Tag: Garry Smith

Exercise Your Mind and Your Zygomatic Majors – Garry Smith

I love reading, I always have. My mum taught me to read before I went to school, it has been a source of pleasure throughout my life. From fiction to non-fiction I devour books, I eat the words with my eyes and digest the content with my brain. 

Yesterday I was reading ‘The Ape in the Corner Office’ by Richard Conniff and I was barely a chapter in when I had to text a female friend with a new ‘fact’ I had found. The new ‘fact’ was that a human females zygomatic majors are thicker than those in a male, in contrast to males being on average 15% larger and more muscular than females.

The zygomatic majors are the muscles running from the outside of the eyes to the corners of the mouth, we use these to smile. Most of this smile muscle is made up of fast twitch fibres, 90%, so smiling is a rapid response. The muscles used to frown are only 50% fast twitch fibres meaning a smile has evolved to be quicker than a frown.

“Smiling is our oldest and most natural expression, and like other facial expressions, it evolved for a function, as a means of responding to the people around us and influencing their behaviour. Primatologists connect our smile to the ‘fear grin’ in monkeys and date its evolution back at least thirty million years. In a group of macaques, for example, the approach of the alpha may cause a subordinate to cringe and nervously pull back the corners of the mouth, exposing the clenched teeth. It’s a signal meaning, ‘I’m no threat’.” Richard Conniff.

Conniff considers if women are genetically better prepared to smile or if the extra muscle is a “by-product of smiling surly males into a less bellicose frame of mind”. Before we descend into the rabbit hole of evolution versus social programming let me explain why this really interests me.

It is because I teach self defence. The starting point of self defence for me is avoidance. After avoidance comes escape, then defusion and only, seriously only if there is no opportunity to avoid, escape or defuse, the use of force may have to be employed. Reflecting on a few confrontations in the last ten years, rather the multiple confrontations, fights and battles of my younger years, I realised I now employ a different tactic, I go deadpan. I do not think I show any emotion, of course this is entirely subjective so I cannot say for certain, I also stay calm and not allowing the monkey to take control..

Well I think I do, trust me I have experienced many amygdala hijacks in the past and let the monkey brain have free reign, so in my personal evolution I have now managed to, mostly, prevent this happening. To do that requires knowing what is happening in the first place. That is why I read and read a lot.

I am fascinated in how we function as social animals. Most people are locked into the daily struggle to get by, the luxury to think, to reflect on what we are and how we came to be this way is replaced by the game show, reality TV and trivia, escapism is the order of the day. But the pursuit of knowledge is escapism too, continual personal and professional development should be our goal. The other day I bought 3 ebooks for my Kindle:

  • ‘Violence of Mind: Training and Preparation for Extreme Violence’ by my friend and CRGI colleague Varg Freeborn,

  • ‘What Doesn’t Kill Us: how freezing water, extreme altitude, and environmental conditioning will renew our lost evolutionary strength’ by Scott Carney and Wim Hof  as recommended by Mark Hatmaker.

  • ‘Life at the Bottom’ by Theodore Dalrymple as recommended by Marc MacYoung.

That is my next holiday sorted.

Sat on my bookshelf there are actual paper books waiting to be read:

  • ‘The Passionate State of Mind’ by Eric Hoffer.

  • ‘The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease’ by Daniel Lieberman.

  • ‘Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst’ by Robert Sopolsky.

  • ‘Rules of Engagement: A Life in Conflict’ by Tim Collins.

  • ‘Voices of the Foreign Legion: The History of the world’s most famous Fighting Corps’ by Adrian Gilbert again recommended by Mark Hatmaker.

Each one is a source of information and inspiration, each one a source of enrichment and education. For those of us who assume the responsibility to educate others it is our duty to continue to educate ourselves. I have always been a passionate autodidact and, I hope, a critical thinker. I owe it to my students to be the best I possibly can be in order to provide the best training I can for them.

I see lots of moaning on social media about the problems in the unregulated nature of the self defence and martial arts industries. I agree with most of them, but apart from bitching about the guy down the road or setting up another quango governing body type organisation, I see little in the way of solutions.

Well how about trying this.

  • Do everything you can to get better and better, accept you are not and never will be the finished article.
  • Join together with others who share your passion to improve and feed off one another.
  • Discuss, debate, argue and be prepared to be wrong.
  • When you find something new that improves what you already have embrace it, adapt, evolve, its what we are designed to do.

I have a favourite quote from Edward De Bono:

“What is the point of having a mind if you are not prepared to change it.”

Adaptation is the key to evolution, this is true of the individual and the species sapiens. Our social world is complex and continually changing so why would you want to stand still? So read, expand your mind, challenge and grow your intellect and as you do so you may find yourself using those Zygomatic majors a little more often.

www.AcademyOfSelfDefence.co.uk

www.AoSDDigital.com

www.JuJitsuSheffield.co.uk

Book Review – ‘Extreme Adventures at the Highest Temperatures on Earth’ by Ranulph Feinnes.

I read this whilst on holiday recently in the Canary Islands where it was fairly hot for the time of year. To be fair I have been to some incredibly hot countries and experienced extreme temperatures so I can feel some of what Ranulph Feinnes writes about.

I will admit he is one of my heroes and I have read a lot of his books so I am a little biased. I really enjoyed reading it, its a tremendous collection of stories, some are recreated from previous books and articles. I do not see this as a downside as this time Ranulph goes into much more detail and the Kindle version, which you can read on a laptop too, was free.

The main focus of the book is his time attached to the Sultanate of Oman fighting Marxist rebels. I have read a little of this before but this time with much greater depth into the social and political conditions and how cultures, language and diet are affected by heat. This is true when he describes how he and his companions recreated the journey up the River Nile, another epic expedition fraught with a huge variety of dangers all associated with the heat.

If you want examples of resilience and determination, Sir Ranulph Feinnes has this by the bucketful, it was a compelling read and excellent for a holiday read on the sunbed soaking up the sun. Working and training in heat presents tremendous problems and I learned some interesting ways of minimizing the affects that I did not know before, Like anything else they are obvious when you read them, learning from the environment we are in and what lives there, flora and fauna, is more the territory of my colleague Toby Cowern but there are a couple of gems in this book.

The writing style is at times a bit swashbuckling but I understand why that is having read a lot of his books, there is humour here too as some of the worst encounters with disease, giant insects, snakes, crocodiles and the rest also often have a funny side.

Reviewed by Garry Smith

Vive La Difference – Garry Smith

We were training in Ju Jitsu pretty much as normal one Saturday recently when one of our senior instructors and fellow director of CRGI Jayne called me across the mat. She was helping one of our 1st dan black belts Sam with one of his 2nd dan techniques, (Jayne is a 3rd dan for the record). She asked me to demonstrate the technique,

So after a few seconds thinking back I did, just like that, and that is where the fun started. Jayne then demonstrated on me how she did it, there were a couple of differences and we started discussing them. As we did our other senior instructor Bill came over and joined in, he is a 6th dan and has studied and trained Ju Jitsu longer than Jayne and I combined, his knowledge is encyclopedic.

Bill demonstrated the technique, it was different to either of ours, so now we have Sam watching 3 different versions of the same technique. The technique in question is irrelevant, the point is you have 3 senior instructors all showing how to do it differently. So off we go into a huddle to discuss how and why we do that technique the way we do.

To be fair there are a number of techniques where we teach a couple of variations and we are happy to differ. So once again we discuss, try each others way and agree that what works best for each of us is cool as the core technique works however we manipulate it to suit us. The differences are usually influenced by both psychological and physiological factors. Jayne is 5’2½” tall and slight and needs to make her techniques work mostly on a much bigger male opponent and she trains to hurt them a lot, Bill is about 5’10” and a skilled technician in the art and he trains to hurt them skillfully whilst I am 5’9” and a bit of a thug, I am not much concerned about the art I just want the job done.

After our discussion I went to explain to Sam our differences and why we have them and asked if it looked a bit amateurish. Sam is the clinical director of a hospice and we all have great respect for him, his reply was not what I expected, he explained how many skilled medical practitioners do just what we did but not in front of the public. He described how after some examinations of a patient they go off to a private space and share their different prognosises. He regarded what we did as a very positive thing.

The philosophy we all share is that the tecnique needs to fit the student not the student the tecnique. Both instructors and students come in a variety of shapes and sizes and one size does not fit all. I have seen really bad practise where a student is made to repeat again and again a technique in a particular way when it just does not work for them, a slight change of position of one leg might make it work but that is not allowed because it has to be done this way and this way only because it always has been. If it does not work for you then that is because you are the problem.

That stinks but the attitude that underpins it is seen as a virtue by many in the martial arts and self defence industries. It is at its worst in those systems that exhibit cult like practises and behaviour. Too many people slavishly follow the how it has always been done approach for my liking, I love my Ju Jitsu a lot, it is fun and works for me. Last week one of our black belts who has not trained JU Jitsu for years because he went off training and fighting Muay Thai came back for a session and took me down with a leg sweep they use. The good news is he will be training with us and instructing regularly in the new year and will teach us the said leg sweep plus some other cool stuff, also there was one of our black belts who does BYY and he often teaches us stuff not in our sylabus.

Its abou having an open mind and recognising there is not just one way to do things and that having conversations about it and if necessary agreeing to disagree is a very good thing indeed.

CRGI, the Origin Story – Garry Smith

In mythology there are many narratives of how the world began, how creatures and plants came into existence, and why certain things in the cosmos have certain yet distinct qualities. Most origin stories are simply that, stories full of the thing Marc MacYoung calls lies we tell to children.

There are many origin stories and most cultures have them and many have become major religions, some were invented by religions, all have true believers and are deeply entwined with our social and cultural practices, they influence almost every aspect of our life. Some exist as they did thousands of years ago, some were adapted and absorbed into newer forms of religion such as Christianity which appropriated then claimed as their own many of the Roman and Norse traditions for example.

The thing is they are all stories, not facts, they only exist because people choose, not always freely, to believe them, they have no objective reality. To one group the origin story of the other group may be seen as nonsense, heretical even, and we know where this leads.

So whilst I know there are many origin stories, as an Englishman I have mine, it starts with the arrival in post Roman Britain of two Germanic brothers, Hengest (Stallion) and Horsa (Horse), they were mercenaries who for a time served the weak Vortigern, King of the Britons, then they sent for their own and the rest is Anglo Saxon history.

Of course there is an origin story for Hengest and Horsa, who’ actual existence has never been definitively proven but long argued over. There are many legends of horse associated brothers which stem originally in proto Indi-European religions. Its a good story and may be based on some truths but there is little evidence Hengest and Horsa existed but it provides a heroic back story for those who choose to believe it.

So there are many origin stories, this is CRGI’s and it is not a myth.

“How did CRGI come to be? A few years ago, Garry Smith (the man who is now editor of Conflict Manager) asked, “If we were to do a full blown, accredited, bachelor’s degree program in self-defense instruction, what would be in the curriculum?”

I said I didn’t know exactly what would be in it, but I had some definite ideas who I would tap to help design the curriculum. That list, with Garry’s insight and experience, became the board of CRGI.

The members of the board are very different in some ways. Some were bad guys, some very bad. Some were good guys. Some are physical monsters, some were monsters in the day— and a few have physical concerns that affect every decision they make. One has been dead, and many have been close. Most are martial artists, but not all.” Rory Miller, ‘Conflict Manager Magazine’, July 2016.

That is how CRGI got started, a question was asked and that question sparked the creation of the first board. Then, as in most good origin stories we wandered in the wilderness for a few years whilst we debated and discussed what our purpose and mission were, we built our nascent infrastructure in cyberspace and began to communicate what we were trying to do and not very effectively either, we reformed the board and brought in new blood and fresh ideas, we gathered followers, but here is where we differ from other origin stories, we discouraged the true believers.

CRGI is not a quasi religion or a social organization promoting a vision of how the world should be, we have no ambition to create an inward looking entity, CRGI exists to promote discussion, polite disagreement included, a space where people can share and learn, a place where people can do sets sapiens above all other organisms on this planet, co-operate.

Being part of CRGI means people are welcome to be members of their own tribe with their own totems, talisman and beliefs but can come to CRGI to meet, to talk and treat with other tribes without resorting to trolling and name calling and questioning their origin stories and the totems, talisman and beliefs of other tribes.

CRGI is about creating a place where tribes can gather together instead of the alternative world where the ‘my tribe is better than your tribe’ mentality persists. As Marc MacYoung says:

“Now if you have people who don’t know how to behave at tribal gathering, how well do you think they’re going to be doing dealing with people of other tribes?

Here’s a hint. Not well. Especially if you consider them stupid, wrong, inferior — if not evil — for thinking differently than you do.

One of the lost aspects that smearing the lines between tribes to create an uber-tribes is how to treat with different tribes. If we’re one big uber-tribe why would we need that? Well, simple, we’re not. People are trying to revert to super-tribes without understanding tribalism. We self-identify ourselves with a tribe and feel we must hate this other tribe — even though we’re technically all one big happy uber-tribe.” Conflict Manager Magazine, December 2016.

CRGI is not some safe place for precious snowflakes it is a space where interesting, challenging and robust discussions can take place between mature adults and this is reflected in our mission statement.

CRGI is dedicated to creating an unimpeachable source for pertinent, accurate information on all aspects of conflict management.

Our mission statement shows our focus.

  • ‘Unimpeachable’ means we vet our contributors.
  • ‘Pertinent’ because we seek actionable information over trivia or speculation.
  • ‘Accurate’ speaks for itself, but we understand we live in a world full of ambiguity.
  • ‘All aspects’ refers to the fact that we are not just about martial arts, we reach out to the self defence practitioner, the firearms community, the survival community, LEO’s, the armed forces, friends in academia and all those who share our thirst for knowledge and learning throughout life.

That is why we use Yggdrasil as our logo. Yggdrasil was, reputedly, a giant Ash tree with branches that reach out into the heavens and roots that went to the center of the earth. The thing is Yggdrasis is not just a tree it is a whole ecosystem rammed with complex conflicts with many gods, eagles, dragons, snakes, squirrels and deer together with no end of mythical characters, not least the highest of the Norse gods Odin himself

“The most satisfactory translation of the name Yggdrasil is ‘Odin’s Horse’. Ygg is another name for Odin, and drasill means ‘horse’.

When Odin hung, speared, for nine days on the Yggdrasil, he uttered the words that he had ‘sacrificed himself onto himself’. This stanza gives us a description of the unity existing between the Godhead and the Tree in the myths. To emphasise this connection, we find in old English the word treow, which means both tree and truth. Etymologically, then, truth and tree grow out of the same root. Subsequently, in the Norse creation myth, man and woman originated from trees. We are all the sons and daughters of the Ash and Elm tree: the first man was called Ask, born from the Ash, and the first woman Embla, born from the Elm. Their oxygen offers us the primordial conditions for life. Ask and Embla sprouted from Yggdrasil’s acorns, and so it is that every human being springs from the fruit of Yggdrasil, then to be collected by two storks, that bring them to their longing mothers-to-be.”

Yes we too like an origin myth but it is Yggdrasil symbolising the search for knowledge and truth that we relate to in an ecosystem, ours and real not mythological, full of conflict from wars to micro-aggressions.

CRGI seeks truth, we pursue and share knowledge and we seek to understand and to manage conflict, join us and one day you may find yourself at Mimir’s Well, and that is another story for another day my friend.

Book Review – “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” by Robert Sopolsky.

WOW, this is some read, I read the third edition of this and it has been substantially revised. Sopolsky is an incredibly interesting person himself and as a professor of neurology and a primatologist he occupies a unique position in academia. Make no mistake I am a huge fan of his work, I have his new book ‘Behave’ sat waiting to be read.

Written with an interesting sense of humour this book introduces the reader to some incredibly interesting medical research and practise. I have been using certain items from this book into my teaching and cortocorticoids is now my new favourite word.

The emphasis is on stress and there is a wealth of information on how the body and in particular the brain reacts to stressors. Trust me and go get this book, work through it slowly one chapter at a time. Take weeks not days to read it, let the information seep into your subconscious.

As I worked my way through the chapters I could see my friends and family and some of their problems appearing from within the pages. Frighteningly I recognised a few things about myself and how I deal with, react to stressors, trust me I learned some valuable lessons and will modify some of my behaviour as a result.

As I write this review there is a radio debate in the background on the health effects of poverty and the discussion is almost word for word out of this book.

I highly recommend this book, it is an incredibly enlightening read.

Reviewed by Garry Smith.

Political Violence and the Hive Mentality Part III- Garry Smith

I agree with Hoffer on a second point that the individual’s existence is based on their feelings of dissatisfaction with themselves so the surrender their individual will to the freedom of being told what to do, who to love, who to hate, and this hate spreads through the mob when it forms. Once one member of the mob triggers the others then the hive mentality takes over and the desire to sting infects all. But it’s happening here too, we are not that far behind.

As I watch these groups ‘protest’ their behavours continue to amaze me, do these people ever see themselves afterwards?  People act but do not think, their emotionally driven violent outbursts are experienced outside of our ‘normal’ frames of reference, my wife Karen Moxon Smith wrote in an article for Conflict Manager magazine “I have seen grown men cry when the CCTV shows them repeatedly kicking someone in the head when they honestly thought they had only acted lawfully”.

When individuals lose control, and I have been there, they will commit acts they would be shocked at any other time, appalled even. I have been in mobs that once a victim goes down then the kicking starts and it goes on long after they are unconscious. Football violence is fuelled by many things, the desire of young men to fight, the consumption of alcohol, the intense tribal emotions and an othered enemy who are going to attack us. I have swarmed, I have attacked and I have hurt people and just because the supported a different team. Not politics or religion or race, football.

So I understand this from a subjective perspective as well as an objective one, I may be wrong, feel free to disagree, I welcome that but I have been there and done that. To non participants the shock of the hive attacking can be as frightening as for those actually attacked, especially when lives are being taken now. Once you upset the hive and the bees come out it is almost impossible to get them back in.

We are, post event, and from the comfort of our armchairs, unable to comprehend this behavour when we see it and one coping mechanism is to other those involved. They are not human, they cannot be, and from there it is one small step to de-humanising them, whoever they are. We, whoever we are, need to stop these people; we can only do so by banding together against them.

Can anyone hear a small buzzing sound or is it just me?

The thing I have not discussed and that really bothers me is that hives are really easily triggered. Social media today allows not just one hive to be triggered but multiple hives in multiple locations. Chaos can erupt real fast now and infection can be global in seconds. The massive threat is hate groups manipulating social media to trigger their own hives and this triggering the hives of opposing hate groups. They feed of one another. They feed of truths as much as they feed off lies and often nobody knows what is truth or lie.

The social infection can go viral incredibly quickly and there are many who, as Haidt shows very clearly, act instantaneously on emotion and then proceed to rationalise the emotion. As they say the first victim when war breaks out is the truth, for me the first victim when emotion breaks out is rationality.

Over here in the UK the electorate defied all the major political parties, all the major institutions, interfering foreign leaders and all the celebrities they wheeled out to tell us our future was better in the European Union, and we won. Brexit should become a reality in the next few years, those who supported Brexit were attacked mercilessly as bigots, little Englanders, ignorant, stupid and racist, and we were the undesirables. The hive mentality was triggered and the stinging went on for weeks led by a fearful political class and the comfortable middle classes, it is still going on now.

I mentioned hate groups from minorities earlier, well the biggest hate group is those who have the most invested in the system, the socio-economically comfortable and the people who do their bidding, they will drop their veneer of rationality and reasonableness when threatened and they will swarm. The hive mentality has a wider reach than we thought.

Does this remind anyone of Nazi Germany or Communist Russia or even the horrors of Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge with their year zero and killing fields? You see people love a charismatic leader and they in turn only love their true believers.

Remember that in his novel 1984, Orwell described that “the two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.”

Welcome to our brave new world where freedom of thought and expression are feared and those of us who value that freedom have a fight on our hands. The virtue signalling identity politicos are  now fighting one another as allies who have even minor differences are transformed into enemies. Thought crime is now real and punishable by death, white men are terrorists and should be eliminated according to some.

In London a couple of weeks ago there was a political attack on a group of radical feminists at speakers corner, they were not attacked by chauvinistic men but transgender supporters and one very angry and possibly mentally unstable transgender person who had posted his intent to harm someone on social media earlier that day.

Members of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists had gathered at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park, central London ahead of a talk on gender issues. They moved the discussion from another venue in London after threats were made by rivals Trans Activists. But the protesters discovered the 50 TERFs were meeting in Hyde Park and confronted them.

“Members of Action for Trans Health (ATH) have issued a series of incendiary statements on social media since its supporters were involved in an attack on a 60-year-old woman in London’s Hyde Park on September 13.

The victim, Maria MacLachlan, suffered bruising after being punched by an activist widely identified on social media as Tara Flik Wood, 28, a courier who lives in London. MacLachlan was with a group of feminists who were planning to hold a meeting about gender identity.

Unlike MacLachlan and her group, ATH believes that anyone who self-identifies as a woman — without having undergone transition surgery — should be allowed to use women-only spaces such as changing rooms. The ATH extremists refer to MacLachlan and women who hold similar views as “trans-exclusionary radical feminists”, or Terfs.”

So who are these evil TERF’s? We according to Action for Trans Health Terf’s are, yes you guessed it, NAZIS.

“After the attack ATH’s Edinburgh branch sent out a series of tweets defending the use of violence: “punching Terfs is the same as punching Nazis. Fascism must be smashed with the greatest violence to ensure our collective liberation from it”, and “violence against Terfs is always self defense”.

Yes you read it correctly attacking a Terf is always self defence. What disgraceful crime were these Terf’s committing, well they were peacefully standing around at Speakers Corner whilst one of them sang a little song she had written, the ATH activists arrive and begin chanting, “when Terf’s attack we fight back’ on and on until Tara Flik Wood actually attacked a woman taking pictures.

Nobody was attacking anybody, it was a group of women enjoying their democratic right to spot their views, I have been to speakers corner a few times, I have heckled good naturedly, I have heard things I agreed with and things I did not agree with. Somebody saying things you do not like is not an attack, at least not in the physical sense. The hysterical ATH, BLM, Alr-Right activists do not understand this, once the hive mentality is triggered its time to use violence against words.

The Terf’s said things ATH did not like, they deserve to die, let’s build the camps now. Fuck me sideways but once again we have people using Nazi tactics claiming their victims are Nazis because they hold a different opinion.

I am off to colour my hair purple, chop off my manhood and put on my jackboots, there must be a human face somewhere that needs stamping on, forever.

 

Political Violence and the Hive Mentality Part II – Garry Smith

Traditionally the political left accuses the political right of doing this and vice versa, but the centrist parties do it too, in fact all the political class do it and all religions have been doing it far longer.

In his book ‘The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt revives the work of several theorists who were also sacrificed at the stake of political correctness and shows how resulting evidence almost conclusively provides the evidence they lacked which allowed the ‘PC mob to grab their pitchforks and light their torches.

I am not claiming that much for Le Bon but he sure saw something the others did not want to see. 
There is another parallel I want to draw with Haidt’s work that also prompted me to go back to Le Bon, Le Bon was here first and Haidt never heard of him, or if he did he never recognised him. 
Maybe because Le Bon was lost in some pseudo academic backwater is what I would think, forgotten and unloved. However, I suggest you go get your free copy from Kindle now, read it, read it in the full and tell me that it does not describe how the world is today.

As I reread it I saw all the arguments, and candidates, in the recent presidential election in the USA, the BREXIT vote and our recent snap election in the UK, it frames the rise of Islamic State, I will not prime you too much but this is a really interesting read. There are bits that lack intellectual rigour, it is more polemic than analysis and his biases are obvious, BUT, that is not a reason to ignore it. Go get a copy and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

“Man is not a rational animal, man is a rationalizing animal”, Marc MacYoung.

We know people make decisions with the emotional part of the brain first then rationalise those decisions. In the introduction to his classic book ‘Emotional Intelligence’, Daniel Golemen states.

“Our journey begins in part one with new discoveries about the brain’s emotional architecture that offer an explanation of those most baffling moments in our lives when feeling overwhelms all rationality. Understanding the interplay of brain structures that rule our moments of rage and fear – passion and joy – reveals much about how we learn the emotional habits that can undermine our best intentions, as well as what we can do to subdue our more destructive or self-defeating impulses.”

So back to 2016 and 120 years after Le Bon put forward his theory we saw mobs rampaging in the USA as the presidential election certainly divided good people, we saw racial tensions thrown into this mix too with black and white supremacists making capital from these divisions. We saw the Alt-Right on the streets and Antifa using the iconography and tactics of the fascists, WOW. Hate spewed forth as emotions ran incredibly high. Why are we surprised when the violence comes? Now in 2017 people are attacking statues, not just statues of Confederate soldiers but any old statue that triggers their ‘I am offended’ button. Just like the religious lunatics that are ISIS history can be attacked if it does not fit in with your righteous world view.

When Hitler and Stalin did this it was accompanied by industrial scale imprisonment, torture and murder of millions of people.

When manipulated by charismatic leaders groups of true believers form behind the new movement that promises a better future. Eric Hoffer describes these people and we can see them daily, our sweet Corbynistas and Britain First in the UK, the alt-right and Antifa in the USA.

First they join the group and gain acceptance, then they subscribe then ingest the groupthink 1984 style until their vision is all that matters, not whether it is rational, not whether it is possible, there is no consideration of a down side to the better future vision because it is incomprehensible that there could be one. So with fixed and totally ideologically armed warriors can pursue total control and the driving before them of their enemies and their eventual liquidation.

Their emotions are hijacked and emotional flooding is explained brilliantly by Goleman:

“The technical description of flooding is in terms of heart rate rise from calm levels. At rest, women’s heart rates are about 82 beats per minute, men’s about 72 (the specific heart rate varies according to a person’s body size. Flooding begins at about 10 beats a minute above a person’s resting rate; if the heart rate reaches 100 beats per minute (asit easily can do during moments of rage or tears), then the body is pumping adrenaline and other hormones that keep the distress high for some time. The moment of emotional hijacking is apparent from the heart rate: it can jump 10, 20 or even as many as 30 beats per minute within the space of a single heartbeat.”

Yes it is that quick, this all happens in a single heart beat, less than a second, makes the 2 minute hate in 1984 look quaint doesn’t it? The thing is this massive flood has rapid physiological effects as Goleman explains that when flooding happens:

“Muscles tense; it can seem hard to breathe. There is a swamp of toxic feelings, an unpleasant wash of fear and anger that seems inescapable and, subjectively, takes “forever” to get over. At this point – full hijacking – a person’s emotions are so intense, their perspective so narrow, and their thinking so confused that there is no hope of taking the other’s viewpoint or settling things in a reasonable way.”

Once incited when time for action comes the mob mentality takes over, here the work of Le Bon seems as good an explanation as any other. Actual attacks on communities, even suspected attacks, in the currently overcharged atmosphere cause people to swarm and to sting their real or perceived enemies.

The mob was feared by Le Bon, he was frightened of the mob and its riots, but those riots were underpinned by revolutionary ideas that threatened the existing order. He was frightened by social change and in a time where execution by guillotine was in overdrive who can blame him.

I think we now have a phenomena worse than the mob as there appears to be little rationale behind most of these hate groups other than fear, misconceptions and misunderstandings, be they the KKK, Westborough Baptists, Islamists throwing gays off roofs or Black Lives Matter screaming for the slaughter of white babies, my observation from the much calmer side of the pond, is that they had rhetoric, now they are mostly spewing out hate and some of it is vile.

Youtube Video of the Week – Trans Gender Wars

I guess this falls into the category of micro identity politics where violence is now the new tool of choice. This kind of behaviour will be discussed in Political Violence and the Hive Mentality.

Every Sunday since 1866 a range of different speakers gather at Speaker’s Corner to air their views and the tradition continues today. Many famous figures have spoken at Speaker’s Corner including Karl Marx, Lenin, William Morris, George Orwell and Lord Soper.

Tolerance of the views of others and a respect for freedom of speech are the cornerstones of British democracy or not if you are a gender fascist full of ate and intolerance.
The transgender issue is sensitive in Britain today especially for these narrowly focused virtue signalling groups, sparking passionate debate that passion has erupted into the sort of outright violence normally associated with football hooligans.

Two factions – the Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (or so-called TERFs) and their bitter enemies Trans Activists – clashed in an unseemly bust-up that ended with a 60-year-old woman being bundled to the ground and punched in the face. The incident was caught on video and is now being investigated by the police.Mother-of-two Maria MacLachlan, who describes herself as a ‘gender critical feminist’, was attacked at Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park at about 7pm on Wednesday.

She had joined around 50 fellow TERFs who were to be given details of the secret location for a talk entitled What Is Gender? The Gender Recognition Act And Beyond.TERFs are feminists who are opposed to some campaigning by transgender women.The event was originally scheduled to be held at a community centre in New Cross, South-East London, but was switched following online warnings of a protest from Trans Activists.Among the groups threatening to protest were the LGBTQ+ Society from Goldsmiths University, an organisation called Sisters Uncut, and Action For Trans Health London. Ms MacLachlan told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I was chatting to one of the speakers, Miranda Yardley, and people started to come who looked different to the rest of us. There was quite a generation thing.‘These studenty-looking types were turning up and some arguments started to take place but I kept well out of it.’

Ms Yardley is a prominent transgender writer and was guest speaker at the event along with Dr Julia Long, who describes herself as a ‘lesbian feminist and defender of women-only spaces’. Ms MacLachlan said: ‘Julia said she was going to sing a song she had written. She took a megaphone and as soon as she put it to her lips, these kids started shouting, “When the TERFs attack, we fight back.”‘I thought, “I can film this, it will be interesting.”

They were getting louder and louder. Then suddenly someone tried to grab my camera. It was scary. Someone kept trying to get my camera. I think it was a girl, but I couldn’t tell because they had a hoodie over their eyes.’Footage of the incident was uploaded to YouTube the day after the alleged attack, and it has since been viewed tens of thousands of times.In a statement to police, Ms MacLachlan later identified a trans-woman who is currently trying to raise £5,000 for vocal-cord surgery to make her voice higher, as one of her attackers.

Her Lumix camera was smashed and the memory card stolen. She also sustained a nasty bruise on her face, red marks on her neck and grazed knees. She added: ‘I didn’t go to hospital but it has really shaken me up.’Several feminists called 999 and three cars containing six officers arrived on the scene, but no arrests were made.Notes were passed among the feminists letting them know the secret venue was the University Women’s Club in Mayfair.

They left in small groups hoping not to be followed but were tracked down by the activists. Another feminist, Jen Izaakson, said tension remained high at the venue. She added: ‘The staff had to form a human chain to let our people in and keep protesters out.’Because students from Goldsmiths had been so vocal in opposing the original meeting, the feminists believe they formed a section of the protesters.

A spokesman for the university said: ‘Goldsmiths prides itself on its diverse and inclusive community. We uphold the right to peaceful protest but cannot condone violence.’Action for Trans Health London issued a statement saying: ‘We condemn violence against women in all forms. We’re proud that many self-organising activists, allies and supporters stood against hatred, misogyny and intimidation.’A Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed an investigation was ongoing and video evidence would form part of their inquiries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UDmJsbRmqU

Political Violence and the Hive Mentality – Garry Smith

This article in its subsequent parts is a complete redraft of a previous article but brought up to date after reflecting on the recent political violence particularly in the USA. I am a firm supporter of people having the right to speak freely, however obnoxious I feel their views are. I hope it touches on points others fear to write about or discuss in case they are screamed at and attacked. So here goes, feel free to comment at the end, I will take any comments that I have not already included and weave them into the article, so it could be our first interactive article.

Regards, Garry.

I will start with a confession. Sometime ago before we had Bertie, our cute little Puggle, we had a Border Collie cross called Guinness. He was a lovely dog too and like Bertie used to like his walks. On one nice sunny day we were walking along a path in the Mayfield Valley and I noticed a large number of wasps coming in and out of a cavity in a tree. I am not sure why but I threw a stone into the cavity hitting the nest, guess what happened? Yes, out came the wasps and I made a run for it. The problem was Guinness did not.

The wasps caught up with Guinness, I tried swatting them off him with my hands but they, and there were a lot of them, began to crawl into his coat. I did what I could by getting him to a part of the nearby river that was deep enough and pushing him in. Hoping this would kill the wasps. They had already been on him for a couple of minutes and I had no clue as to whether they were stinging him. There were no signs that they were but he did slow down as we walked home.

I felt real guilt as my stupid actions had caused my dog possible suffering. The good part is after a nap on the lawn Guinness went about the rest of the day as normal.

The thing is I know about wasps, I know that like bees in a hive, they will swarm if they feel the hive is under attack let alone under actual attack. If you have seen bees swarm it is a pretty impressive sight and not something you want to provoke. Stings hurt and multiple stings hurt more. Insects, bees and wasps in this case, have no intellect, if attacked or if they think they are being attacked,

Swarming can also be the result of overcrowding in a successful hive so the hive splits and reproduces itself. This is different; these bees are looking for a new home. Our previous bees and wasps were looking to defend theirs, and for the insect mass attack is the best form of defence.

There are a number of different things that can trigger a swarm, overcrowding, lack of space, reducing pheromone levels in the queen, reducing pheromone levels in the population, increasing daylight are just a few, plus some species of bee are more prone to swarming than others.

Whatever signal that triggers the attack these insect will sacrifice themselves in the process. Take a look at this video.

Frightening stuff. The thing is people behave this way too. I am now going to reprint a book review I wrote for the February 2016 Conflict Manager on ‘The Crowd, A Study of the Popular Mind‘ by Gustav Le Bon 1896.

I first came across this book in my studies at the University of Warwick in a class called Social and Political Movements taught by Professor Jim Beckford. Jim was a great tutor and a really nice guy to boot; his classes were always looked forward to although his rigorous analysis of ideas may upset some of today’s precious petals.

The first class looked at the work of Le Bon and his study of the psychological nature of crowds. I remember liking it at the time but feeling that it was just too much guess work and overtly influenced by the authors experience of a turbulent and frightening, for him,  period of French history.

That was back in September 1990, much water has passed under the bridge since then, so why come back to it now?

Well it all comes back to a conversation I had with Rory Miller early in 2015 about ConCom and the triune brain when I mentioned Le Bon and his theory. Le Bon’s analysis is that once subsumed in a crowd an individual surrenders their individuality and a psychological mind is formed through contagion, emotions spread throughout the crowd and freed from individual responsibility the baser instincts take over. The individual ceases to think about the consequences of their actions as emotions take over and acts of both barbarity and heroism are possible.

Le Bon describes the ‘spinal cord’ as being in control and not the intellectually reasoning brain. 
 Ring any bells? Well it rang mine.

The thing is in the PC days of the 90’s this became a bit of an Aunt Sally, by the students that is, to be fair Jim used it in its historical context to begin a much wider and deeper exploration of the subject at hand. For the students, fresh out of some of the top schools in the UK, it was to be belittled, corny, out of date, lacking in evidence etc.

I was 31, I had been involved in a lot of crowd violence involving a full on riot with flaming barriers, thousands of people mobilised and hand to hand fighting with specially trained units of riot police, plus the occasional football riot, I thought differently.

Though written in a voice from a different age and though the criticisms raised were in part valid, it was not enough to write it off as a whole, I thought all along there was something of value here.

Like our friends the bees there are many different triggers that can cause the hive mind to kick in and for humans to swarm. Politics and religion are the big no go areas for most polite social intercourse because this is where families and friends can fall out. In a world where social media is helping people to inhabit their own echo chambers where the harmful and dangerous, people forget different, ideas, however horrible they are to you, cannot actually hurt you. Well the echo chamber is an increasing trend and it lends itself as an actual too to those who will benefit from influencing then manipulating others, the radicalisers.

Traditionally the political left accuses the political right of doing this and vice versa, but the centrist parties do it too, in fact all the political class do it, end of and religion have been doing it far longer..

Part II will follow next week.

 

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Book Review by Garry Smith – Emotional Intelligence; Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman.

I finally got around to finishing this book; it has been on my bookshelf for years, unread and therefore unloved. Not any more, I really enjoyed reading this and it is on my highly recommended list.

Goleman draws on a vast amount of research to put together a thorough explanation of how we function, or not, using our emotions. He explains some very complex processes using excellent analogies, yes it is now dated as it was first published in 1996 but having just watched an intriguing documentary on psychopathy, everything in that programme was covered by Goleman 20+ years earlier.

He explains how genetic predispositions can then be shaped by environmental factors and how we experience socialisation to shape who we become and how we interact with others. I suppose the scary bit is when you sometimes realise you are reading about yourself but it really does help you to understand why some people are as they are, including those you love.

I have to say I am now hooked on learning more and more about how the brain works, its architecture and function, the chemicals it produces and what they do. I have already started to use snippets from the book in my teaching self defence, I keep it simple as students do not need the detail, just the headlines, and it is an instructor’s duty though to immerse themselves in the detail so that they can fully understand their subject.

I firmly believe that striving to gain as much useful information, not just cramming it for cramming sake, is for myself an intellectual necessity, it is a hunger I have to feed. I suppose I was already a believer in emotional intelligence, I long ago realised the problems with measuring intelligence with IQ tests, I guess that is why it lay on my overcrowded bookshelf for so long.

Do I regret not reading it earlier, yes and no, everything has its time and I think I am still learning and will never stop, I try to be the best person I can be, I sometimes fail and now I have a better understanding of why, maybe I can fail less in future.