Developing a pre disposition for effective violence (From the Mountain Guerrilla blog)

From the article:

" I had a student in a class recently ( IIRC, it was the Iowa Combat Rifle course, but I could be mistaken ), ask the very serious question, “How do we prepare mentally for the act of killing another person?” While, after giving him the tongue-in-cheek answer of “go chop people’s heads off with a pen knife?” I gave the legitimate answer that it’s a matter of overcoming cultural conditioning, it’s a question that’s been nagging at my conscience ever since.

For the most part, neither I, nor any of my friends who have been downrange, has ever voiced a concern over a reticence to drop the hammer and kill the enemy. Unfortunately, because of the prevalence of feel-good, New Age humanist bullshit in the soft sciences like psychology, there is a lot of nonsense in the world about “mankind’s natural, inherent reluctance towards intra-species killing.” All the archaeological evidence to the contrary, too many people have conflated a CULTURAL conditioning that illegitimizes interpersonal lethal violence, with a “natural” human reluctance.

Regardless of the status of the oft-voiced reluctance—inherent at the genetic level, or culturally conditioned—the fact is, it is a very real concern for a lot of people ( FYI, before anyone starts citing BG SLA “Slam” Marshall, do more background research into the repudiations of his “research.” ). At the risk of getting slightly side-tracked, as we all know I am wont to do, I will point out that I am an inveterate journalist. At any given time, I’ll have anywhere from six to a dozen different journals floating around. These serve as PT records, a means to record ideas I want to develop into articles for the blog, and things I’ve come across in my reading, as well as simply random thoughts that pop into my head. Once or twice a year, I’ll sit down and compile all the notes and records into a single volume, then dispose of the old, partially full journals that now are serving no purpose other than taking up valuable space on my bookshelves. This is important, because I spent much of last night and yesterday on that very task.

As I collated journal notes from a round dozen different journals, I came across an entry on the subject of this article. I am not sure when I recorded it ( this particular journal actually has notes from over four years ago, so it’s been stashed away in hiding for quite some time! ), or what the original source was, but……

According to the journal entry ( which I obviously agreed with, or I wouldn’t have written it down in the first place ), there are six basic facets to developing a predisposition towards effective violence.

Visualization

One of the first “training” lessons I ever learned was from my grandfather. While I’d like to believe he picked it up during his OSS training in WW2, I honestly never bothered asking him, so I genuinely just don’t know. I’ve since heard the same advice from dozens of different sources, have practiced it myself for well over twenty years, and have repeatedly found…it works. Not just well; it works like a Creole hooker during Mardi Gras…

That lesson was on the importance of visualization. Play the “what if” game. Not just in the context of this conversation, I play the “what if” game constantly. “What if” that car in front of me suddenly loses control and starts sliding all over the road? “What if” that dude walking into the steak house pulls out a Glock and starts shooting people? “What if” I look out my front window and see a group of jocked up dudes in black nomex in my yard? “What if” I’m driving down our road and come to a tree across the road, then gunfire starts pinging into the truck? “What if” I take a gunshot wound to the lower abdomen below my plate carrier?

The key to effective visualization of course, is REALISTIC mental images. Basing your visualization on John Woo action movie behaviors is not going to do you much good. Fortunately, if you’re reading this, there is an amazing resource just a couple mouse clicks and typing away, in the form of YouTube. Despite the noise:signal ration on YT, the fact is, there are lots of camera recordings of everything from helmet cam footage of gunfights in Iraq and Afghanistan to criminal assaults and convenience store robberies. By studying the appropriate videos, and dissecting the behaviors and movements of the key players, you can begin to form a relatively accurate mental image of what a given scenario might look like, when you experience it.

This allows you to begin formulating realistic, effective responses to those scenarios. There is ample scientific experimental, research, and anecdotal evidence out there, aptly proving that if you can create a realistic image in your head—visualization—of yourself performing certain actions in response to certain key stimuli, to your brain, it’s as if you had actually performed them. You get the benefits of the experience, without the attendant risks and costs of the experience.

Ultimately, for the inexperienced, the surest way to inculcate the ability to be extremely violent, without actually going out and beating the shit out of people…or chopping off stranger’s heads with a pen knife, is through visualization. Visualize the reticle of your optic superimposed on a bad guy’s face or chest, and “feel” your finger squeeze all the way through the trigger break. Visualize the recoil cycle of the gun, and visualize seeing the rounds impact his shirt or jacket. Visualize his face being distorted from the impact, and the violence of high-velocity blood and brain matter spray out the back of the skull.

Visualize the slight resistance and sudden give of the tip of your kabar puncturing his clothing and flesh. Visualize the warm, stickiness of blood flowing over your hand. Visualize punching a dude in the face so hard that you can “feel” his cheek bones fracture under your fist.

The catch of course, is that you have to actually visualize the entire physical performance, in all of its details, and ACCURATELY. You also have to actually be physically capable of performing the action. I don’t care how realistic your visualization is, if you’re a quadriplegic, you’re not going to be able to perform a Master-level run at the local 3-Gun match. Having the physical ability to perform the tasks, of course, requires…"

(This is not the whole article, click the link to read the full article…which I highly recommend doing)

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What about it? I would rather avoid that plase.

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:+1:110%!

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Watching the media and democrats anti fada dealing with people in general I think that I am on the verge of being very violent and midevil about it most of the time . I’m really just kidding but I don’t think it would be hard to slip into the mind set. You would have to be cold ruthless and without emotion like a planned parent hood clinic worker then you could take thousands of lives a year.

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“ You would have to be cold ruthless and without emotion like a planned parent hood clinic worker then you could take thousands of lives a year.” Good analogy

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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

That’s something that no demoncrat liberal anti-God humanist atheist soy-loving psychologist is going to tell you.

And God said, “let us make man in our image, after our likeness”… so God created man in His own image, in the image of God made He him; Male and female created He them. And God blessed them.

God commanded us to offer peace before attacking. That’s in Deuteronomy.

God said do not kill, in the context of forbidding murder. And the context I have wanting us to be really reluctant and unwilling to do violence on others or hurt or kill them. God Himself weeps over the enemies that He has laid low. He expressed remorse over the enemies that He defeated. He also sang victory over them and how happy he was that he defeated them. God has got both. He does it right.

And the psalms David and others say the same, they trounce their enemies and rejoice over them and stomp them down in the mud,

and then weep for them and say man I’m really sad I had to do it and that you’re destroyed. They are sad for the ones they had to defeat. You fight your enemies righteously and then you feel bad for them and you be humble. You realize that it is God who allows justice to happen and it is under Him that the system of justice in the universe exists.

Lamentations says that God does not willingly bring suffering on mankind. Most of the Psalms, which are full of God and men being Warriors against evil people, also express sorrow over having to destroy and defeat an enemy.

God said “thou shalt not kill,” and He meant something when He said that. He thereafter commanded holy war, and commanded judicial justice in society, and gave victory to the Israelites in self-defense, and in war.

And then God judged and condemned people who were overly violent and killed for no good reason. About wrongful assault He said “eye for eye and tooth for tooth,” whatever you wrongfully do to someone it should be done back to you.

Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.

If someone wrongfully assaulted you and gives you a black eye, then they should be given a black eye as punishment. And that’s the end of it. It is murder to kill someone because they tried to take your wallet, if they weren’t trying to kill you.

You took my wallet so I kill you? That’s murder. You punch me in the eye so I stab you to death? That’s murder. Eye for eye and tooth for tooth sounds rough, but it means that you can’t go beyond what the aggressor was trying to do to you. You can’t kill them because they tried to knock you out.

You defend yourself, but then you don’t carry out the Eye for eye justice afterward. You don’t hunt them down to carry it out, but the authorities might.

And then Jesus added to the rules, that the authorities and others around you can defend you using eye for eye and for tooth for tooth, but you yourself should not exact this law against your own enemies for yourself. This is the principle that still stands, but you personally can’t be the one that carries it out.

You can’t avenge yourself this way, but others around you and the authorities can. Your neighbor could avenge you, and the authorities could avenge you, but you can’t do the eye for eye tooth for tooth for yourself.

We need to have a certain attitude about ourselves when we carry ourselves in this realm of being someone who has the fight, a warrior. God calls Himself a Warrior in Exodus. God called king David a man after His own heart. God condemned Joab for caring out his war-grudge in civilian life.

God said “hate what is evil love what is good.” God said: “in your anger, do not sin.” Be angry and sin not. Anger is not a sin, if you don’t hold onto it forever, it’s whatever actions are sinful, that get inspired by the anger.

Jesus Christ continue this principle. Yes we can fight if we need to. Jesus fought to escape the grasp of the people who were going to kill him once. Jesus commanded us all to sell our winter jackets or our Xboxes and Playstations and faming computers in order to buy a sword.

Yes God affirms that we can fight when the battle is righteous such as a just war or a holy war, we can fight in self-defense, we can defend others, we can fight animals, we can fight bad guys, but we must feel remorse over our enemies whom we defeat,

the Psalms even say that if we rejoice over the enemies we destroy or whom God destroys for us, then God will come and destroy us too because we were supposed to love our enemies. That’s in the psalms and that’s what Jesus said also. But this is even in the Old Testament, we’re supposed to love our enemies. We have the same God from beginning to end in the Bible.

I would rather that my enemy goes to Heaven than Hell even if I had to Shoot him. In fact I directly specifically hope he does not go to Hell but that God can get them to Heaven.

Deadly force should not be used by me to defend my own life. Maybe someone else could, and I could defend someone else that far, but I myself shouldn’t, unless it was that I was in on the battlefield and war were declared. If war were declared, then yes I could use deadly force to defend myself.

If I’m in danger of my own life while at the same time other people around me such as my family are in danger of their own lives, then because there are others around me then I can use that force to defend myself too. But if I’m alone in the woods, I could knock them out but I should not kill him.

I hope that by the way I fight my enemies, if I have to fight them, or if it is right that I must, Or ought to happily and desirously fight them, I hope that my behavior and words and the way I fight, or somehow that I can share the gospel, that my enemies will be pointed towards Jesus by the way I fight them. I hope that that is chivalry. I hope they fight me and come away praising Jesus and repenting of the idea that they tried to fight me. And I want to win. I trust God for my victory and success and safety.

But the Bible already talks a great deal about this issue of how should we condition ourselves to battle, war, defense, and conflict and how should we deal with preparing for conflict and danger and violence.

God shows us in His Bible how to prepare for war, preparing for self-defense, the mindset, and how should we feel towards your enemies but before during and after the fight. You can righteously judge an enemy and put a bullet through his head through his helmet and out back the other side with his brains following, and still love him and hope He goes to Heaven.

You can fight him the right way. God doesn’t need torture or unrighteous tactics because God gives victory without them. God demonstrated this so many times in the Old Testament. And God gives information and knowledge without them.

You can love God and you can have sorrow and sadness that you had to do what you had to do, but that’s the point – you had to do it; or it was just the right thing to do.

It is possible to have joy in war and fight a holy war with joy and happiness and not regret it. To want to go and fight WW2, to gleefully go off to fight the Crusade in the holy Land against the mohomeddan Arabs, or to willingly and determinedly fight the War on Terror.

It is possible to be carried along with the war zeal of God like the Israelites were, berserking through Jesus Christ Yahweh God, and in holy furor in the Holy Spirit of the Lord they destroyed the entire Philistine city of Jericho. It is possible for this to happen today and it would be righteous to do it, but it’s not too common so I wouldn’t expect it.

God has got that extremeness of war covered, you don’t need to worry about it too much, he’s got you covered. He also says we need to love our enemies and be very circumspect about what we do and why. If our enemies are hungry we need to feed them.

Throughout the Bible from beginning to end God does not want us to be quick or on emotional about this sort of thing but to not to want to. God wants us to not want to have to go there and to be sad that we did. For the most part.

Culture is not a man-made concept that exists merely in the minds of men, it’s not a conditioning. It is inherent to humanity. It does not supersede the individual or God or their both mutual right to take the third option. But,

Culture is something that God created. God created the human race and He created families and he created cultures nations and civilizations. He divided our languages so that all the languages that exist today would exist.

The Bible even says that every nation, civilization and culture that exists right now, God raised them them up to exist. And when they turn wicked He will tear them down. He has done this for ages while carrying out his plan to get the gospel to every man woman and child on the planet and let people make their own choices in totality so that no nasty sinner myself included on this Earth who could possibly be saved, would be lost.

History has a beginning in history will have an end and then Eternity will begin. There will be a resurrection in-the-flesh of everyone good and bad, everyone goes to their respective eternal place, and a new heaven and a new earth will be created, and Eternity will begin.

God is with you on “2A” values, which predate the existence of America because they are God’s values that God gave to humanity because its the truth and what’s right, beautiful, and good. It’s of God.

But God has even more values and things that he just, but how to prepare our minds and how to think about the whole issue and about our enemies.

When Jesus was crucified, and He is Lord and Savior, and He is risen and coming again, when Jesus was crucified He pointed out to His disciples that throughout the entire crucifixion and trial process He has 12 legions of angels ready right then to defend Him and rescue Him from the cross at any moment.

One angel was able to instantly kill 185,000 Assyrians that attacked and besieged Hezekiah‘s kingdom of Jerusalem.

Jesus had 12 legions of them at His disposal to fight the Romans and rescue Jesus. Individual angels have the God-given capacity to carry and distribute plagues that can strike the entire Earth with desolation.

But Jesus didn’t do that he let himself be killed, he wasn’t defending someone else it was his own life that was on the line, and he used his own death to rescue Barabbas … because He wanted to.

He allowed Himself to die so He could save all of us from our sins. And then he came back to and then he came back to life later life later. As a result every Christian who dies will eventually be resurrected too. We can afford to sacrifice our lives at the right time. And when He was about to die He asked His Father “please forgive them because they don’t realize what they’re doing, killing me.”

God is in Heaven and He judges everyone who dies because everyone dies eventually, and He’s not going to except our excuses how we want to be grizzly dark tough guys and not listen to Him and what he says about life.

God not going to take our excuse that we were traumatized at church. I don’t go to church frequently anymore because I’ve been traumatized at church but I’m not going to turn against God or His Word or His Son Jesus.

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the only way to know is when the situation is staring you in the face…

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There is a reason the united states military forces stopped shooting at circles and started having us shoot at silhouettes. Psychologically most young men and women are taught that murder is wrong and that killing someone is by default murder. Grossman and S.L.A Marshall both claimed that the majority of soldiers where not shooting at the enemy out of psychological fear. Military training has been modified to reduce this effect however incidents of PTSD have risen since WWII and the increased number of soldiers actually taking lives.
I would suggest reading Studying Killology for yourself. I have seen the effects firsthand and I will tell you I believe that there is truly NO way of knowing what your reaction will be. I believe that men and women of faith however that believe in what they are doing are less impacted.

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Funny… I always thought I was a bit off my rocker for visualizing things this author is now telling me to visualize. This may be one of the first times I felt normal.

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I don’t think the equal force thing is as easy to apply in real life during the actual event, maybe after.

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@Robert will this fit in tomorrow’s quote of the day?

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PLEASE use this as the quote! Thanks!

Omg the best!

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fill up your tablet screen too much?

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Fits perfect!

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I have for many months now been watching YT videos of street fights, road rage, instant karma, badge cams, robberies, that sort of thing. What I was hoping it would do, and I believe has done, is desinsitized me. While I can not bear to watch an animal being hurt, I am not nearly as upset when I see the hate, anger, violence and fighting in these videos among my fellow human beings.

Anyway, I do study how large groups of people react and engage with the people who are fighting. I hear the words they are screaming. I see how they have no problem ganging up on one person. Having not been around this kind of violence in my adult life, I figured getting large doses of the real thing would be as close to being there as I can get. I try and learn from what I am seeing. And like this article says, I put myself in that situation and create scenarios where ever I go.

I also watch educational videos about fighting, self defense, survival, etc.

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@Harambe1

Interesting, but though I am no Biblical scholar, I have read the Bible. I can’t recall where it says for us to feel sorrow or remorse over killing our enemies (though that may well be a good idea). Can you help me learn more about this by citing the verses in the Bible that talk about this? Also, where does it talk about us not taking out our enemies directly, but instead, rely on others to do so?

Thanks for any citations you can provide on these topics.

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What I don’t under stand is the ganging up on one person. When I was growing up you fought one on one and if someone tried to jump in on a fight someone would pull them off or give them a thumping.

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That’s not how it is today. There is no honor in the fight. When people see the other person getting the upper hand on their friend, they all jump in. In some fights, I do see that they keep it one on one, but that is not the norm, especially among women.

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Always remember that there is no such thing as a “fair fight”. If you are to the point where there is no other choice but violence, you do anything and everything you can to win, no matter how “dirty” or “unfair”, you do whatever it takes to come out on top. You have to assume that your opponent/s are going to do the same. Do not give them any advantage or any slack. Go all in or don’t go at all.

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YOU FIGHT TO WIN!

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