I did ECQC a few times and some limited BJJ in my early twenties. Opened my eyes, gave me a reality check, and I avoid conflict.Originally Posted by jh9
I did ECQC a few times and some limited BJJ in my early twenties. Opened my eyes, gave me a reality check, and I avoid conflict.
William Aprill (RIP) spent a good amount of time teasing this out in Applied Mindset.
Gaming will get you killed in the streets. Dueling will get you killed in the fields.
-Alexander Hamilton
I think this has been pretty well hashed out and the differences of opinion well stated. All of us have lines in the sand that we won't let someone cross without consequences. Just because I'm not angry at Will Smith for his actions doesn't mean that I would have reacted the same way, mostly because I'm not famous and have no reason to be at the Oscar's, but you get where I'm coming from.
If my wife had alopecia, or some other medical condition and someone made a joke that her and/or I didn't appreciate, I would immediately let them know about it. Make the joke again, and they might get their chops busted. A person should be given the opportunity to recognize their error and apologize though unless it's something egregious. Will Smith didn't do that. What is not immediately clear is if they have history. I know they've worked together on at least a Fresh Prince episode back in the day, but there could be some prior history that none of us know about. Or maybe he just lost his shit after all the drama that's surrounded them for the last couple years.
Either way, what I find the most interesting about the whole thing is not that he won't face any charges, but I'm really surprised that he wasn't at least removed from the event. Whether or not he should have been given the award he won later is something that I'll let people who actually care about such things worry about.
I live in a country that has a cultural problem with escalating insults into actual acts of violence.
The fact that an insult here may be answered with a machete to the face does not make this place more polite.
And reading about how things were in the South or West over a century ago, we see something similar- you don't get more politeness, just more stupid violence.
"You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
"I've owned a guitar for 31 years and that sure hasn't made me a musician, let alone an expert. It's made me a guy who owns a guitar."- BBI
Despite the popularity of that phrase on the gunternet, I have always found that an armed society is a society in which more people are armed, and that's about it.
I have not found the politeness of a society to be particularly correlated with armament. I live in an extremely polite cultural micro-climate, you could say. It's almost entirely unarmed.
I have spent plenty of time in places that were much more heavily armed. I have rarely been anywhere as polite. There are plenty of people out there who are, by nature, assholes. If I had to guess, I'd say that more self-centered and obnoxious you are, the more likely you are to land hard inside the Dunning-Kruger club, so being armed is unlikely to quiet you down all that much, because you overestimate your abilities etc...so the jerks will be disproportionately more jerkish.
None of the foregoing should be interpreted to mean that I don't support people getting smacked in the mouth from time to time, of course.
This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff
Same here, and I'm not saying that it is the correct way to handle things but in some areas/settings/people it's pretty common that mouthy people got punched.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a blog post on the subject. While he includes some wokey baloney, he also makes some solid points. Not that Abdul-Jabbar represents some pinnacle of societal introspection or anything, but it's informative to see the view from someone who's world I don't travel in.
https://kareem.substack.com/p/will-s...-bad-thing?s=r
..."Some have romanticized Smith’s actions as that of a loving husband defending his wife. Comedian Tiffany Haddish, who starred in the movie Girls Trip with Pinkett Smith, praised Smith’s actions: “[F]or me, it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen because it made me believe that there are still men out there that love and care about their women, their wives.”
Actually, it was the opposite. Smith’s slap was also a slap to women. If Rock had physically attacked Pinkett Smith, Smith’s intervention would have been welcome. Or if he’d remained in his seat and yelled his post-slap threat, that would have been unnecessary, but understandable. But by hitting Rock, he announced that his wife was incapable of defending herself—against words. From everything I’d seen of Pinkett Smith over the years, she’s a very capable, tough, smart woman who can single-handedly take on a lame joke at the Academy Awards show."...
..."Worse than the slap was Smith’s tearful, self-serving acceptance speech in which he rambled on about all the women in the movie King Richard that he’s protected. Those who protect don’t brag about it in front of 15 million people. They just do it and shut up. You don’t do it as a movie promotion claiming how you’re like the character you just won an award portraying. By using these women to virtue signal, he was in fact exploiting them to benefit himself. But, of course, the speech was about justifying his violence. Apparently, so many people need Smith’s protection that occasionally it gets too much and someone needs to be smacked."...
..."Young boys—especially Black boys—watching their movie idol not just hit another man over a joke, but then justify it as him being a superhero-like protector, are now much more prone to follow in his childish footsteps. Perhaps the saddest confirmation of this is the tweet from Smith’s child Jaden: “And That’s How We Do It.”...
No matter what side of the fence you sit on in this matter, there are lessons to be learned.
You can't predict with certainty how a person is going to react to something you've said. It could be something you don't deem to be an insult, but it could be taken that way. They may ask you to clarify, or they may slap or punch you in the face. Even if you're in a place where it seems highly unlikely, like the Oscar's, violence can still take place and it can happen in a matter of seconds. There isn't always a build up. Sometimes rational people make irrational decisions for a multitude of reasons. Have you ever had a bad day at work and spoke unkindly to your wife or children? Not saying that's on par with slapping a comedian for a joke, but sometimes you meet someone on their worst day who may react in a way that they normally wouldn't.
All able bodied men should be prepared to take a punch and respond accordingly. All able bodied men should be able to shoot a single and a double leg. Chris Rock is a very wealthy man who lives in a bubble, a bubble very similar to Will Smith's. It was very clear that he was completely unprepared to be struck in the face and hadn't the slightest clue how to react except for stand there and look bewildered and stumble over his words. What others saw as poise and composure for not striking back, looked to me like complete unpreparedness. He needs to sign up for a class with @SouthNarc asap.
People and life can be unpredictable. The time to figure out how to defend yourself isn't in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot after you've already been hit in the face by a crackhead wanting your iphone.
True that there is unpredictability, but it is my feeling that those who would initiate violence typically do some type of mental calculation. Especially the face saving type of violence like this.
If Chris Rock had a publicly known passion for wrestling, BJJ or a fight record in a sport like Muay Thai or kickboxing, then it seems more probable that Will Smith would have just said something snarky in his acceptance speech or done a mean interview or Twitter rant.
If Dwayne Johnson had made this joke, same story.
But Will Smith chose to do this (perhaps subconsciously) because he figured Chris Rock would let him. Because he figured he could do it with relatively low cost to his reputation/lifestyle/relationships and the relatively high satisfaction of delivering violence onto a loudmouth prick who had bothered him for years. (There's a history between them)
Victims are chosen because they look like victims, even for these types of encounters.
In fact, I believe it is maybe especially for these types of encounters.
Because you don't want to have a joke made about your wife and then go and get your ass whipped by the dude who just made the joke. Your wife will look at you differently, your kids will look at you differently, and the people who saw it happen will view you as the guy who had a violent tantrum and got stopped by a guy defending himself from your out of control behavior.
So you'd best win that exchange. Do the mental calculation and leverage speed, surprise and violence of action and you just might shock everyone enough to get away with it.
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I agree with this.
I disagree in general but I agree that some victims are chosen because they look like easy prey.Victims are chosen because they look like victims, even for these types of encounters.
I don't look like a victim, I'm a big ogre looking dude with wide shoulders, large arms, and a thick neck. The last time I was sized up by an individual was a couple years ago out to dinner with my wife at a local tavern. It's the kind of place where you have 21 year old kids all the way up to people in their 80s having dinner. They're known for their food, not a rough and tumble bar. This guy gave me the stink eye from the moment we walked in until we left. My wife even noticed it without me saying anything. When we dipped out the side door he was with a group that were smoking and it appeared like he was gonna follow us. We beat feet to the car and skeedaddled outta there. I don't know if this guy could have kicked my ass or not, but I had no desire to find out one way or the other.
Joe Rogan talked about being out with Chuck Liddell when he was prime Chuck that was murking everybody in the octagon, and dudes would still talk shit to him. If the baddest light heavyweight in the world at that time isn't free from being messed with, no one is.
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