Human Nature and Martial Arts Training

What are we willing to do? A man is verbally assaulting your date. I suppose one could respond in rime one could walk away. But if we were to ask a psychologist about the essence of human nature we would hear from a specialist what we all know deep inside. It is human nature to stand up for ourselves and our beliefs. It is human nature to stand up for people who need our help and our courage to be strong for them. If we witness an assault or a crime we have to do something about it. Somehow, society wants to make us believe that we should stand back and let other people handle it. But when you look around there is no one else. It is only us who are able to help. Back to the example from earlier, a man is out with his date and she gets verbally assaulted. From the women’s perspective it is comforting to see that the man is able to stand up for her and protect her… may it be as primal as a punch in the face. From a man’s perspective he really has no other option than to stand up for her. First he should ask the assailant to leave but in the real world that usually makes it worse and it is at that point where he has no other choice than to physically restrain the assailant and protect his date. It is here where good martial arts training becomes necessary – because as a human being we need to decide what is appropriate and what is not. Most of the time a punch to the face will end the confrontation because the receiver does not expect it. A punch has a sobering effect and as such is very effective. It is the assailant’s ego that makes him believe that the man who only protected his date has no right to physically restrain him and his assaults. It is the same ego that made the assailant believe in the first place that he has the right to assault someone else without any consequences. It is not about encouraging violent behavior. It is about doing the right thing at the right moment! It is about controlling the situation and making sure that innocent people won’t get hurt because of our negligence!

Man, any man is part warrior. Yes, we have evolved. We were suit and ties, have cell phones and drive expensive cars. But there are certain primal qualities that will always be there. We all have experiences the embarrassment of not standing up for ourselves. Usually that happened in our childhood years, someone takes our lunch money or cuts in line in front of us. And although we were being told that ignoring it and walking away was the right thing to do, deep deep down we knew that we should have done something about that. And this failure stays with us, haunts us and sometimes defines who we become in life until we learn the techniques and skills to make better decisions and stand up for ourselves and others.

We all have had our successes in our professional careers, we have given money to charities, we have volunteered to causes dear to us and it has brought us enormous gratification as a human being. But as a man, as medieval as this may sound, as a man the most satisfying moment of our life is the moment when we stand up for ourselves or someone who needs standing up. And that is a fundamental truth of man’s human nature.

Ingo Weigel

Sifu