Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected by Rory Miller
I can’t say this book was notably different in quality than MEDITATIONS ON VIOLENCE, which I gave 5 stars, but I didn’t like this one as much. This book covers a lot of the same material as MEDITATIONS ON VIOLENCE, except that it has a brief overview of force law. The information wasn’t better the second time around.
I can sum up the content of this book in one sentence “If you think you’re good in a fight, you’re a dumbass who is going to get himself killed.” Basically, training in a dojo is not the same as actually hitting people. Also, you won’t be able to think and do difficult things when you’re afraid and surprised, such as when you’re hit in the face.
He’s got some valid points. The main point is that real fighting is different from simulated fighting, and that you only get good at real fighting by fighting, which will land you in jail unless you’re a cop. In the section about force law, he points out that even if you’re in the right (legally) you can still be hit with a civil lawsuit for pain and suffering by the survivors of the crackhead rapist you shot after he broke into your house.
This book has some more in-depth information about different types of fights/assaults, and how to determine if it’s one or the other. For example, is it a “Monkey Dance”, ie. fight between two men for status that is designed to be non-lethal, or a “predatory assault”, ie. someone wants to take something from you and sees you as a resource rather than a person. Some of the situations, such as an “educational beat down” are culturally foreign to middle class people.
Miller tries to give some advice as to how to deal with some of these non-middle-class-American situations (ie. if you are a woman in a men-only location, or if you are a man and a woman approaches you) but he kind of glosses it over and while he implies that he’s talking about foreign countries, he doesn’t say which one. This annoyed me. I find it more frustrating to have incomplete, hazy information than to have that information not included at all.
At least half of this information was either not-useful or demotivational to me. I have never been in a bar fight in my life, and expect it will never happen, so I don’t think I need coaching on de-escalating the pre-fight warm-up. According to Miller, unless you’re in some testosterone-laden hardcore dojo where people jump out and whack you in the face when you’re not expecting it, you can’t train in any useful way. Also the criminals you fight are going to be soulless killers, whereas you are going to have serious hangups about hurting someone else, especially when that someone else is a filthy AIDS-ridden meth addict covered in blood and puke. After a while, it was kind of like “yeah, yeah, I get it, Miller. No one is as badass as you.”
The first book was peppered with fascinating anecdotes from Miller’s career fighting bad guys. This one has a little of the psychological aftermath of spending your whole time with the dregs of human society, but it doesn’t have as many cool stories.
If you’re a woman who wants to keep herself safe, this book basically says “your attacker will be bigger than you, stronger than you, have no moral qualms about hurting you, and will strike unexpectedly in a situation of his choosing, probably with reinforcements.” Considering how much Miller went on about how fighting is a mental game as much as a physical one, it would have been nice to have some courageous “against all odds” stories instead of the equivalent of a cloaked skeleton pointing a bony hand and shouting “doom! doom!” I would rather read a book called “How to Fight Cancer by Eating Fruit!” rather than a book called “The Myth of Cancer Survival: Why Everyone You Know and Love Will Eventually Die.” Both are true, but reading the latter will not help you.
I guess I’d recommend this book for frat boys with a black belt in tae kwon do who think that it’s fun to pick bar fights. I don’t recommend it for women. For women, I’d recommend Gavin De Becker’s THE GIFT OF FEAR and Miller’s other book MEDITATIONS ON VIOLENCE.
