This is a good video:
This post borrows heavily from nononsenseselfdefense.com (best site on the internet, I always say that) and bullshido.net. If you want to learn more in this vein, read those.
The point of learning how to fight is to give yourself a primal feeling of physical control over your environment which, in the process of acquiring it, will require humility, realism, and pragmatism. The point is NOT to learn how to defend yourself and NOT to become good at dishing out violence. If you want to defend yourself, the very best thing is to acquire social intelligence so you can avoid shitty people and dangerous neighborhoods and talk your way out of bad situations. If you want to be good at violence, buy tools made for the job (guns, pepper spray) and drill yourself in the best practices for using them. By definition humans are social animals and tool users! Even those Antifa fags know there’s no sense playing Bruce Lee, which is why they attack in groups with weapons. You don’t want to be dumber than Antifa fags, do you?
All that said, learning how to fight unarmed is not optional for male humans. It is absolutely necessary, and that’s because the primal feeling of physical control over your environment is a 100% necessary step to achieve the attitude of an adult man. In-group male dominance hierarchies have traditionally been sorted out through nonlethal fistfights, and even if you don’t personally feel this way you can bet the majority of men around you do. I remember when I was 16 my dad was still absolutely convinced he could thrash me if he wanted to, and one day I got fed up and offered to do some light sparring. After slapping his slow, untrained ass around a bit we went to the ground and I arm-barred him. He was still in denial about this for about five years afterward, because he’d never known how to fight and therefore always had something to prove. High school never ends, only the dress codes change.
The reason this is necessary is so profound it’s a cliche: if you can fight, you won’t have to. People can smell it on you. More than that, they can see it in the way you walk. It can’t be faked, or at least that aspect of Game hasn’t been worked out just yet. I’ve worked the door at a club in a dangerous part of town where walking away from the monkey dance wasn’t an option and despite many altercations I never once had to lay a hand on anyone, except to guide evicted drunks to the door. Which is great! Fighting is illegal and unpredictably dangerous—you may think you’re in a fight for dominance right up until you notice those punches you were feeling were actually stab wounds. So if you’re going to hurt someone you might as well premeditate it and use the proper tools as I mentioned before. The point, again, is not the ability but the visceral sense of respect, both your own respect for yourself and the respect of all those predatory chimps out there plagued by insecurities because they never mentally left high school (or worse).
If your social savvy ever fails you and you get in a real self-defense situation, your best option is to hand over your wallet and phone, use verbal judo to buy time while you back away slowly with your hands up, and then make a break for it. Yeah, that doesn’t feel very manly. So what? This is where the humility and realism from training martial arts comes in really handy. When you know what you’re capable of, you don’t feel the need to constantly test yourself, which lets you leave your stupid pride with your wallet and phone. It’s worth a lot less than the $20 and subway stamps in your wallet. A stick-up is no place to find out what you’re made of. If you really need the feeling of social dominance that people used to get from fighting, make more money than other people and become skilled in showing off your class markers. That’s how adults play dominance games.
If you’re defending your family, that’s another thing. Hand over your wallet and phone, use verbal judo while you whine and scrape like the pathetic dog you are…and then at the right moment, use your tools. Make your neanderthal ancestors proud and use your tools.
For advice on wat do…well, the short answer is Brazilian Jiu Jutsu and Western boxing. And the long answer.
Being in good shape makes a significant difference in fighting ability but not as much as you’d think. It actually matters more how much you weigh. Good training matters a hell of a lot more than fitness.
The point of having a male sex in the first place is violence. Study it.
Aeoli Pera 
This is great poast.
Side effect of knowing what I’m talking about for once.
Some 15 years ago, taking a course at SWC at Bragg, our morning PT consisted of Krav Maga (a system I tend to sneer at, anyway). I was paired with a kid only a bit over half my age, West Pointer, very fit. I was old, somewhat overweight, with a bad heart, and not in good shape after practicing law for a number of years. The kid didn’t have a chance. Beat the boy like I owned him. Indeed, beat him so badly, so regularly, that it was shocking and humiliating to him, and made me a bit ashamed of taking advantage of someone who was so much weaker in the pertinent attributes. Some of that was my speed advantage but not most of it.
And, be it noted here, the pertinent attributes are neither strength nor skill, but the will to conquer and indifference to being hurt or even killed, oneself, provided one still wins.
Hmmm…there’s a Japanese fable….here we go: https://www.storynory.com/the-samurai-and-the-tea-master/
Thanks Tom, that was a nice story, and an enjoyable read. Solomon wrote to the same effect when he said: Proverbs 16:32 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
There’s a very clear distinction made between zeal and anger in the Old Testament. There’s probably some selection bias though, people who go down in history for acts made in anger tend to be enormous fuckups.
The moralizers in that section sort of miss the point. I didn’t mention it because I wanted you folks to have a chance to think about it first, with the hint I gave. What’s really happening there is that the blowhard with the two swords sees an easy mark for some fun, but when the tea master comes back and assumes that pose, what the real samurai sees is someone ready and willing to die, beyond which there is no more dangerous opponent. He then promptly shit himself and chickened out.
Solomon didn’t miss your point Tom. It is implicit in what he wrote.
>Some 15 years ago, taking a course at SWC at Bragg, our morning PT consisted of Krav Maga (a system I tend to sneer at, anyway).
But itz da most bruutal itz like on da streetz, no rules brah!
>And, be it noted here, the pertinent attributes are neither strength nor skill, but the will to conquer and indifference to being hurt or even killed, oneself, provided one still wins.
I don’t know much about training killers proper, just fistfighters.
>Hmmm…there’s a Japanese fable….here we go: https://www.storynory.com/the-samurai-and-the-tea-master/
I’m reminded of the book “Flow”. MM’s boildown was better than the book itself, but it’s an interesting subject.
Great post tbh.