Beyond OODA — Developing the Orientation for Conflict and Violence
Episode Stats
Summary
Vegas Freeborn is the author of two books: Violence of Mind: Training and Preparation for Extreme Violence, and Beyond OODA: Developing the Orientation for Deception, Conflict, and Violence. In this episode, he shares how he went from being a convicted felon to a self-defense and firearms instructor who has worked with both civilians and law enforcement.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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The OODA Loop. The OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It's a strategic tool
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designed to help people make better decisions when facing any kind of competitor or opponent.
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My guest today says when that opponent is a seasoned criminal, the orient component of OODA,
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a person's mindset, is the most underestimated and critical part of the model to understand.
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His name is Varg Freeborn, and he's the author of Violence of Mind, Training and Preparation for Extreme Violence,
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and Beyond OODA, Developing the Orientation for Deception, Conflict, and Violence.
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We begin with how Varg's life story has uniquely positioned him to understand the dynamics of violence
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from the perspectives of both perpetrators of crime and the would-be preventers of that crime.
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Varg shares how he went from being a convicted felon to a self-defense and firearms instructor
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who's worked with both civilians and law enforcement.
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We then turn to why it's so important to understand the difference between the orientation of an average person
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and the orientation of a violent criminal, and why, when the two collide,
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the latter has a real advantage over the former.
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We enter a conversation with what you can do in terms of mindset and training to close that gap
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and be better prepared to handle a violent encounter.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash orientation.
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So you are a strength coach, and you're also a firearms and self-defense instructor
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And you've got two books out that are really good.
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You've got Violence of Mind and then Beyond OODA Loop.
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And I hope we can discuss some of your ideas there.
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Before we do, I think it would be helpful to talk about your background
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because you got to your career as a strength coach, as a self-defense instructor,
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a firearms instructor, differently than a lot of other firearms instructors.
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And I think it'll help understanding your background to help readers understand
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I was basically raised up in a dope house, and my mother was 16 when she had me.
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She had probably seven or eight brothers and sisters, and they were all drug addicts,
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I experienced very violent things at a very early age.
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Which nearly became the victim of a stabbing when I was seven.
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So someone was loose in the house and stabbing my family members and came after us.
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And my mother and aunt were able to get us barricaded in my grandfather's bedroom with a toolbox.
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And basically, the attacker was stabbing through the hollow corridor.
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It was a very memorable moment for me as a young kid.
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That was an example of, like, that things like that happened quite often.
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And so from a very young age, you saw violence firsthand.
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And your stepfather, very violent, strangled you.
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So your teenage years, same thing, continue on, just getting more intense.
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And then there's this moment, you ended up in prison.
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And, you know, obviously, there was a catalyst for this event.
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And the beginning of it was a relationship with a girl.
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And so from out of that came, you know, a guy that was angry with me over who I had dated.
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He was much older than me, outweighed me by about 100 pounds.
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And he relentlessly pursued me for about six months.
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I was trying to kind of, you know, get my life on track and pursue things that I wanted to do
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and get away from the nonsense that the, you know, beginning of my life had been marked up by.
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So I was trying to avoid this situation as much as I could.
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And he was incredibly drunk and high, just really out of his mind, intoxicated.
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And he initially had tried to get me to leave with him and his buddies.
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And it's one of those things where someone's incredibly drunk and they think they're making
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sense, but you, they're not making any sense at all.
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He really thought that maybe he could convince me that we were friends and that I could leave
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As I said, this was a time when, you know, my best friend was shot in the head and thrown in a lake.
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So when someone like this guy had been is telling you that they're going to kill you,
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it's something that you take, you know, serious back then.
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In that environment, that day and time, it was something that you would take serious.
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And that night, basically, he ended up cornering me.
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And I told him a bunch of times, I was even to the point of witness coaching by this point,
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where I'm like saying things for people to hear it because I know something bad is going to happen.
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And I'm trying to at least lay the groundwork that, you know, I'm trying to avoid this situation.
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But he comes and corners me in a back room, and I see that his friends had went outside and pulled the car back to the back door,
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So I'm thinking to myself, this is about to go really bad, right?
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Because if these three guys that outweigh me and outnumber me get a hold of me and put me in that car,
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So I just made my mind up that I wasn't going into the car.
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And he reached up, and I told him several, several times, leave me alone.
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And, of course, he was just persistent in doing what he thought he was going to do.
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So when he reached for me, he grabbed me and began to choke me.
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And that's when I pulled a blade, and I went to work on him.
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And I stabbed him a couple dozen times, and he didn't drop until the last one.
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So it was very eye-opening to the resilience of the human body and how much it takes to actually stop someone who's determined whether they're intoxicated or not.
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And during that situation, he had a lacerated internal artery in his neck, a lacerated jugular, and a collapsed lung.
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And he was in pneumothorax, and he still survived.
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So however that comes out, he survived those injuries.
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And then when we went to court, he wasn't the tough gangster anymore that was going to kill me.
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He was the afflicted victim of a vicious attack and on and on.
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And this type of thing was just, it was the most unbelievable thing I've ever experienced in my life to see how the stories shift.
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And all of a sudden, you become a villain in a way that's like, it's getting ready to take your life away.
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And I started out with an attempted aggravated murder charge, which was 25 years.
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And I was able to plea that down with some help from some family members who scraped together some money.
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And I was able to plea that down to a two- to five-year sentence.
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And I ended up serving the entire five, probably due to being such a model prisoner.
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But yeah, so that was basically how that went down.
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And then when you were in prison, you continued to see violence firsthand.
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Now, this is something that, and I don't claim to be hardcore or be an expert on anything.
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And I don't claim to be an amazing fighter or anything like that.
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But I can tell you that I was in prison during one of the most violent times to be in prison.
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Because if you look at the violent crime statistics and the murder rates, which is going back up now for reasons that would be another discussion.
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But before 2020, violence was way down and used to be able to say, oh, the murder rate's down 50%.
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Because if you look back to between 85 and 95, the violent crime and murder was up to 50% higher during that time.
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Well, by the early 90s, in 94 was when I got convicted and locked up.
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Most of those people had been locked up, right?
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So it was a time where you had the most violent street criminals in the longest time that we had seen for a while.
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And they were all locked up and the prisons were overflowing.
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And so when I first got there, it was so overflowed that we ended up being put in a gymnasium that was converted to a bunk room that had probably 400 bunks in it.
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So you got 600 to 800 people shoved in this gymnasium that was a basketball court, right?
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So an intake prison is they bring in everyone to this initial facility and decide where you're going to go as a parent facility from there.
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And they'll ship you to wherever in the state they want to.
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And so the problem with an intake facility is that you're in there with everyone.
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If you're minimum security, you're bunking with a maximum security guy.
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I remember I had one cellmate that had murdered five prostitutes with a claw hammer.
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And so you have to go to sleep at night with these people.
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And this is the type of thing that was your introduction to prison, right?
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And I was a pretty violent kid for sure, but this was like the big leagues, right?
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So your introduction is a paradigm shifting experience for sure.
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Maybe there's some insights we can take that you've learned about violence from your experience in prison.
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And we can talk about that later, but you, you serve your time.
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And mostly when you're a felon, like you can't vote, you can't have a gun, you can't work at a government job, et cetera.
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Well, I was fortunate enough to have been locked up in Ohio.
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So the Ohio has an automatic restoration of the right to vote, the right to sit on a jury, and the right to hold public office when you're released from prison.
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The thing that they don't have is an automatic restoration of firearms rights.
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I had continued to fight my case while I was in prison, and I continued to fight my case when I got out of prison because I always believed that I acted in self-defense and I had no choice.
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And basically what happened after I got out is I finally got them to sit down with me.
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And they said, look, we're not going to open this case up because if you cause us to open this case up again, we're going to take you right back to the original 25 years.
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And we're going to disregard the five that you served, which is a tactic that the state will use anytime they don't want to do something.
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So what they did do is they said, we will give you a restoration of your rights and give you all of your rights back.
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And so I thought, okay, that's a pretty good deal.
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So they gave me a restoration of all of my rights to vote, sit on a jury, hold a public office, and own and possess firearms as allowed by state and federal law.
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And then they issued me a concealed carry license, but they never removed the felony.
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So I have a very unique situation of being a felon that also is allowed to carry a gun.
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And if you pull up my record, I get pulled over, they pull it up, they're going to see the felony and they're going to see the restoration and then they'll see the concealed carry license.
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But I was able to fight that enough to get at least that back.
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And that took quite a few years for that to happen, for sure.
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You teach police officers and military guys about self-defense and firearms, right?
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I am semi-retired from the active training part of it here in the recent time since COVID, actually.
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That kind of pushed me into a slowdown for sure.
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And then I just never kicked it back up because I just never intended on retiring in that business anyway.
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And so it was a good time to kind of semi-retire.
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But I still work with, I'll be at Ohio Tactical Officers Conference this year.
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And it'll be working with civilians and law enforcement and military guys.
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And the way that I accomplished that was after I had gotten my restoration, I started to see the boom that was happening in self-defense training.
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And one thing that I seen was this huge gap in information between reality and what was being taught in the mainstream of that industry.
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And so all that I wanted to do was fill some gaps in for people and say,
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Hey, you know, based on my very real experience, this is not how that typically goes.
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And you're going to need to prioritize things differently than what you're being taught here.
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And I was pretty early on grabbed by law enforcement guys and pulled into the law enforcement training world.
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I was sent through a lot of closed enrollment training on the LE side.
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So I've been to breaching school, ballistic, thermal, mechanical, explosive breaching.
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I've been to just hundreds and hundreds of hours of CQB training from different angles and different disciplines and different agencies.
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I was certified all the way up to full team CQB instructor, which I will never do, but it added to my knowledge base for their benefit as well as mine.
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And, you know, I've done law enforcement, executive protection training and just on and on to things that I got fortunate enough to get pulled into.
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So I was able to train at a very high level on that side of the fence after having a very real experience on the other side of the fence with violence.
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I have at least one body part missing from the stabbing.
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And so this was something that really rounded out my experience and my perspective to be able to see these things from both sides of the door, basically.
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Let's talk about how does your personal experience with violence change the way you approach or think about training people in self-defense?
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I mean, what gaps do you see in traditional self-defense training that your experience can fill?
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Like, what's the difference between the way you approach it and the most other self-defense instructors approach training?
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It was more cultivated from a very young age, so I didn't have a changing moment for myself.
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But what I do see in the difference between myself and what's taught by most of the instructors, especially when I started this business, is the prioritization of decision-making and the components that go into decision-making over weapons and techniques and things like that.
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So I think that your least experienced instructors will always be weapons-focused, technique-focused, speed-focused, always thinking about those types of things.
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And your more experienced instructors tend to be more decision-making focused and cultivating the ability to make good decisions when faced with very dire consequences and fast-moving situations.
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So I think that's probably the biggest marker between the two that I see.
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Yeah, I've noticed in my own experience, I've taken firearms training.
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You go, and you're just kind of doing like a choreo, like a kata almost.
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It's like, oh, here you can do this draw, and then you're going to take a step.
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And I mean, it was fun, but after the experience, I don't know if this is actually going to be useful in a real-life situation.
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Yeah, it's kind of like if we remember the times of the McDojo age in the late 70s into the 80s when everybody wanted to learn karate because Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris were the main things on the big screen, and everybody wanted to do that.
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And then when reality hit that whole movement in the face with MMA, and you don't see karate and Kimpo black belts dominating anything anywhere in any ring, that was like a wake-up call for that.
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And I think the firearms industry has had that coming and is experiencing it now to a certain extent.
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But when you have guys coming back from, and not necessarily like 11Bs or something, but like special operations, guys that have been in very heavy situations, heavy fights with very small numbers, very up close and personal, you'll see more and more the decision-making process is almost all that they will focus on.
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The weapon skills are very professional to a standard, and that's it.
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Like you just, here's your standard, work until you can achieve the standard, and then work to maintain it.
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And that's the simplicity of the weapons part of it.
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The rest of it is all being able to make the decision, being able to see the situation for what it is, analyze the information, synthesize it with what you already know, and then move forward with good decisions that will keep you and your people safe.
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And that's the difference that I see, that you really need to focus on if you're going to really think about getting into a fight.
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Like you say, you know, the kata, is it going to help you?
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It might, because it may be there when you need it, and you'll do this perfect move, and it was the thing you needed at the time.
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But the likelihood of those circumstances lining up like that is very low.
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So there's Violence of Mind, and your most recent one is Beyond OODA.
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And OODA Loop was developed by a guy named John Boyd, military strategist.
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And you hear it used a lot in the sort of tactical self-defense world, but you have a different emphasis that a lot of guys miss, and I want to talk about that.
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But before that, for those who aren't familiar with OODA Loop, can you give us a big-picture overview of what it is and how it's used in the tactical world?
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Yes, so John Boyd, who retired a full colonel from the Air Force, was the developer of OODA Loop.
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And it's not really a loop, and it really grew and developed beyond that first conception that he had as an OODA Loop, which was very much like Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, which is what the acronym stands for.
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And it became a very complex series of loops, and there's bypasses, and there's different mechanisms within this process that change how a person makes decisions, how quickly they make decisions, and how quickly they can act on it.
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I've never used it as a model in the lectures I do or any of the classes that I've taught.
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And one of the things that I think people miss the most about the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act concept is there were many, many, there was 30 years of development that went into that with Boyd.
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And for most of that time, Chet Richards and Chuck Spinney were working very closely with him.
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So there were actually three people involved in the development of that concept.
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Boyd gets full credit because it was his idea, and he was the main driver.
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But it couldn't have been what it became without the other two guys helping him and being very close friends with him.
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As the stories go, they would get these crazy phone calls from Boyd at 2 a.m., and he'd have this breakthrough idea,
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and they'd have to get out of bed and listen to the type of person that Boyd was.
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And without those guys there, this would have never became what it did.
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And some guys will get stuck on the simple loop that it began as and think that's what it is.
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And I've even heard it so incorrectly put as to say that orienting was physically facing yourself towards the threat,
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which couldn't be more farther from what it really is.
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And I think that the other guys will consider themselves guru of the concept,
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but they'll point towards things like the aerial attack study, which was Boyd's work in the 60s,
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and completely disregard what he did in the next 30 years of his work life.
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So what I think that is most important to understand about OODA is basically your orientation is what drives your decision-making and your actions.
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And your orientation is, as he put it, a repository of your genetics, your cultural inputs, your value systems, your experiences, your confidence.
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All of those things are what actually drive and influence your decision-making process.
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And I think that's really, for me, the most key takeaway from OODA that you can have.
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I mean, even Boyd said orientation was the most important part.
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Because orientation is based, like this is a kind of way to summarize,
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it's like your mental models of how you see the world or perceive the world.
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And, again, like you said, like Boyd says, your genetics, your culture, your upbringing, your personal experience with violence,
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So orientation will influence how you observe, right?
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And then orientation will also determine how you make a decision.
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And orientation will also determine how you're going to act.
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So I think, like you said, I've read a lot of articles when I've heard,
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I've gone to the gun range and had some guy tell me about OODA Loop.
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They just focus on the observed part and then decide and act.
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But then if you look into it, like you guys did, like orientation, that is everything.
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I'd be better just to focus on that when you're thinking about the OODA Loop.
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And actually, of the two guys that worked with Boyd, Chet Richards and Chuck Spinney,
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I actually was able to develop somewhat of a relationship with Chet Richards during the writing of this book.
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And he also really advised me on the first part of the book where I'm talking about the OODA Loop.
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So this is not something I just flew by the seat of my pants.
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I took this to the source and I was like, hey, here's my perspective.
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And I had no idea what would, you know, I didn't know if he'd come back and say,
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you're a foolish guy and you, you know, you, you're way off base.
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And, you know, so I threw this at him and he came back and was super excited about it.
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And he said, you know, this is exactly, he's like, you've got Boyd figured out here.
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He said, this is exactly what Boyd would get excited about and would want to talk about
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And he said, this is a, you know, a very important book.
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And then he even took the time to dig into personal letters that Boyd wrote him
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and give me access to quote some of those and things like that stuff that people have never
00:24:48.080
So it was a very cool experience, but the validation encoded in that was, you know,
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And with the orientation part of it being the central, obviously the central focus of the book
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and orientation also being the central focus of a lot of Boyd's work, especially in his last
00:25:07.200
15 to 20 years, I think that we can safely say that if you focus on the orientation components,
00:25:23.180
And at some level it requires what might even resemble brainwashing, right?
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Where, and the military does a good job of this sometimes where they take young men and
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completely change their culture to one of brotherhood and camaraderie and, you know,
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you'll fall for the guy next to you and all this type of thing.
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And that's what they send them effectively into war with is that new culture, this new paradigm,
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this new system of values that they've instilled in them, right?
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And if they genetically receive that, that's great.
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The problem that I see with it is the big difference between the good guy and the bad guy.
00:26:02.560
There's an initiation process that happens in an orientation to violence.
00:26:08.080
And it's going to be probably your first big event, your first killing, your first, you know,
00:26:12.580
lethal force level event that is going to initiate you into the experienced.
00:26:18.840
And for someone who's been prepared for that or someone who seeks that initiation,
00:26:25.440
then it's a very different experience than for someone who does not seek the initiation and gets it.
00:26:33.740
And I think that there's such a violent shift in their mind and psychologically,
00:26:39.000
their paradigm has shifted so quickly and so violently that there's moral injury and other
00:26:45.060
things that cause severe PTSD to happen after a violent shift like that.
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And I'm no expert, but from my own experiences and from talking to several of my friends who've
00:26:54.840
experienced war firsthand, these are the conclusions I come to.
00:26:59.000
And I think that the initiation process with the orientation is probably the most important thing
00:27:05.840
to look at and try to simulate or try to achieve at that point.
00:27:09.620
Yeah, I want to dig more into that initiation process and how it can shape orientation.
00:27:13.240
But before we do, I mean, let's talk about this.
00:27:15.760
So one of the things that Boyd talked about, so generally the OODA loop, is if you want to
00:27:22.240
So in any competition, he's basically saying there's an OODA loop going on in every competitor,
00:27:27.520
So if you're the guy defending yourself, you have an OODA loop going on, and then the guy
00:27:32.220
who's trying to do something to you has an OODA loop going on.
00:27:34.880
And whoever can cycle through their OODA loop first is going to win.
00:27:38.080
But how fast that OODA loop goes depends on things like orientation, for example.
00:27:43.240
And you argue that if you really want to make better decisions when it comes to self-defense,
00:27:49.160
you need to understand the orientation of the person who's attacking you.
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And I think a lot of people who are just sort of regular dudes who grew up in the suburbs,
00:27:59.180
they don't really understand the mind or the orientation of a criminal.
00:28:08.840
Like, what is the orientation of a violent criminal?
00:28:11.520
And like, what's contributed to that orientation?
00:28:14.440
So we can't speak just generally about every criminal because just like every other profession
00:28:21.940
or subculture, there's the whole spectrum of human beings in there from idiots to experts.
00:28:27.240
But I think that the biggest difference when we're talking about serious violent criminals
00:28:33.280
that are going to do very high levels of damage or become lethal, that again, we go back to
00:28:43.420
So the thing that's going to be lacked the most in the good guy group, whether it's law enforcement
00:28:51.400
or civilian and self-defense, is initiation experience and confidence that comes from both
00:28:58.300
Now, when a criminal, let's say, for example, when you look at a young gangbanger who grew
00:29:07.920
up very rough, didn't have anybody really cared about them, had a really rough way to go,
00:29:12.820
was treated like trash at school and by the establishment and looked at very suspiciously if they went
00:29:22.620
anywhere and just was just rejected by the world, I'm not condoning or anything like that.
00:29:42.640
And then they want to think about bucking somebody in a chest and putting their enemies down like dogs
00:29:48.640
and being a soldier and things of this nature start to become important to them.
00:29:55.580
At this point, it's still a story that they're telling themselves about who they are.
00:29:59.360
And they may be like, yeah, yeah, I'll buck somebody to the ground.
00:30:03.260
And they're telling themselves this, but they haven't acted it out yet.
00:30:07.180
Now, the second that they act that out, there's going to be a very dramatic paradigm shift that
00:30:14.840
happens inside of their brain. And they're going to become a part of the story they've
00:30:20.040
been telling themselves, a part of the story that they've been glorifying.
00:30:23.560
So if they come home and they've got Tony Montana on their wall and they want to be
00:30:28.380
a big-time dope dealer and have the cars and the women and the pit bulls and all this stuff,
00:30:39.840
And so when the story becomes real, the confidence level goes way up because now they've actually
00:30:46.680
done the thing that they said they were going to do.
00:30:58.940
And so the difference is for the good guy, right?
00:31:02.420
So the so-called good guy doesn't have that initial sociopathic tendency towards violence
00:31:11.580
And the initiation is going to be a very different experience when he gets it.
00:31:15.780
And if he's not properly prepared for it, then when it happens, it's going to be a violent
00:31:20.600
shift that might tear his psychological world apart.
00:31:23.160
And then there's going to be that whole thing to deal with.
00:31:25.680
And we see this when we see aftermath videos of officer-involved shootings where the officers
00:31:32.380
just break down and just uncontrollably go into trembling, crying, and things like that.
00:31:41.940
It's not a lot, but there are times where we have had the opportunity to watch that happen.
00:31:47.540
And that's that violent shift tearing their world apart, right?
00:31:51.120
And that's going to cause major problems for them down the road, whereas their counterpart
00:31:55.480
glorified it, looked forward to it, and now has benefited from it because it has completed
00:32:04.720
And I think that that's the big difference between the criminal thought process and the
00:32:09.600
good guy when it comes to lethal level violence.
00:32:13.280
We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:32:19.240
Okay, so the criminal has this predator orientation.
00:32:22.780
It's influenced by their past experience with violence, maybe growing up around it, experience
00:32:27.980
It's shaped by the stories they tell themselves.
00:32:30.620
Like you talked about, sometimes these guys tell them stories like they're like the mob
00:32:34.960
Or you talked about in prison, a lot of these guys would kind of harness this sort of warrior
00:32:40.580
So like you had like the white guys getting rune Viking tattoos and like the Mexicans
00:32:45.020
getting Aztec warriors and the black guys getting Zulu tattoos.
00:32:49.260
So they're, that's a story they're telling, like they're a warrior.
00:32:52.140
Then you say like a really powerful thing that shapes a criminal's orientation is this idea
00:32:59.660
Like what, what is an initiation for a criminal?
00:33:04.360
So it can be very literally an initiation into a gang where you have to shoot someone to get
00:33:09.820
in, or you have to commit some kind of a beat down or some, you know, some type of a violent
00:33:13.820
act to prove yourself and also incriminate yourself in front of the group because there's
00:33:19.440
a type of a leverage there that comes with that.
00:33:22.640
And so that's that an initiation could be something as simple as that, or it could be more esoteric
00:33:28.640
in nature that it's not specifically called an initiation to them or their culture, but when it
00:33:35.400
happens, it has the effect of making the story they've been telling themselves about this violent
00:33:41.060
soldier, you know, that they're, they're a warrior and they're, they're down for the, you know, the cause
00:33:45.940
they'll go down with the, with their crew and they actually do it.
00:33:50.940
That is an initiation from a story that was not founded on anything true to now living a
00:34:14.000
And there's also a memento mori aspect to that too.
00:34:18.680
I think at the highest levels where people are accepting the live by the sword, die by
00:34:25.280
the sword philosophy in their life, where they accept it.
00:34:28.820
They're like, someday I'm going to get bucked to the pavement, but until that day, I'm the
00:34:34.740
And so that's something that comes at a time when the actual transfer to real action from
00:34:45.040
thought takes place, that's when those thoughts become really powerful and they're backed up
00:34:53.720
So you can have a guy that gets tatted out and runs around and is jacked and he's on
00:35:00.600
TRT and he's doing all this stuff, but he doesn't have any real experience to back it
00:35:04.840
So if he's called out on the carpet and the bell rings for him on any given day and he's
00:35:10.140
got to prove it, is he going to have what it takes to do it?
00:35:15.420
I've seen some really tough looking guys that talk tough, act tough and live a really tough
00:35:23.500
And when I see them get called out, they crumble, just absolute crumble.
00:35:28.160
And so there's that moment when you're facing someone who has had those moments and they've
00:35:37.140
passed it with flying colors and maybe they've done it multiple times.
00:35:40.880
I tell stories in the book about people I've met that have been shot 11 times in four different
00:35:48.320
You go up against that guy, you're not going up against an amateur, not at least psychologically.
00:35:54.200
He might not be a great shooter, but he's a killer and he's not afraid to die.
00:35:59.480
And he probably thinks he's pretty damn hard to kill.
00:36:02.240
And he's proven that that's true so far, right?
00:36:05.060
So when you're facing that type of orientation, it's a deficit.
00:36:13.540
So with criminal orientation, the criminal tells himself certain stories.
00:36:17.240
He's initiated into violence, either literally or just through experience.
00:36:21.760
And the more he experiences violence, the more confidence he gains in its power.
00:36:27.820
You know, he's able to use, he's more comfortable with using violence as an answer to situations.
00:36:32.880
And he's more, I don't know, he's like more comfortable operating outside, you know, standard
00:36:42.460
Let's talk about the orientation of the non-criminal.
00:36:45.180
What stories do they tell themselves about themselves and what parts of the average guy's orientation
00:36:51.900
can become deficits when he encounters a criminal?
00:36:56.580
So one of the most dangerous things you can do as a good guy is develop the notion of righteousness,
00:37:04.380
And I've seen this very, very often where they have what's also known as good guy syndrome,
00:37:11.060
where you just think automatically you're the good guy, so you can just act and everybody's
00:37:23.300
And if one thing goes sideways, you're going to be called out into the court system and then
00:37:32.380
And it is not an experience that anybody should want to go through.
00:37:37.640
There's a very, very high chance of being convicted at some level.
00:37:44.200
Most over 95% of cases in the country end in a plea bargain of some sort based on an independent
00:37:50.540
study done for the Department of Justice some years ago.
00:37:53.820
And that, I think, is very accurate from what I've experienced in the system.
00:37:57.580
Um, you, you, they overcharge you, they'll hit you super hard, they'll throw everything
00:38:03.120
at you, and then that leaves room for them to strike a deal.
00:38:06.520
It's just the same as you go for, you know, a car, you want to buy a car, and he's like,
00:38:12.720
And you're like, man, I was thinking more like $7,000.
00:38:17.900
So he's, he's shooting you at $10,000, you come at $7,000, you get to $78,000, you get
00:38:22.420
the deal, you know, you wanted it for less, but he gets what he wants.
00:38:27.660
They shoot high because they want to hit you low and boom, now you're going to prison or
00:38:33.440
you have a felony on your record and you're disarmed for the rest of your life.
00:38:36.900
So it's something that you have to really consider very deeply.
00:38:41.840
And I think that the, another problem about it for the good guy is understanding the selective
00:38:48.980
valuation of life and selective or the sliding scale of morals, right?
00:38:53.680
And, you know, I'd like to correct you on saying that, you know, the criminal has no
00:38:58.300
morals and they, you know, just do whatever they want.
00:39:04.480
A lot of them would not, you know, they might shoot your mother, but they wouldn't shoot their
00:39:10.380
So there's a, there's definitely a selectiveness there and it can change too, because one day
00:39:15.520
they might not shoot their, you know, the mother of their children, but another day that
00:39:20.100
So it's very selective and it's a sliding moral scale.
00:39:23.480
And there's also justification built within that.
00:39:26.320
And so the justification part of a sliding moral scale is the problem.
00:39:33.180
Once you develop a sliding moral scale, you are vulnerable to justifications like righteousness.
00:39:39.300
So you feel like you're the good guy, you're on the side of, of good fighting evil, and
00:39:46.480
you go too far in a defense case and you anchor shot somebody once they're down, anchor shot
00:39:52.660
them a couple of times, meaning that they go, they hit the ground, they stopped doing what
00:39:57.860
And you put a couple in them just for good measure.
00:40:03.640
You're going to go to prison for that in almost every case.
00:40:06.420
But in your mind at that moment, if you've slid your, your moral scale too far to one
00:40:13.300
side and justified that by saying, I'm doing the world a favor here and I'm saving people's
00:40:19.260
lives, you're going to get yourself in trouble.
00:40:22.400
So most good people keep themselves in line by having a very static valuation of human life
00:40:32.320
Whereas the criminal and the, the higher level military guy, sometimes even the law enforcement
00:40:39.920
have to have the sliding moral scale there because you have to be able to change the
00:40:46.160
valuation of human life in the moment, according to what's being called for.
00:40:50.000
If someone's in front of you that is an innocent person and you know, they should be saved.
00:40:55.880
You have to be willing to step into harm's way to save them if that's your job or if that's
00:41:02.240
If there's someone in front of you who is a bad actor and they're going to hurt you or
00:41:07.380
other people, you have to, you know, conversely be able to make the decision to possibly end
00:41:12.440
And that's a very, that's a very tricky situation to be into morally.
00:41:18.440
And so the criminal develops that very easily because they have a lot of justifications
00:41:26.780
And I can attest to that because even, you know, after getting out of prison and having
00:41:31.700
my rights restored, there's several times that I've been roadblocked even recently in
00:41:37.320
25 years after being out of prison, almost 30 years after being convicted, I still get
00:41:44.160
I was just denied admittance into a technical school because of my felony.
00:41:47.960
And so these are justifications for some people to be like, you know what, screw society.
00:41:57.440
So now I just move my scale and this is where I put you on the valuation of human life.
00:42:06.280
They have to be more, they're raised in a culture that's more static about things like
00:42:10.980
violence is bad and don't do violence or, you know, things like that.
00:42:14.520
And it has to, that has to change into an adjustable, manually adjustable situation, but it has to
00:42:20.760
be backed up by professionalism because if, if there's not a professional structure behind
00:42:25.760
it, then you can lose control of that very easily.
00:42:32.220
So one potential problem with the non-criminal orientation is having too inflexible of a
00:42:39.880
I mean, you want to be able to adjust your approach based on the circumstances, but at the
00:42:44.320
same time, you can't overly tip into justifications that seem justified at the time, but actually
00:42:51.000
push you to go too far, like into a legal territory.
00:42:54.060
So you have to have like a sliding scale, but have hard limits on it.
00:42:57.960
I mean, you have to be a professional about your approach and you described, you know, being
00:43:02.600
a professional as, you know, being able to meet a minimal requirement of safety and accuracy
00:43:08.740
If you decide to carry a weapon and conducting yourself with self-control and discretion under
00:43:14.780
So you're, I mean, so you're only going to apply your skills and capabilities when they're
00:43:19.920
appropriate or where they're appropriate to apply and under the confines of the law.
00:43:25.860
So another deficit, you talk about an orientation for someone who sees themselves as the good
00:43:31.240
guy is an overconfidence about their ability to handle violence.
00:43:35.140
Like they think, okay, I've done the training and if I encounter violence, I'll just do,
00:43:40.240
you know, steps one, two, and three, and it'll work out like I expect.
00:43:46.860
I think that anybody that's been in real violence knows, you know, we used to have a saying in
00:43:52.600
prison that all the badasses were in the graveyard and that there's a very deep meaning to that.
00:43:59.220
And it, and it applies to, you know, soldiers, special, special, special operations guys that
00:44:03.920
know that some of the, they've, some of the best of the best have went in and died, you
00:44:09.600
know, and they've been killed by goat herders and, and guys in sandals.
00:44:14.280
Like, you know, it's so, it doesn't matter how much you train and how hard you go at it.
00:44:20.900
But there is also the factors of good days and bad days and that's it.
00:44:27.360
And, and sometimes it's just a bad day and there's nothing you can do about it.
00:44:31.740
You've seen the best fighters in the world go into the ring and catch a left hook and go
00:44:42.600
You're never prepared enough to be untouchable.
00:44:47.900
And I think that there's a glorification of, if I train hard, I do jujitsu, I carry a gun,
00:44:53.960
I train at the range, I'm doing all this stuff.
00:44:56.240
I'm, you know, I'm just harder to kill, harder to kill, harder to kill to the point to where
00:45:00.480
they really over glorify their capabilities and they underestimate the very negative effects
00:45:10.140
And I think the violence is a very nasty, unpredictable thing.
00:45:13.960
And you could wake up on any given day and it's going to be a bad day.
00:45:18.680
And that's the, that's the truth of violence that I think most people miss.
00:45:22.340
So the orientation of a typical non-criminal can be a disadvantage when he goes up against
00:45:27.340
a criminal because he's not familiar with the realities of violence.
00:45:31.300
He's got a inflexible moral scale when it comes to making decisions.
00:45:35.180
And then he can also get caught up in his own sense of righteousness.
00:45:38.560
Are there any other potential deficits in the average person's orientation?
00:45:43.800
We also have the exploitation of social courtesies that, that work against us, which is a deficit
00:45:51.720
We're not the offensive actors in any situation.
00:45:57.160
That means there has to be an initial action that takes place before we can go into action
00:46:03.000
You can't just smoke somebody because you think they're about to do something.
00:46:06.360
They have to actually begin the process of doing it for the justification, legal justification
00:46:11.520
to be reached for them to be dealt with at a certain level, lethally.
00:46:16.580
So there's a huge problem with deficit of orientation, deficit of experience, and also deficit of social
00:46:24.560
And those are, those are gigantic problems to overcome as a good person trying to learn
00:46:31.220
self-defense at a, at a highly violent level and try to match what's going to come at them someday.
00:46:38.120
Those are the problems that I think instructors should be trying to solve, not just getting people to shoot fast.
00:46:44.760
I think that's the last thing that they should learn.
00:46:47.360
The first thing they should learn is the decision to shoot and then learn how to shoot well.
00:46:52.320
So I prioritize decision-making and, you know, in the last several years, my class has devolved into
00:46:58.140
very concentrated force-on-force simunition UTM training away from a broad scope of like, you know,
00:47:08.220
square range skills and live fire skills and, you know, this and that and some combatives and all this.
00:47:13.300
And I'm like, all right, let's go down to the very, you know, basics of making decisions in
00:47:19.800
tough situations and putting people in hard situations.
00:47:23.420
And one of the unique things about my classes that I would do when I did the force-on-force
00:47:27.480
training was I would make, I didn't bring professional role players in, I would make the
00:47:35.160
So at any point in the class, you could be a good guy, you could be an armed bystander,
00:47:39.800
an unarmed bystander, you could be an observer, or you could also be the bad guy.
00:47:45.980
And one of the things I wanted them to do was be able to see the perspective of the bad guy
00:47:51.960
entering the situation, trying to accomplish a goal and look at all the problems he has to solve
00:48:01.300
He has analysis and synthesis that has to take place.
00:48:04.560
It's not just as simple as walking in and robbing somebody.
00:48:07.080
I think that people have pushed this narrative that the wolf is at the door and is vicious
00:48:13.900
and they don't think like you and it couldn't be farther from the truth.
00:48:17.400
We all have the same exact processes that take place and being able to see it from that other
00:48:23.160
side, that other perspective gives you that insight to how to get into that, like how they
00:48:28.640
like to say, get into their loop and disrupt it, right?
00:48:31.060
So you're getting into that mindset and seeing the problems he has to solve so that you can
00:48:36.680
create those problems or manipulate those problems to your benefit and against his.
00:48:41.740
I think that's the biggest thing that we can accomplish there.
00:48:47.520
So at least you're getting a little bit of a feel of what an actual violent encounter
00:48:51.720
is like, you know, rather than just doing more of a kind of scripted training.
00:48:55.740
And I'd like to talk more about the kind of training you recommend in a bit, but you mentioned
00:49:02.680
Can you talk about what it means to have a mission and what part does that play in creating
00:49:09.540
Mission is the most important thing that needs to be established when you embark on a journey
00:49:15.800
of self-defense and carrying a weapon and things like that.
00:49:18.600
If you're not clear with yourself about what your actual mission is, then you will not be
00:49:23.740
able to train properly, equip properly, or conduct yourself properly in stressful situations
00:49:29.300
because you don't have the proper boundaries and parameters defined.
00:49:36.360
It defines what you're willing to fight and die for.
00:49:38.940
It defines what is legal, what you're allowed to do, who you're allowed to do it to.
00:49:44.040
For example, a civilian that's carrying a gun needs to understand the state they live in,
00:49:49.320
the laws for self-defense in the state they live in.
00:49:59.240
All these things need to be understood in the mission because if your mission is not in
00:50:03.900
line with the external boundaries with the laws and where you live or the use of force
00:50:09.360
policies with the agency that you work in, then your actions and your training and your
00:50:13.800
equipment are going to vary outside of those allowed parameters and you're going to get
00:50:19.880
So I think that understanding how that works and where your mission is at first puts you
00:50:28.640
in line with the rest of the things that come after that.
00:50:31.860
And that is the most important thing to really consider.
00:50:37.220
A lot of times I would start classes when I used to do live fire classes.
00:50:45.240
And most people would say, it's because I want to make sure I make it home and my family
00:50:50.800
makes it home so we can live our life together.
00:50:54.900
And then I put up a scenario where you walk into a gas station and the bad guy's got a
00:51:01.280
gun to the clerk's face and he hasn't seen you yet.
00:51:04.200
And you can make the decision to take the shot or you can step outside and call the police
00:51:09.480
And a lot of people would say, I'm taking the shot.
00:51:11.280
And I say, all right, let's examine that for a minute.
00:51:14.160
If you got out of there and got in your car and called the police and went home, would
00:51:19.520
you accomplish your mission of getting yourself home and make sure you and your family make
00:51:26.220
If you went in and got into that fight and you got shot by the clerk because your gun jammed
00:51:32.060
or you slipped on some water or whatever could happen in violence and you die, did you
00:51:37.160
fail at that mission of making home and taking care of your family?
00:51:43.480
Now, I'm not downing people if they say they want to jump into fights and protect people
00:51:50.640
But just state that mission clearly to yourself and to your family and then train for that
00:51:56.020
Don't tell yourself you're only in it for yourself and your family if you're going to
00:51:59.820
jump in and defend whoever else is out there around you.
00:52:02.420
And vice versa, don't say that you're going to jump in wherever you can and then you don't
00:52:10.060
protect your own family when you need to, right?
00:52:12.980
So having your mission stated is the way to get all of that squared away.
00:52:18.780
And I think that's going to attack the root of that initial problem.
00:52:22.520
How should understanding the orientation of a criminal, understand the orientation of just
00:52:28.520
a regular good guy who just wants to get home to their family and take care of their family?
00:52:32.700
How do you think that should change their approach to self-defense once they have that
00:52:37.620
I think it's going to give them a more realistic perspective of who they might be dealing with.
00:52:42.240
And that's very, very important because I don't think that a lot of people have a realistic
00:52:49.740
And one of the things that I encourage people to do is spend some time watching death row
00:52:58.280
interviews and there's just countless shows on criminals and talking to, especially murderers
00:53:08.780
And just get a glimpse of what the mindset is in some of these people and their philosophies
00:53:15.840
and their viewpoints and how they just have zero valuation of human life for certain people.
00:53:22.500
And certain people meaning innocent people that they don't know.
00:53:34.680
And so understanding that is going to give you a better realistic viewpoint of the level of
00:53:44.300
Also understanding the level of violence these people have experienced and how many times
00:53:49.120
they've been involved in violence and you may never have been in a real fight in your
00:53:56.060
It's like going into an MMA ring with someone who has not only trained, but has a hundred fights
00:54:01.980
And you've, you know, went to a couple of eight hour classes.
00:54:05.920
It's, it's just ridiculous to think that, right?
00:54:10.200
You have to get a realistic view of this to understand, okay, this is what I'm up against
00:54:18.420
And with those two pieces of information, now you can go and put together a proper gear
00:54:23.820
and equipment acquisition protocol and a proper training protocol that are going to help you
00:54:31.160
Because if you don't do those two things first, then everything you do after that is just your
00:54:40.380
Basically what we talked about today is that when your OODA loop is going up against the
00:54:45.160
OODA loop of a criminal, the criminal has certain advantages while you, the non-criminal has certain
00:54:52.380
So I guess, I mean, the question is, you know, what can the average guy do to close that gap?
00:54:58.060
I mean, you've talked about the importance of simulated training and role play, which can
00:55:04.060
give you a closer approximation of what actual real world violence is like.
00:55:08.660
But beyond that, I mean, what do you recommend training wise?
00:55:12.280
Personally, I think that your, your individual strength and fitness is your most important component,
00:55:21.280
Now, if you're handicapped or you have some type of a disability that prohibits that, then
00:55:27.460
you, you have to recognize that deficit and go harder on the other elements like weaponry
00:55:31.580
and things like that, because that's a fallback.
00:55:34.480
That's not the go-to, but most people put that as a go-to first.
00:55:38.240
And I'm telling you that, for example, you know, we referenced me being a strength coach.
00:55:42.560
I run a, an online coaching program and I have several, you know, clients that are either
00:55:48.180
competitive in some sport or another, or they're just, you know, they want to, they're training
00:55:56.560
And for me, that's also something that was born out of prison.
00:56:00.000
I was fortunate enough to land in prison during a time when they still had free weights and
00:56:09.340
There's nothing in the world like the aggression of a prison weight pile.
00:56:14.540
It's a very, very unique experience that you cannot duplicate.
00:56:18.540
And I lived on that pile for the whole time that the weights were still in there.
00:56:24.200
And this was at a time when, um, this was the early nineties and I was probably about 30
00:56:28.780
miles away from where Louie Simmons was Westside Barbell.
00:56:32.120
And so at that time, Louie had a lot of like very questionable characters coming through
00:56:37.600
that gym and, um, some of those same guys were coming through the prisons and stuff and
00:56:44.180
And so I learned very quickly, I went from being 130 pound kid going into prison to hitting
00:56:52.580
about, I peaked out about 200 pounds within the first two years.
00:56:59.340
I was different psychologically and I was different physically.
00:57:02.840
And I found life to be much easier, both in fighting and in avoiding fights when I, when
00:57:11.280
And it taught me a very, very important lesson about strength and its importance to survival.
00:57:17.380
Also, there's a difference between training in an atmosphere like that and training out
00:57:25.440
Most people go to the gym here, they're trying to look good to attract, you know, a mate,
00:57:29.920
or they just want to, you know, be jacked and intimidate people or just want to look cool
00:57:36.200
And some people is for health, you know, but in there it's purely motivated by survival.
00:57:42.300
Like I need to get big, I need to get big fast and I need to be able to fight.
00:57:46.020
I just can't be a big dude just lunking around.
00:57:48.560
I have to be able to run, I have to have some cardio, I have to have some endurance, you
00:57:52.980
And so the motivation for training is very different and that was ingrained in my mind.
00:57:57.340
And today I have my own gym at home and there's not a day that I step into my gym that
00:58:01.900
I don't slap back into that mindset that I was in, you know, you know, 27 years ago
00:58:10.280
And I'm, and I'm right back to where I was then, like, and this is, it's ingrained.
00:58:15.160
And so I think that if a person's going to train for this, if they're going to set themselves
00:58:20.540
up to be prepared to deal with a self-defense situation, your first and most important thing
00:58:29.900
Not only will it help you avoid fights because you'll look more formidable and that's not
00:58:35.040
always a deterrent, but it does work in some cases.
00:58:40.080
But if you do actually have to fight, you're going to be mentally tougher because being willfully
00:58:45.900
uncomfortable underweights and pushing yourself in a, in a training program is a, is a very
00:58:52.660
And it's going to cultivate mental toughness, no matter how you do it, you'll also be physically
00:58:58.440
And so you'll be much more capable of handling someone when they get ahold of you.
00:59:03.360
And also too, the, the biggest threat to your life is the, is the, you know, heart failure
00:59:10.460
and, and the multiple diabetes and multiple, you know, diseases and things that happen that
00:59:16.400
are killing people by the hundreds of thousands because they're obese or out of shape or out
00:59:20.580
of weight, uh, are, you know, overweight, they get, you know, older and they, their muscles
00:59:25.140
atrophy, their, their skeleton begins to droop and sag and their joints become disaligned.
00:59:31.200
And like, everything is just based on the degradation of their strength and integrity.
00:59:36.080
And so in today's world where we have this virus and it's already been proven that viruses
00:59:41.660
of this nature, lean muscle mass is generally an indicator of how well you will handle it.
00:59:48.420
The higher lean muscle mass you have, the less severe the symptoms typically are.
00:59:52.500
And that's been found in studies in the last two years and before.
00:59:56.200
So it's just a general good idea and it cultivates the foundation for everything else.
01:00:02.200
A lot of guys will jump straight into BJJ and, you know, the problem I have with that is that
01:00:09.400
you're getting off the couch and you're going to do something that's great, but you're going
01:00:13.840
and putting loads on your joints and you haven't done anything to prepare those joints to handle
01:00:21.200
It just does not make sense from that, from that standpoint.
01:00:24.500
As a, as a bar balance strength coach, I like to, you know, say, okay, let's do some bodybuilding.
01:00:29.580
Let's do some volume work to build up the, the connective tissues, the ligaments, tendons,
01:00:35.620
the small musculature around the joints gets you strong in those areas before we start one
01:00:40.920
rep maxing, before we start BJJ, before we start all of those things.
01:00:44.560
And that's just the approach I like to take with it.
01:00:47.700
And then weapon skills, of course, is, it's a good, it's a good step.
01:00:52.840
If you're so inclined to use weapons or carry weapons, make sure that they are the type that
01:00:57.460
are approved for use in justified self-defense in your area and your state, and also pick
01:01:04.300
instructors who emphasize decision-making over flash.
01:01:10.380
That's the biggest piece of advice I could give you for weaponry.
01:01:13.180
But those would be the order I would put things in.
01:01:15.400
So you have your strength and your health and fitness, your compatives, and then your weaponry.
01:01:24.500
So, well, Varg, is there a, this has been a great conversation.
01:01:27.480
Is there some place people can go to learn more about your work?
01:01:30.000
Right now, my main website is just vargfreeborn.com.
01:01:33.460
And I don't have, like I said, I'm semi-retired from classes.
01:01:36.600
So I'm doing one-on-one work and I'm doing some strength coaching and some, some lectures,
01:01:44.780
But if someone wants to do some work or they're interested in something, they can contact me
01:01:48.380
through that website and we could probably work something out for sure.
01:01:57.680
He's the author of Violence of Mind and Beyond Uta.
01:02:01.600
You can find more information about his work at his website, vargfreeborn.com.
01:02:04.840
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash orientation, where you can find links to resources,
01:02:17.520
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.
01:02:20.220
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01:02:23.860
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01:02:26.900
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