Chapter 66: Trade-offs

In general, within the security discipline and industry at its most basic, security always consists of trade-offs. In Self-defense your security and safety are at the top of most lists as important to survival in conflict and with violence. The goal is to create a balance, achieved between two desirable but incompatible features; a compromise.

You can say that this is another aspect of the yin-yang, i.e., when you lose one quality or aspect of something you gain another quality or aspect. If something increases, some other thing decreases. Where the SD discipline comes in it is critical for the practitioner to understand, “The idea of a tradeoff often implies a decision to be made with full comprehensionof both the upside and downsideof a particular choice, such as when a person decides whether to participate in a conflict (more risky, with lower potential of safety and health, etc.) versus walking away (generally safer, with higher potential returns).”

A good place to begin understanding all the trade-offs in the martial arts, karate and self-defense disciplines is to lean about both conflict and violence in all its forms, start at the no nonsense self-defense site by Marc MacYoung. Step into his book on SD then take a look at another perspective through the efforts of Rory Miller, another professional on the other side of the yin-yang coin. 

One example is when you are doing your thing when something or someone triggers your spidey sense or you observe something hinky as you start to travel into an environment where you have to decide to continue or turn around and go another way. One is about avoidance while the other is about exposing yourself to possible dangers. If you think about the pro’s and con’s of both decisions then you can decide which benefits you as to your personal safety, health and well-being. Your decision will therefore involve some trade-offs but for me the decision is moot, turn around and all because I took the time to study the recommended material and so on. 

Morally speaking which is the best trade-ff between the harm prevented and the harm caused. This is called, “The trade-off interpretation of the requirement of necessity.” What option would result in the least harm to you, to bystanders and even your attacker? What, if you had to go hands-on, would cause the least harm while accomplishing the objective of stopping the attack among your defensive methods and force levels so that you achieve the highest probability of successful defense that includes actually meeting the standards of self-defense legal requirements. Don’t forget the rule of proportionality on the grounds of necessity, etc.

As can readily be perceived such trade-offs are also intricate to study, training, practice and application of various modes and methods of self-defense and that begins here, reading and studying along with a good dose of analysis, hypothesis and synthesis to achieve a self-defense model good for it and teaching and learning and most of all, “Understanding!”