One of the first things a motorcyclist learns is that “You go where you look.”
Target fixation is the term used for the habit motorcyclists (and drivers) have of running into things they mean to avoid. They do this because we – for some reason – are wired to tend to steer toward whatever we are paying attention to.
So that’s interesting, you reply.
I want to extend this toward the larger debate we’re having here about Iran. And to put it into context, let me base the argument on something I know a bit about directly – personal combat.
One of the key issues in making fighting personal is that typically, it is far from clear that you’re really in a fight for a long time. Often the person who knows that you are – or decides first that you are – has a substantial advantage.
There’s a problem with this formulation, of course.
And that is that a very small proportion of interpersonal conflicts actually become fights. Let me give a concrete example.
You‘re driving cross country, and you stop to put gas in your car late at night. A pickup truck full of violent lacrosse players (note the clever use of stereotype) pulls up next to you and starts making fun of your car, of you, of the trailer you’re pulling, and of your wife sitting in the car.
They get out of the truck and approach you in a menacing manner, challenging you (the technical term is ‘woofing’). So what do you do? The threat is real, and as they approach you – two of them – it’s clear that time isn’t on your side. How do you respond?
The problem, of course is that while there is a conflict, there isn’t necessarily a fight yet. So you have to make a decision. On one hand, the decision ought to be relatively easy – they threatened me – GO!!!
…but on the other, most of us know that if we used that as a criterion to start fighting, society would be a worse place, we’d be ostracized if not imprisoned, and worse – the actual risk of harm we’d face would be higher, not lower – because the increased odds we’d face in each fight because we made the decision first would be far outweighed by the increased exposure to harm that we’d face because we’d be in so many more fights.
There is a conflict of stereotypes that we can look at; on one hand, the meek victim, never willing to realize they are at risk, always in ‘condition white’; there is another stereotype as well – of the person with a ‘hair-trigger’ temper, the bully, the one who always seems to find themselves in conflict wherever they go.
Practically, we want to navigate a middle ground.
It starts by recognizing that conflict =! combat. Conflict is always a precursor to combat – but combat does not always follow conflict.
I’ll quote Clint Smith, a famous firearms instructor:
“You better learn to communicate real well, because when you’re out there on the street, you’ll have to talk to a lot more people than you’ll have to shoot, or at least that’s the way I think it’s supposed to work.”
So what’s the goal?
On one hand, the goal of personal defense skills, as it’s always been explained to me, is to enable you to have the comfort not to have to respond too quickly, and thereby make combat certain.
On the other, it is to give to the mindset and skills to win when you do fight.
But most of the skills you learn – on the mat in the dojo or on the firing range – don’t do a good job of teaching you the hardest thing – which is to know when you are really in a fight.
Expanding back to geopolitics and Iran, some of the bloggers on this site are convinced that the fight is here, and that we need to act accordingly and act soon. We get something for that – we get a tactical advantage, and the certainty that Iran won’t create or use nuclear weapons in the next five or ten years; if we invade and make it stick, we’ll get the certainty that Iran won’t in the near term, make them at all.
But we’ll trade some things away for that.
First, it means that we’ll certainly have a fight.
Next it means that others will be making decisions about whether to make nuclear weapons in a different light. Will they be more likely to make them – more hostile, more committed to opposing our interests, more certain we are Crusaders? Or less likely – as they are more afraid of our response, more convinced of our commitment to reshaping the Muslim world? It’s hard to say.
Finally, it means that we’ll be fighting without the tactical advantage time can give us, if we use it.
There is no certainty in this kind of world; mistakes are made on both sides – in World War I, in fighting too soon, in World War II in fighting too late. There is no ‘right’ answer. We have to weigh the odds, and decide what kind of risk we’re willing to take.
The thing to watch out for is target fixation – of either kind.
Trent, Tom, and Joe are convinced we’re in a fight. To be honest, they’re looking for one, and if we follow their policies, we’ll certainly have one.
Matt Yglesias, Josh Marshall and others are convinced that a fight is out of the question. To be honest, they’ll make the opposite mistake, and won’t know we’re fighting until the planes have flown into the towers again.
There is a large middle ground, which doesn’t reject force – even the first use of force – but doesn’t list it as the opening gambit.
The situation at the gas station I’m describing above really happened to someone I know, at an isolated gas station on an Interstate late one night.
It happens that it happened to Clint Smith, a retired Marine combat veteran, former SWAT sniper, and then a shooting instructor on his way to teach a submachine gun class to a local police department. He was armed with a handgun under his jacket, and his wife had a MP-5 submachine gun in her lap, as the trailer was stacked full of submachine guns, ammunition, and police munitions.
How does that change the response you’d propose? How does it change the kinds of mistakes you’re willing to make in that situation?
Where would you look? Where would you want to go?