I often find myself wondering, if nothing more than out of curiosity: If we were in times of serious survival-duress and not the generally-safe times we live in, would our perspective on functional violence-training change, and change rapidly?  Would there be a sudden and drastic paradigm-shift in focus? An upkeep/maintenance mentality is much different than a daily-usage one….energy-conversation could very well be a thing. I often mock many hardcore, ultra-serious combatives instructors for their training for a post-apocalyptic world. The “Mad Max” approach to modern personal protection. Overkill. Excessive. Paranoid. Hyper-vigilant. Not my style in any way.

However, we do live in a world with some long-term (hopefully?) species threats. Growing artificial-intelligence (AI). Cloning. An ever-growing over-reliance on the Internet for communication, business, finance, knowledge…..which begs the question of what a downing of the grid would do. A world gradually decreasing in natural resources/water shortages/climate-destruction. Nuclear war among super-powers with growing technological arsenals. Political upheaval/unrest and population division/segregation. (The term “civil war” gets tossed around regularly across the globe these days and the widening gap between classes is a wonderful divider)

I’m sometimes curious as to how my violence/counter-violence prep might be altered (more streamlined/ultra-efficient/tailored-to-fit?) based on survival-need…especially if your approach is more holistic and not one-dimensionally physical. What parts of my training would I immediately take-away? Which ones would become more paramount? Which that I don’t put any focus at all on now, would become integral then? Would I need an entire paradigm-shift or is my current-training relatively on-par in at least a number of pertinent areas with which to build a foundation and add as needed? What abilities am I void of that would pay to invest some immediate study and formulate ideas? It’s not paranoia to at least gloss-over where your skillsets, knowledge, training, and experience lie and would or might need alteration should macro-context suddenly and irrevocably be altered…and how those would change depending on that particular macro-context. As usual, something worth a little thought, self-assessment is always valuable.