Inarguably, this is defined in three major, interdependent parts of the same combat infrastructure:
1) Having a reasonable, practical, overarching mission or goal in mind. This means you have developed a very broad multifarious tools and plans, so you are able to accomplish the missions through variety of different methods and means.
If the only thing one likes to focused on is working on weaponry and nothing else, then it may be very difficult to accomplish a reasonable and practical mission/goal within the boundaries of the-variety of different circumstances that one may find oneself in. For instance, reason, science, and collective experience dictate that we cannot use a knife, or a stick, or a firearm, or a takedown in every single circumstance when the goal/mission does not and cannot logically and objectively support those means. And to insist on such irrational attempts, is to allow one’s mere emotional attachments and feelings to take precedence over objective, rational exigencies as dictated by times and circumstances. Some people call it kismet (“a hypothetical force or personified power that determines the course of the future events”. —Merriam Dictionary)
2) The targets one actively seeks is the second component of the fight-infrastructure that determine the objective and subjective nature of combat. This second component has three other sub-components:
I) blood (objective)
II) oxygen (objective)
III) neuromuscular (subjective)
It is certain that when you interrupt the blood (I) and oxygen (II) circulations, you can objectively expect the opponent to temporarily or permanently lose total consciousness. An individual who has lost total consciousness is no longer a relevant threat.
The third sub-component (causing neuromuscular damage) is not necessarily an objective pathway in most empty hand self-defense situations. There are numerous cases which have demonstrated a person whose bones and muscles were severely damaged in a fight, and they still continued to fight.
Depending on the size of the person, their skill levels, their genetics, and whether they are under the influence of some specific drugs, it is not consistently guaranteed that hitting them is going to render them unconscious or unable to continue the fight, unless it is directly or indirectly affecting their air and blood circulations, OR major skeletal and neuromuscular structures. This is why hitting or striking someone is more subjective than what some people may have imagined. That being said, the using of the elbow, knees, and headbutts the way we like to deliver them can objectify the results if that is the mission/goal dictating them. This is not because an individual on heavy dose of PCP is feeling the pain, but because those shots (elbows, headbutts, knees) can deliver such a massive damage internally that both the balance of the blood and air circulation, and the signal from the brain to the rest of the body gets completely interrupted. They get so disturbed that the man on PCP, though not feeling much pain, would still go out due to major internal bleeding of the brain which is associated with the internal disruption of the pressures on central nervous system, as well as the direct and indirect damages to other organs which physiologically it would become quite apparent that the person is not able to stand on his two feet and begins to lose consciousness, though the heavy drugs have made him immune to much of the pain. So unless strikes produce such definite results, they remain subjective for the most part. The most assured range to create such consist results as far as strikes are concerned would be the clinch range. The further we go out of the clinch range the more subjective the fight becomes. Obviously, we are talking about empty had fighting and not the use of guns and knives.
All that being said, if the mission/goal changes, then what’s considered objective must take on a completely different form. For instance, if the mission/goal is to try to merely contain and control an individual with the least amount of collateral damage, then a competent grappling skills consisting of: positioning, pressure, spatial control, and base are absolutely indispensable. In that case, jiujitsu would be the number one system to master, and complimentary to that would be grapple arts such as wresting, Sambo, Catch, and so on. But Bjj would be absolutely central if mere containment and control of the opponent is the only objective. Considering anything else in this particular circumstance would either be irrational or not objective relative to the situational demands.
3) The collective, the proven, the most efficient, the most practical, the most compatible, and the most sensible methods in par with the goal/mission and the target.
A true story that would violate every element of a sensible method is when ‘a bus driver lost control of his bus and went down a valley. There were a lot of people on this bus who died. One guy still appeared to be ok in the bus and could still move. He manages to get himself out, but he hears one other person groaning with a lot of pain and was begging this guy to help him. This fellow didn’t know what method he should use to help this other fellow passenger. So, he finds a crowbar and approaches the guy in pain and hit the man over the head as hard as he can.’ This was his low IQ method in helping the guy in pain.
Some people use the dumbest methods to try to accomplish a goal. I think this third component of the combat infrastructure is obvious and does not require any further explanations. We understand that all three components we talked about are to be complimentary and sensible in relationship to each other——there is to be a coherent synergy with the three components we have discussed above.
It is necessary to think about these principles and re-examine our training objectives. The more we align our subjective self with the asymptotic nature of objective reality the wiser we can make our decisions. We use the word asymptotic because absolute objective reality is impossible to arrive at; but what we can do is to position ourselves asymptotically through which we are constantly getting closer and closer to comprehending the objective reality—— knowing consciously that we will never reach the absolute.
