Proportional Force

Thursday, 23 September 2010 12:14 Hrs

seldomlogical.com / 2010 / September / 23 / Proportional Force

❝ In reply to @lionhearted, `Memoirs of a Bullied Kid` on Hackernews

And the first girl who uses an ‟indirect asymmetric attack”? [1]

❝ But son, as soon as someone puts their hands on you, they’ve crossed a line. Fuck them up. It’s the only thing these vicious freaks understand. They’re wild animals. They make violence on you, you need to show them that you’re the stronger, bigger animal. When someone attacks you maliciously for no reason, you need to impose your will on them. [0]

There is a concept of ‟proportional force” [2] when you respond. If you fail to apply the correct amount of force, you could actually cause more damage to others and yourself. You do not want to ‟Unleash the beast” inside. People are killed every day by someone loosing control and going too far. There are long term ‟consequences” for this type of approach. Consequences for yourself and others.

You have to decide before hand with a cool-head, what are your ‟rules of engagement”? Where do you draw the line? What is your justifiable, ‟proportional response”? Is it offensive or purely defensive?

❝ Are your ‟motives pure”? Or are they to, ‟do harm” to save face?

If you want to ‟fight smart” I’d advise Akido (合気道) [3] The core ideas are faithful to the ideals of ‟be good”, [4] ‟minimal harm” and self preservation. Akido allows you to achieve this through redirection of force, removing ‟ego” from the equation. You can use Akido techniques for both physical force and psychological protection.

❝ Remember, ‟your actions have both short and long term consequences” [5]

Maybe these ideas are too subtle. One thing I notice, is the pattern of those being abused repeat the pattern of their abusers. There are alternatives to break this cycle.