Second Thing: Context Part I

“It's not enough that you believe what you see. You must also understand what you see.”

                             --Leonardo da Vinci

In the last Blog Post, I discussed the concept of developing Moral Certainty and I defined it in the following way.

Moral Certainty:

• the ability to sum up a situation and take action with near-perfect confidence, without thought or hesitation, or irrational fear, with little regard for the consequences to yourself.

However, there’s a little more to it than that because in order to develop the Moral Certainty you seek you must first understand things in their proper “context”.

context noun

con·​text | \ ˈkän-ˌtekst \

1. the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning
2. the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs: (e., environment, setting.)

Like I said in the previous post people want to be reassured that as they exercise their God-given right to protect themselves and their loved ones, above all they want to have the assurance that they are doing the right thing, the noble thing, with the strength and courage to do what must be done and consequences be damned.

As I said, I want the same things so I’m right in there with you. They just want the truth.

Folks, I’m going to tell you if there is one area that really screws people up when it comes down to life and death is not having clear unambiguous guidance or understanding of the situation and where the line is so to speak. Even though I’m known for spouting off that there are “no rules” in a real fight for your life. Well… that’s not entirely true only they are not the kind of rules that people think.  

In other words, people need to know what they are looking at and they generally at least when they seek out training with me they want to know how to respond in certain situations. They want to know what to do when this happens or that happens. People no matter what want to know what the rule is because they know the “context” in which information is presented to them and understood by them makes all the difference in the world in a life or death situation.

I’ll give you just a small example of what I’m talking about because I also think it’s sort of funny. I remember long ago I was at this park I used to take my granddaughter to. I guess she was about 7-years old and we were near this fence when a wasp started flying near her. So I quickly stepped over and “swatted” the damn thing.

So she’s like, “Papa! Why’d you do that?”

So I said, “Because I didn’t want you to get stung.”

She was actually a little angry at me because I killed as she called it “the buggy”.

Humph… You’re welcome!

It was then that realized she probably didn’t know what a wasp was. I’m sure she knew from school what a bee looked like, but a wasp? Not in her wheelhouse at the time.

So I told her,

“No princess, they can sting you and they have a nasty sting worse than a bee and can sting you over and over.”

Now, you have to know my granddaughter, even at that age she was all about trying to choke me out on the couch, sword fights in the kitchen with me and learning about “The Riddle of Steel” (good girl).

So she’s like, “Have you ever been stung by one?”

I was like, “Oh yeah… and yellow jackets too”.

I then told her the story about when I was in high school and how me and a friend got stung up by a nest of yellow jackets freeing a friend’s dog that was tied to the fence from getting stung to death. We saved the dog and damn near got stung to death ourselves.

Well… after that she was incensed. Once she realized they would attack and sting you up like that she was all about, “dusting off and nuking the site from orbit”!

But what changed? Before she was all upset at me because I had disrupted the harmony of the universe causing a disturbance in “The Force”. Then five minutes later she’s all about nuclear destruction, “Judgement Day”.

Simple, her understanding of the nature of the threat.

Once she understood the danger, the “context” she was all about going “Roman” on the “Wasp Empire”.

As simple as this sounds this is the same thing that we all want as adults. The proper understanding of the threat so we can make an informed decision about our own safety. So that if we have to go all Leif Erickson on someone we do so with the knowledge, the understanding, the Moral Certainty that we did the right thing… even if it costs us our lives.

If you’re a fan of JRR Tolkien like I am and other such writings in that genre one of the most fascinating things I’ve always found that I think for most people goes over their heads. And that is in the fantasy world he had created there was one creature one being who by their nature were either immortal or virtually immortal. That was the Elves.

Yet throughout the saga you see the Elves fight alongside humans and other beings sharing in the risk because while Elves were virtually immortal they could be killed. Now, without getting into a religious debate can you imagine?

Being virtually immortal and giving that up, risking all of that?

Think of the sacrifice?

The Moral Certainty, the surety of the cause they had to possess to be willing to risk all of that?

Now, think of us as humans, think of in certain ways how frail, how fragile we can be yet resilient?

How finite our existence is?

Our lives are so short for many people we can recount our entire existence, our accomplishments in a few hours to our grandchildren.

Our short life spans are maybe 80 good years and then “poof” back to the clay we go. The idea of immortality is seemingly incomprehensible and in between those quotation marks we try to fill it with as much “life” as possible. Sort of like stuffing 100 pounds of stuff into a 1-pound bag.

Everything in our lives is done in such a hurry. We shun the lazy and admonish those who haven’t checked a sufficient number of blocks in their lives at certain ages as haven’t really tried, as unfulfilled. And even when we have lived what would be deemed a good long life, for the most part, we are really not ready to go even if we tell ourselves that we are.

Now imagine being willing to risk those possible 80 good years at 18 years of age? Having the Moral Certainty, the maturity, the understanding, the proper context of the world and the nature of evil and being willing to stand in that space against it even unto death. Yet I’ve found that for many who seek out martial training this is the very thing they seek even if they have not verbalized it to themselves. Otherwise, why be there?

I know that’s why I showed up.

Anyway, let me assure you there are very, very few situations in the course of human existence where understanding your environment in context and having the Moral Certainty to take action when necessary is more critical than in War.

Because you see in war everything seems to count…

You know in war there is nothing that worries a man more than death except probably letting their buddies down. Men can endure a lot of things in combat, we can forgive a lot of mistakes, overcome a lot of failures and our faults. But nothing probably worries us or even scares us more than that feeling like we didn’t pull our load. That in our hour of need we didn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers. That we let them down. It can’t be helped because it’s what makes us who we are as men, as sword maidens, as warriors.

I can remember when I was in an area of Afghanistan called Spin-Gar with a unit “collecting information”. Anyway, I remember myself and a good friend of mine who was the Marine Corps Historian, and we were talking with this Lieutenant where he was recounting a story of the only Marine he had lost in combat at that time.

He said something along the lines,

“Yes, Sir, we were on patrol through the poppy fields in the area we were in earlier when the Marine (I don’t remember the name) turned placed his hand out and told everyone to stop, and I guess he must have when he turned stepped on or brushed a pressure plate that’s the only thing I can figure. The next thing there was the explosion and all I can remember was everyone taking action waiting for an ambush. Me and the squad leader practically ran over there and when we got there it was bad. He must have been right on it and all he said was, ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding!” and then… (the Lieutenant shrugged his shoulders) he just died.”

I could see it in his face, his eyes were glassy, welling up with tears. You see this wasn’t just some kid or some Marine this was his kid, “his” Marine.  The mood was very somber and very sobering. I could tell just by his mood there were a million things running through his head, all of the questions, all of the doubt, all of the what if’s? No matter what when you are the leader you never feel that you’ve done enough, trained hard enough, long enough, well enough. It’s just that way.

Did they have all the information?

Did they know?

Could I have done something differently?

The questions are endless because so are the possible outcomes and trust me it is very easy, like “very easy” to blame yourself. But in reality, it isn’t anybody’s fault because the truth is “that’s war”, and you could be the most well trained Marine, Soldier, Sailor or Airman. You could be the best grunt or pilot or whatever.  If it’s your time it’s really your time and that’s all there is to it. I found that the sooner you come to terms with that fact, with your own mortality, how finite our existence is, you feel more alive, and it is liberating because you are not spending all of your time taking counsel of your fears.

But I also found something else, the more you understand the nature of the threat in proper “context”, the more Moral Certainty you are able to glean, the less fear you have, the more focus you have and the more confident you are and "effective" in battle.

Over the years I’ve seen even with people I teach self-defense to while they may come to me with all sorts of doubts and fears. Once information is presented to them in the proper context, as they develop their skills in the body. Becoming more capable in the body, the more their ability to feel “confident” standing in that space becomes.

In the next part, I’m going to delve further into how Context plays a role in training not just Moral Certainty but also how it affects “physical” skills and martial development.