The Gift of Fear: Chapter One (1997)
archive.nytimes.com
archive.nytimes.com
Since then, I have been on high alert to the bad stuff happening around me every single day. I'm getting help, and I'm lucky to be able to afford it, but I probably won't ever be the same. One thing I can't afford is doubting my instincts -- I have learned that doing so will get me burned.
This part of the excerpt struck me: "We don't need to learn about violence, many feel, because the police will handle it, the criminal-justice system will handle it, experts will handle it. Though it touches us all and belongs to us all, and though we each have something profound to contribute to the solution, we have left this critical inquiry to people who tell us that violence cannot be predicted, that risk is a game of odds, and that anxiety is an unavoidable part of life."
Quick and dirty take of what I would do differently now (because I think a lot of readers here live in SF and I want to help, but without mongering too much fear):
- Don't be out alone at night on Market Street/near BART stations, especially if you're a woman
- Don't engage with homeless people if you're alone (day or night)
- Don't let a situation escalate. Just avoid areas and people that cue "trouble" for you (this one is context-dependent and will be different for everyone)
These might sound painfully obvious, but when weird stuff is completely normalized like it is in SF, it can be hard to discern what's a real threat and what isn't. I hope this helps.
I've been reading Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now, and there are some sections on violence and using crime as an indicator of progress.
Which leads me to wonder, what the phycology of average people were like through history. Presumably everyone in the middle ages had some experience of violence, and would have witnessed awful acts (in the name of good too).
Was everyone suffering inside?
In my above post, I talk about being a victim of a gender-fueled hate crime. Because that is not normal to me. And it's not very normal for others, either. The violence in the middle ages could have been normalized to the point where it didn't cause as much suffering. That I'm not sure of, but it probably depends on the prevailing religious doctrine of the time.
(Article links to original study but link is bad)
Our instincts have been honed over thousands of years, there's not much to lose in trusting them.
What you say is a point that the book drives home many times. De Becker says it is better to stay away from a decent person than to allow a malicious person to get close to you. And if the person really is decent, they'll understand your reaction.
de Becker's The Gift of Fear is such an important work because it emphasises everything that happens before a violent confrontation. By the time most people realise that they might get hurt, they've already missed a dozen opportunities to recognise the situation and act to protect themselves. It applies not merely to the random acts of violence by strangers that many people fear, but the far more prevalent and insidious forms of violence that develop within relationships of all kinds.
Any meaningful self-defence training must include real fear, real violence and real pain. It must start with the essential skills of situational awareness, threat perception and decision-making under acute stress. It must be rooted in the understanding that skill and technique are nearly always trumped by size and strength, and that most violent confrontations have the possibility of suddenly and unpredictably becoming catastrophic.
Now my friend who has rage issue and is also a football player, kicked so fast and hard at his wrist the gun was nowhere to be seen.
Now, i am neither martial artist nor a football player, i could barely see him kicking but he was ready to punch his face now since the gun was out of the equation.
If it was just me, I would have gave up everything and went home.