Sometimes it is the answer Pt2.

So a few days ago I wove an intricate, though crude, tale of a very real and unfortunate event that took place last Monday. Although I framed the event in a more humorous light the reality was far from funny. The reality was that a group of young miscreants violently assaulted one Casey Heynes and he was forced to defend himself.  This event, as well as every event that has followed it, show a disturbing set of trends in our society. In fact it brought so many to my mind that I have not the time to address them all in one sitting.

Instead of trying to cram it all in I'd like to address these things in a more slow and thoughtful manner, and I want to talk about how this situation relates back to an early post I put up about violence.

First we need to look at the instigator of this sad event, Ritchard Gale. In the video, which was recorded by and no doubt uploaded by one of Ritchard's "friends", we see that the first thing he does is poorly punch Casey right in the mouth. Anyone with no background in the military, martial arts, or self defense of any kind would miss that Ritchard's technique is rather sloppy. They would also miss the fact that it's still quite close to being adequate. That means that little Ritchard is emulating the movement as well as every subsequent movement and attack from someone or somewhere. What is most worrying to me about this is that Ritchard is learning something dangerous, something that is dangerous both to himself and others, and not obviously being taught the consequences.

I watch, you watch, and it's likely that Ritchard watch action movies packed full of explosive violence. Movies where the hero gets beaten bloody, gets back up and beats the villain bloody. Movies where the hero shrugs off repeated powerful blows to the head like he just had bags of cotton balls thrown at him. This is bullshit, which actually might come as a surprise to many people. You cannot strengthen your head like you can strengthen a muscle, and only16 pounds of pressure are required to cause a simple skull fracture (Link contains NSFW images). To put that in perspective, a fall from standing can apply 196 pounds of pressure to the skull, so 16 PSI (pounds per square inch) would be walking into something solid. Based on these facts it is plausible that Ritchard could have killed or crippled Casey with just his fists. Ritchard is lucky, he only has to apologize to Casey for being a little dick weed. Ritchard could have been apologizing to Casey's parents in a courtroom for killing their son instead.

As bad as that sounds though, Casey could have ended up in a courtroom as well. After all he did drop Ritchard down on the concrete like a sack of rotten potatoes. Lucky for everyone involved he managed to drop Ritchard on his side rather than his head, because with the amount of force that Casey applied in his rage he would have certainly killed Ritchard. This story could have been a depressing story of a wasted life rather than the useful parable it is.

Does this mean that young Mr. Heynes should have done things differently by walking away instead? Should he have taken the advice of John Dalgleish, an expert on child welfare, when he said, ""We don't believe that violence is ever the answer. We believe there are other ways that children can manage this." It would be nice if Casey could have managed the situation per Mr. Dalgleish's advice, but unfortunately he couldn't have. A fact that unsurprisingly escapes Mr. Dalgleish who obviously isn't an expert on violent confrontation or self defense. 

That doesn't mean however that Casey couldn't have done things differently, it just means that the peaceful, walk away and ignore the bully technique that most teachers, parents, and every expert like Mr. Dalgleish push couldn't have. When the confrontation is restricted to cat calling and heckling, then such pacifistic techniques can and will work, but once the name calling is upgraded to assault then such methods rarely retain their usefulness. At that point swift action needs to be taken so that injury to the victimized party is limited. 

The problem is that Mr. Dagleish, and most of society desires to teach children that violence is never the answer. They fail to see that violence is simply not the answer in most situations, but that it is very necessary in the worst situations. They also refuse to acknowledge that we need to start teaching our children about violence, and we need to do it in a holistic fashion. It's inadequate just to take them to the local McDojo and expect them to learn about the legal or moral responsibilities involved with the use of violence. We can't also expect them to learn about how to defuse violent situations from school when most of the teaching staff there can't even throw a punch. And we definitely can't expect parents who've grown up in the sterile safety of the suburbs to teach their children about being aware of potential danger in their surroundings. All things that would need to be included in proper self defense education.

Proper self defense education would have given Casey the ability to recognize that the hallway he planned to take that morning was out of view and extremely narrow. Thus allowing him to take a different route, perhaps one through a more public area, and avoid his assailants. Barring that, equipped with the right tools Casey would have known that he didn't need to slam his assailant to the ground but that he could have used his superior strength and his greater mass to simply pin Ritchard to the wall instead. An act that would minimize both his injury as well as Ritchard's. To top it all off proper self defense education would have given Casey the confidence he needed to keep a cool head in the execution of all of the above.

So Casey did in fact have a better set of options, but they didn't involve letting himself be a punching bag, instead they involve a better understanding of the nature of violence.