Institutionalization versus Individualism

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 25th May 2020

This article is about having an open mind, regarding styles, systems, techniques, training methods, etc. Self-defense training is often paradoxical and self-contradictory, and if this inherent characteristic of the martial arts isn’t understood, then we can find ourselves taking wrong turns, and facing dead ends as regards our training. The problem with arts, systems, and styles, is that they start to become institutions (and in certain cases “cults”), that naturally lead us away from reality. The more systemized and formalized an approach becomes, the more prescriptive it becomes, telling us how we should act and behave – and what techniques...Click To Read More

Training Components

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 18th May 2020

In Reality-Based Self-Defense, techniques are often presented as the great equalizers. After a professional MMA fighter, professed difficulties in dealing with a burglar he got into a fight with in his home, in the early hours of the morning, there were many who were quick to comment, “if only he’d known Krav Maga”; that somehow what a professional, fulltime fighter/athlete was lacking were the right techniques, and that this alone would have made the difference. This is an extremely dangerous fallacy, which unfortunately is extremely common in many martial arts and self-defense circles. If you believe that you would have...Click To Read More

Disfluencies in Speech

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 11th May 2020

Although Forensic Linguistics, has been around for a relatively long time e.g. the trial of Derek Bentley in 1953, centered around the meaning of the statement, “let him have it”, and whether it was meant as an instruction to an armed accomplice to hand over his weapon to the law enforcement officers present, or whether it was in fact meant as an idiom (a phrase that doesn’t have any direct meaning derived from the words themselves), with the intent being for the accomplice to start shooting, etc. It was not until 2008, that the UK legal/forensic system properly formally recognized...Click To Read More

Ignoring the Predator in the Room

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 4th May 2020

None of us are immune to being charmed. There are skilled individuals and social players who know how to connect with us in a way that we end up liking them; even when we understand that they don’t have our best interests at heart and are even morally reprehensible. It is possible for us to compartmentalize a person’s character traits – along with their behaviors – so that we are able to down-play and ignore the bad things that they do to us and others, in order to be able to accept them in other roles; including friends and even...Click To Read More