True
self-protection is a castle with layered battlements and buildings. The
castle’s individual structures represent unique and essential subject matter
areas, contributing individually while reinforcing the whole. A cornerstone is
the first set stone around and upon which the rest of a building’s foundation
forms and, for our purposes, Cornerstones are central concepts or themes upon which
areas of self-protection rest.
Four central areas form the most important buildings in our self-protection castle, each with its own cornerstone. These areas are Bad Guys 101, Becoming, Level Up, and Beyond Power. The fifth area, Teaching, focuses specifically on instruction issues and ideas.
Bad Guys 101
Bad Guys are the perfect place to start any Self-Protection efforts because they’re the “problem” many SD/MA methods “solve.” If you don’t look at problems in context, solutions become useless or even harmful. Understanding how and why BG’s hunt and live provides a variety of advantages and insights.
Becoming
Bad Guys prey on more than physical weakness; they look for those easily influenced or manipulated. Thus, worthwhile self-protection training is, primarily, emotional engineering toward greater strength. Stripped of pretense, that emotional engineering changes *who* the student is by challenging them to grow. Becoming is about the internal process of becoming stronger, alone and together.
Level Up
Mentally and emotionally strong people may need to apply their internal strengths to the physical world. Moreover, good training processes simultaneously build physical skill and mental/emotional power. Leveling up is developing skills and training methods to build stronger humans to help solve the Bad Guy problem. Planning, Moving, Fighting, and Communicating are the central pieces.
Beyond Power
Self-Protection against serious threats really only enhances degrees of choice in when and how we die; death’s inevitability remains. The power to prolong life; devoid of purpose, responsibility, or direction; is meaningless in a world where mortality claims us all. Thus ‘Beyond Power’ examines the “why’s” of self-protection and the power it cultivates.
Teaching
Though all of the previous areas of self-protection apply to instructors as well, there are issues specific to those who would teach. Teaching is about ensuring student growth while maintaining the various balances between ethics, efficacy, efficiency, sustainability, and the like.
Each of these “structures” could serve as an entire field of study and often do. Our responsibility to examine them and how they fit into, protect, and enhance our lives.
-M
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