The Protector Ethic. James V. Morganelli
been called out before a crowd of my peers, so my aim was to impress, and I was pretty sure I had. I remember that moment as well as I remember the next: turning to confirm the safety of my protectee, only I couldn’t find him. He’d been silently nabbed by an unknown second attacker. Cue the laugh track for this fool.
A teacher, mentor, and friend, Jack Hoban, arranged the fiasco. He had nothing against me; he was simply taking advantage of the chance to teach a larger lesson. And I have never forgotten that lesson. It laid bare the one thing no professional ever wants to admit he possesses: a weakness he wasn’t even aware he had. My confidence to serve up skill lacked the one thing truly necessary for right action: clarity of what I ought to do. My job, my role, in that moment was not about attacking an attacker. It was about defending someone, about safeguarding his life. It was about being a protector.
After all my years of training and experience, you might think I should have already known this, that it would be second nature, a given. It was not. And it is not for many other professionals. In that crucial moment, I was convinced I was doing the right thing, but I was wrong. I was confused. And I failed. Instead of being a protector, I behaved like a thug.
No one trains martial arts to get worse at martial arts. No one trains to gain less understanding and ability. Everyone trains to get better, gain comprehension, and enlighten themselves. Even weirdos dressed as Power Rangers who flood the net with claims of secret training from Master Cucamonga believe this through the fog of their own self-importance. In fact, it is this unanimous motivation to gain proficiency that’s translated into the variety of reasons folks train in martial arts. But real proficiency is contingent on a central truth: it must protect and defend a clear sense of obligation. It must know its ought.
In his seminal work, The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate, the founder of modern karate, Gichin Funakoshi, recounts the story of a famous feudal-age sword master. A high-level student of Tsukahara Bokuden with “extraordinary technical skill” passed by a skittish horse, which kicked at him. The student “deftly turned his body to avoid the kick and escaped injury.” Townsfolk were so impressed, they immediately related the story to Bokuden himself, who reportedly said, “I’ve misjudged him,” and promptly expelled the student.
Mystified by his reasoning, folks plotted to force Bokuden to react to the same circumstances. They placed “an exceedingly ill-tempered horse” on a road they knew he used, then secretly waited. When the old man finally came round, they were surprised to see him give the horse a wide berth and pass without incident. Once the townspeople confessed their ruse, the sword master said this: “A person with a mental attitude that allows him to walk carelessly by a horse without considering that it may rear up is a lost cause no matter how much he may study technique. I thought he was a person of better judgment, but I was mistaken.”1
Funakoshi highlights this story to introduce the principle of “mentality over technique,” writing “mentality” as shinjutsu, describing acute mindfulness with ethical connotations. Losing our mentality, or, worse, being willfully ignorant of it, can be life threatening, as it represents a personal duty. Bokuden dismissed his student for the plainest of reasons: he had lost touch with the duties he was obligated to uphold to himself. And if he had failed himself, what use was he to anyone else in need?
This clarity of obligation is by far the most important point of martial undertaking because it places every lesson in context—protecting the self grants the confidence and accountability to protect others. People concoct all kinds of reasons to study the martial way, but track those reasons far enough, and they invariably travel full circle to this originating alpha point because of a shared experience: the martial way was not invented; it was discovered.
Universal instincts from deep within the human condition compelled early adherents toward a shared sense of purpose: to survive human conflict. Thus, at different times, in different places, by different people, in different ways around the world, the martial way was realized and refined into the plurality of means and methods we know today. More than simply traditions of culture or libraries of fighting techniques, they are creeds. Codified systems imbued with values, morals, ethics, and virtues—a code of what we feel, what we think, what we do, and what we aspire to do—all calibrated to a particular end, what I call the protector ethic.
Take this true story of a young man who went to the aid of a young woman—she was being beaten. This fellow tried to thwart the attack by attacking her attacker. But, unbeknownst to our hero, the aggressor’s friends were not far behind, and when they came on their comrade receiving a knuckle sandwich, they served up several of their own. Whatever happened to the girl is anyone’s guess.
Were our hero’s actions ethical? Did he do the right thing?
He saw the violence and knew it was wrong. This young lady did not deserve to be beaten by a cretin. In his gut, he knew this to be immoral and acted. Our hero, a trained martial artist, gained tactical advantage and took the bully out. Now, had the violence stopped at that point, perhaps he could’ve tipped his hat and walked into the sunset. But the question remains: Did his tactical action provide him with the best option to stop the violence and prevent more?
Some will say yes, based on his intention to do right. But intending is not the same as doing. Knowing the right is not enough—doing the right is what counts. Then perhaps by merit of the outcome? Still not enough. The outcome could have been born of pure luck, like a rum-fueled dance-like-nobody’s-watching stumble accidentally knocking the attacker out—hardly an ethical act, even when the outcome goes his way. But the outcome didn’t go his way, and our hero was lucky he won only some nasty bruises, in spite of doing a noble, dumb thing that could have resulted in croaking at the hands of angry drunks.
The world is a brutal place, and there will always be cases in which good folks have no choice but to attack an attacker, even at great risk to themselves or others. But this doesn’t mean it should be our first choice. In fact, if your default setting in regular training is “stomping mudholes in chests” or worse, slitting throats like a commando but you are not a commando, you are priming yourself to go off road, even off map, to cause greater conflict and violence. “Kill ’em all and let Gary sort ’em out” is an awful way for Gary to live in the real world, where some of that indiscriminate aggression will rub off on him and people he cares about.
We can be tactical without being ethical. It’s easy, really—far easier than being both, for sure. Even though our hero had been tactical—he approached and ambushed unseen from the rear—he had not acted on the ethical first. If he had, he would have given himself the best opportunity for the outcome he was initially compelled to effect.
Let’s remember why he intervened to begin with. It wasn’t to deliver justice to the villain and tie him up with a note for the cops. He did it to protect a young woman who could not protect herself. Why, then, did he choose a tactic that endeavored the former and neglected the latter? Bear in mind, once the aggressor’s friends attacked our hero, it created a new issue: now he needed defending. And the young woman was left in the very same predicament our hero found her in to begin with—at the mercy of those who meant her harm. He had lost touch with the duties he was obligated to uphold to himself. And if he had failed himself, what use was he to anyone else in need?
By unnecessarily attacking the attacker, the hero placed himself, the girl, and even his attackers in potentially deadly harm. Yes, even his attackers: had the hero or someone else been carrying a concealed weapon, such as a firearm, it might have turned into a turkey shoot with no turkeys.
What ought the hero have done?
He should have placed himself between the young woman and her abuser and separated them. This ethical action is the best tactical action, as it protects everyone:
By standing up for the girl, he becomes a guardian to protect her from further violence.
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