"That once you have been forced to initiate contact .. it's on. There is no stopping till the threat is neutralized."
Under real life and death situations, everything becomes reflexive or instantaneous i.e., everything is directed or turned back on itself (the past). This means a two part component:
1) Philosophy of life (life-convictions, ethics, informed faith based on knowledge and experience, critical virtues, attitude, mental stamina, immovable human spirit, strong sense of justice, etc ....)
2) Prior training
I like to say that both of the above parts are interdependent, but experience have taught us a counter intuitive lesson. This means you can train as hard and as deadly as you like, but if the philosophy of your life is of a passive and timid nature, you won’t be able to counter with equal measure of force, for a sustained period of time if the opponent is a trained, violent, and out of control killer bent on taking your life [at all costs]. You WILL NOT be able to bring it out of your gut and heart to measure up to that level of violence. Period!
One the other hand, if the philosophy of one’s life is of [taking no shit] from anybody, and this does not mean someone who fights at a drop of hat, or is rude, prideful, or thoughtless, or is disrespectful of others, but just someone who is fair and just in all his or her affairs in life———such a person, even if he or she is not a trained fighter, they can still be tough and certainly fight to death and not regret it at all! So training doesn’t necessarily affect deep-rooted philosophy, but philosophy definitely affects the mental attitude in all violent encounters and as such——the thought processes of one’s training protocols. Of course, if you have both, i.e., a strong philosophical [conviction], AND a top notch quality training, then both parts of the human component would be in balance and the best and most ideals results would be achieved. Such a person can release enough [dark matter] as needed and would neither undercut nor overexert a force in any of possible various levels of violence.
If you cannot release the animal 100%, you will be in big trouble at certain and gruesome levels of violence; on the other hand, if violence is your favored way of resolving things, and it makes you feel like a tough guy, YOU also will be in trouble, because: 1) your quality of life will drastically and [diabolically] be diminished by less freedom and a constant shadowy life, and 2) your own attitude and life-approach in general will probably and maybe eventually get you run across someone who is much crazier than you, and he or she wouldn’t hesitate pulling the trigger.
During our Phoenix JKD training, we try to infuse a sense of balance between philosophy and training. Both parts provide us with an efficient and balanced human-component in order to respond in a JUST and UN-regrettable fashion during a variety of violent acts.
Some times I tell my students that fate, due to our own faulty nature, drives us to a forked-path in the middle of some unknown desert——one path says life and the other says death. At that point your philosophy (life-convictions) and your prior training will determine which path you will comply with.
—SHAHRAM MOOSAVI
Photos: Sparing session during a private training with one of my students, Alan.
