The Big Picture

12/02/08 - OK, my first post on the blog. Rather than diving in to any one of the myriad topics of Personal Safety/ Self-Defense I thought I would try to look at it from a holistic perspective, get the Big Picture without trying to overwhelm everyone at the same time. So where to begin?

Let's look at it like this: we are people. Social creatures that live in a social environment, that has several stressors (economical motivators, fears, expectations, societal standards, laws, mores, norms, basic human needs, etc) . Ultimately, we all want something - to call up from some of my workplace violence lectures "all behavior is motivated". We may want several things. Most of the things we want are legitimate desires (wealth, a happy family life, people to like us, enjoyable experiences, a legacy....... you get the picture). There's nothing wrong with this. Therefore we pursue them; more often than not we look for avenues that are within societal norms (go to school, go to work, make a paycheck, save for wants, spend here and there as desired, etc.). This is typical of probably a good portion of American Society. Now i am sure there are people who live and function legitimately outside of these norms (more power to them!) but for the most part this is the average slice of Americana.

Outside of this slice of the pie there exists a different social caste of society. Often we identify them as criminals, miscreants, sociopaths, etc. Whether or not the label fits and how/why they got the label is beyond the scope of my blog (though I may touch on it occassionally). According to a Washington Post article 1 in 32 adults in the US has been behind bars, on parole, or probation. That equals about 0.03125 or 3% of the population that is classifiably criminal - which seems to jive with my recollection from my Criminal Justice theory classes (blow the dust off). Though I am sure they are only talking about the criminals that got caught. As one Police Science professor put it to me "we only catch the dumb ones". The smart ones avoid prosecution until they run out of luck. That means the percentage could very well be higher. Can we speculate on 5%, 7%, 9%, or even higher ? To this end we have to understand that these people in our society are also motivated to achieve their desires. Whether their desire or the means to fulfilling that desire is abhorrent to Society at large is in many ways......irrelevant to them. It doesn't take a statistical genius (that I am not) to realize that we are living in a society with a significant portion of people who consider us to be "lunch". That's scary.

OK so lets tighten our holistic circle of understanding a bit more. We do things to achieve our personal goals (work, shop, school, leisure). Now a known and a speculated unknown percentage of our Society realizes that our behavior may provide them with an opportunity to aggrandize themselves at our loss. Distilled: criminals prey on other people. More appropriately they prey on perceived weaker people than themselves.

Therefore, as people living in a Society where others may be willing to take advantage of us for their own gain we have to begin to concern ourselves with how not to allow this to happen (another stressor). To steal a cue from my Instructor Steve Kardian there are 3 things we then do (or should do) to not become a target:

• Awareness: we start to understand what we have that makes us desirable to a perceived criminal, we learn or theorize on who our "enemy" might be, we study our surroundings to understand what will protect us and what won't, we study the people around us, while some of this is correct - some of what we also believe is incorrect.
  
• Avoidance/ Passive Action: we take precautions that we believe that will make us safe, we change our behaviors, where we go, who we go with, we may take a self-defense course, carry a weapon or self-defense implement, make contingency action plans, devise escape routes and catalog resources (911 - for at home or on the road, Mall Security - for shopping, etc).
  
• Escape (or Fight) / Deliberate Action: Author and psychologist Lt. Dave Grossman lays it down as to what really happens when confronted with a high stress situation - based on his research we will do 1 of 4 things: run, submit, pretend to fight - called posturing, or really fight. All of this is based on our prior experiences, prior training, prior physical and/or mental conditioning, and what we have been able to plan for.

Everything we do and continue to do to make us safer from those who desire to prey on us is considered to be target hardening. Organizations (business, law enforcement, miliary) do this all the time. People do it too - but don't often realize it (locking your doors and avoiding dark alleys are examples). Ultimately, we want to make ourselves hard targets for criminals. In future posts I'm going to get into the nuts and bolts of what we can do to make our lives and our world a safer place. This will be what my blog is about.

Stay Safe!