SOFT SKILLS. By David McGoldrick.
In my experience, the vast majority of fights can be avoided with soft skills. This makes soft skills the most effective form of self defence there is. So what do I mean by soft skills? This is what would be considered by most to be "Conflict Management".
However two of the biggest problems that I have with the majority of conflict management courses are; firstly, that they are rarely fit for purpose and secondly, you cannot change a persons attitude and behaviour by sending them on a one day course once a year. The key to soft skills is your attitude. That is everything.
I like to explain this by using my "Harry versus Garry theory". You see Harry the Hippy is all about peace and love. He constantly seeks agreement and wants everyone to get along. The problem is that his attitude is based on fear. Now Gung-ho Garry is the opposite. He is full of bravado. He constantly battles injustice and wants to fight for right. The problem is that his attitude is based on anger. So we have two very different people who's attitudes are based on the emotions of fear or anger. If you know someone who easily fits into one of these categories, then their personality is probably based on these emotions. However, sometimes seeking agreement or justice is the right and most logical thing to do. Most well developed adults are therefore capable of switching from one attitude to the other depending on what is appropriate. In the original film "Roadhouse", the main character, Dalton said "I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice". (I apologise for the split infinitive, I am just quoting directly.) The secret is knowing when to be nice or not. I can absolutely assure you that making an emotional decision during an emotionally charged conflict will definitely put you in the wrong. Now more than any other time, your decision should be based on what is right, not what feels right. Emotions have no place in conflict management, only logic. To quote Rudyard Kipling; "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you,".
Unfortunately, I have been in far too many real fights in my life. But I am proud to say that for every fight I have been in, I have prevented another ten. I have to be careful about my pride because I can assure you that pride is the reason that most conflict turns physical. I am not going to try to teach you about religion, I will just say that there are a great many valid reasons why the vast majority of Christian scholars considered Pride to be the first, worst, original and most demonic of the 7 deadly sins. It was considered to be the root of most of the other deadly sins. If you are not a religious person, then I can assure you that the condemnation of pride has a very practical basis. The vast majority of conflicts that I deal with involve one or more persons saying " But I have a right to...", "I don't care about that, I want...", "You can't tell me what to do.", "I can do what I want.", "He deserves...", "Why should I have to...?" or my absolute favourite: "It's a matter of principle." By saying any of these things, you are making yourself wrong by demonstrating to the world that your point of view is based on pride and ego. What could have been a valid argument, has now been proven to be stupid and immature. Ironically, people usually say these things to gather support for their argument and don't understand how foolish they sound. Thankfully, however, once you know how, you realise that people who are full of pride are the easiest to manipulate.
Now let's look at the subject of avoidance. One of the least understood theories in Martial Arts is the principle of the Void or Nothingness. I loved Bruce Lee's demonstration of this principle in "Enter the Dragon" when he invited the bully on the boat to a fight "on that Island". Even though Bruce knew he could win, he avoided the fight by using his brain. Intelligence worked better than pride. If I tell you that the vast majority of physical conflict happens on a Friday or Saturday night in pubs or clubs when people are drunk, then the simple solution to violence is: Don't go to pubs. I said it was simple, not easy. Now you might respond with the very prideful "But I have a right to...". Firstly, you don't. Anyone from the Landlord to the glass collector can withdraw your invitation to be there. If you stay there insisting that you have a right, then you are committing trespass. You can be forcibly removed if necessary. All because you were rude to the 16 year old glass collector. Where is your pride now? Secondly, on the assumption that you know how to behave like an adult and are fortunate enough to be allowed into a pub, you have still put yourself in a potentially violent situation. As an adult, you have every right to do that. However, the risks do not disappear just because you are mature enough to make that decision. Before you think that I'm a party pooper, I love to see people enjoying themselves and I don't like seeing people spoil that (which is the best motivation I have ever seen for wanting to be a doorman). However, don't be naive enough to think that you can go into a pub and not catch a stray punch. It is part of the risk you take.
I have mentioned this in a previous article that the vast majority of stabbing in this country are drugs related. Again, the simple solution is "Don't do drugs kids!" Once more you could respond with the very prideful "But I have a right to...". No, you don't. Enough said!
When I teach self defence, I like to make people aware that the clothes they wear can attract the wrong kind of attention. Again, you absolutely have the right to wear whatever you want, but if a girl wears revealing clothing she will have no control over who's attention she attracts. She is far more likely to attract perverts and predators than nice guys. If a guy wears a Manchester United football top, he is more likely to attract people who hate Man U (because there are so many) than people who like them (because there are comparatively few). Unfortunately, our pride prevents us from avoiding theses obvious dangers. Those Christian scholars might have been on to something.
So, let's assume that you are not clever enough to avoid conflict. The next step is escape. Simply walk away. Once you detect danger, just leave. I strongly advise that you get involved in people watching. The study of body language will give you the earliest clues of danger and give you more time to walk away. Experience tells me that the more vocal and argumentative someone is or the more they wave their arms around and puff out their chest, the less likely they are to resort to violence. These people are full of pride and can easily be controlled. However, before someone becomes violent, they do the opposite. They put their chin down, they do little rocking movements from one foot to another, sometimes they clench and unclench their fists and their teeth. But the biggest giveaway is going quiet or monosyllabic grunting. So once you hear "Yeah... Mmm... Uh huh...", they will start punching any second. The absolute best thing you can do is leave. If you are being prevented from doing that, then I would say you have good grounds for a preemptive strike (this is not legal advice). The problem in this situation is that it is far easier to notice the vocal arm waiver than the quieter real threat. The solution to either problem is just to leave.
So why don't we just leave? Just saying "pride" might be true, but it's not the full story. In reality, sometimes people just push our buttons. What one person doesn't think twice about can drive another person crazy. I know so many doormen who despise being told to smile. Not that there is anything wrong with smiling (after all, it's our principle number 2), but if you were told to smile by people you didn't know, multiple times a night for 10 years, you would be looking for the first excuse to throw them out too. We all know that our parents (or our kids) can drive us crazy with one phrase. I have noticed that as I get older, more and more things make me grumpy. I wonder if anybody else has noticed this. Sometimes, it only takes a person to say one wrong thing and we lose all sense of reason. But remember, this is our problem, not theirs. We need to own this because no court in the land is going to forgive you for beating someone to death because they ended a sentence with a preposition.
If most decent people don't want to fight, then what stops them walking away? It's because they don't want to back down either. When I'm trying to prevent fights I always try to create win-win situations that save everyone's ego. Once you learn to read people, this is not that hard to do. Drunk people are like children and are easy to read.
So, when it is physically not possible to escape an attack, then self defence is justified. Sometimes when I teach self defence, people ask me "When CAN I hit my opponent?". I always say to them "You can't!". Not because it's true, but because they need a serious attitude adjustment before I give them my blessing. Of course their question should have been "When SHOULD I hit my opponent?" Because self defence should not be regarded as a right, it should be regarded as an obligation. It should be done because there are no better options, not because you feel justified. If you follow this way of thinking, it will keep you out of jail.
I'm going to get a bit dark now. Secretly, most people have a desire to punch someone in the face. If you don't normally do that, then you want to know if you are truly capable. Everyone loves to tell a "war story" where they are the hero. We all want the confidence that we have beaten the bully because winning an argument is a shallow victory in comparison to winning a fight. For this reason, many people's judgment on whether they should fight gets blown out of proportion in an emotionally charged situation.
The last of the soft skills is disengagement. This can be the hardest thing to do, especially if your motivation for fighting is vengeance rather than self defence. This is the reason why you have a legal responsibility to try to disengage from a fight as early as possible. If you have injured someone and you are claiming self defence in court, you can be absolutely assured that you will be cross examined and asked to show that you could not have walked away from the fight at any stage up to the point that you actually did. You see, if you could have disengaged, then everything after that point is vengeance and you can no longer claim self defence (even if your original reason for defending yourself was justifiable). If you imply by words or actions that your opponent deserved what he got, your self defence claim will be torn apart (and rightly so, in my opinion). It is vital to remember that in a court of law, there is only one person who is entitled to punish someone. That is the judge, not you. The judge has been involved in the legal system all his or her life, was appointed to the position because of their experience, listens objectively to both sides and even then is very restricted in the punishments they can administer (none of which include a good kicking). It shocks me to hear the number of people who hit someone out of revenge and then claim they were defending themselves. Even among Martial Artists the subtleties of what exactly constitutes self defence are often lost. In my opinion, the law in this country is actually quite moral about what constitutes self defence. If there is evidence that you have injured someone then it is up to you to prove you were defending yourself at every point in the engagement. There is a much misunderstood idea that all you have to do is say that you were in fear of your life and everyone will believe you were defending yourself. It's definitely not that easy, because your feelings are not proof. There is also an argument that if you get carried away while defending yourself, it's ok, because you are not expected to weigh the niceties of the situation. There are two problems with that. Firstly, I wouldn't rely on that to stay out of jail. Secondly, you don't get to decide what constitutes a nicety, the judge and jury do. So, if you hit someone because you think they deserved it, expect people to believe that you are the one defending yourself because your feeling of fear is more significant than actual proof and that you should be forgiven for it because you don't have to use sound judgement in this situation, then pride is not your problem, it is arrogance. A judge and jury will definitely see you for who you are. If on the other hand, you do just enough to prevent an assault and no more, you have an excellent chance of claiming self defence.
At the beginning of this article, I did say that I thought that Conflict Management training is rarely fit for purpose. My reasoning is that soft skills will never work unless you have the hard skills to back them up. If you think you can just use soft skills to resolve conflict, you are deluded and any worthy antagonist will know that as soon as they look at you. The only time I have seen soft skills consistently work was when they were being used by very able and confident fighters. You need to have that ace up your sleeve in order to make conflict management work otherwise, even the most obtuse opponent will know you are bluffing. In other words, soft skills are used before hard skills, not instead of them.
I would like to finish this article by referring back to the film "Roadhouse". After the Doctor sees Dalton's extensive medical file, she asks "Do you ever win a fight?". He replies "Nobody ever wins a fight."
As usual, these are my opinions based on my experience. I always love to hear from intelligent people who disagree with me. D