, regardless of who he is or what kind of shape he is in, who gives away his intention to prove how tough he is.  To the Warrior, though, this type of man-child is a clown who isn’t worth a second’s worth of his consideration.

The only time that violence is necessary is for when the innocent need to protect themselves against genuine human predators.  And then, then it must be unrelenting and unapologetic.  Unconditional victory, at which point the innocent is standing over the body or bodies of his or her attackers, must be the only goal.

There is one system that stands as a resounding repudiation of the conventional paradigm of violence, one system designed to prepare students to become, not athletes, but warriors.

This system is Warrior Flow Combatives.  We will discuss it more in the next installment of this series.