Their Faith Was Misplaced

Mentally unbalanced attackers often release their rage upon groups of helpless victims such as schoolchildren, shoppers, or co-workers. Although half-mad with rage, these predators have enough wit to carry out their attacks within environments where they are unlikely to meet significant opposition in time to prevent them from carrying out their atrocities.

Helpless Victims, Herded Together in Age-Matched Groups, Left Unprotected

The recent mass killing in a Connecticut school reminds us of the innate helplessness of small children, in the face of a deadly threat. Small children themselves can not be expected to defend themselves against guns, knives, clubs, or other deadly weapons including strong adult hands and feet. These children and their parents assume that the little ones will be safe behind the walls of government schools -- so generously supported by US taxpayers.

But their faith is sadly misplaced. Most schools are so called "gun free zones," which means that any miscreant who can devise a way to carry loaded guns onto school properties is guaranteed to have several minutes of carefree trigger time, unmolested by meaningful opposition -- at least until the police arrive.

But some school districts have decided to toughen up, and make it more difficult for mentally deranged killers to have their bloody way with the children -- whether they are using guns, knives, swords, hammers, clubs, or baseball bats.

In Ohio, the Buckeye Firearms Foundation is swamped with 20 times more applications — from teachers and administrators to custodians and bus drivers -- than they have space for in a three-day tactical defense course to be offered this this spring.

Jim Irvine, president of the Ohio foundation, said Thursday that the $1,000 per person Armed Teacher Training Program would be free for the 24 people selected from more than 400 applicants. "What better use for an educational foundation than to help educators protect our children," he said.

...In Salt Lake City, Utah, shortly before their latest class was set to start, Clark Aposhian, chairman of the sponsoring Utah Shooting Sports Council, said they were expecting at least 200 people to attend.

They have trained about a dozen teachers a year. Utah has allowed teachers to carry concealed weapons on K-12 campuses for 12 years now and, said Aposhian, "We have never had any accidental or intentional shootings." He serves on the state board where any violation of concealed weapon laws would be reported.

"Teachers are professionals. They will take appropriate measures to maintain a gun discreetly and safely," said Aposhian, a tactical firearm instructor. _USAToday

There is a great deal of opposition to the idea of allowing teachers to have access to loaded weapons on school grounds. But such opposition is likely to be pushed back by the need to protect children with more than just high sounding words and hypocritical catch phrases.

Several armed criminal attacks are aborted by bystanders carrying concealed weapons every year. One of the most famous massacres in US history -- the Luby's massacre in Texas 20 years ago before concealed carry was allowed -- would have been curtailed with much less loss of life, if a young chiropractor eating in the cafeteria at the time had been allowed to carry her handgun.

A recent shooting at a mall in Clackamas County outside Portland, Oregon, was cut short when a bystander with a gun appeared to have frightened the shooter into killing himself.

Other would-be shooting sprees have been cut short by armed bystanders, before they reached the threshold of murder and mayhem in which the skankstream press appears to revel so gleefully. Clearly more such incidents would be aborted by armed bystanders if not for the fact that they typically take place in areas where it is illegal to carry firearms.

Concealed Campus.org is dedicated to promoting legal concealed carry on campus.

Survival is not politically correct. Instead, what is politically correct is for presidents, senators, celebrities, academics, and journalists to use tragic deaths to trumpet their pet causes -- which would merely leave citizens even more helpless against deranged predators than they are at present.

Violence in the Real World, Coming Your Way Soon

Worldwide, 468,000 homicides occurred in 2010. Some 36 per cent of all homicides take place [in] Africa, 31 per cent in the Americas, 27 per cent in Asia, 5 per cent in Europe and 1 per cent in Oceania. _UNODC

Chances are, if you are reading this page you've been spared the worst aftereffects of violent crime. Most readers of the Al Fin blogs live in North America, Oceania, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore . . . In other words, most of you do not understand what it is like to live in a truly violent society.

But as certain as your societies are shifting under your very feet, you will. Oh yes, you will.

UNODC Global Intentional Homicide Rates

The war in Afghanistan has claimed a total 3,238 allied lives. This is about the number of murders in Brazil every month. Last month’s conflict between Palestinians and Israelis produced approximately the same number of fatalities as a “hot” weekend in Caracas. The probability of being shot dead as you walk on any street in Baghdad is lower than that of dying on any street in Guatemala. Worldwide, the murder rates have declined slightly, or not risen much. But in Latin America they are soaring. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have the highest homicides rates in the world, closely followed by those of other countries in the region. In 2011 in Brazil, 112 people per day were killed; in Mexico, 71 per day. _CarnegieEndowment

In many nations of SubSaharan Africa, violence is just as bad or worse as described above. There is simply a more relaxed standard of compiling statistics on the dark continent. You simply have to be there to get a feeling for how bad things are.

Latin America, on the other hand, is intimately tied to expensive programs run by a wide assortment of developed world law enforcement agencies. So records must be kept. And the reality is very ugly indeed.

Violence in Latin America is fueled by drug money pouring south from the US and Canada. In Africa, the violence has many causes -- from tribal massacres to religious hatred to a dark and unrestrained inchoate urge to bloody anarchy.

Thanks to the inexorable demographic logic of modern immigration policies, the same type and level of violence that is accepted on an everyday basis across much of the third world, will soon come to neighborhoods very close to your own -- if you live in or near a large city.

Immigrant communities within first world urban areas not only contain the seeds of latent violence -- they are an irresistible attractant for larger-scale and more organised violence. Immigrant conclaves form a safe haven for criminal and other violent organisations from the old countries, often generating levels of local violence so great as to become virtual "no-go zones" for law enforcement.

The coming changes are inevitable. But don't thank me, I am merely the messenger. Thank your politicians. You elected them.

Oh, Those Violent Genes! Genetic Landscapes of Violence

There are neighborhoods that you know to avoid, if you want to keep your wallet, your vehicle, your life, and any loved ones who accompany you. Likewise, there are entire cities, countries, and regions of the world which intelligent people will only visit for very good reason -- accompanied by ample protection.

If one makes the association between the human makeup of such neighborhoods, cities, countries -- and the people who inhabit those places -- one is apt to be labeled a "racist" in the worlds of politically correct groupthink.

But when the modern scientific worlds of genetics and cognitive science come together and declare an association between particular gene sets, and specific types of violent behaviours, intelligent people are given a glimpse behind the curtain of political correctness, into the grist and blood of an important underlying reality.

Flow Chart of Violence

The flow chart of violence above is taken from the article "Genes for susceptibility to violence." It provides a glimpse at some of the different factors which may contribute to the decision (conscious or unconscious) to commit violent acts. The MAO-L genotype refers to the specific monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) promoter variant which is at least 10 times more common in people of African descent than in most other population groups, and which seems to predispose to both violence and antisocial disorders.

The MAO-L genotype is not the only gene variant which may predispose to violent behaviours, as you can see below:

Natural Born Killers

The table above looks at a number of gene variants which have been associated with violent and other antisocial behaviours. It was taken from an article first published in : Aggression and Violent Behavior 14 (2009) 286–294.

The full set of genetic factors which play into violent behaviour will not be compiled for quite some time yet. Since we have barely discovered the underlying genetic foundations of impulse control, intelligence, executive function, cognitive assessment of threat, susceptibility to fear conditioning, etc., it will take a number of decades to fill in the outlines -- and much more to fill in the gaps.

Natural Born Killers

The excerpt above comes from the summary of the article "Natural Born Killers: The Genetic Origins of Extreme Violence." It is meant to help explain the difference in rates of violence between men and women. The reference to "impulse control" makes an important point: Even humans who are genetically predisposed to anti-social behaviours can exert self-control to abort impulses toward violent behaviours before they are carried out.

And since "impulse control" itself is largely genetically determined, we see that if an individual is genetically inclined to harbour violent impulses -- and is additionally genetically inclined to have low impulse control -- the likelihood of that person exhibiting violent behaviours is much higher than in a person who exhibited only one of the two genetically determined traits.

Parenthetically, blacks typically display lower levels of impulse control than other population groups.

Catalyst Model of Antisocial Behaviours

The image above was first published in The Journal of Social Psychology, 2010, 150(2), 160–180. PDF download of article.

The catalyst model of violence was devised by violence researcher Christopher Ferguson. It attempts to illustrate the multiple factors -- genetic and environmental -- which come together to generate violent and anti-social behaviours.

The image suggests a one-way flow from predispositions on the left, to violent behaviours on the image far right. But the actual processes involved -- genetic, emotional/cognitive, and environmental -- are far more complex, with multiple circular feedback loops interacting with each other.

If one looks at the geographical map of violent crime, it is easy to infer that genetic factors -- probably many genetic factors -- interact to cause higher rates of violence among African-derived populations.

Blacks have higher genetic prevalence of some of the factors that predispose to impulsive violence, are genetically inclined to have lesser control of these impulses -- both in terms of executive function and IQ. As the complex components of violence are further uncovered, we will learn more about the reasons for the large discrepancies in rates of violence between African-derived populations, and other human populations.

For although the PC groupthink police will tell you that it is racist to think about such things, in the real world understanding these differences may save your life, and the lives of people you care about.

Out of All the Possible Futures . . .

The future is not set in stone. There are always a number of possible futures -- strange attractors -- ceaselessly battling each other for the opportunity to evolve into a transient reality and instantiation.

Mega-Egali-Dystopia

As crucial elections pass and the world moves more deeply into a narrowing set of futures, a few things become more clear. Almost none of the possible futures which have been predicted by pundits, bureaucrats, visionaries, and speculative writers, are likely to come about. That is because the future cannot be created deliberately in the manner of conventional construction. Instead, the future must be facilitated and channeled by the erection of specific, well-placed constraints, keeping in mind the natural forces underlying the movement of humans through time.

The set of constraints being erected by the great powers as of today, combined with apparently inexorable demographic forces at work across the globe, increase the likelihood of a global dystopia of poverty, low intelligence, and constant, low-level violence.

The world’s urban population is expected to grow by 2.6 billion people between 2011 and 2050, bringing the total number of urbanites to 6.3 billion. This urban expansion will be especially burdensome for developing countries, where 82 percent of the world’s population currently lives...

Slum populations are expected to grow significantly in the future, and UN HABITAT projects that 6 million more people live in slums every year.

The World Health Organization identifies the rapid increase of urban populations, especially slum populations, as the most important issue affecting health in the 21st century. The agency cites overcrowding, lack of safe water, and improper sanitation systems as the primary factors contributing to poor health among the urban poor. Slums often become breeding grounds for diseases like tuberculosis, dengue, pneumonia, and cholera, and slum dwellers contract water-borne or respiratory illnesses at much higher rates than people in rural areas do.

Cities and their slums will continue to grow as long as rural populations continue to migrate to cities to find economic and other opportunities, such as access to cultural amenities, education, and health care. _Worldwatch_via_GCC

Across the more developed world -- from North America to Europe to Oceania to East Asia -- populations are aging, fertility is falling far below replacement, and these generally more intelligent and accomplished societies of the world are embarking upon a grand experiment of group extinction. These populations which accomplished so much over a fairly short period of time, appear to have chosen to fade away.

Decline of Average Global IQ Over Time

...nearly all of the world's annual demographic growth - close to 95 percent - is occurring in less developed regions. Top seven contributing nations are India, 22 percent; China, 9 percent; Nigeria, 5 percent; Pakistan, 4 percent; Indonesia, 3 percent; Brazil, 2 percent; and Ethiopia, 2 percent

...African birthrates... stand at more than 4 children per woman, with some countries, such as Mali, Niger and Uganda, continuing to have rates above 6 children per woman. Such fertility rates, though expected to decline, translate into rapid population growth for most sub-Saharan African countries for the coming decades. For example, with a current fertility rate of 5.5 children per woman projected to decline to 3.5 children per woman by 2050, Nigeria's population of 162 million more than doubles to 390 million over the next 40 years.

...The consequences of these major demographic changes affect every aspect of human society, including food, natural resources, economic well-being, security, revenue, politics, employment and healthcare. Neither political rhetoric nor wishful thinking can dispel the enormous impacts. _Demographic Trends Shaping the World

Of those who are left after the depopulation of the advanced world -- the primitive tribal societies of Africa and Asia along with the emerging nations -- only China is likely to have the wealth, resources, technological expertise, and infrastructure to persist in creating grand visions of great futures.

And China is virtually certain to split at the seams into competing factions -- some of them based in modern China, others based overseas in Africa, Latin America, and areas that were formerly part of Russia, Oceania, and Europe.

Already we see the beginnings of "the coming anarchy" across the middle east, central Asia, and sub Saharan Africa. The fault lines for civil wars are setting up across a number of countries in Latin America. The forces of secession are erupting from the UK, across Europe, penetrating deeply into the US and Canada, and are likely to grow in intensity as global instability builds. The schisms -- both old and new -- are building, reaching well into the emerging BRICS -- Russia, China, India, Brazil -- and throughout the first and third worlds.

Up until now, the US has been an anchor to which Europe, Oceania, and Latin America could grudgingly hold -- and an oppositional brace against which Russia, China, and their satellites and hangers-on could orient. But it is clear that the US cannot sustain its role as world-policeman, world financial guarantor, world guardian of the trade lanes, world rescuer in times of war and natural disaster, or world anchor.

The US is now undergoing a designed stealthy undertow and dissolution of internal cohesion and external power that is slowly releasing more and more parts of the world to their own fates. A slow destruction which was already occurring through blind corruption and ambition is now taking place by craft and planning. That intentional process of dissolution of cohesiveness and strength can only accelerate with the re-selection of the current US president for yet another 4 year rule.

The moderating powers of Europe, North America, and Oceania on world affairs are dissipating.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. _WB Yeats . . . The Second Coming

There is no need for peak oil, climate catastrophe, resource collapse, global overpopulation, and all the other bugaboo tools of leftist scare-mongering -- all of those meant only to facilitate the grab of power and resources, after all.

Violence, Fertility, and Low IQ Most Prevalent Among Third World People

Everything needed for a collapse of civilisation after the style of Mao, Pol Pot, or Kim, is contained within the weaknesses of human nature combined with the demographic forces at work around the globe.

Parts of the "civilised world" are likely to cohere and fortify themselves against the coming anarchy. Other parts will ally themselves with the anarchy, in an attempt to bring down the remaining foci of a livable future. Much will depend upon where one happens to be when the camels' backs begin to break.

This is where I am supposed to write: "And then I woke up, and it was all a dream."

But was it really? The shape of the shakeout above is only one out of all the possible futures. Yet the forces of dissolution and anarchy are certainly hard at work. They have always been and always will be as long as humans are what they are. Pax Americana was never meant to last forever, just as Pax Romana and Pax Brittanica could not last.

Those periods of transition can be a bit difficult, and quite unpredictable. You have choices: You can choose to fight a courageous holding action, a la The Tea Party movement and the like. You can take your chances and try to profit from the turbulent volatility in markets around the world. You can sit on your laurels and accept whatever comes. Or you can find a good place to hunker down. If you choose to hunker, be advised that there are no guarantees as to how long you will have to wait for TEOTWAWKI. You may find yourself hunkered for quite some time. ;-)

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Youth Violence: Black Thugs to Eco-Fascists -- Don't Blame Conformity

Pan-African News Wire

From ethnic flash mobs to organised political mobs, to religious rape and violence, to more traditional violent delinquents and gang-bangers, youth and young adult violence has become a permanent fixture in cities across the modern world.

Is most of this violence a result of the influence of conformity and peer pressure on impressionable youth, or are violent participants more cognitively committed to the violence than is commonly thought? Australian researchers suggest the latter:

Milgram's 'Obedience to Authority' research is widely believed to show that people blindly conform to the instructions of an authority figure, and Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is commonly understood to show that people will take on abusive roles uncritically.

However, Professor Haslam, from the University of Queensland, argues that tyranny does not result from blind conformity to rules and roles. Rather, it is a creative act of followership, resulting from identifying with authorities who represent vicious acts as virtuous.

.... people participate in horrific acts not because they become passive, mindless functionaries who do not know what they are doing, but rather because they come to believe—typically under the influence of those in authority—that what they are doing is right," Professor Haslam explained. Professor Reicher, of the University of St Andrews, added that it is not that they were blind to the evil they were perpetrating, but rather that they knew what they were doing, and believed it to be right. _MXP

Professors Haslam and Reicher have performed prison experiments of their own, and discovered a much more complex layering of actions and motivations on the part of participants than most sociologists appear willing to admit -- based upon how the Milgram research continues to be interpreted.

Haslam and Reicher suggest that youth and young adults have already largely decided that violence is justified "in the cause" even before they participate in the looting, rapes, and other violent assaults. The youth have already been indoctrinated into an acceptance of violent behaviour by education, family, community, peers, and popular music and media.

In Palestine and Gaza, for example, Arab youth are indoctrinated by parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, etc. in undying hatred against Jews and Israel -- from the cradle and throughout childhood and youth. For a Palestinian youth to take up arms against Israelis and Jews is instinctive after a certain amount of this.

In many black and minority communities across North America, Oceania, Europe, and beyond, the hated ones -- the targets of lifelong indoctrination into hatred by families and local communities -- are the whites, the Koreans, the ethnic Chinese, or any other group that experiences a greater degree of success or perceived acceptance than the particular minority community.

But perhaps a greater problem than ethnic violence -- even within multi-cultural societies -- is the problem of the widespread political and social indoctrination of children and youth inside government schools. Not only are children taught that modern productive economic systems are the root of global warming catastrophe and all types of other eco-doom, they are also isolated from serious responsibility and prevented from acquiring practical skills and competencies which would allow them to succeed in a modern economic system.

This flood of indoctrinated psychological neotenates and lifelong incompetents is dumped onto the jobs market -- often hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and with no meaningful skills, competencies, or developed talents. It should be no surprise that besides escaping in drugs, alcohol, and meaningless social interaction and entertainment, that some of them are attracted to violent leftist and green activist organisations.

As new communications technologies develop, coordinating "spontaneous" mass violence and mass crime becomes easier, and within the reach of larger numbers of youth and young adults.

An ongoing evolution of flash mobs

Should Children be Taught to Fight?

The following article is adapted from a previously published article at Al Fin, the Next Level

Modern children are typically pampered and sheltered from most of the harsher realities of life. This is a relatively good thing for infants, toddlers, and most kindergartners. But as a child grows older and more independent, he will spend more and more of his time outside of direct adult supervision. If he does not learn to develop situational awareness and how to protect himself as he gets older, he becomes a sitting duck for bullies, predators, and accidentally stumbling into bad situations.

What are the best martial arts to teach children in the beginning? In our opinion, Aikido, Judo, Jiu Jitsu, wrestling, and fencing. Here are a few ideas for teaching martial arts to children:

Aikido:

I think if I were to teach a class of kids aikido, here's some of what I'd do to avoid chokes, joint locks, and etc...

Mobility games
Ukemi - lots and lots of ukemi [ed: the art of falling safely and smoothly]
Walking kata
Evasion drills with partners
Brush-off and escape
Wrist releases
... Cool ki tricks (mind games, concentration, etc…)
Talk about how to deal with interpersonal conflict
Situational self defense
... So, there's still a lot of aikido and pre-aikido that we could do. Much of the pre-aikido stuff is identical to the pre-judo stuff we do in kiddie judo. _Aikido for kids

Judo:

For a while, young kids should play a games-based judo approach. Fun preparations that build strength and coordination and familiarity with judo. But then at some point they have to move to "real judo." I'm not talking about adult judo - we start kids in regular adult classes at about age 13, depending on their physical size and maturity. I'm talking about an intermediate level between games-based judo and actual judo technique.

. One indicator that they are ready to step it up a level from games to real judo, is that they understand and can abide by the gentleman's agreement at the heart of judo. I've mentioned this Judo gentleman's rule before.

. The most central rule to judo practice is that if I am going to allow you to use my body to learn to throw hard and fast then you must save me at the end. You can throw with force, but you must support me and help me get into the proper landing position. .

Without people abiding by this rule, judo falls apart and cannot be practiced. When kids are progressively demonstrating that they can take better and better care of their ukes, they can be taught progressively more vigorous judo. _Judo for kids

Jiu Jitsu:

After teaching my own children and many others basic self-defense, I realized that children should first concentrate on a safe foundation system of self-defense based solely on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Only given solid aptitude of this system, at an intermediate level, would I then teach the striking techniques of Thai Boxing. The rationale for this is manifold:

Only a more advanced student will learn techniques that are inherently more dangerous (striking). This way, I will assure that only children who are mature enough to understand the safety issues will learn the technique.
In a fight, position is more important than pure striking ability. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gives a greater ability to control the position of your opponent than Thai Boxing. So, I want the student to know how to control their opponent long before they learn how to punch, elbow, or kick them. With positional control, punching and kicking can happen with relative leisure!
Beginners may get confused if they have too many techniques to focus on. After they have the fundamentals of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu "wired in," they won't get their mind as cluttered with dramatically different techniques of Thai Boxing.

Core Concepts

Safety first.
Understand the difference between causing pain and causing harm. Never attempt to harm a fellow student.
Avoid physical conflict.
Work out conflict with words. If you can escape a situation without physical harm to you or a family member, don't fight.
Words are never a reason to fight. Children are rewarded for avoiding fights.
Because of legal and school disciplinary issues involved in fights, the children are taught that in a situation where a fight is unavoidable, the words spoken and attempts made to dispel and avoid the situation beforehand can make a great difference.
Challenge the student to work hard.
The only true rewards in life come from hard work, dedication, and consistent practice.
Fitness through aerobic conditioning
Self defense in realistic situations
Have fun, but be serious enough to make solid progress every class!
Share techniques and learning with fellow students only.
It is important that they understand that this is a fighting system that should not be casually shared or demonstrated anywhere but in class with the instructor, unless self-defense calls for it. In other words, it would be very bad if they demonstrated a choke on a friend at the playground or kicked the family dog!
Don't advertise yourself as a martial arts expert! Many children take a few classes and think they are Bruce Lee reincarnated. A bigger bully will go out of his way to pick a fight with someone like this. Sun Tsu said, "All warfare is based on deception." Don't let them know what you know. More importantly, as a beginner, you don't know much, so don't pretend to know more than you do! _Jiu Jitsu for kids

Wrestling:

Find a Team

Depending on your child’s age, there are several different options for the types of teams you want to sign him up with. The most popular choice for parents with children under the age of 10 is to start them in a freestyle/Greco-Roman wrestling club. These clubs typically practice folkstyle, the same style of wrestling contested in high schools and colleges across the United States.

Wrestling clubs are typically not affiliated with any specific school or organization. Rather, they are private organizations geared towards teaching children the sport of wrestling. However, many clubs may practice at a school and have the same coaching staff as a school’s regular team — but the club will not be related to the school in any other way.

Essentially, you want to look for a team that focuses on fitness and technical development, rather than competition. This is especially important for younger wrestlers. For more information on what to look for when choosing a wrestling club, check out iSport’s guide, _Wrestling for kids

Wrestling has traditionally been a male sport, but it is becoming more popular among females. It can be extremely strenuous, so children should have good health and fitness levels before beginning training. Most of all, choose a coach who is skilled, patient, a good teacher, and emotionally mature.

Martial arts training for children can be useful for many reasons, but the training needs to be age appropriate, and geared to the individual child's needs and maturity level. Basic training to develop respect for instructors and classmates as well as disciplined habits of practise, should precede more difficult and complex skills training. Early training should focus on fitness, mobility, escape, releases, balance, situational awareness and response, and the mental aspects of physical training and confrontation.

Fencing for Children:

Dominion Fencing (my club) has experimented with programs for very young children.... We found that what worked best was a program of running, jumping, "gross motor skills" games, and playing games with foam swords. In short, we were charging parents to do what any kid is going to do on a playground when left to their own devices. I would be surprised if any club accepting children below the age of 8 is doing anything much different than we were.

To actually learn fencing as a sport takes a considerable amount of motor coordination, higher level reasoning functions, and the ability to understand some complex rules (rules many adults don't ever understand) -- which is why every expert in the field usually recommends taking up fencing between the ages of 8 and 10. _Fencing.net (forum)

Fencers learn good sportsmanship, self-discipline, gain quick reflexes and how to compete independently. They gain a sense of accomplishment when winning and learn to profit from their defeats. They learn to make complex decisions, analyze problems, and think fast on their feet. These ideals help children reach their potential in many areas other than fencing.

• They are active and doing something, not being passive receptacles for programming beamed out from the TV.

• Fencing helps children get fit – you can’t “sword fight” without a good bit of movement!

• Educators are discovering that fencing can enhance mathematical performance.

• Fencing helps children learn to pay attention and to develop their decision-making abilities.

• Fencing helps people with ADD and ADHD to focus.

• Because fencing is an individual sport, the fencer is solely responsible for their success or failure, which becomes a great lesson in responsibility. _Swordsmen101

Martial arts skills should be introduced in a graded fashion, as appropriate for the child's age, level of physical and emotional maturity, and the ability of the child to progress and integrate new skills into the total skills set.

Most training in strikes, kicks, weapons, choke holds, joint locks, etc. should be withheld until the child is mature enough to learn and practise them with proper restraint and respect for classmates and instructors. This should usually only occur after significant time (years) in training, under close observation, and only with other students who are prepared for such training.

Every dangerous child should be able to sense potentially dangerous situations and avoid them when possible. But he should also be physically and mentally prepared to deal with situations which occur outside of his ability to predict or prevent.

Dangerous children are by definition not helpless. This should be true physically, mentally, emotionally, and in virtually every aspect of his life.

So ideally, martial arts training will be just one aspect of a dangerous child's training in not being helpless. This is a different attitude toward child raising than one typically finds, but it is necessary.

Life is dangerous. So should you be. It is never too late to have a dangerous childhood.

20 Years of Progress

Twenty years ago, Los Angeles was burning. Police officers were initially held back from the rioting, in hopes that the violence would die down on its own. Instead, rioters attacked firefighters who tried to save homes and businesses, and the infectious fever spread across the city.

The city was burning around us. They were going to try to keep us safe. We were in Koreatown, and it was April 29, 1992...A teacher said he would allow me to follow him around the city. Then I could make my way back to Pasadena. The deal he insisted on was: If something happened to me, if my car was stopped, he was not going to help me...Nancy instructed me to stay close. We drove south on Broadway. I had never seen anything like it. Fires, looting, anarchy. We were trying to shoot photos from the car. Paul insisted we stay inside. I was trying to get my flash to fire. It worked the day before and the day after — but not that night. I didn’t see the man with the gun that came up to Nancy’s window. I was focused on my malfunctioning flash. She told Paul: “Drive, drive, drive.” We barreled through the chaos. I started counting the gunshots. That’s one shot. That’s two. That’s three. _LATimes

Long suppressed resentment and rage flared into flame. Angry glares become violent outbursts. Mobs of men and boys stalked anyone who looked out of place, with murderous intent.

A city that had been smoldering for decades burst into flames once again. Like Watts, like Detroit, like Newark, like any town or inner city that had collected and cherished a critical mass of resentment and hatred, LA flared orange and red.

A people who had been conditioned to blame everything from poverty to disease to migraines on "the oppressor race" were prepared to unleash their long suppressed anger and hate.

People were dragged out of cars and trucks, beaten and murdered in an orgy of violent emotion. No one could explain, calmly and rationally, why they did these things. They only knew it felt good. Community leaders and elected representatives supported and excused their actions.

The violence was not new -- it had been present in every inner city neighborhood around the country. It was the intensity and focus of the violence which proved a revelation. Thoughtful analysts began to look at roots of violence around the world, considering a possible racial or genetic basis.

Cognitive science had learned that intelligence was highly heritable, with clear statistical stratification by racial categories. Perhaps tendencies to violence were similarly heritable? While not a politically correct question, it was a crucially important question for rational people to ask.

Global maps of average IQ, birth rates, GDP, literacy, and other measures of social function and dysfunction all seemed to stratify according to regional -- and often racial -- characteristics. Certainly culture, religion, rule of law, corruption, and more all contributed to the overall portrait, the contribution of racial and genetic components could not be denied out of hand -- and required more study.

Thoughtful persons began to ask whether entire population groups were being left behind by advances in science and technology. As different societies' infrastructure came to rely more and more on sophisticated technologies, which required higher cognitive aptitude to maintain, it became clear that populations with low average IQs would struggle to keep up.

Chronic frustration at lack of achievement would naturally be converted into blame toward those who did succeed. As "underclass" status became intergenerational, political leaders and media conglomerates found an advantage in stoking the envious resentment, despite the obvious risk of violence.

And so the dark, rank, violent underbelly of diversity is exposed, time and again. But few learn the lesson -- that prosperous and successful societies must operate on trust. Without the trust, the machine accumulates a destructive grit and grime that leads to societal breakdown. As long as underlying realities of innate inequality and cultural incompatibilities are denied, the societal trajectory is downward.

From Australia to Canada to the UK to Europe to the US: You are soaking in a PC flood of denial, brought to you by your governments, your media, your academics, your pop stars. You are soaking in a growing Idiocracy.

Be very careful out there. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Stephen Pinker Thinks We are Growing Less Violent

Cognitive psychologist and linguist Stephen Pinker's latest book details what he sees as "a historical decline in human violence." Pinker provides a large amount of documentation for his point of view, but a lot of people are not convinced. Political philosopher John Gray thinks that Pinker's argument is more an exercise of faith than a scientific theory. Journalist Ron Rosenbaum does not address Pinker specifically, but he backhandedly scolds cognitive scientists who think they can define away "evil" using scientific theories in the manner of an exorcism.

Pinker appears to have more or less identified a historical trend of decreased violence in advanced societies. His idea is worth a look:

Images via Steven Pinker Edge.orgPinker's recent Edge.org article describes how human violence has subsided in recent years, providing a glimpse into his newest book.

As seen above, deaths from warfare in the UK have come down significantly from historical times. The chart below illustrates the reduction in European homicides since the year 1200. The bottom graph demonstrates the large peak in genocides in the middle of the 20th century, with subsequent decline. More from Pinker:

Believe it or not—and I know most people do not—violence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence. The decline of violence, to be sure, has not been steady; it has not brought violence down to zero (to put it mildly); and it is not guaranteed to continue. But I hope to convince you that it's a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars and perpetration of genocides to the spanking of children and the treatment of animals.

...The extraordinary 65-year stretch since the end of the Second World War has been called the "Long Peace", and has perhaps the most striking statistics of all, zero. There were zero wars between the United States and the Soviet Union (the two superpowers of the era), contrary to every expert prediction. No nuclear weapon has been used in war since Nagasaki, again, confounding everyone's expectations. There have been no wars between any subset of the great powers since the end of the Korean War in 1953. There have been zero wars between Western European countries. The extraordinary thing about this fact is how un-extraordinary it sounds. If I say I'm going to predict that in my lifetime France and Germany will not go to war, everyone will say, "Yeah, yeah; of course they won't go to war." But that is an extraordinary statement when you consider that before 1945, Western European countries initiated two new wars per year for more than 600 years. That number has now stood at zero for 65 years.

And there have been zero wars between developed countries at all. We take it for granted nowadays that war is something that happens only in poor, primitive countries. That, too, is an extraordinary development; war used to be something that rich countries did, too. Europe, which traditionally has been the part of the world with the biggest military might, is no longer picking on countries in other parts of the world, or hurling artillery shells at one other with the rest of the world suffering collateral damage. This change has been extraordinary. _Edge.org

It is worth at least skimming the entire piece, paying particular attention to the graphic images. Civilisation seems to be growing less violent in most of the ways that can be measured -- at least on a historical scale.

But can we expect this drop in violence to continue? To answer that question, one must look at demographic trends. The populations which are growing are those that exhibit higher rates of violence, and those that are shrinking are the ones which exhibit lower rates of violence -- as a rule. For example, populations within Africa, Asia, and South America which exhibit the world's highest rates of violence are also generally showing the highest birthrates. Even within advanced nations, the subpopulations which show the highest rates of violence also exhibit the highest birthrates.

If these demographic trends continue, the shrinking, less violent populations, are apt to either die off, or be killed off. The violent and prolific populations may just inherit the world.

In modern politically correct cultures, violence is often condemned outright, without qualification, as if violence itself were evil. But violence in defence of one's life, family, and property is the hallmark of civilisations which survive. Without the threat of defensive violence, the weak and passive become prey to any violent person who comes upon them.

Law enforcement cannot be everywhere, protecting everyone. Any society which forbids individuals from using violence to protect themselves or their property is a society in decay. The law is meant to be taken into the hands of citizens. Otherwise the law will serve only a corrupt oligarchy.

So while advanced societies may seem to be experiencing lower rates of violence overall at this time, demographic changes suggest that this trend toward less violence is only an ephemeral one.

Modern civilisations that do not look to their own survival are likely to fall to primitive civilisations that are merely following the growth imperative. The ongoing popularity of the doom cults in the west: carbon catastrophe doom, peak oil doom, resource scarcity doom, etc. speak to the undertow of defeatism eating at the foundations of the culture.

Violence is an integral part of the human condition, as long as humans live in the world within the universe. The modern west may turn its back on violence, imagining itself to have grown morally superior to the old, brutal ways. But having your back turned simply means that you will not see the violence that inevitably seeks you out and finds you, unprepared.

Parts of this article are adopted from an earlier posting on Al Fin, the Next Level