Don't Let The Tamed Ones Tell You How To Live

Photo by Blake Wheeler on Unsplash

Alarm bells in her caput went off when she spotted a car parked in the painted filigree that marks the loading area effectually handicapped parking. It was a jerk parking job for sure, but for her it was a clue that something more sinister might be itinerant. She noted the poor parking chore as an "anomaly" and her observation skills went into overdrive.

As the car'due south commuter darted out of his car and into the store she snapped photos of him, the car and made a mental note of what he wore in example it was needed for after.

Exiting her own car, she pulled out her especially made "tactical pilus pins" that double as weapons. She fabricated sure her pepper spray was handy.

She entered the store.

She spotted him.

She started with her own errands while keeping her centre on him.

She noted the exits and was ready to jump into activeness should anything happen.

Naught happened.

He bought cigarettes and left.

He wasn't a crazed killer. Merely a smoker who parked like a wiggle.

2020 was the year of the Internet Expert. Where hysteria, mistrust of instruction, science, and of each other fueled emotions over reason. The in a higher place story was shared on social media with a detailed account of the poster's experience – a play-past-play of what they saw with the goal of sharing with her readers, "Because I went through these steps, I had the confidence that IF something happened, I would be prepared and able to take action immediately. That helped me stay relaxed and present."⁠

All of this was underscored with the typical, "merely my actions weren't paranoid."

Bullshit.

Not but were they paranoid, they were delusional.

If she was and so concerned, why follow him into the store with her mall ninja tools?

What was she going to do?

We've all seen bullshit advice on social media, simply I gave this one the prize in the category of situational awareness for 2020. It perfectly captures the spirit of the Internet Expert with no actual experience with the topic at hand but spouting off half-baked advice anyway. By parroting concepts and phrases read in books or in conversation with other questionable experts and then passing that off as expertise, our globe is awash in data – only very little wisdom.

"Don't let the tame ones tell yous how to live", is a phrase I use a quite a flake around Asphalt Anthropology especially equally I cadet upwards against mainstream self-defense.

In that location is more than to that perspective: I never heed advice nigh being street-smart from people whose principal experience is the suburbs.

There, I said it.

I've been fearful of saying that out loud in fear of alienating others.

But I'm saying it now considering posts like the ones above are examples of exactly why you lot shouldn't either. There are no shortages of books, classes and "experts" putting material out there that then gets repeated through a filter – and frequently those filters become Internet experts with no real context for what they are saying.

I've avoided writing this article for some time every bit I was afraid of being perceived equally bitchy or catty, or whatsoever words used to close women up. Yes, I believe in supporting other women – but not at the expense of other women.

This suburban warrior mentality is laughable, simply information technology is not harmless. It plants the seeds of hyper-vigilance and delusion.

I've written earlier nigh the direct line between the influx of military mode "self-defense" classes that take been popping upwards in relatively safe places and

all the "empowered bad-ass" suburbanites losing their minds and escalating pocket-sized conflicts to assault. While the images from the coup in Washington D.C. on Jan 6, 2021 indicate the mob was primarily men, Ashli Babbitt was shot dead while busting through a window in the Capitol after a lot of tough talk on social media. On lighter note we have Elizabeth from Knoxville as our comedic relief. In both cases, we see the extremes of when fantasy met reality.

Net blowing has existent life consequences.

Photo past Pedro Marroquin on Unsplash

I'll admit, I've participated in some bullshit myself. I've taught self-defense for over 20 years, and much of it was repeating things I had heard from experts. That status of "expert" has usually been reserved for martial artist or men with military or police force enforcement background.

Only over the final several years I've realized how the experiences of those folks have very fiddling relevance to my own life or that of others who are just trying to go almost their lives in dense, public spaces.

What began to shift my perspective was my move to Los Angeles in 2011. Prior to that, I had lived in the relatively tame and homogenous city of Austin, Texas. Before that I grew up in a dumbo, various, working class suburb of Philadelphia. It could be a pretty dicey neighborhood, but all-in-all a pretty low-key identify.

Moving to Los Angeles inverse everything I thought I knew about cocky-defense (and I had been teaching for many years!).

And then what was dissimilar?

It's hard to qualify, but let'southward come across if we can quantify it a bit:

• City population: 4M

• County population: 10M

• Annual worldwide tourists: 50M (most of them traipsing right through my own hood with their out-of-place hometown views of the world)

• Population density of expanse in Hollywood: 22k/sqmi

• Population density of where I worked in downtown LA: 27k/sqmi

• Languages spoken: 220+

• Homeless population: 59K

• LAPD mental health calls per year: 20k

• 2 out of ten of the near dangerous pedestrian intersections in the metropolis as function of my daily commute every bit I walked to the railroad train.

For the last ten years this cluttered, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and electric customs has been my laboratory to observe, exam and refine the common wisdom of mainstream self-defense. One of my favorite pre-COVID activities was long walks, getting "lost" in whatever city I was in.

In Los Angeles a favorite weekend stroll was the vii-ish miles betwixt Hollywood and DTLA making stops in between for light nibbles from a wide range of cuisines that the surface area offers: Thai, Armenian, Korean, Colombian, Guatemalan, Mexican, French, Filipino... on and on it goes, the opportunities are limitless as I soak in the murals, the languages, the cultures and the street life.

Doing this most oftentimes lone as a woman has yielded observations and rich experiences as I've dodged problem here and there – merely by and large found people either welcoming and friendly or otherwise indifferent to my existence.

And this is how Asphalt Anthropology was born. It grew out of my observations that many people are at the extremes: either naïve to the earth or those who were afraid of their environment. And its exposed a number of self-defense myths commonly held as self-defense "truths".

Asphalt grew out of the fact that in larger, more dense spaces, the rules that might go you by in the suburbs don't have a lot of value here. For example, the standard self-defence force advice, "keep your head on a swivel". That might fly in a more low-key identify where someone parked incorrectly is a big deal and generates a lot of excitement. Simply when I skilful that long-engrained habit in my new environment back in 2011, the data overload was besides overwhelming – everything in Los Angeles looks similar an emergency!

Discernment is the key. And discernment can be hard when we are overwhelmed with information flooding us from and then called experts. The Plandemic is an case of this fraud on a wide-scale, but the self-defense force earth has been swimming in it for a while at present. And it is especially hard to discern misinformation because then many folks don't have firsthand experience so they tin't tell good information from bad.

A big part of the discernment piece is understanding how the brain works. When exploring neuroscience, the key is to larn from primary sources of experts in that field, and non filtered through non-experts, including (and especially!) myself.

Looking at self-defense through the lens of neuroscience has very practical applications for how we go about our day-to-day. It tells us that "keeping your head on a hinge" and hyper-vigilance really DECREASES your capacity to discern REAL threats, because everything looks like a threat. In that location are very real and physical effects of hyper-vigilance on i'southward brain that enlarge and thicken the amygdala which ultimately desensitizes it and creates a roughshod cycle. [i]

Additionally at that place are hormonal furnishings of hyper-vigilance that increment and sustain levels of cortisol that have far reaching implications for our health and longevity. [ii]

These outcomes aren't proficient in any surroundings, only are absolutely unsustainable in more dense places – hence, I don't take self-defense communication from people living in the suburbs.

And neither should you.

Photo by Bucography on Unsplash

Consider the Source - You Might Be a Bigger Proficient Than You Realize

A few months dorsum I had a friend, nosotros'll telephone call her, "Due east", reach out to me with and urgent, pressing desire to accept a self-defense grade. She had seen a post on Instagram - it was one of those scare-tactic videos that showed someone getting assaulted on the street.

The indicate of the post was along the lines of, "social conventions and norms dictate that about people don't walk around attacking other people... but you should exist prepared because you never know when someone will get off that script!"

I was balked.

Eastward was convinced she needed to take self-defense force after seeing the post. But I knew something of E's background then I asked her when was the final time she was in the metropolis and something started to get awry. She described walking abode belatedly ane night on a deserted street when a man began to follow her. I don't remember all the details, but she was able to handle herself by addressing the homo directly and convincing him she was a hard target. She made it home safely.

At present, I'one thousand not against East learning cocky-defense skills and adding to her arsenal. My goal of that chat, notwithstanding, was to talk her out of the fear she was experiencing created by that nonsense social media mail.

I happen to know that E is a bright woman with an advanced degree, dual citizenship between the U.S. and a European country. She's traveled the world, and has handled herself finer on more than than one occasion when threats arose.

I likewise know a bit about the person who posted the video with the scare tactic bulletin: she lives in a small midwestern city and has gotten her situational awareness data from books, other social media accounts and Bourne Identity movies.

Once I was on a panel to discuss travel safety where she was included. Her advice boiled down to "blend in". That'south probably non the worst advice in the world if anybody looks and sounds like yous where always y'all go. In her case she had only traveled from her small mid-western urban center to Orange County, California and Australia and so that might take care of some general prophylactic concerns if that is the size of your world.

But East'due south globe is bigger than that.

Don't let the tame ones tell you lot how to live. And definitely don't take their self-defense advice.

Notes: [i] Stanley, E. A. 2019. Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Torso to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma. New York. Avery. [ii] Nagoski, E., Nagoski, A. 2020. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. New York. Ballantine Books.

Source: https://www.asphaltanthro.com/post/don-t-let-the-tame-ones-tell-you-how-to-live-the-one-where-i-slam-the-suburbs-los-angeles-self-defen

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