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By Bradley J. Steiner, American Combato
The Centurylink website recently (6 September 2020) ran a lengthy presentation citing “The Rudest City In Each State”. We read a few “assessments”, shook our heads, then dropped the article and went on to check the weather.
How anyone could possibly label a city as being rude is difficult to understand. Yes, there are rude—even very rude—people in every city. There are also kind, generous, thoughtful, considerate, friendly and extremely benevolent people in every city. Without literally knowing, analyzing, interviewing and comparing every single person in every city, and then performing the impossible task of evaluating—person by person—precisely how many in each city were and were not rude, and then figuring out the exact ratios of “polite” people to “rude” people applicable in every city, and how the results in each city stack up against the results in other cities, all you’ve got (in our humble opinion) is a smelly crock of bullshit!
HOW THE HELL COULD ANYONE EVEN BEGIN TO DO THIS WITH ONE FIFTH THE TOTAL NUMBER OF CITIES IN AMERICA, let alone all of them?
Articles like this one entertain some people; for others the articles confirm or dispute their prejudices; the articles make some people laugh; the articles make some people angry; and some really stupid members of our species with an IQ approximating the number of fingers and toes that they possess, are actually so damn stupid that they regard this as “established, incontrovertible fact”. Ugh.
But here’s why we bring this up. Generalizations are, per se, unacceptable when evaluating persons who are unknown to you. You do this at your own risk. When it comes to personal security, self-defense, and cautious, situationally aware living, you cannot afford this simplistic, idiotic mindset. People whom you do not know personally must be recognized as the strangers they are.
You cannot safely judge so-and-so who approaches you as a “good guy” because he is smiling, apparently friendly, and initially courteous and respectful. Nor can you accurately evaluate someone who is shabbily dressed and perhaps a bit unkempt as a troublemaker. If you do not know someone, you do not know them; and you know nothing about them. The well-dressed fellow with the attaché case may be a drug dealer. The unkempt fellow in jeans and a dirty T-shirt might be an undercover DEA agent.
People whom you do not know, you do not know. Period. And it would be just as wrong to either judge a person unknown to you as a good guy or as a bad guy. The simple truth is: You don’t know. And because you don’t know (and, literally, cannot know) your course of action remains clear: you remain in condition yellow (i.e. relaxed alert) and never drop below that level in regard to a stranger. You may of course rise to condition orange (alarm) if the BEHAVIOR or the GUT LEVEL INTUITIVE SENSE YOU GET ABOUT THE STRANGER causes you to feel uneasy. However, it is entirely possible that you might on occasion bring yourself to an orange level of readiness unnecessarily, or you might unfortunately remain in a yellow state of readiness, when orange would be more appropriate.
We are hoping that you get this.
People who are successfully victimized by violent predators in general are caught off guard, by surprise. People who possess defensive skills and who are ever-aware and alert are not only rarely successfully victimized; these people are very, very rarely targeted in the first place. The aura of preparedness is something that experienced street filth can pick up coming from these people, and it normally warns the garbage off.
If you do not know someone then REALIZE FULLY that you do not know them! Remain alert. Remain ready. And to paraphrase that former USMC General Mattis, always be polite while at the same time being fully prepared to take lethal action if necessary, should a deadly threat materialize, and the individual you are interfacing with proves to be a predator!
Snap judgements about persons whom you do not personally know are also a potentially huge mistake. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is the soundest advice anyone could give a student and practitioner of self-defense and close combat, as it most definitely applies to people you may encounter.
“Oh, this guy is puny. I don’t need to worry about him,” could be one of the dumbest things that you ever tell yourself. We have seen persons who, apparently “puny”, nevertheless were fierce, determined, and extremely dangerous when aroused; and only a fool with rocks in his head instead of brains would wish to engage in battle with them. We have also seen muscleman types who were timid, and who literally were docile and easy to intimidate. Maybe that fellow approaching you who you never saw before is as weak and ineffectual as he looks. But what if he isn’t, and what if he suddenly comes at you with a knife, fully determined to kill you?
Don’t think this sort of thing doesn’t happen.
Most of you have likely never heard of the Russian weightlifter Alexeev. He goes back a ways, but so do we, and we remember him very well. An apparently obese, clumsy, and slow moving clod ON FIRST APPEARANCE, this athletic Hercules was a world class Olympic weight lifter who was so agile he could, from a standing position, jump up—unassisted—from the floor to a table or desk top, and land perfectly balanced! Try it sometime. Anyone looking at Alexeev and not knowing him or ever having seen him before, might have been tempted to dismiss the man as a hopelessly overweight, physically underpar individual. Hah!
Generalizations do not produce reliable knowledge. This is precisely because they provide—at best—only a general concept. Any individual may prove to be an exception. Your task in mastering self-defense and close combat skills is, in part, to come to an understanding and appreciation of this fact, and be guided by that whenever interfacing with and interacting with ANYONE whom you do not know.
As an aside—and as an end to this instructional piece—I must point out that I have been to three of those cities indicated as being “the rudest” in their respective states, and I personally found the people there to be open-hearted, friendly, and a pleasure to meet.
So there, Centurylink!