Jason H. writes in this self defense question:
“Do you really live in the Cause State every day? Do you find that it affects you negatively in any way (socially) and if so, how do you deal with that?”
Jason,
This is a great self defense question, and one we don’t hear about too often. The Cause/Effect State is really just a paradigm to illustrate the roles of winners and losers in violence: The winners do the hurting while the losers get hurt. It’s about making the decision ahead of time to be the one doing the hurting. It’s understanding that defense, blocking, countering, and backing up are what victims do, and leaving that for the victims. If it’s act or react, you want to be the one doing the acting.
It means nothing socially since we’re talking about operating in asocial violence, not in everyday living. As I’ve noted in past seminars, “It allows you to work like a sociopath without any of the negative consequences.” (All the frustrations and difficulties true sociopaths face in the everyday, social world.)
Learning to use the tool of violence correctly and well doesn’t change who you are.
It doesn’t make you “cold” or deaden your sociability, it doesn’t make you uncaring or mean or into a hair-trigger assassin. It just means that if somebody comes after you, to hurt you, you know how to hurt them instead.
If anything, I’ve found this training to make people more caring, more considerate and far less likely to get involved in stupid situations because it highlights the fragility of life (his and yours) and shows how quickly and simply it can end.
Any situation that’s not worth your life is not worth the risk.
That attitude tends to make one more tolerant of other people’s social friction. I know it does for me.
The Cause State isn’t a personal philosophy or “way of life.” It’s just one side of the violence coin. Violence is only about winners and losers, and, whether we realize it or not, we’re training to be one or the other. And if we’re not training to be the one hurting people, we’re training to lose.