#334： When Violence Is the Answer
Episode Stats
Summary
Tim Larkin is a self defense expert and the creator of target focused training. In his latest book, When Violence is the Answer, Tim makes the convincing case that civilians need to change their mindset about violence if they want to protect themselves and their family.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast where we're often
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told violence is never the answer but my guest today would argue that not only is that idea
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wrong it's also extremely dangerous he says that sometimes violence is the answer and when it is
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it's the only answer his name is tim larkin he's a self-defense expert and the creator of target
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focused training tim has trained military law enforcement and civilians on how to use violence
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to protect themselves and in his latest book when violence is the answer tim makes the convincing
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case that civilians need to change their mindset about violence if they want to protect themselves
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and their family today on the show tim and i discuss what he means by violence and why violence
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is often the only possible response to violence he then goes into detail about the difference
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between antisocial aggression and asocial violence and how to respond to both we then discuss why
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good people should study criminals on how to use violence more effectively and we end our
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conversation by exploring how knowing how to kill and maim people can counterintuitively make you a
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more peaceful and gentle man really fascinating show after the show is over check out the show notes at
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aom.is violence all right tim larkin welcome back to the show nice for having me brett man so it's been
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a few years i think it was 2015 we had you on talk about what you do your self-defense stuff that you
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talk about you got a new book out where you've basically taken what you've been doing for the
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past several decades and and synthesized it and and the title is awesome when violence is the answer
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learning how to do what it takes when your life is at stake so we're often told that you know violence
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is never the answer but right here in the title of your book you're saying no sometimes violence is
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the answer so when is violence the answer well it's the it's the question nobody likes to talk about
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and i think that's why that's that's why the title of the book and i actually believe it or not i had
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to fight for that title and you know my publisher was good enough to finally realize you know that
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that's a it's a very relevant title that's how uncomfortable people are with even the word violence
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the the idea behind the book is we we talk and we're very well versed on when violence isn't the
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answer we've gone almost overboard on that aspect of it and the illusion that's out there is that
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violence is never the answer and so the idea was you know by doing that the very people that need
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the tool of violence the most have just self-selected out of even looking at the subject
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thinking that it's you know somehow will make them criminal and so the goal of the book is to you know
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not not even get to the training aspect i do talk a little bit about that but it's really like
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how do we think about the subject and why is it so taboo and you know where can we actually learn
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good information yeah that i thought was interesting i mean you there's just a like a like a chapter or
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two about specific tactics but like most of it is just an argument for regular good people to be
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comfortable with violence that's the biggest change the the physical training aspect is actually fairly
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easy for for me to get through to people the hardest aspect and the ability to use that physical
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training correctly is going to absolutely fail you if you don't have the correct understanding of the
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tool and correct you know mindset to use it and you know it's that you know like the current
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secretary of defense general mattis has that saying you know to his marines that he first wants them to
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engage the brain before they engage the enemy and you know the idea behind that is i have to set you
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know we're talking about you know real violence we're talking about criminal violence we're talking about
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asocial devoid of choice violence and in order to understand that correctly you have to wrap your
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head around you know what you think violence is versus what society tells you it is the media tells
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you it is entertainment tells you it is right so let's get into that that like what violence is
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because i mean i thought there's an interesting point you make in the book you know that it sort of
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hitting on our discomfort with violence is that you know people will sign up for self-defense classes
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but they want self-defense in a way where they actually don't have to do violence right they
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they want like what can i do to like you know protect myself but not actually have to do something
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bad right and that goes to the core of the whole misunderstanding of what's talking about you know
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another guy a friend of mine in the industry tony blauer talks about a time he was on an airplane
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and you know if you're in this business you get this question all the time and i thought his answer
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was perfect you know the answer the question was oh gee i you know you teach they find out you teach
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self-defense you know and they go i've always wanted to learn self-defense and tony was a little
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irritated that day been a long day he's flying back and he looked at the woman he just said no you
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don't and she's you know kind of was taken aback she goes no no i did he goes no no you don't want
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to learn how to do this because if you did you'd already know how to do this and you would have
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been training all these years now what you want is you want to learn how can i live a life that
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avoids the possibility of me having to use self-defense and with that i can give you a lot of
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information and so that's really what most of us want you know it would be crazy for us to think that
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we want to go out there and actually you know test ourselves or or look for this and that's that's
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the real difference between you know uh you know violence and you know people that survive violence
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don't brag about it they don't uh they certainly don't want to seek it again the example that i
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always give is the idea of you know uh people swim you know swimming i i usually you know in my
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class i'll ask people i'll say hey how many people here know how to swim and just about every hand
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will come up and i'll say how many of you have ever had to swim for your life and there'll usually be a
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few hands including myself leaving their hands up and i said okay of you people that had to swim
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for your life would you ever want to experience that again and nobody has their hand up at that
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point and that's what violence is you know violence is that black swan event that you know just like
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if you are you know in the water and you don't know how to swim you got nothing in the toolbox you're
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in you're in a horrible situation same thing with violence if we have nothing in the toolbox and
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society has got us to the point today where the people that need it most meaning good
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law-abiding citizens you know most of us have nothing in the toolbox when it comes to dealing
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with real violence let's talk about like what do you mean by violence because i think that was probably
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the most the foundational chapter of all this is that difference between uh social aggression
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and asocial violence because i think what most people there when they take a self-defense class
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they're preparing for social aggression but you're saying no like you need to prepare for actual
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violence so what is the difference between aggression and violence so it comes down to
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communication everything that we want to respond to that oftentimes we imagine we need to respond to
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usually falls in the realm of social aggression i'm fascinated when i see training out there i have a
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lot of the guys in the industry and a lot of the training revolves around social aggression which is
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a fast track to jail time um you know they literally will teach things like hey here's what you do in a
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bar fight hey here's what you do you know when somebody knocks into you hey here's you know all these
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things that are eminently avoidable that you can use your social skills to get out of you know the the aggression
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versus that rare occasion when you would actually the only tool available to you be violence and that's
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when you're devoid of choice the way we define it is i am devoid of choice meaning if i had an exit i
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would have taken it by now if there was a way for me to talk my way out of this i would have done that
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communication is stopped i am facing imminent grievous bodily harm if i do not use violence to protect
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myself i am basically participating in my own murder and that's that that uncomfortable time where
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people you know recognize it you know and and a way to understand it when you see like a lot of these
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uh these shootings that you're seeing you know people are realizing that oh my god you know this
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is happening and they're having to take action and most people don't know what to do in situations like
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that and they've had no skill training and a lot of what's really interesting to me is even in the
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professional world they will give you an excellent training up the scale for social aggression and then
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when it gets to asocial violence where say it's a law enforcement his life is on the line or a soldier
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and and you know he's facing you know imminent bodily harm by the enemy the training when it comes
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to the physical training self-defense whatever you call it they at that point say do whatever it takes
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and they just send you on your way you know there's there's no specific information and that's that's
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what i find is just amazing you know is is that you know that's when you need the most specific
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information that's when you need to understand how to go after the human body how to take it out how to
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actually injure it but the threshold to use this information is that of in the event that we're
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talking about if you had a firearm you would be comfortable deploying that firearm and emptying it
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into the threat that's the the level here so that eliminates probably 99.9 percent of most of the social
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aggression stuff that we think we need to respond to you know we're talking about all the unpleasant
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interactions that you can have with people you know road rage incidences incidences in social
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settings like you know nightclubs and bars or restaurants on the street you know anything that
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you could walk away from if you chose to walk away from it could happen you know and and it should
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happen and that's what i go in the book in depth about you know the idea of what do you actually
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have to respond to if there's communication still going on then it's not the time if you have
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to ask yourself hey is this the time should i punch this guy should i do you know some of the
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crazy questions that i get if you have to ask yourself whether or not it's the time to use
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violence it's probably not the time to use violence all right so violence is let's get some definitions
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clear violence is imminent like death or severe bodily harm or in the case rape is another one too
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where you could use violence yes right yes if you don't if you don't basically if you don't take
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action meaning if you don't try to protect yourself using the tool of violence in the situation i'm
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talking about you're basically participating in your own murder meaning this is going to happen
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this this violence is imminent you know and it's devoid of communication that's that's the big thing
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meaning there's no communication i gave the example i've given the example a couple times of situations
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where you it initially starts out and it's say a robbery and and the person is is is you know
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communicating in an you know an unpleasant way but basically communicating with the guys that are robbing
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him giving giving uh over you know all the the watches the wallets everything it's asked for
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and uh you know the people go away there's an incident in london that i talked about that
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kind of highlights this whole thing and the young lawyer did all that two guys held up against a tree
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with knives and robbed him and he complied gave them everything and they left and he used his social
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tools in that unpleasant situation to basically negotiate a favorable response where they left
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and he started walking away everybody loves that part of the story because it falls into
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the realm of you know what we're told to do by law enforcement you know don't resist don't do this
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don't you know antagonize and that's fine problem was the second part of the story they came back
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second time when they came back their heads were down their knives were drawn they rushed in and
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just started stabbing him immediately until they killed him he was heard screaming hey why why why i
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gave you everything i gave you everything what i want people to understand is the difference between
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those two scenarios there's one scenario at the beginning where you possibly could use social
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you know you possibly could you know use social it's talking your way out the second one where there's
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no communication it is pure action and it's imminent and there's no escape the only thing that would
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work is the tool of violence and if you have nothing in your toolbox at that stage of the game
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you know you're going to be just you know just just an easy target right so the tool of violence is
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basically you you have to be able to kill or bodily maim like seriously bodily injury that it's not
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just like some you know a submission move or like a thing like you have to inflict severe damage to
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this person well what we're talking about we're talking about injury to the human body it's very
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specific we are you know our bodies are are all similar in in the fact that we all have areas of the human
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body that can't take trauma meaning you know physics and physiology meeting badly a hard part of you
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with body weight behind it going through an area of the other guy's human body that's not rated for
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that type of traffic and so when we talk about injury to the human body we're talking about breaking
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the structure of the human body or we're talking about breaking a sensory system of the human body
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you know things like broken joints you know destroyed eyeballs crushed throats you know something as
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mundane as breaking the top of the foot anything that elicits a level of trauma that creates what we call a
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spinal reflex reaction and that means it's a reaction that takes the brain basically captures
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the brain and takes the brain out of the equation meaning the trauma is so much is it's so great on
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the body that the spine gives the re that gives the uh feedback to the body to pull away from it and
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we've all experienced it when you touch say a hot surface your hand automatically comes off that surface
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your brain isn't engaged that you don't realize that you've touched a hot surface until after
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if your limb has already been removed from that and that's to protect you and what we do is we use
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that info that information of how the body tries to protect itself to actually destroy itself we flip
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it upside down and we use the fact of you know these spinal reflex uh reactions to trauma to basically
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take the brain out of the equation because the most dangerous thing that you and i ever faced with
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another human being is an active brain you know as long as his brain can as long as he can think and
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move he can do damage to us as soon as we take his brain out of the equation and we do that through
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injury and injury is something that all of us are capable of we are all capable of delivering injury
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to the human body we're not all capable of competing in combat sports but you know that's the great thing
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about violence is the tool of violence is available to everybody and it works on everybody and that's
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that's the education process right let's go back to this the the social aggression aspect of this
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really trying to figure out the difference between social aggression and asocial violence so you
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mentioned communication is one thing right they're communicating with you it's you know it's probably
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social aggression but are there any other signs that someone you know how can you tell if someone's
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asocially violent if there's just besides just like they're not talking to you well it's it's really
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it's really the cues it's not really when somebody's asocial the way we highlight asocials in our
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training in our training we basically have no no communication meaning there's no talking when
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they're out in the mats when my clients are out in the mats training there's no music there's no social
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interaction meaning you know you don't help each other up you don't do any of the social things
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that are out there you'll see this in a lot of other like combat sport gyms and you know martial arts
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facilities and that's fine there's nothing wrong with that the problem is you know my goal for
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training people is to get them to trigger on asocial and the thing that saved my clients lives
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across the board and across all the demographics that i've trained is they're triggering and
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understanding that oh this just went asocial and what that is is it's getting used to training in a
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non-communicated communication environment you know in a devoid of social communication
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and it's just it's a it's it's just a recognition system everybody understands it we've all done it
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before we've all walked into situations where all of a sudden our non-verbal cues are hitting us all
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the time we call it intuition sometimes it's dismissed sometimes you know people think it's uh
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you know esoteric but it's not we have non-verbal uh warning systems that are inherent in our in our
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physiology that are designed to protect us you know and just you know things where you know people say
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hey the hair on the back of my neck standing my stomach feels queasy these are all this is your
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body screaming out saying hey there's something wrong here there's i'm picking up something that's
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wrong here you need to pay attention to this and one thing you also highlight in the book that's
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useful for just good regular folks to watch are videos or films of asocial violence going down
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because what they'll be surprised by is that there's no yelling there's no screaming there's no that
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that war face you talk about in the book it's just quiet and there's just like an intent and it's
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done fast well that's if you watch violence across the board real violence you'll just understand like
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if you you watch say uh you know animals you know predator animals when they're in there when it's two
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predator animals of the same species in a territorial situation it's loud they're making all sorts of
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gestures towards each other they're knocking into each other not really trying to injure each other
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they're just trying to run each other off the land it's usually a an alpha type of situation if you
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watch that same predator going after prey they're usually in a low crouch super silent just waiting for
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the right time and when they strike they strike fast and silently and just you know get into it right
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away that's exactly how asocial violence goes down with with people and that's you know the
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difference the difference is your you know one person oftentimes is trying to communicate and
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usually the person that ends up being the victim is trying to communicate with the predator who is
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merely just taking action and getting right into violence and getting into the work right away and when you
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watch acts of violence there's a lot that can be learned but most people watch them incorrectly
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so how do they watch them incorrectly they'll usually empathize with the victim and they'll usually
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try to look at a situation and they'll look at you know because oftentimes it'll be a criminal act of
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violence and oftentimes it'll be the criminal that is successful using the tool of violence and so
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oftentimes people will look at it and say well the victim could have done this or the victim could have
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done that and well maybe you could get your way out of this or you could have dodged this punch or you
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could have you know x y or z and that's the exact wrong way to look at it when you're looking at the tool
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of violence when you look at the tool of violence you want to inoculate yourself to always identify
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with the winning side of violence you want to train your brain to look at an act of violence and say
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okay at what point did it start to work for this person the person that ultimately won what happened
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usually what you're going to find is you're going to find there's going to be an exchange and at one
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point one person injured the other and normally right after that injury they piled on on those
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injuries and were you know ended up being the victor now the hard part for us the same socialized
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you know humans is that we you know we tend to identify with the story and so i often have people
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watch the video with no sound in it whatsoever they just watch the physical acts of the video
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which normally makes it a lot easier for them to see they go oh there's the point yep okay now what
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are you doing you're training your brain to always identify with the successful use of the tool
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you're not training yourself to look at the tool being used at you and trying to figure out how to
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un you know you know you know block your way to success and it's dramatic and where it really became
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relevant was when you look at alpha predators and you show them acts of violence you know we're
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talking about the worst of the worst in the prison systems they'll look at an act of violence they
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never identify with a victim it's it just never happens they they always identify with the winning
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side and if anything they'll be critical of the winning side they'll say okay he did this this and
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this and yeah it worked but i would have done if they're going to say if they're going to do anything
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they're going to prove on the results the individual got with violence they're going to say i actually
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would have done it this way whereas well-meaning people would say would try to do that with the
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victim say well i would have you know blocked the punch here i would have grabbed him here or maybe
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i would have done this or that they won't look at it that way they'll look at it from the successful
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use and then how could i improve upon the successful use of that tool and what that does is your brain
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says okay this is what you want me to do you always want me to look for options you always want
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me to look for potential injuries you always want me if this situation comes about my job is to
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immediately start looking for opportunities for you that's what you're telling me to do and you
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don't want that because you did you want the only option to be inflict injury on this other person
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but that's what you're training yourself to do by watching video correctly i mean if you watch from
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successful side all the time you know the people that are successfully using the violence so you know
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uh act an act of violence goes down and i'll usually find really challenging ones where it's it's pretty
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bad and how people sit there and i'll have them watch it there and i'll say okay why did that work
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or you know and as soon as people start going from the victim said well she could have done x y or z i
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said no what happened he goes and then some people say oh okay he stepped through he used his body weight
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he hit her to the side of the neck and she went to the ground and that's when he started stomping her
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now that's really hard for us to deal with as as uh you know citizens but what we're doing is i can't
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learn anything i can't undo this all i can do is protect my brain from making sure that it gets the
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right information the right information is not trying to you know figure out how the victim could
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have not got struck and hit we have to find out okay what works and and you know that's that's
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the difference because what makes us what most people do when they see a bigger faster stronger threat
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a bigger faster stronger individual and most you know if we're going to face a predator usually
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that's what we're going to be facing somebody who's bigger faster and stronger than us
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if we focus on all those differences rather than the similarities meaning oh my god this guy's so
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much bigger than me rather than oh there's his throat or you know oh there's his knee there's his
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you know there's the side of his neck there's you know once we start realizing all the similarities
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and the options that we have areas of the human body this individual can't protect
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you know that's when you start making the change and that that's when violence starts becoming you
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know universally available to everybody it's just whoever gets the injury first right and going back
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to this you know how thoughtful these some of these criminals are about violence you mentioned
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like the mexican mafia has this reading list for new recruits that i thought was surprisingly heady
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what are some of the things that the mexican mafia has their their guys read well there's a really
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there's a really great video that's out to interview with one of the uh the the heads of the mexican
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mafia that uh was was debriefed by law enforcement and they shared the video with me and he goes over
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the education portion and the books that i'm about to talk about this literally is probably 80 of these
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books are books that i read as a young special warfare intelligence officer at the jfk center at a course
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that i was at uh in in fort bragg and you know it was machiavelli's the prince it was the 48 laws of
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power it was psychology and abnormal psychology it was what was the other book they had uh forgot they
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had one they had one other one other book that was you know very much a special warfare book you
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know type type book that they had and that was that was great the consistent book that they had
00:23:59.080
that our first responders and our military people weren't reading were books on anatomy
00:24:04.500
and it's interesting he says this he goes he goes oh yeah he said we have to know anatomy
00:24:12.340
because we have to know how to kill violence is our currency that's how we derive our power that's how
00:24:18.320
we control things that's how we are able to make money everything derives from the successful use of
00:24:23.320
the tool of violence and you have to know anatomy in order to be successful and that's absolutely true
00:24:30.480
meaning the the reason these guys are worth looking at not in it's really it's a road that you have to
00:24:37.000
be very careful with because it can seem if you soundbite this information it can seem like you're
00:24:42.640
somehow promoting these guys or somehow thinking they're great people they're not but often the best
00:24:48.780
information comes from the worst people and what he is saying is we can't afford to get it wrong when
00:24:55.120
we use the tool of violence it's a very specific use of the tool and that's the other thing that i
00:24:59.740
learned by you know studying with the law enforcement officials that i did and really going in depth and
00:25:04.680
realizing that for them violence is currency and there's nothing random about its use we as society
00:25:12.360
think oh you know we think these prisoners are crazy and there's all these random acts of violence
00:25:16.060
going on everything has to be condoned everything has to be approved for the most part if you just go
00:25:21.580
off on your own and violently attack somebody you could have serious repercussions for doing that
00:25:27.460
because you're going to affect the business of the prison the business of the prison is to make money
00:25:31.060
for these gangs and they control acts of violence so when they set up an act of violence they have
00:25:36.740
to be successful it may have taken them six months to set that up and therefore they can't afford to
00:25:42.140
get it wrong so they need to know okay we've got the shanks we've got we've got all this information
00:25:46.980
where do we put it to get the maximum amount of damage in the minimum amount of time because we
00:25:51.780
don't want the prison SWAT team the CERT team to respond in time to save this guy and so they need
00:25:59.060
to know exactly where to stab people exactly where to hit people exactly where to you know open them
00:26:03.840
up so that they they die and it's very interesting it has nothing to do with opinion it has all to do
00:26:10.260
with results and they're very very methodical about it you i there were less the fascinating
00:26:15.600
thing was letters that i was seeing that were decoded of one prison gang member sending to his
00:26:22.320
cousin who was coming into prison for the first time he sent a letter that if you and i read it
00:26:26.640
would seem very much like a family member sending us a hey good luck you know uh letter and oh here's
00:26:32.800
a little bit of information about the family when it was decoded it basically was telling him exactly how
00:26:38.120
to create what you know make weapons where you can make weapons in the prison where to attack people
00:26:44.160
you know specific targets of the human body of where to attack people and how to make sure that
00:26:48.920
you do it efficiently and effectively each and every time you know it's very very specific information
00:26:54.180
and um the reason they do that is because these guys can't afford to get it wrong and that's why
00:26:59.180
it's worth looking at how they look at the tool because they look at it very different than we look
00:27:05.120
at it we try to sanitize everything that we do and we try to make a an approach that's a very indirect
00:27:10.440
approach oftentimes because you know we're trying to be good people and that i you know and
00:27:15.460
unfortunately if we meet up against one of these predators who uses a much more direct approach and
00:27:19.840
direct methods we're so far behind the power curve that you know we're going to probably not come out on
00:27:25.040
the right side of it right and going back to social aggression so you know most self-defense
00:27:31.220
methods out there or people often confuse sport martial art with self-defense they're going to use
00:27:37.240
that in social aggression because they think that they're they're being threatened that they're going
00:27:41.940
to have bodily harm so they use those tactics but what ends up happening is it often elevates it to
00:27:47.120
possible asocial violence yeah well when we look at the the world of combat sports you know i live in
00:27:56.260
vegas and i'm surrounded by some of the top ufc competitors a lot of these guys are friends of mine
00:28:01.340
i love combat sports i grew up with it you know but the only way you can make you know you can gamify
00:28:09.480
violence is to take out injury to the human body and so if you want to find out how to be effective
00:28:17.440
in a life or death situation all you need to do is look at the rules in any of the combat sports
00:28:24.200
and the last time i looked at the ufc there are 31 rules 28 of them revolved around injuring the
00:28:32.140
human body that they were taken out and the reason being is because that's not the goal of a combat
00:28:37.520
sport application combat sport application is to pit skill against skill these amazing athletes that go
00:28:44.400
at it but if you allow injury to the human body you can bypass it right away um you know all of a sudden
00:28:51.800
what happens if a guy you know accidentally rolls up and breaks another guy's ankle in an mma fight
00:28:56.620
you know it's over right away and everybody's all you know upset because hey the fighter can't go on
00:29:01.080
and you know it wasn't intentional but it was an injury to the human body and so those are all the
00:29:06.960
telltale signs when when you see things like that happen in a combat sport environment that's the
00:29:13.000
learning curve that's where you sit there and say oh hey wait a minute i had two two highly trained
00:29:17.840
guys that were completely committed to train for at least a 10 week training camp for this were in
00:29:23.180
amazing shape and all of a sudden something just happened that this guy who had all the will in the
00:29:28.080
world to to keep going can't keep going regardless of his resolve he's got an injury to the human body
00:29:35.240
and that's what these prisoners understand at a much more base level they want to go right to the
00:29:41.680
direct injury they want to go right to the thing that shuts down the athleticism that shuts down the
00:29:46.760
brain's ability to think the guy's ability to respond and and that's by breaking a structure
00:29:53.000
or sensory system of the human body right so if you are faced with a social aggression situation
00:29:59.800
right there's you know that i mean i think men probably encounter this more often with each other
00:30:05.060
the shoving the the name calling the chest puffing up and the yelling and shouting what should uh your
00:30:12.720
response be well you just walk yourself through the scenario okay so i'll give you three scenarios
00:30:17.800
first one i walked into the bar this guy came by and he you know he knocked into me and he told me my
00:30:26.360
wife was fat i went over i slammed him on the side of the neck i grabbed his head i gouged his eye out
00:30:32.780
your honor second scenario i'm going to the whole foods parking lot i've been waiting for uh parking
00:30:42.640
you know a parking spot for the last couple minutes i go to go take it when the guy backs out
00:30:49.420
small little mercedes comes in grabs spot guy's a real jerk gets out flips me off i run over there i
00:30:56.540
throw him down kick him i stomp him on the neck and then i gouge his eye out your honor
00:31:02.380
third scenario i was at my office when he came through the door with the firearm he shot two of
00:31:10.680
my co-workers his gun jammed i noticed that he went down for a reload i tackled him the first thing i
00:31:17.140
saw was his eye and i was able to use my thumb and i gouged his eye out and i stopped him from
00:31:24.040
continuing to shoot anybody else officer now i did three scenarios there we knew the first two were crazy
00:31:31.420
and the reason i ended both of those with your honor is because you're going to end up if you're
00:31:38.000
lucky in front of a judge for something like that and there's no way you're gonna be able to justify
00:31:42.440
anything like that the last thing you were talking to the officer and the officer dismissed it at that
00:31:50.340
point and realized it didn't go any further up the chain because it was a justified use so
00:31:54.340
when would gouging and i ever be acceptable you know it has to be there we are not talking about
00:32:01.320
a dust-up fight we're not talking about things that are voidable that you can absolutely walk away from
00:32:06.560
we're talking about things when you're devoid of choice and you have to use that's the only time
00:32:11.140
does it meet the threshold of if i had a firearm i would take it out and deploy it on here now can
00:32:18.000
you don't know once you cross the physical plane you have no idea where it's going to end up and
00:32:24.480
this is where social aggression can turn into asocial violence even though neither party intended it
00:32:30.780
you don't have the luxury of that choice because literally there's there's you know one of my
00:32:37.160
instructors for years collected uh collected news clippings of two guys who get into an argument one
00:32:43.320
guy pushes the other guy he falls over brains himself and he's dead now the other guy's facing
00:32:47.660
manslaughter over nothing you know i think i think we talked about this before on the last podcast but
00:32:54.260
it's still very relevant for your your listeners to hear again you know you have to ask yourself the
00:32:59.000
act that you're about to take and these are things that you have to think about and this is what the
00:33:01.880
book really does it really walks you through these scenarios to think ahead of time about this stuff
00:33:06.680
but the idea is if i do what i'm thinking of doing right now if i participate in this three days from now
00:33:12.340
if i'm sitting in a jail cell facing charges is this going to be worth it for me or if i'm six
00:33:20.540
feet in the ground dead is it worth it very few things pass that three-day test and it's an education
00:33:28.920
process especially you know this is the art of manliness and men have a huge challenge in this
00:33:34.980
because we we sometimes confuse like our locker room culture and we communicate with violence
00:33:40.640
sometimes and and we have this this nebulous you know uh relationship with violence at times that
00:33:47.760
can get us into trouble and and this is where we really have to do some deliberate thinking about
00:33:52.600
this and and you know understand the difference between that's why i use term violence i don't use
00:33:57.580
fight i don't use any of those specific terms i don't use the term self-defense you know when we're
00:34:02.700
talking about self-defense is what is determined after you use an act of violence after after you
00:34:08.920
participate in an act of violence it is then determined whether or not it's criminal or self-defense
00:34:12.760
any of the things coming up any of the conflict coming up prior to that any social aggression coming
00:34:18.980
up to the point of violence is all being dealt with anything prior to that point where we actually
00:34:24.680
use tool of violence all that can be dealt with in anger management classes and and you know
00:34:29.940
social interaction and all of those things but when you get to that point of violence you know
00:34:35.320
what we're talking about when violence is the answer you have to be very specific about that
00:34:38.540
information and so you have to use correct terminology right and i thought it was interesting point you made
00:34:43.500
that by knowing how to inflict violence right it can actually make a person more confident more calm
00:34:52.740
more peaceful in those social aggression situations because they realize like you know
00:34:57.820
okay i can just put my knee right there in that kneecap or i could do this like by understanding how
00:35:04.580
fragile the human body is it like makes you realize this is not worth it like it's totally not worth it
00:35:09.660
yeah well you know one of the one of the things i was thinking about is you know and there's some there's
00:35:15.040
some great guys out there you know from from the combat sport world martial arts world that's shared stories
00:35:19.740
you know some of them are incredibly tragic but i'll give you one that's not it could have been
00:35:24.620
tragic but it wasn't most of your listeners that follow any martial arts or anybody you know one of
00:35:29.340
the big personalities is boz rootin and uh he's a former champ uh ufc champ heavyweight champ and he's
00:35:35.500
a really interesting guy he's dutch and he talked about a time it was really interesting in an interview
00:35:39.740
that i heard him and he talked about a time that he was in i think i believe it was amsterdam
00:35:43.260
and he he got baited he got baited into going outside of a bar and fighting two guys
00:35:50.060
and he did it and at the end of the confrontation one guy was breathing the other guy was out cold
00:36:00.860
conscious you know unconscious and he wasn't sure if the guy was alive and he ran to his hotel room
00:36:09.300
and he said he spent a terrified night in his hotel room just waiting for the police to come take
00:36:14.820
him away because he thought for sure he had killed that guy and the reason he felt the way he felt was
00:36:19.720
because he realized it was all avoidable he didn't have to participate in that and it was just such a
00:36:25.600
learning curve for him that he he recognized i allowed myself to be baited into that i mean the
00:36:31.220
reality was hitting him after the fact and thankfully he didn't murder that guy and it didn't go horribly
00:36:37.940
wrong and it was over nothing it was over just you know typical bar room you know ridiculousness
00:36:44.660
that he got caught up in it and i thought it was a really honest um honest thing and i i hope most
00:36:51.860
young guys could hear stuff like that because uh you know it really it really made a difference i mean
00:36:57.380
you know my my situation i've had a couple situations that have happened where um you know where it's
00:37:04.660
really it's really educated me on what's worth responding to and what's not worth responding to
00:37:11.060
and um you know the last the one that uh the one that hits me that still to this day is i was a young
00:37:19.780
guy and doing a lot of work in south america as an intelligence officer um we were doing a lot of like
00:37:26.420
back then counter narcotics type of work it was really interesting it was really you know what we thought
00:37:30.740
dangerous i get back to san diego it's a real uh you know i i just i'm feeling very comfortable in
00:37:36.900
san diego it's my hometown so we're driving around an area where you know we get into a little bit of
00:37:41.060
traffic some buddies of mine were going downtown to go to the happy hour and we get caught in a little
00:37:46.500
bit of traffic and there's a guy that's behind me that somehow and i'm talking about traffic that's
00:37:50.660
just inching forward this guy somehow thinks that i cut him off and he you know he starts making faces at
00:37:57.300
me and do anything and i'm laughing i got two of my friends in the back of my jeep and i just start
00:38:02.500
making eyes to this guy through my uh you know rearview mirror and i mean i'm incensing him i'm
00:38:08.980
like blowing him kisses he's getting just more and more fuming fuming so he he angles his car around
00:38:14.420
in about like a four to five minute time frame to get in front of me stops the car gets out of the car
00:38:20.820
and i'm thinking oh this is great here i am this you know highly trained hand-to-hand combat instructor i
00:38:25.700
just got back from south america we've been doing all this badass stuff uh you know i get to show my
00:38:30.260
skills off to my boys get out of the car i take two steps out of the car and from the back my friend
00:38:35.700
yells gun and i realize at that point i'm fully exposed that i'm in the like a you know just a
00:38:45.140
complete complete fatal funnel if the guy has the gun and i've screwed myself i just instantly realize
00:38:51.220
what i've done to myself you know at this stage of the game turns out it wasn't a gun turns out it
00:38:57.380
was one of those things back back then a lot of people had things that that that tied up your uh
00:39:02.500
your your steering wheel you know the club and he had one of those things it was a metal piece of uh
00:39:07.940
you know like a metal metal club that he had there and i just looked back at those guys i said you know
00:39:13.380
a couple expletives to my friend for being an idiot you know scaring that scaring me that it's a gun
00:39:17.780
i looked at it it's a club no big deal i i can deal with this all day so the guy like is a little
00:39:22.820
bit shocked that i charge him he comes and he tries to swing the club at me i strike the club
00:39:27.620
out of his hand grab him by the side of the neck i do basically 270 and i slam him on the back of his
00:39:33.540
car and i'm just about i'm holding his neck down and i'm just about to hit him because i'm so pumped
00:39:38.740
up from the fact that i thought it was a gun and then i was mad that he was trying to hit me with a club
00:39:43.460
and i was just going to take my aggression out on this guy i'm a young guy i'm in my early 20s
00:39:47.620
and just as i'm about to hit him the little girl's face is pressed up against the window he had a
00:39:52.260
four-year-old daughter in the back of his car and she was saying please don't hit daddy and
00:40:06.660
so that was the last time i ever responded to social at that point i got lucky um
00:40:13.300
it's not worth it it just isn't worth it and i know you know my passion is to teach young guys i
00:40:19.620
love teaching young guys and really get them through this and help them navigate through this
00:40:23.140
because there's two things there's the young guys that will get themselves in trouble and when i say
00:40:28.740
young i'm saying anybody under 50 you know um we'll go headlong into something and not think
00:40:34.820
and i'm hoping that through this education process i can get them to think about the subject
00:40:39.620
more scary for me though are is the other side of it brett where they have to take action and they
00:40:45.300
don't know what to do they've never been taught about asocial they've never been taught about
00:40:50.580
the fact that hey here's the rare occasion when violence is the answer and by the way here's how
00:40:56.180
to look at the subject matter here's how to look at the human body here's how to activate your brain
00:41:01.380
and and here's how to get the most out of this because there's so much you know there's so much
00:41:07.300
hero worshiping out there when it comes to the media you know we see like you know the jason
00:41:11.860
movies we see all of these ridiculous uh ideas of what we think you have to do to be violent and
00:41:18.100
violence is really very very simple and straightforward to use and it doesn't require great coordination
00:41:24.740
it just requires intent and knowledge and it's a very simple skill set that all of us have access to
00:41:31.860
and very few of us in the last 50 years have really looked at this and trained ourselves to do this
00:41:38.340
you know i use the analogy of swimming before i look at this subject matter is the same i look at
00:41:42.660
teaching my kids to swim i don't teach my kids to swim so they can be the next michael phelps
00:41:48.820
you know i teach my kids to swim because i don't want them to drown and it's the same thing with the
00:41:52.580
tool of violence everybody should have a working knowledge of how the tool works yeah and and as you
00:41:56.900
said it it's dead simple and this is where your your target focus training comes in and you like
00:42:03.860
that's what i love about the book like i mean it's like super simple it's basically you know
00:42:07.300
no certain parts of the body will if you hit it hard enough inflict it with enough damage that it
00:42:14.740
will you know have that spinal reflex thing and you you highlight all these stories of of students
00:42:20.660
you've had some were 110 pound you know sorority girls taking down 215 pound rapists just by using
00:42:29.380
these this this target focus training thing yeah well it's not it's not target focus training is the
00:42:33.940
is the method we're talking about we're talking truly about violence i don't have a patent on
00:42:37.460
violence you know we know like the mexican mafia as we were talking about earlier you know they
00:42:41.940
understand it's anatomy it's understanding how do you you know make an you know an anatomy you know
00:42:47.300
physiology and anatomy meet in a really bad way and you know physiology and physics meet in a really
00:42:52.900
bad way and the best data that's out there comes from sports and you know sports injury data and
00:42:59.300
the reason we look at sports injury data is because those are humans those are injuries that that come
00:43:03.380
from humans colliding with humans and humans colliding with a planet and we can replicate those those
00:43:08.100
forces you know and that's where we talk we really draw all our information and there's about 70 areas
00:43:14.340
on the human body that get a an injury threshold that we're looking for where the brain's taken out of
00:43:18.900
the equation and those 70 areas of the human body keeps showing up time and time again in the data
00:43:24.580
and you only need to know a small portion of those to be effective you know uh that's that's
00:43:29.460
the whole idea i mean i'm living proof of that i mean that's you know for me the the seminal event
00:43:36.660
for me was i was in seal training i'd been training to be a seal for about 10 years as a young kid
00:43:43.620
i was a navy brat i knew everything there was to to know about the seal teams you know i was fortunate
00:43:49.380
enough to live in navy housing in coronado and was around a lot of seals
00:43:53.780
and just learned everything i went through college got selected got there flew through
00:43:59.700
training was just doing great and a couple weeks before training was over and i'd already been
00:44:04.820
assigned to the seal team i wanted to go to i was a young officer i was full of myself i was at the
00:44:08.980
height of my physical abilities i was absolutely sidetracked by an injury a small injury just a burst
00:44:15.780
i burst my eardrums and the semicircular canals you know emptied out i went into vertigo and literally
00:44:22.740
instantaneously my body just failed me and i was you know my career ended before it even started
00:44:30.260
in the seal teams you know i had to switch over to intelligence at that point and i stayed in special
00:44:35.220
warfare but for me injury just realized that it just showed me that bigger faster and stronger
00:44:41.220
which i was always up until that point inculcated and thought that was that was the way to go i realized
00:44:46.500
that no that's that's not enough because it had nothing to do with my will it had nothing to do
00:44:51.940
with you know my desire my desires through the roof i had no control over my body when i went into vertigo
00:44:58.100
and you know that was true injury and my ears just never healed correctly so i could do couldn't
00:45:01.860
do pressurized diving uh anymore and that's what got me on this this journey you know it was just uh
00:45:08.900
i ended up meeting people we ended up meeting people that started changing the way special
00:45:13.060
operations looked at hand-to-hand combat and it was all based off of injury the human body
00:45:17.940
and the problem with that is it's it's hard for people to wrap their heads around because there's
00:45:23.380
nothing rewarding you know you know when you compete say in jujitsu or um any combat sport and
00:45:30.740
you better one of your opponents there's a lot of you know there's a lot of social gratitude to that
00:45:36.260
and there's a lot of camaraderie and there's a lot of you know there's a lot of social validation
00:45:42.100
and proof on that when you use violence there's nothing i mean when you when you see a really cool
00:45:47.940
fight on tv you know where two guys were really going at it it was a great fight that that's that's
00:45:53.300
amazing then you see videotape of one guy taking a hammer and hitting another guy in the head and just
00:45:57.140
you know continuing to hit him until he's dead nobody you know there's nothing there's nothing rewarding
00:46:04.020
about that there's nothing to learn there that's just an act of violence you know yet that tool is
00:46:09.940
exactly what we need when somebody's trying to take our lives and we need to know how to access that
00:46:16.100
and the scary part for most people isn't the fact that learning it it's when you start to learn it you
00:46:22.260
realize you're already pre-wired and hardwired for this we're really good we're predators we're the top
00:46:28.180
predators as a species and what's interesting about us is we are not the biggest fastest and
00:46:33.620
strongest because if we were we wouldn't be the top species but we have brains and the brain is
00:46:39.300
what makes us dangerous you know and when you train your brain correctly then everything else is
00:46:45.380
available so you train your brain first your body is your your first line of tools that you have access
00:46:51.220
to and everything else is ancillary and once you train that way you you know you physiologically you
00:46:58.820
change on the way you look at things you have a different outlook on life it's really what you came back to
00:47:03.300
talk about i mean the more competent i am in justified lethal force the calmer my life is
00:47:11.700
because i understand the threshold of when i would ever use that and i would understand
00:47:15.460
everything else that needs to be dismissed so i'm a really friendly guy you know when people meet me
00:47:21.060
i'm usually and i look you know i've got tattoos and i'm a big guy and i work out and and i have all
00:47:26.500
that look i have the look of it but i'm always engaging with people and people are often it's often
00:47:33.060
funny when i see that you know there are some people that'll go socially they'll take it they'll
00:47:38.580
try to take advantage of it they'll you know they'll say oh okay he's he's not he's not scary so i can kind
00:47:44.020
of screw with him and that's when i know i have them at that point because that's exactly what i want
00:47:50.740
to do i don't want to trigger anything that says you know i may or may not use the tool of violence i
00:47:56.500
want that available to me and i want it to be a surprise each and every time you know that i use that so
00:48:01.460
i don't want to trigger off anything that shows me as being a violent person or somebody who's who's
00:48:06.100
used there i know it's a tool that's available to me i know how to use it and i don't need to make
00:48:09.940
people feel uncomfortable but what's really interesting is i treat everybody that i come
00:48:15.780
in contact with if i've never met them before i tell people it's gonna you know it sounds kind of
00:48:21.780
you know crazy sometimes but you know i treat them like they're six seconds away from a shooting spree
00:48:26.340
and i don't want to be the one to trigger it so how would you communicate with somebody like that
00:48:30.980
well you'd be really polite you know you'd engage people that way you'd let a lot of things go
00:48:37.140
and it's just a much easier way to live you know when you do this the problem is is when you don't
00:48:44.180
look at this subject and you don't have that you have these irrational fears and so oftentimes you'll
00:48:48.580
do things you'll you'll respond aggressively out of fear you'll think oh okay i'm feeling really
00:48:54.100
uncomfortable right now so i'm going to respond aggressively and maybe that'll make the person
00:48:57.780
back off you know and oftentimes that's the worst thing you can do but when you really understand okay
00:49:03.060
i understand how violence works i understand this person's doing this for whatever reason but hey i
00:49:08.020
still have options so i can still deal with this socially and you know he may still call me names and
00:49:14.660
it may be unpleasant but i don't need to escalate it at this stage of the game because i don't want to flip
00:49:19.780
that coin tim this has been a great conversation i mean i think the big takeaway from the book like
00:49:24.820
as you said violence is simple i think what i think you're doing with this book and you did a good job
00:49:29.700
with it is just changing the mindset of just regular people about violence so where can people go to
00:49:36.020
learn more about the book in your work the best place to go to learn about uh you know our stuff is
00:49:41.860
probably uh target focus training dot com and if they go to if they go to the book and pre-order
00:49:48.500
the book i have a i have a lot of free information i'm giving i'm giving out a 10-week course on the
00:49:53.780
book where i go in depth on all of the subject matter that i couldn't cover in the book for each
00:49:58.580
chapter but that's only for people that are that they go in pre-order and and that's at when violence
00:50:03.300
is the answer dot com the name of the book and uh they can get that but i i really appreciate the
00:50:09.700
opportunity to share the message i know it's a it's a different message for people and i hope
00:50:13.700
they really understand that intent of this you know we're with with what we just saw in charlotte
00:50:20.020
with what we've seen you know with the pulse nightclub and all of these shootings and everything
00:50:24.500
that's going on overseas right now this is very much a topic that we're all aware of it's the 800
00:50:29.780
pound gorilla that's in the room and this is a real opportunity to explore it and understand it
00:50:36.340
and then probably you'll deal with the news reports in a much more you know effective manner
00:50:43.060
in how you look at the subject because uh you don't want to control you don't want to have
00:50:47.380
irrational fear and you know the way you get over that is by just looking at a subject and studying
00:50:52.740
it and this is a real simple straightforward entertaining way to do it awesome well tim larkin
00:50:56.980
thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you brett my yesterday was tim larkin
00:51:00.420
he's the author of the book when violence is the answer comes out september 5th next week and
00:51:04.820
it's available for pre-order right now on amazon.com you can go there today pre-order it
00:51:08.900
and you'll get it september 5th the day it launches so go do that today it's a fantastic book also check
00:51:13.460
out our show notes at aom.is violence where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper
00:51:18.180
into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips
00:51:30.580
and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you
00:51:34.260
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00:51:37.220
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00:51:40.660
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