Ethics in presenting self-defence advice

[kickcatcher]

Dear forum members,

Do you believe that there is a moral obligation on those teaching/presenting self-defence advice to take reasonable steps to ensure that what they are teaching works within the relevant context?

If you agree that they should take reasonable steps, what do you deem “reasonable”? –(for example pressure testing, real life experience, statistical studies… or just gut feeling, etc).

 

[Andrew Green]

I tend to regard most "Self-defence" in the same way I would regard Fortune telling. There really is no way to tell if any of it works as advertised, so I give it about as much credibility.

It might work, might not. But as soon as it comes out of a sport-like (note the sport-LIKE there, lots more can be done then what exist in established competitive sports) it falls off the map in terms of testibility.

Yet, there are countless people reading horoscopes every day, getting there palms read, using tarrot cards, etc. That's fine, whatever floats there boat. But I don't think a fortune teller can be held accountable for a reading. Even if they could they could just claim missinterpreting. Same in self-defence. What works for one person might not work for another, so accountability for effectiveness is impossible to judge, best just leave it be.

 

[HKphooey]

Great topic!

My greatest fear is that one of my students gets attacked and cannot defend themselves adequately. I think most of us question all that we learn and adapt it for different people. I think the first step is giving someone the self-confidence they need to stay safe. I always have a difficult time teaching shortened self-defense clinics or seminars. It is almost impossible to train someone in a few hours. You can give them common sense advice, but too many scenarios out there. I personally try insure that my students feel confident about what they have learned, and we must be open to their questioning of why we teach something a certain way. For us to say, “Because that is how so and so told us to do it that way” is not a valid answer. I think sparring, reality training (redman suits), self-defense drills, endurance, etc. give the student one more level of comfort. Every level helps get them closer to avoiding danger.

Once again, great question/topic for all instructors to ponder.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Depends. Should everyone who wishes to write about something first test it in battle?

If say, I were to write a book on effective sword techniques, must I first find someplace where I can risk my life in combat, or can I take the word of my instructors and my own research that the technique is in fact effective, as prescribed, based on solid historical evidence?

Should I have a degree in cellular biology, chemistry, medicine and physics before attempting to describe the health benefits and risks of say, nutrasweet, or can I refer to an existing body of research from those who do know to write my paper/book?

Reasonable steps? Sure. Get your information from reliable sources, triple check your answers and proof like mad.

But, I don't expect that every person talking about a technique will have actually pulled it off in a "real world" situation.

It's the moral responsibility of the instructor to teach what they believe are solid techniques. The question is, who decides what is solid? I saw a tape once of a guy doing techniques with credit cards and a wallet. It looked incredibly dangerous, and in fact, lame. Yet the instructor has combat experience and is well respected. So, who's right?

 

[HKphooey]

Amen!

 

[kickcatcher]

If a person is say a martial artist, and they readily have an environment in which they can do some level of pressure testing to validate that the technoques are likely to be effective, then is it reasonable to expect them to take advantage of that before they go giving seminars on "how do" etc?

 

[Andrew Green]

I would tend to put that on the practitioners more so.

Anyone can teach / publish whatever they want. It is up to the people that recieve that information to decide what to do with it.

Your information is only as reliable as your source, and in any field there are good sources and bad ones.

 

[kickcatcher]

If say, I were to write a book on effective sword techniques, must I first find someplace where I can risk my life in combat, or can I take the word of my instructors and my own research that the technique is in fact effective, as prescribed, based on solid historical evidence?

Solid historical evidence would be a good base IMO, provided you presented it as such and reproduced the techniques sensibly - but unless you have actually DONE the moves in "battle" or as a second best some sort of training which reasonably accurately recreates battle conditions, then you are a theorist.

Martial Arts is an unusual area, in that you can go to a dojo and learn a few kata, then present yourself as an "expert" on swordfighting, despite never having been in a sword fight. It's the age old dry-land swimming analogy. My version of that joke:

Should I have a degree in cellular biology, chemistry, medicine and physics before attempting to describe the health benefits and risks of say, nutrasweet, or can I refer to an existing body of research from those who do know to write my paper/book?

Any suppositions or conclusion you drew would be questionable. You would not be taken seriously by Cellular Biologists.

Reasonable steps? Sure. Get your information from reliable sources, triple check your answers and proof like mad.

But, I don't expect that every person talking about a technique will have actually pulled it off in a "real world" situation.

But are not certain reasonable steps, such as closeer-to-real pressure testing, not available to nearly all martial artists?

 

[kickcatcher]

I would tend to put that on the practitioners more so.

Anyone can teach / publish whatever they want. It is up to the people that recieve that information to decide what to do with it.

Your information is only as reliable as your source, and in any field there are good sources and bad ones.

"let the buyer beware!". Is that not irrisponsible given that the majority of people taking up martial arts lack the relevant experience to judge fully the worth of what is being presented?

 

[Bob Hubbard]

But, by this argument, the only people qualified to teach real life defense tactics are those who have survived a previous encounter. I wonder though, how many drill sergeant in the military had previously killed someone. Shooting a person is much different than shooting a paper target. Same as rolling on a padded mat, or within the safe and rule laden tournament environment different than a street fight, or barroom brawl.

I don't need to have a degree in cellular biology to say "Dr. X in his research determined that Y". If we required expert status before allowing publication, we would destroy the entire concept of a masters thesis I think.

 

[kickcatcher]

The original question was more along the lines of what are reasonable steps. Some may believe that anyone can publish self-defence advice, regardless of how flawed that advice is without moral conscience. At the extreme other end, as you have hinted, some might say that only people who have survived 200 real life attacks are qualified, etc.

I know didly squat about space travel. Say I write a book about how to make homemade space rockets, someone buys it and tries to make one, resulting in a huge explosion killing six people. Am I morally responsible (legal is a seperate issue)?

 

[Andrew Green]

In a sense, which is where public sources can come in. We can provide people with the tools to test what they are learning. There are countless fight videos available as well.

Personally I prefer to focus on the positive things, let's not talk about what is wrong. That gets no one anywhere, just makes everything stink. Instead let's talk about how to go about testing these things, how to recognize things that do work instead of throwing poo at things that don't.

Because IMO if someone where looking for info, in a honest way, and they walk into a place that is nothing but poo slinging they are going to walk right back out. If they come in and say "This is what I have been taught and what I believe" and are met with a full assault of feces throwing they'll leave before they heard what everyone else is doing and how to test things for themselves.

If I pick up a legitimate newspaper I expect to find news, real news,with a reasonible degree of accuracy. If I pick up the enquirer I expect to find a bunch of unsubstantiated nonsense.

Yet real papers do not concern themselves with knocking down everything the enquirer publishes, they concern themselves with publishing real stories. If they where to start launching full out attacks on the Enquirer they would quickly loose there reputation as a reliable news source and it would become harder to seperate the facts from the fiction.

Now, suppose I had never seen a newspaper, or a news cast, or really anything related to the world. I was a brand new, recently landed, alien. I go to the store and look at the papers, how will I know what is what?

Well, consistancy among the reliable sources would be one. Presentation of evidence another and all those other things a source needs to be considered reliable.

If it was just a bunch of papers slinging poo at each other they would all loose credibilty and I'd probably read the one with the prettiest pictures...

 

[Martial Tucker]

To me, the concern is not whether or not a technique will actually work. While the techniques we focus on have been used successfully countless times, no two situations are exactly alike, and there are never any guarantees. This is something that should be discussed in class.

However, to me the bigger concern is the student that can perform the technique competently on the mat amongst friends, but in a real situation, you just know they could never pull it off. They just don't have the personality trait required to be aggressive and fight back. The worst thing would be for them to have a false sense of security, thinking that because they've trained for awhile, and can execute a technique in class, that they could "take care of themselves" in a real situation. As a teacher, I think it is
ethically incumbent upon you to gently but firmly let this student know that they are at risk, regardless of what they feel they can do in class.

Because of this, I'm a big fan of reality training and adrenal stress training,
with the "attacker" being someone that is unfamiliar to the students.
Even this is no guarantee, but it will at least give an indication of how any student is likely to react when really stressed, and hopefully "send a message" to those students whose confidence is higher than their ability.

Also, I think a good teacher will often address the "mental side" of fighting on a regular basis. Unless you've got some real world experience in street fighting, this is really important, IMO....

 

[Andrew Green]

However, to me the bigger concern is the student that can perform the technique competently on the mat amongst friends, but in a real situation, you just know they could never pull it off.

Absolutely, even in training this comes up. How many people can honestly say that the first time they sparred with hard contact and hits to the face that they where "ok" with it right off the bat? Not turning away, being able to counter punch, push into an attack, hit back with intent?

It's not easy, not even in a sport environement with friends. Actively trying to hurt someone is something a lot of people are not mentally capable of, even when the other person is doing the same and they are wearning safety equipment.

So in sport training there is always the question of how far do you want to take it? Light training, limited contact, heavy on padding? Moderate contact, gloves and open face gear? Heavy contact and heavy gear? Heavy contact and minimal gear (think dog brothers)? Full MMA competitive fighting?

The farther you are willing to go the better you'll get, too far of course can be too dangerous. Every time you step it up you don't know how you will react, you could start taking hits and freeze, you could be unable to hit with enough intent to do the damage needed to succeed.

But to write sport fighting off because you don't know at each step and just assume that when the time comes you'll be able to do it seems the wrong way. Training realistically is a progression, you shouldn't go full contact with 4 oz gloves your first sparring session, and no gloves / mouthpiece in a non-controlled environment is quite a big step above that.

 

[beau_safken]

The real thing you have an obligation for if you teach someone something, is the person's mental ability to decern when its approapriate.

Its kinda a karma thing for me. I want to know that anyone that I teach or have a interaction with, will not use what I know to do harm unnecessarily to others. Its very important to me that someone knows how to defend themselves...but its also important to know that person is a responsible user of the skill.

Thats my little take on it.

Beau

 

[Brother John]

If say, I were to write a book on effective sword techniques, must I first find someplace where I can risk my life in combat, or can I take the word of my instructors and my own research that the technique is in fact effective, as prescribed, based on solid historical evidence?

But, I don't expect that every person talking about a technique will have actually pulled it off in a "real world" situation.

It's the moral responsibility of the instructor to teach what they believe are solid techniques. The question is, who decides what is solid?

Very good points.
Logic, practical training....lots of effort and atttention to detail.
I think these are KEY

Your Brother
John

 

[Cryozombie]

Any suppositions or conclusion you drew would be questionable. You would not be taken seriously by Cellular Biologists.

I dunno about this... its like saying Because I never died falling from an airplane, Pilots wouldn't take me seriously if I said you would die if you fall from a plane...

Presenting evidence that was tested by a reputable source, (like the medical examiners who determined, yes, the people who fell are dead) should be enough evidence that I dont need to do it to prove my point.

Although I know a couple people Id like to try and convince to test the theory...

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

 

[kickcatcher]

I dunno about this... its like saying Because I never died falling from an airplane, Pilots wouldn't take me seriously if I said you would die if you fall from a plane...

Presenting evidence that was tested by a reputable source, (like the medical examiners who determined, yes, the people who fell are dead) should be enough evidence that I dont need to do it to prove my point.

I think it depends entirely on the subject field. That falling from great heights causes death is common knowldege and beyond refute.

Whether technique "x", performed in manor "y" and trained in manner "z" is effective or not in self-defence isn't common knowledge. The scope for being wrong whilst still being taken seriously by joe public is far greater.

 

[Cryozombie]

Whether technique "x", performed in manor "y" and trained in manner "z" is effective or not in self-defence isn't common knowledge. The scope for being wrong whilst still being taken seriously by joe public is far greater.

Ok, so let me ask you this... in the grand scheme of things... what does it matter?

Suppose for a moment that you are a pretty good fighter. (I dont know you so Ill take that on supposition) and some clown named, I dunno, ashida Kim, is teaching idiots his deadly ninja arts.

Does it matter to you if he teaches them total crap? That's just that many people who will never be better than you, that you don't have to worry about when the crap hits the fan, right? I would think the only time it would matter to you is if you got suckered in by kim and subsequently got your *** kicked trying his moves...

 

[MA-Caver]

The real thing you have an obligation for if you teach someone something, is the person's mental ability to decern when its approapriate.

Its kinda a karma thing for me. I want to know that anyone that I teach or have a interaction with, will not use what I know to do harm unnecessarily to others. Its very important to me that someone knows how to defend themselves...but its also important to know that person is a responsible user of the skill.

Thats my little take on it.

Beau

Thank you. Nicely said.

Take in consideration also the mental state of the user at the time of the attack. Some people freak out (and that varies with person to person) when suddenly surprised. Some freeze and are incapable of doing nothing until it's too late. Some may get into the mind set of defense and then lose it when things are quite going the way they expect it to be going. A few will actually use the techniques taught to them to effect.

Some people will even with advance warning will do one of the above. There was an important thread elsewhere here on this forum that spoke about self-esteem/confidence issues which in my experience are critical in the use of any SD/MA technqiues in the real life situations of a mugging/rape/assault.

Ethically? A person has a skill which they can impart to others. Others which come to them requesting to learn that skill. They decide to do so because others with the skill(s) taught them. Is it a good or bad thing? Depends upon the user doesn't it?