22 November 2007

Why Come to Me for Help?

Many of my friends locally are younger than I am, and seem to have adopted me as a teacher figure. I do not understand quite why. Today this was demonstrated to me quite well when someone asked me to help teach their friend how to fight, since they had suffered several attacks recently. I have accepted, but I am curious about how exactly they have come to the conclusion that I can fight well.

Now admittedly I can do and have demonstrated it, but I am not highly muscly, I do not have a fighter's build, and I have scars. Let us review for a moment on that. I have scars. Now yes, that means I have survived being hurt, but looking at the other side of it, I have been hit several times with sharp implements that leave nasty scars on my arms, and smaller ones on my chest, back, legs and face. This is not the sign of someone who will teach you how to stop being hurt.

Either way, I have now taken on a student, so I am going to have to think about how to teach someone to cause lots of pain and anguish when you are a lot smaller, weaker and less vicious than the person you are trying to hurt.

There is a psychological mechanism called the doomsday switch, at least that is its name in popular psychology. The doomsday switch is that little trigger in the brain which turns you from being interested in your own survival into being interested simply in causing as much damage as you can. This is not a survival mechanism for individuals, it is a pack mechanism, whereby one herd member will sacrifice itself for the good of the pack. This is the same sort of switch which allows grandmothers to lift cars off their grandchildren, meanwhile ripping every single muscle and joint in their body and bringing themselves to the edge of death.

I do not particularly want to teach someone how to use self-hypnosis to put themselves into this state. I think I will stick with the more basic things, like poking people in the eyes.

5 comments:

AngelConradie said...

poking people in the eye certainly helps... but you still have to be able to stay upright long enough to pok them in the eye!

Nosjunkie said...

people think I can fight because I quite frequintly tell people that I am gonna kick their but and take joy in colouring my threat in to the point where the pure mental image will make you shit your pants

Simply Curious said...

I've never had anyone teach me to fight. I took karate as a little girl, but not for more than a year. I've always been pretty good at fending for myself though when it came to physical arguments. I might be little, but I pack a lot of power and ball up my little fist and wail until someone stops me. I'm sure for men it's different. We, as girls have less rules to battle another girl. In school there was a lot of punching, slapping, pulling hair, kicking, biting, kneeing, spitting, choking, poking, screaming, and food thrown. I've always been more of a sit in my corner and watch, girl, though, unless it came down to defending myself or getting my ass kicked.

Sweets said...

good for you, teach him all your dirty tricks, i think this poor kid can use all the help he can get!

Anonymous said...

A swift kick to the groin always does wonders too!