Making Sense - Sam Harris - #316 — Self-Defense： Reality and Fantasy

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

00:00:12.500 this you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing the first part

00:00:16.900 of this conversation in order to access full episodes of the making sense podcast you'll

00:00:21.800 need to subscribe at sam harris.org there you'll find our private rss feed to add to your favorite

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00:00:32.500 therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers so if you enjoy

00:00:36.540 what we're doing here please consider becoming one well um i just did megan kelly's podcast

00:00:49.700 yesterday and i like megan she has always treated me extremely fairly even though she has a very

00:00:59.640 different audience that would incentivize her to treat me unfairly that strikes me as a bit of a

00:01:05.940 high wire act so i was happy to talk to her and you can see the results over on her channel in any case

00:01:14.480 megan asked me about the recent incident with the dalai lama which i suppose i should comment on here

00:01:21.000 you can hear what i said to her but i'll just more or less repeat that here i hadn't really thought to

00:01:27.580 react to this but it's understandable that people would be curious to know what i think my history

00:01:33.840 obviously with buddhism and with vajrayana buddhism goes way back i've met the dalai lama on a number of

00:01:42.000 occasions and briefly functioned as a bodyguard for him for about a month when he toured france so i

00:01:50.920 traveled with him to i don't know about a dozen cities or more over the course of a month and got

00:01:56.940 to see how he functioned with many different groups of people and was never less than thoroughly

00:02:04.540 impressed by him as a person this was i think over 30 years ago at this point but found him to be

00:02:14.080 as advertised just an extraordinarily present compassionate and wise man i can't say he was

00:02:23.640 really a teacher of mine i never studied with him in any sense i studied with several lamas who he

00:02:30.520 considered teachers to go kenshin rinpoche nil shulken rinpoche and perhaps others were i'm unaware of

00:02:37.600 the connection so what to say about this recent incident if you haven't heard there's a video that

00:02:47.460 has now widely been circulated and commented upon of the dalai lama teaching in front of an audience and

00:02:55.480 being asked by a young indian boy if he could hug him and once that hug takes place the dalai lama asks

00:03:06.100 for a kiss on the cheek and then a kiss on the mouth and then he sticks his tongue out and asks the boy

00:03:12.880 to suck his tongue which the boy doesn't do and this has been widely perceived as not only bewildering but

00:03:24.280 totally inappropriate i certainly understand that reaction with an emphasis i think on the bewildering

00:03:31.120 part uh it's certainly not appropriate but as i told megan i find it hard to believe that

00:03:36.500 the dalai lama was trying to gratify a sexual urge with a child in front of hundreds of people

00:03:43.940 so in my view the behavior would have even been more concerning had it occurred in private

00:03:50.120 but still it was bizarre it's true that tibetans sometimes greet one another by sticking out their

00:03:57.840 tongues and i suppose there's something that could make sense of this as a joke but from the video it

00:04:04.880 really did seem that the dalai lama gave this boy ample opportunity to actually suck his tongue

00:04:09.920 which makes it hard to interpret as a joke anyway i'm inclined to ascribe this to some form of

00:04:17.640 brain damage on the dalai lama's part he is an 87 year old man whether what's going on in his brain

00:04:24.360 has simply made him less censored in front of an audience and this is some window on to how he's

00:04:31.420 behaved privately with kids i don't know but in any case i'm not inclined to say anything to defend his

00:04:38.480 behavior except to say that if he does have some relevant form of brain damage it would explain it

00:04:45.100 otherwise i have absolutely no idea what was going on there and it's just quite unfortunate because

00:04:52.620 the man had an absolutely stellar reputation i guess it remains to be seen whether this will

00:04:59.320 mar his legacy permanently it doesn't take much more than a moment to change everyone's view of who you

00:05:06.720 are as a person and needless to say that's worth keeping in mind okay and now for today's podcast

00:05:16.140 today i'm speaking with matt thornton matt has been teaching martial arts for more than 30 years

00:05:22.480 and he holds a fifth degree black belt in brazilian jiu-jitsu his organization straight blast gym has more

00:05:30.880 than 70 locations worldwide and has produced champion mma fighters as well as world-class self-defense

00:05:38.140 and law enforcement instructors and he lives with his wife and five children in portland oregon

00:05:43.920 and matt has long been one of my go-to authorities on all things related to martial arts and self-defense

00:05:51.360 as many of you know i've touched this topic a few times on the podcast i've spoken to gavin

00:05:57.900 de becker and jocko willink and scott reitz about many topics related to self-defense and understanding

00:06:07.980 violence and now i have finally done it with matt and we talk about his new book titled the gift of

00:06:14.760 violence practical knowledge for surviving and thriving in a dangerous world we discuss his background in

00:06:21.100 martial arts the reasons a person might want to train in combat sports the ufc and the evolution of

00:06:27.620 mixed martial arts the fundamental principles of effective self-defense the street versus sport

00:06:34.800 fallacy grappling versus striking the persistence of fake martial arts bruce lee's legacy male violence

00:06:44.000 and emotional maturity the male fear of humiliation violence against women the validity of our instincts

00:06:51.980 when judging danger the behavior of predators weapons avoiding violence and other topics anyway it was a

00:07:01.400 pleasure to finally get matt on the podcast i hope you find our conversation useful and now i bring you

00:07:06.880 matt thornton

00:07:08.220 i am here with matt thornton matt thanks for joining me thanks for having me sam so you have long been my guru

00:07:21.320 on uh all things related to martial arts and violence brazilian jiu-jitsu in particular but really

00:07:29.000 you you and i have discussed kind of everything related to self-defense and i remember urging you

00:07:36.680 to write a book on this topic and you have now done that and it's uh congratulations it's a wonderful

00:07:41.200 book uh the book is the gift of violence practical knowledge for surviving and thriving in a dangerous

00:07:47.080 world and um it's really excellent so uh just congratulations i know it took you a long time to produce and

00:07:54.100 it was worth the effort well thank you very much it took me about 10 years but i did get it done

00:07:59.080 eventually so let's just uh go through this systematically because you know violence is a

00:08:03.980 topic that i've touched a few times on the podcast i've spoken to jocko willink and navy seal who has his

00:08:11.940 own podcast who many people will be familiar with uh scott reitz and i spoke about firearms in particular

00:08:19.160 uh i spoke to uh henna gracie about um bjj and i guess i've probably had a few other conversations

00:08:27.140 but um i'd like to take it from the top here and give people insofar as it's possible a comprehensive

00:08:35.120 view of the topic of self-defense before we jump into the conversation proper perhaps you can summarize

00:08:42.860 your background here and how you come to know anything about this topic because actually your

00:08:48.640 background is in reading your book i realized it started earlier than i recall that i'm sure you

00:08:54.820 told me about your childhood before but i think i forgot the details but your father was a police

00:09:00.100 officer right yes my father's a retired police officer and my uh my mother was joe's witness so

00:09:06.480 there's a bit of contradiction that way is that uh that produces uh all manner of conflict i would

00:09:12.680 imagine exactly okay so give me your your background as a martial artist and as somebody who

00:09:18.020 who understands you know interpersonal violence and then will hit the ground running well i think

00:09:24.000 like a lot of people you know i i had some run-ins with bullying and things like that when i was

00:09:28.860 little i was the only child for the first 16 years of my life anyway and my dad was a police officer

00:09:34.500 as i mentioned my mom was very religious so i had a kind of a contradiction in what i was being told

00:09:39.780 how how to handle violent confrontations how to handle situations like this i was being told

00:09:44.860 different things at different times which i found a bit confusing and i eventually uh reached a point

00:09:50.120 where i just started fighting back and then i became fascinated uh right around the same time with

00:09:56.300 what works in fights and what doesn't work in fights and that question of you know what martial

00:10:02.000 arts are going to be effective what tactics or things are actually effective against a fully

00:10:06.740 resisting opponent was always front and center in my mind and so um when i went into martial arts i went

00:10:13.140 into martial arts very specifically to try and answer that question and i talk a little bit about

00:10:18.260 it in the book but i started with the boxing and i boxed for a while and then i became an instructor

00:10:23.260 in what they call jeet kundo concepts which is a kind of a cross training makes martial arts sort of

00:10:29.620 system where they were taking different pieces from different martial arts i became pretty disillusioned with

00:10:35.640 all martial arts and including that but also that was bruce lee's system right bruce lee's

00:10:42.400 concept and the idea was which was a quote he'd actually taken from mount seitan but absorb what

00:10:48.840 is useful reject what is useless add what is specifically your own so it's kind of utilitarian

00:10:53.260 approach to martial arts it's at least that's how it was advertised and i was attracted to that aspect

00:10:59.300 of it but after getting to become an instructor and spend some time with those people for a couple

00:11:04.560 years i started to get a little disillusioned and i saw a bit of hypocrisy i saw them saying one thing

00:11:10.300 to each other or you know amongst the coaches backstage if you will and then something completely

00:11:16.400 different to the audience and it was right around that time that i had a fortunate run-in with

00:11:22.360 brazilian jiu-jitsu so i've told this story a bunch of times but it's kind of funny uh fabio santos was up

00:11:28.640 here in portland and he was building sailboats and he wasn't teaching jiu-jitsu nobody really knew what

00:11:34.320 brazilian jiu-jitsu was at the time and horian what year was this uh this would have been very

00:11:40.000 early 90s so 91 to somewhere before the ufc which was 93 yes so this is about a good year i'd say

00:11:47.660 before the ufc and horian actually called up uh fabio and said i've got something big that's going

00:11:53.720 to be happening and i'm going to need you as an instructor here so you should get in shape and what

00:11:59.000 do you the big thing that he was going to have happen was ufc and since they've been running that

00:12:03.380 experiment in brazil for decades they kind of knew what the results would be and fabio's way of

00:12:08.380 getting in shape was to put a ad in a in a classified newspaper here offering to pay people

00:12:14.220 fifty dollars if they could uh come and try and beat them up and so my buddy and i from the boxing

00:12:19.900 gym showed up um predictable result of what would happen he'd let me try and hit him took me down

00:12:25.760 demonstrated jiu-jitsu to me a few times and then once he was clear he could tell it was clear to me

00:12:31.680 that what he was doing was working and there really wasn't anything i could do about it he could

00:12:35.540 see i was hooked and uh from that moment forward i fell in love with jiu-jitsu and not too long after

00:12:41.240 that i also got to meet hickson which was a a big eye-opener as far as what the what the art was

00:12:46.980 capable of and hickson gracie who is often acknowledged to be the the greatest jiu-jitsu

00:12:52.880 athlete of all time yeah i don't think there's any any doubt about that i you know the people who've

00:12:58.820 been around and the world champions from that day and era they all have stories about hickson and

00:13:04.540 these are guys that aren't apt to you know make up martial arts mythologies they're not going to

00:13:08.940 talk about you know getting tapped out if they weren't actually tapped out and and hickson just had

00:13:13.360 an amazing has an amazing level of skill so i fell in love with it and i realized i needed to train it

00:13:20.320 and the people that i was training with at the jkd school weren't interested they still had these

00:13:25.720 ideas about how hard they would be to get taken down again this was before the ufc um how you don't

00:13:31.420 want to be in a on the ground in a fight so why would you train to be on the ground and in a fight

00:13:35.760 and so forth and so i actually opened up a very small school for the sole purpose of having

00:13:42.040 training partners i had no intention of becoming an instructor and um it the gym just took off from

00:13:48.940 there unfortunately and this became your straight blast gym yes came spg straight blast gym it was a

00:13:56.240 tiny little school in uh salem oregon that i shared with a judo black belt was a friend of mine we brought

00:14:02.340 hickson up once hickson gave me my blue belt and told me at the time i said listen i'm i'm trying to

00:14:09.460 train this every day uh i have to teach what you show me so i can get training partners he gave me

00:14:15.180 permission at that time to teach what i know and my school as long as i always called it you know

00:14:19.820 brazilian jiu-jitsu and that's how it all started and then a few years after that um hickson became

00:14:25.380 very famous fighting in japan became hard to reach hard to get hard to train with and around that time

00:14:31.660 i met a mutual friend of ours chris howder and chris became my coach from purple brown and black

00:14:38.400 and to this day so chris and i have been training together about 30 years nice nice and so how many

00:14:45.560 gyms do you have now because you have created uh multiple spg yeah gyms right yeah yeah i think one

00:14:53.680 of the things i'm most proud of is when i went off to do it all my peers in the martial arts at the

00:14:59.340 time my peers in the jeet kune do community were telling me this was never going to work and it's very

00:15:03.320 kind of a cynical take on martial arts in the sense that people don't really want to sweat people

00:15:08.260 don't want to get tapped out people don't want to get hit they want to click sticks together they want

00:15:12.900 to compare notes they want to collect certificates you're never going to make any money or be able to

00:15:18.020 have a gym and i assume that was true but i needed to train i wanted to train so i i did what i was

00:15:24.720 planning on doing anyway and of course they all turned out to be wrong and so i just happened to be

00:15:30.240 the first school i think i was really the first mma or brazilian jiu-jitsu school in oregon

00:15:35.800 and so people just started to to come to the gym and and it grew from there exponentially

00:15:41.580 and then towards the end of the 90s i produced a video set called aliveness which was about how to

00:15:49.660 know what works in martial arts and what doesn't work and what the what the what the determining

00:15:54.500 factor is when you're talking about a functional martial art versus a fantasy-based martial art and

00:16:00.000 those videos became very popular as well they sold a lot and people from different parts of the

00:16:05.840 country would contact me to tell me that they'd you know they'd been thinking the same thing i'd been

00:16:10.820 thinking that they did they just hadn't put words to it they were very appreciative of it and that's

00:16:15.560 kind of how the organization started so i had you know people in the uk carl tanswell and then john

00:16:20.760 cavanaugh of course uh was conor mcgregor's coach was one of my first black belts and they kind of

00:16:26.900 came to me be from hearing about me through um through the aliveness videos and that's how the

00:16:32.420 organization kind of grew now we probably have about 70 some odd locations with you know a dozen or so

00:16:38.660 big schools that'll have you know between 500 and a thousand members in each one amazing okay so i want

00:16:47.760 to get into the the details of just how you think about martial arts specifically and violence

00:16:54.600 generally and i think we want to differentiate what you've already referred to as as traditional

00:17:00.540 and fantasy-based martial arts from proper mixed martial arts that are functional but um before we

00:17:08.420 get into the details let's answer this basic question which i think occurs at least subconsciously

00:17:15.280 to many listeners which is why think about violence at all the more civilized a society the more

00:17:24.020 privileged one is in that society the less likely violence is a variable that anyone realistically

00:17:31.900 has to worry about and you know it's just it's the measure of progress really in a society that a

00:17:40.480 legitimate concern for violence diminishes you more or less to the point of vanishing why think about

00:17:47.280 violence yeah that's a good question i've actually thought about that quite a bit everything you said is

00:17:52.680 true of course as we as we become more and more civilized and and uh our communities grow and we

00:17:58.440 have law enforcement and we have all the you know the enlightenment and all the modern things that uh

00:18:03.880 that have helped create a better society then the violence curve drops but still to this day i don't

00:18:09.760 think a lot of people realize but there's about four times as many people that are killed in

00:18:14.260 interpersonal violence every year as are killed by uh all the wars you know there's there's always an

00:18:20.020 exception here and there but generally speaking it's about half a million people a year are killed

00:18:24.840 worldwide from violence and that's never going to completely go away and so there's that aspect of it

00:18:33.080 that is there and that i i do believe it's better for people to take personal responsibility for their

00:18:38.720 own safety and well-being rather than completely farm it out to a third party which may or may not be

00:18:45.420 there if you need them so there's that aspect of it just very practical aspect of it but there's

00:18:51.480 another piece to it too and in that you know violence is so intrinsic to our nature as human

00:18:58.240 animals it's part of who we are and i don't think anything good comes from repressing those instincts or

00:19:04.360 or thinking you know where some those things are somehow below us i think really what we want to do

00:19:11.200 is we want to have a healthy relationship to that topic and a healthy relationship to that topic

00:19:17.000 is not going to turn violence into a fetish and romanticize it on one extreme but it's also not going

00:19:24.620 to demonize or try and repress violence as something something evil and instead it's just going to look

00:19:31.440 at violence as what it is and try and have a healthy relationship to the topic so if we ever do have to

00:19:38.360 defend ourselves or engage in it you know we'll be prepared but also i think it's just a healthier way

00:19:44.560 to live your life i think there's so many people probably some of your listeners today that are

00:19:49.680 listening to this that have tried something like brazilian jiu-jitsu and very quickly kind of fallen

00:19:55.920 in love with the with the art and they're not in love with the art because they're thinking about

00:20:01.160 hurting people they're in love with the art because the pushing pulling struggling physical

00:20:06.280 contact that you have with another human being is so visceral for us and i think in many ways necessary

00:20:13.940 and so i i don't think it's necessarily a healthy thing to separate ourselves from that part of

00:20:20.920 ourself and and one of the things that good combat combat athletics functional martial arts martial

00:20:27.660 arts that are sports essentially give people as they give they help put them back in touch with

00:20:33.000 all of that that whole aspect of who we are and so that we can start to have i think a healthier

00:20:39.040 relationship to the topic and not have a phobic one yeah i mean one answer to this question that

00:20:46.300 i've experienced personally is just that it changes you to train in preparation for violence and to

00:20:53.000 understand violence and it changes you in my experience in really wholly good ways i mean it gives you

00:21:00.420 confidence where confidence is possible it gives you a wise circumspection where you might not have

00:21:09.200 had it before right so it's like it's a antidote to certain kinds of dangerous delusions that genuinely

00:21:15.220 do increase your risk of of encountering violence and being on the wrong end of it and so in this

00:21:20.840 training whether it's in an effective martial art like brazilian jiu-jitsu or with firearms or i mean

00:21:28.060 whatever side of this problem one engages it's uh kind of owning some part of that potential force

00:21:36.820 continuum for oneself it changes the way you are in the world in contexts that have nothing to do with

00:21:43.780 self-defense or personal risk i mean you just you have an understanding of things that matters and

00:21:50.820 changes just the way you feel with other people uh and in different circumstances yeah 100 percent i think

00:21:57.700 that um that's kind of a universal finding that people have and i think that you know that's one

00:22:02.660 of the reasons people start to fall in love with combat sports or an art like jiu-jitsu one of the

00:22:08.560 things we say at spg is one of our goals is to make good people more dangerous to bad people

00:22:13.620 but one of the things i talk about in the book is one of the nice side benefits of making good people

00:22:19.860 more dangerous to bad people is it also makes better people and it's just the humbling process of

00:22:25.460 having to deal with failure over and over again failure is an essential part of this process so

00:22:30.980 somebody that's not gonna open themselves up to be vulnerable to that kind of failure you literally

00:22:36.380 can't get good at the art it's necessary to have to tap and submit you know thousands of times and

00:22:43.780 and also handle and and learn how to deal with tapping and beating other people you know thousands of

00:22:50.340 times and the myriad of lessons we get of interpersonal communication and things that are appropriate or

00:22:57.140 not appropriate being comfortable and uncomfortable situations all of that really starts to come into

00:23:01.700 play and and there's nothing really it's not kind of a conversation i would have as a coach at my gym

00:23:07.180 there's nothing i need to really do to facilitate that for people other than create a healthy safe mat where

00:23:14.260 people can come in they can be vulnerable they know they're not going to get hurt and then that's

00:23:19.380 enough and that and the process of doing the art all these other things we're talking about come into

00:23:24.500 play and i you know there's nothing i i don't need to give a lecture about it i don't need to talk to

00:23:28.820 people about it just happens organically that way well we should talk more about what makes brazilian

00:23:35.780 jujitsu so interesting from the point of view of training for self-defense but before we do let's

00:23:44.020 distinguish what you call the the fantasy-based martial arts or the and this is this overlaps

00:23:51.140 impressively with what are often thought of as traditional martial arts and the functional combat sports

00:23:59.060 approach to self-defense or you know martial art you know what's now generally understood as mixed

00:24:06.020 martial arts or mma and what you see in the ufc perhaps we should start with what the ufc did to

00:24:12.180 the conversation about what works and what doesn't because in in my memory before the ufc happened it was

00:24:20.100 all pretty hypothetical i mean everyone was just imagining that the art they were training in was was super

00:24:25.940 effective and would it's sort of like asking what would win in a fight a lion or a tiger right well

00:24:33.140 until you have something like the roman coliseum where you throw those two animals together it's all

00:24:38.020 speculation and the ufc became a kind of science experiment where all these different martial arts

00:24:44.420 were hurled at one another and we could see what worked in which context and then and then there was a

00:24:52.580 kind of an iterative evolution there where there was a kind of cross training that happened where

00:24:57.620 everyone started grabbing the skills that worked whatever their provenance and we got something like

00:25:03.540 a generic form of of mixed martial arts where it was understood what skills were were fundamental and

00:25:10.420 and foundational at each each range perhaps you can just describe what happened there sure so now

00:25:18.580 makes martial arts is its own sport and the young fighters that we have that train in ireland or

00:25:24.340 oregon or wherever they come into one of our gyms and they want to go down that path as fighters

00:25:29.060 they're going to be training stand-up clinching ground they're going to be training what we call

00:25:32.820 mixed martial arts from day one as a kind of a unified whole and that's what it's become it's become

00:25:38.260 its own sport but when the ufc first started that's not what it was about horian started it as

00:25:44.100 as you said kind of a science experiment and the idea was to pit different styles of martial arts

00:25:49.540 against each other which is one of the reasons why i think to this day watching the first three or

00:25:54.580 four ufc's are still some of the funnest because you're going to see a kung fu guy go against a

00:25:59.300 karate guy or whatever and you're matching people up almost like you you were talking about trying

00:26:03.300 to match up different animals and there were there were no weight classes no weight classes no rounds

00:26:08.660 yeah uh no gloves you know some of those things i i would like to see them go back to but

00:26:14.100 no weight classes no gloves no time limit at least in the first first couple ufc's as far as i can

00:26:19.060 remember and the only real rules were you weren't supposed to attack the eyes or or the groin and

00:26:24.340 horian had engaged in this experiment the gracies had engaged in this experiment in brazil for decades

00:26:30.100 so they knew what was going to happen but i don't think anybody else in the united states was particularly

00:26:35.460 prepared for that and what you saw very quickly was there's a certain handful of martial arts that

00:26:43.060 will work in that environment and will work in any environment because they're functional

00:26:47.860 and so when we're talking about makes martial arts we're talking about boxing and muay thai american

00:26:51.700 wrestling greco-roman wrestling brazilian jiu-jitsu judo sambo and so you start to look at these

00:26:58.100 different arts and you say well what do all these arts have in common that work in this environment and

00:27:02.580 what they all have in common is they're all sports and because they're sports the results matter and

00:27:08.020 because the results matter they kept to some form of meritocratic competition they have what i call

00:27:13.700 an opponent process and that is the key to what whether a martial art works or doesn't work and

00:27:22.020 i call that aliveness is timing energy and motion and you can train in a fully alive way and and not

00:27:28.420 get hurt and it aliveness doesn't necessarily mean full contact sparring sparring is alive but aliveness

00:27:33.780 could be drilling aliveness could be working the technique you usually will work the movement a few

00:27:38.740 times and make sure somebody can mechanically do it and then we'll put them into an alive drill where

00:27:43.460 there's a sense of timing and there'll be a certain amount of failure and from that process they start

00:27:49.860 to develop functional skill and all combat sports have a variation of that process you know the best

00:27:56.660 coaches in mma especially in the beginning were always the wrestling coaches because they they brought

00:28:01.620 that whole epistemology with them when they came into the the cage and they were much better teachers

00:28:07.700 in many ways than some of the brazilian jiu-jitsu coaches who really had taken a more of a traditional

00:28:13.540 martial arts teaching method and applied it to brazilian jiu-jitsu the only difference was they're

00:28:18.580 rolling and because they're rolling of course they're getting that alive training and they're developing

00:28:22.420 skill but the wrestlers came with the drills with the movement with understanding how to train like

00:28:27.620 an athlete and so all the arts that you'll see in makes martial arts now have they're pieced from

00:28:34.340 various combat sports and that was the real i think message of the ufc and now it's evolved to where it

00:28:42.180 it is its own sport it's very rare you're going to see brazilian jiu-jitsu only person versus you know

00:28:48.180 somebody that's primarily muay thai or something like that everybody that fights now has skills stand-up

00:28:53.860 clinch and ground they all have pretty high levels of kickboxing they all have wrestling they all have

00:28:59.380 brazilian jiu-jitsu on the ground but it it took some time for that evolution to occur and that was

00:29:06.740 just a process of combat sports being exposed in the cage and then eventually merging into what we now call

00:29:14.820 mma so what what is the essential toolkit for stand-up clinch and ground how would you summarize

00:29:23.940 what everyone needs to know at this point to be a fully functional combat sports athlete yeah i try

00:29:31.460 and think of it as um ranges and delivery systems as opposed to specific martial arts so if we talk about

00:29:39.220 stand-up clinch and ground whatever you're working for stand-up stand-up would be striking you're not

00:29:44.500 necessarily grabbing each other but you're you're exchanging blows it's going to be some variation

00:29:50.180 of boxing it's going to have a kind of a boxing base could be french kickboxing savate muay thai

00:29:57.700 american boxing but the structure the footwork the body mechanics that's what works when we're

00:30:04.260 striking another human being and once you put hands on them and you're standing and you're in a clinch

00:30:09.620 there's certain amount of fixed positions underhook overhook two-on-one you know you list out about

00:30:15.380 nine or ten different positions you're going to find yourself in single necktie double necktie

00:30:19.620 and various combat sports will specialize in various positions within the clinch but having good clinch by

00:30:27.860 definition means you can fight in that and use the delivery system of clinch and flow back and forth and

00:30:34.420 then once we hit the ground you have to be prepared to be in literally any position you could fall on

00:30:39.940 the ground with another human being so brazilian jiu-jitsu you know prepares you for that but so

00:30:45.860 does judo so so does uh wrestling so there's a lot of arts that can work down there but i try and think

00:30:52.020 of it you know just like we say there's no such thing as canadian geometry i don't really think there's

00:30:57.300 such a thing as a japanese choke you know there's there's a best practice for cutting off the blood supply to

00:31:04.100 somebody's head and um if you get very good at that then by definition you're you're going to be

00:31:09.060 good at the choke and if we talk about a hip throw you know there there's some very key details that

00:31:15.140 make a good hip throw work and then now you'll see those details in greco-roman wrestling you'll see

00:31:20.420 those details in judo you'll see them in sambo a hip throw is a hip throw so if you kind of take

00:31:26.020 the cultural affectations away from it the the different uniforms the different rule sets and just kind

00:31:32.340 of look at it in a in a very scientific way then we can start to see stand-up clinch and ground as

00:31:38.020 delivery systems and there are certain arts that you know we're definitely going to pull from more

00:31:42.820 than others for example brazilian jiu-jitsu on the ground some kind of kickboxing or boxing for standing

00:31:48.500 and in the clinch it's usually greco-roman and and muay thai or some variation of of that now and those

00:31:54.980 are the arts we're going to pull from but i like to look at it just from a purely objective kind of

00:32:00.420 scientific sense of stand-up clinching ground and all the various positions as opposed to

00:32:05.620 individual style and how would you differentiate all of that from martial arts that are pitched toward

00:32:14.900 the explicitly the self-defense market right this is not the these are not sports they're very

00:32:22.100 self-consciously not sports their techniques are often described as too dangerous to be

00:32:30.740 fully tested because you know you can't train poking people in the eye or kicking them in the groin

00:32:36.980 right so these are these are street techniques that you can't use in the ufc and then you have arts that

00:32:45.060 market themselves as the best possible set of all of those two lethal techniques right so and and

00:32:53.700 something like krav maga would fall into this category um an art i studied uh in my youth uh

00:33:00.900 what was it was very much this uh ninjitsu what do you what do you say you know i mean i have my own

00:33:06.580 opinions on this topic that will certainly echo yours but what do you see is problematic about that

00:33:12.580 particular um toolkit so i call that the street versus sport fallacy i talk a lot about that in the

00:33:19.300 book that was one of the one of the other reasons why i decided to write the book that particular

00:33:24.340 fallacy drives me crazy but you know we've you've heard for decades for years now well what you guys

00:33:30.340 do is for sport you know where there's one-on-one and there's no weapons involved and what we do is

00:33:35.780 we're training for the quote-unquote street and people need to understand that there's no special

00:33:41.460 street technique so the example i give in the book which is a simple one is a headlock anybody who's

00:33:47.780 been in a fight uh if you ever got in a fight as a child or as a kid in school you probably experienced

00:33:53.700 either being in a headlock or putting somebody in a headlock and punching them in the head it's a very

00:33:57.300 natural thing for kids to do when they're fighting or people in general and that's a fixed position

00:34:04.180 that admits to best practices and there are ways where you can shape your body by creating connecting

00:34:11.060 to the ground to build base and then adjusting your posture the shape of your skeleton in relation to

00:34:16.740 the other person's skeleton where you now have leverage and you are going to win that confrontation

00:34:23.300 pretty much every time so if someone first comes into the gym as an example and they don't know this

00:34:29.700 and they get put in a headlock they can certainly be stuck especially if the other person's bigger

00:34:33.700 and stronger and after a couple years by the time most students start to become what we call blue

00:34:38.820 belt which is the first belt in brazilian jiu-jitsu a headlock becomes a fairly simple easy thing to

00:34:45.460 escape from and usually means you're going to dominate that particular scenario pretty much every

00:34:51.540 time so you go from a position where you would very likely fail to you're going to dominate that

00:34:57.860 altercation pretty much every time and the reason why you're going to dominate that altercation

00:35:02.500 is because you're going to have base and posture so you're you're putting your body in a position

00:35:06.580 where you have leverage before you start to apply pressure just push and pull now if we do that that

00:35:12.580 best practice is the best practice in a cage if you're fighting in ufc and you get caught in a cage

00:35:18.500 it's going to work there if you're in a jiu-jitsu tournament and you're in you know fighting for

00:35:23.780 points in a jiu-jitsu tournament you put a headlock it's going to be the same there and if you get in a

00:35:28.740 fight out in the parking lot and find yourself rolling around on the ground with somebody in a

00:35:32.580 headlock it's going to be the same there and so there's no special street headlock technique

00:35:37.860 you know tactics may change certainly the stakes of the engagement may change but the root skills

00:35:45.300 you develop in the delivery system of stand-up clinch and ground those you carry with you in

00:35:50.260 every environment in every situation and someone who has several years of that kind of training even if

00:35:57.460 it's just primarily we'll just call it sport in brazilian jiu-jitsu and they focus mostly on a

00:36:02.100 tournament jiu-jitsu sport jiu-jitsu against someone who doesn't have any of those skills

00:36:08.740 there's there's really no comparison and you're not going to make up for that deficit by grabbing

00:36:15.220 somebody in the groin or thinking you're going to stick your thumb in their eyeball or something like

00:36:19.140 that that's just not how fighting works and so this idea that some martial arts are for sport and

00:36:25.140 some martial arts for street is basically a fallacy you can train specifically 95 of the time for

00:36:33.300 the street if you want to for example for law enforcement you're going to have very specific

00:36:38.260 type of training and and things that you're going to focus on but the the root movements of the

00:36:44.580 delivery system being able to hold someone down and mount being able to escape somebody sitting on

00:36:48.980 your chest being able to punch somebody in the face being able to pick someone up and drop them

00:36:53.780 being able to keep someone from picking you up and dropping you on the asphalt those are universal

00:36:59.620 those transcend environment and so that's one of the main points i try and get across to people is

00:37:05.780 not only is that kind of training so much healthier the kind of combat athletics that we're talking

00:37:10.660 about i think it's mentally healthier and physically healthier and spiritually healthier it's also more

00:37:17.140 practical at the end of the day so so you seem to be alluding to what is uniquely powerful about grappling

00:37:25.860 here and so i can say as someone who started his martial arts career with you know what i would consider

00:37:33.780 largely a fake martial art i can say that the experience was one of engaging in all of these techniques

00:37:43.140 that purported to be you know too dangerous to train fully and in fact they were again you can't poke

00:37:49.460 your training partner in the eye for real to see if it works but even even just ordinary striking

00:37:56.180 based martial arts even valid ones are limited in how fully you can train them because to repeatedly get

00:38:02.580 hit in the head is synonymous with getting brain damage right so you've so even boxing or muay thai or

00:38:08.020 any of these other totally legitimate striking systems are things that you have to train judiciously

00:38:15.940 and when you're not so when you're training them in a way that is compatible with with safety it can

00:38:22.820 become a bit of a pantomime of violence rather than real violence whereas with grappling what is unique

00:38:30.500 about it is that you can you really can train at a hundred percent right you could you know or something

00:38:36.580 close to a hundred percent a hundred you know true hundred percent being the full-on emergency of

00:38:42.980 of a of a real self-defense situation right and given that you can train it that way without getting

00:38:48.500 injured right i mean you obviously do get injured you know where one can often get injured uh training

00:38:54.740 grappling as well but it's not the same kind of injury that you get from striking because you know

00:39:00.740 striking to be effective really is synonymous with injury i mean to hit someone in the head and to have

00:39:06.420 that work as a way of submitting them you know i.e you knock them out right is that is a concussion

00:39:12.100 right that is synonymous with something bad happening to them neurologically whereas with

00:39:17.140 grappling putting someone in a position where they cannot move and they cannot prevent you from choking

00:39:24.420 them unconscious i.e actually killing them if you wanted to or breaking their arm and you and they just

00:39:32.180 simply tap out they need not have been injured at all and yet you had the experience uh depending on

00:39:38.340 which side of that exchange you were on you had you either had the experience of completely dominating

00:39:43.860 someone despite their hundred percent effort to not be dominated or you had the experience more likely

00:39:50.340 over and over again in the beginning of being completely dominated and realizing that you know you would

00:39:55.460 have been killed or gravely injured but for the fact that this was a training circumstance and the

00:40:01.300 ability to train at that level where you're making a hundred percent effort against a hundred percent

00:40:07.140 resistance that is what is so unique at least in my experience about grappling in general and and

00:40:14.500 you know brazilian jiu-jitsu specifically which is the one i focused on yeah yeah a couple things there

00:40:20.260 just to circle back to the street versus sport you know delusion for a second if someone said to me

00:40:26.100 matt i want to learn how to be able to throw hands in a fight i want to be able to punch and slip

00:40:31.620 punches and i want to be able to actually strike in a fight for the street primarily for self-defense

00:40:37.300 i would send them to a boxing gym you know because the last person you want to exchange blows within

00:40:42.420 the street is a boxer so it it is completely functional but as you mentioned all the combat sports are

00:40:49.140 pretty tough on the body and i think what we know now about traumatic brain injury one of my great

00:40:54.180 regrets is how hard we trained when i first started and how hard we went with a lot of the students it

00:40:59.620 was way more head contact than we should have used and we don't do that anymore but we kind of had to

00:41:05.140 evolve into smarter practices for that because obviously those concussions build up and we don't

00:41:10.180 want to get brain damage but jiu-jitsu unlike muay thai or unlike any of the other arts even

00:41:16.500 judo and wrestling can be pretty hard on the body because the constant takedowns jiu-jitsu really is

00:41:21.460 an art that you can train like you said a hundred percent alive fully functional go pretty hard if

00:41:26.660 you want to on a regular basis and not get hurt and then as that all circles back into being able

00:41:33.060 to defend yourself in a fight if you have to end an altercation there's really only three ways that

00:41:38.020 altercation is going to end the person's going to go away you know they're just going to run off for

00:41:42.980 some reason or it's going to get broken up or you're going to have to knock them unconscious

00:41:47.620 or you control them in such a way that they can't move and potentially choke them and of those three

00:41:54.100 the most reliable way to end that fight is to control their body and to choke them unconscious

00:41:58.900 because no matter what substances they have flowing in their system now no matter how strong

00:42:03.220 they are no matter how big they are once you cut off the flow of blood to their head that they're going

00:42:08.740 to go to sleep and so that is the most practical most efficient and really the beautiful part about

00:42:14.980 jiu-jitsu one of the things that makes brazilian jiu-jitsu unique is its constant search for increased

00:42:20.420 efficiency and so from just a purely practical standpoint it also makes a lot of sense to focus

00:42:27.940 on your grappling part and as jaco and other people have said before if you can't run away from a

00:42:32.580 situation if you're not a police officer if you're not protecting somebody else at the time you know

00:42:37.300 there's really no reason why you should be engaged in some kind of status-based dispute outside a bar

00:42:42.500 or something like that situation you could just leave if you can't that by definition means they're

00:42:47.380 holding you they're hanging on to you they've got their arms around you they're preventing your exit

00:42:51.220 and that's when the skills of brazilian jiu-jitsu just completely take over yeah yeah so we've given

00:42:58.020 a an overview of the training here and the differences between real and and fake training all right let's

00:43:06.660 just linger on the on the fakeness for a second because it it is somehow inscrutable that it

00:43:11.700 persists even to this day right i mean there are people who are spending a tremendous amount of time

00:43:17.140 training in martial arts imagining that they're preparing themselves for real violence yeah and we

00:43:25.300 know that that is delusional depending you know if it's an art like aikido or i mean we could we

00:43:32.500 cast opprobrium on on a long list of traditional arts here it's not that they might not have a

00:43:38.580 technique here and there that is serviceable but in general these traditional arts are you know

00:43:44.100 theaters of delusion right and they're you know extreme cases you and i have sent each other you

00:43:49.540 know hilarious videos over the years of of the truly fake martial arts that are exposed as fake when

00:43:55.620 some master you know some kung fu master or a master of another flavor who's using energy to

00:44:02.740 defeat his opponents without even touching them yeah winds up getting embarrassed by getting you know

00:44:07.780 repeatedly hit in the face by somebody who was non-compliant and they're just there are many

00:44:12.580 videos of this kind how is it that this persists i mean how how does one maintain the delusion you know

00:44:21.860 from the side of the teacher and from the side of the student long enough for this thing to just

00:44:27.300 continue for a lifetime yeah that's interesting question and one of the questions i get asked the

00:44:32.260 most when i'm teaching seminars or doing interviews is people ask me you know why do these kind of

00:44:37.860 fantasy-based martial arts continue to exist and the thing i try and remind everybody is because

00:44:43.460 something's been around a long time doesn't mean it's necessarily good for us it just means it's

00:44:47.460 good at replication and so one of the one of the reasons why when you wrote the end of faith that

00:44:53.460 book really struck a chord with me is because what i was reading about the arguments that you would run

00:44:58.260 up religious arguments that you'd run into and the way the argument proceeded even kind of the which

00:45:04.660 argument they used first and what the natural follow-up was they're identical to what we're talking

00:45:10.020 about in traditional martial arts so you're going to have it's basically religion you're going to have

00:45:15.380 an origin story of you know some frail martial arts master who was blind or something like this

00:45:22.260 and had to learn how to fight and everything is based on appeal to authority and the master had to

00:45:28.580 lay down these movements and some kind of secret pattern that gets passed down from generation to

00:45:33.860 generation and then you learn the pattern so that you can carry on the movements but there's no aliveness

00:45:39.140 so it just becomes very it's just a sclerotic pattern and which gets repeated why it persists

00:45:46.020 i think is because of what why people train you know i don't think everybody trains like when i

00:45:51.220 went back to the jeet kune do school after i'd had my my run-in with hickson and i was trying to tell

00:45:55.540 him it's like look i just saw a guy tap a room full of judo black belts without using his hands he had

00:46:01.620 his hands in his belt he was he was just rolling with his legs and he was submitting them this is amazing

00:46:06.260 this is everything i've always heard martial arts could be but but isn't this is the real thing

00:46:11.780 and you know i was like well you don't want to be on the ground in a fight how's he ever going to

00:46:14.980 take you down and and so they had all these underlying excuses but really at the core they

00:46:20.580 weren't training for the same reason i was training i was training because i wanted to know what worked

00:46:25.300 in a fight and honestly that's never really changed that's been my core driving focus of what's true

00:46:31.620 in martial arts and they were not and so if you're not motivated by that you know then uh

00:46:37.140 some of these martial arts some of the more ridiculous ones actually get more traction which

00:46:41.700 is one of the other things that's very interesting i'll use system as an example ridiculous fake russian

00:46:47.540 martial art but where you'll see some obese guy you know barely moving and pretending to knock

00:46:52.740 people down and you'll think to yourself you know i know very smart intelligent martial artists

00:46:57.620 who also train in arts like brazilian jiu-jitsu or boxing and who can then still kind of get suckered

00:47:04.340 by that kind of stuff and it is so transparently ridiculous but i actually think that the ridiculous

00:47:10.660 kind of nature of it is part of what attracts them to it because in a way they're looking for a magic

00:47:15.460 bullet they want some they want there to be some magic martial art that can allow you know and frail

00:47:22.580 85 year old person to beat up two football players in the parking lot and they're deeply

00:47:27.060 motivated by by that and then they'll start to to chase after it and as long as i think people have

00:47:33.780 that inside them there's going to be con artists who are going to whip up some fake martial art to to

00:47:39.620 sell and and the sad part about it too is because i see some of the younger kids maybe kids that were

00:47:45.300 bullied in school get attracted to some of those martial arts because of the marketing because the

00:47:50.100 marketing is always about learn how to defend yourself in the street and i think it's a really

00:47:54.580 unhealthy path for them to go down and i know if you took that same young man and you put him in my

00:47:59.780 school or any good brazilian jiu-jitsu academy or makes martial arts school in two or three years they

00:48:04.740 would be completely transformed you know in a positive way about how they deal with people so we have a

00:48:10.660 solution for those problems but it's not what those guys were offering didn't just just to circle back on

00:48:17.060 that your experience in in jeet kune do didn't dan in asano actually become a brazilian jiu-jitsu

00:48:23.860 black belt in the end and yeah i think he's a black belt under hegan machado yeah so he must have

00:48:29.940 understood the the utility there but were you were you training with dan or what jeet kune do school did

00:48:35.940 you go back to we would bring him up so that when i the school i initially taught at in portland oregon

00:48:40.420 was a jeet kune do academy and my partner in the school was an instructor under dan and asano so

00:48:46.020 dan would come up a couple times a year and i got an opportunity to spend time with him and see him

00:48:50.740 in seminars i just think that they have a misguided approach so with the jeet kune do community you

00:48:56.420 basically i don't go on a tangent but real quickly they divide it into kind of two groups so the first

00:49:02.580 group what they call original and their primary focus is teaching and doing exactly what bruce lee

00:49:09.380 did which is insane so it's a 33 year old movie star he died when he was 33 movie star was only

00:49:16.020 exposed to a certain amount of you know material at the time and they want to take that and kind of

00:49:21.700 codify it and make that an art and so on one hand you have a kind of a traditional martial art being made

00:49:27.620 and in the jeet kune do concepts community they had this kind of like i said utilitarian approach

00:49:32.500 where they would pull from all these different arts and there would be brazilian jujitsu and there

00:49:36.340 would be muay thai and it would be boxing but then they would have some ridiculous piece from sealot or

00:49:43.380 from system or who knows what and they weren't really discriminating and i would hear the instructors

00:49:50.020 discriminate privately amongst each other when they would talk but when they're in front of the group

00:49:54.740 when they're in front of the seminar it was a different story it was all arts have something

00:49:58.820 good you know it just depends on the context and that began to frustrate me because it seemed you

00:50:03.700 know duplicitous it reminds me of what happens in religion when you'll have somebody you know if

00:50:09.300 you're engaged in a debate with someone and they'll start talking about how everything in genesis is a

00:50:14.660 metaphor and and but then when you go and sit in their congregation and listen to them preach you

00:50:19.780 realize the majority of the congregation of that same person takes genesis to be a news report so

00:50:26.020 there's a disconnect between what they're privately saying and what they're publicly teaching and so

00:50:31.220 for me i just couldn't i also just i can't fathom why when we have an art like jujitsu we have i don't

00:50:38.340 have enough time in the day to even get close to the amount of jujitsu training that i could be doing

00:50:44.100 why would i want to train something silly you know it just doesn't make any sense to me but

00:50:49.940 those are the two camps and and so it was like an all-you-can-eat buffet and a lot of it was junk

00:50:54.740 food and i think they thought that you could pull different techniques from different martial arts and

00:50:59.860 create your own style and i just don't think that's how fighting works instead what you should

00:51:06.260 be doing is looking for the fundamental movements of stand-up clench and ground and through a process of

00:51:11.700 a live training over the period of 10 15 20 years each individual athlete develops his or her own

00:51:19.460 style and then you know the temptation is to teach your style when in reality what you need to do is

00:51:25.060 turn around and help other athletes go through that same journey so that they can develop their own

00:51:29.940 style and what we all share and have in common are the fundamentals of stand-up clenching ground but

00:51:34.740 each fighter will be completely unique and different and to me that's what reading the the best

00:51:40.980 possible interpretation into bruce lee's writing to me that's what he was actually seeking to do and

00:51:46.180 some somewhere along the way it just got lost hmm well let's um talk for a little while about the

00:51:52.580 difference for men and women in this theater of concern because it seems that men and women encounter

00:52:02.980 violence if they encounter it at all in very different ways and by a different logic i mean there are

00:52:09.300 very few women who are challenged to you know step outside on the street and and get into a a fist

00:52:16.180 fight you know i.e a duel with a stranger you know outside a bar and men tend not at least you know outside

00:52:23.620 of a prison context tend not to get raped uh you know physically controlled and and you know sexually

00:52:30.020 assaulted uh the way women do so there's there's just differences here let's start with men and

00:52:38.260 the kinds of um ways in which they they find themselves in physical conflict unnecessarily

00:52:47.780 that that is avoidably um and yeah i think you've used the word at least once so far and it is relevant

00:52:54.740 here and it's the concept of maturity how do you think about maturity you know psychologically and

00:53:00.260 and and its relevance to keeping men safe yeah so that's a that's a big part of the book for me and

00:53:07.620 that was something i started to see you know when i decided to to write the book i went and looked at the

00:53:12.580 data first and you know who attacks who and when and all that kind of stuff and and the one unmistakable i think

00:53:19.300 conclusion anybody who looks at the data has to draw from is that a great deal of interpersonal violence

00:53:25.220 comes as a result of issues related to maturity so you know it's not so much about even if we talk

00:53:32.100 about the shootings just to talk about gang related shootings or assaults in the street it's not usually

00:53:37.620 financial it's young men battling it out with other other young men over stupid status-based disputes

00:53:44.900 this is the majority category in a plurality of reasons why violence is committed when we're talking

00:53:50.180 about the majority category that is it and i i don't think a lot of people fully realize that

00:53:56.020 is basically you have fatherless young men hurting and engaging in conflict with other fatherless young

00:54:01.140 men and that that is a big portion of what we have is problematic violence with women it's different so

00:54:08.420 the biggest threat to a woman is going to be her significant other dating is very dangerous for for

00:54:14.740 women so you know at least half of all the women that are killed here in the united states

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - April 14, 2023

#316 — Self-Defense： Reality and Fantasy

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