Episode 717 - Hitting People is Not Natural
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about why hitting people is not natural.
Hitting People is Not Natural - Episode 717
We can all agree that fighting is a natural reflex of humans, however, the act of hitting people is not natural. Other than professional fights and street fights, there’s always a moment when 2 people stop hitting and start grabbing each other. In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about why hitting people is not natural. Listen to learn more!
After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section down below!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hello, welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. And today, Andrew and I are talking about the fact that let's face it hitting people is not natural. Oh my God, just wait, just wait for your bunch of contrarians. Just hold on. We'll get there. Andrew is Andrew Adams, frequent co-host shows up for all the Thursday stuff sometimes for other stuff and a good friend. And thanks for being here for and for all the other stuff that you do. I am Jeremy Lesniak, host of the show and founder of whistlekick. And what do we do? At whistlekick, well, we support traditional martial arts and traditional martial artists, we've got a website that shows all the things that we're doing, and it is whistlekick.com, as you might have guessed, if you go to whistlekick.com, you're gonna see a lot of stuff over there. All the things that were involved in lots of links can be a little overwhelming, as I know, because part of my job is to keep track of all of it and I struggle with it, because that's how much there is.
One of the things I spent some time on today is our store. There is a store, we sell stuff, everything from stickers and hoodies and hats to pants, I'm not going to show you my pants. bunch more, use the code PODCAST15, it's gonna save you 15% and it helps us out. Let us connect that yeah, the show does lead to sales, which is an important thing on the back end with accounting. This show, martial art training, gets its own website, whistlekick martialartsradio.com because I use the simplest names I can when I buy a domain name. And if you head on over there, you're gonna see that we do two shows each and every week. All under the heading of connecting, educating and entertaining their traditional martial arts world that is our goal here at whistlekick.
And if you want to show your appreciation for the show and for the company for the things that we do to support you, yeah, you and the people that you like, in the martial arts world. Well, you might make a purchase, you might share an episode or join the Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick for those of you listening, Andrew, essentially has no right to tell them they know they gotta watch. You're gonna find out. I'm not gonna make them watch the video for that.
Andrew Adams:
Come on. That was fun.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It was fun. I am making them watch the video go back. Like they're listening. And they're like, oh, alright, I gotta go right to the first five minute. You basically put up a sketch app on your iPad, and scratch out whistlekick or patreon.com/whistlekick. Which is funny. But not funny enough to make them go watch them.
Andrew Adams:
Alright, fine.
Jeremy Lesniak:
As an aside, if you think this is ridiculous, you should see us before and after episodes. Maybe someday we'll release a blooper video. Like a blooper. Every episode is a blooper.
Andrew Adams:
All right, fair enough.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Every Thursday show is a blooper video where was that at? Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. Okay, get a place where we post exclusive content, like upcoming guests for the show. And bonus audio, and video episodes, stuff you're not gonna find anywhere else. Seriously. $2 a month is your initial buy in goes up from there, the more you're willing to contribute, the more we get back to you. If you want the full list, all of the things you can do to support us from the paid to the free, the time intensive to the very easy, as well as flowing mix of again, exclusive, not exclusive like Patreon and this but just completely exclusive to this. Go to whistlekick.com/family. You gotta take it. We even give you a little timestamp at the top. Here's when we last updated. Okay, Andrew. Yeah. We made an important distinction. In the word choice and the title of this episode. You did not say fighting is not natural. No, we said hitting people is not natural.
Andrew Adams:
Correct.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I would argue fighting is quite natural. It is something that is quite deeply instilled in our humanity and our animalistic tendencies. That is something that happens frequently among. It's the animal kingdom. It is core to social standing.
Andrew Adams:
All these say it's true.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Not saying it's right or wrong, not saying we shouldn't exert effort to combat it. But fighting is quite natural. Yes. Hitting is not.
Andrew Adams:
At least in my opinion, it is not. And I will talk a lot about it. But you know, we can give some specific examples as to why I don't think it is natural. What do you think when I say that when I brought this topic to you, and I said, I want to do an episode in a consistent month? I mean, I did. I won't lie, I got this idea from another YouTube video that I was watching. And he brought up this topic, and I said, You know what, it's very true. And the more and more I thought about it, I said, You know what, I wanted to do an episode on that. So what were your thoughts? When I sent it to you, hey, I want to do an episode on hitting people isn't natural. I think of how most non combat non non non mutually agreed fights among untrained individuals, you know, not martial artists go, they usually end up with some they start with some somewhat half hearted swinging. And then they grab each other.
Yeah, they usually grab each other. Because I believe on some level. When you look into the animal kingdom, you see this too. There's a goal of expressing dominance without causing injury. Exactly. Look at every pair of dogs that fight. You're telling me those dogs can't tear each other apart. Even the winning dog should be absolutely shredded, if that's the goal. But that's not the goal. You can say the same thing, watch cats fight, they make a racket. And they sat at each other. And then one of them kind of like ourselves. Submit. I often think of this in terms of caveman days. Right? You and I are both cavemen. We are in a tribe, right? And now we're then yes, I'd take your pick. We are part of a society, our little tribe, our little group, whatever. We both have roles to play in the group, right? Everybody has to be out hunting and gathering. And like we all have things to do.
If I and I might want to exert dominance over you and be above you in the pecking order, maybe I get to sleep a little closer to the fire or maybe again, the best, the better choice or whatever. But if I try to exert dominance over you, I strike you and break my hand. There's no way for me to fix that. Because we're cavemen, right? Modern medicine doesn't really exist. I'm now out if in doing so, I'm striking you and I hurt you and made you to the point that you can't function within our tribe, our tribe is now out to people. It's not natural, we would never want to do that. I would want to exert my dominance over you in some other way. The only reason when we extend.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, the only reason the type of fighting that we are used to in the modern era is able to exist is because we're all not individually responsible for our own food insecurity.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, exactly. And if you take it even a little more modern times. Have you ever seen kids fight? Like little kids? Yes, but they're there. They're not like punching and kicking. They usually like you said, they inevitably end up grabbing and rolling around on the ground. Because that's natural. You know, if we were to get into a fight, we would be striking, we would be hitting but that's what we were trained to do. That's not what we're talking about. Have you ever had experience as an early martial arts practitioner on a sparring day?
Jeremy Lesniak:
And they tend to hang out outside of range? And then they kind of try to time things? Yeah, they try to grab you like, ah, right. Like, there's something instinctive there. We want to be able to say okay, I win, you lose, but neither of us gets injured. difference between a hurting injury?
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, absolutely. And I just think it's interesting to think about that, it's not something that we naturally come by now, having said that, if you, it's interesting to think of given that that's the case, if you were to pull 100 people off the street, and ask them, if they're good at fighting, a vast majority of them will say, Yes, I am. And I'm not talking to trained people. I'm talking just random, generic Joe Schmoe off the street, because it's instinctual enough to want to be able to exert dominance over people.
And you know, maybe it's the Dunning Kruger effect, or something like that concept of you don't know what you don't know. You know, those people that are untrained, they don't realize how untrained they are. But it's instinctual in us to want to be better than others. And so people think they can fight, when they might not really be able to fight in the sense that you and I could.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And that I suspect this came up for you. Right around the time I was seeing some social media posts going around on this topic, the idea that way more people think they know how to fight and actually know how to fight. And the percentage of people who believe they would be successful in a fight. Just the statistics don't work. Right. Like, like, most people think they would win in a fight. Well, most people can't win in a fight. Yeah, unless they're all fighting that minority group of people who, you know, no, they're not fighting, right. Like it doesn't work. What percentage of people will win in a fight? 50. Yeah, only half statistically, across enough fights enough randomness. Half of the people will win the fight.
Forgetting of course, by personal if you can't win a fight, right? Like, like, we're not talking about philosophical aspects for those, we're talking about the, you know, just kind of the raw primal elements here. And I find that really fascinating. And I think that, as you said, this all connects because if you believe that you are terrible, and you would not be able to win a fight, under any circumstances. If too many people feel that way, you end up with a social hierarchy. That really doesn't work. Less work in the bottom is just really flat.
And that's not good. For pecking order, you get people just kind of like, oh, no, no, am I better than you? Are you better than me at what's going on? Right? Like, and that just we're not going to unpack that. Because that starts to bring in other elements of social standing that I think are outside the scope of what we need, here. Now let's talk for a moment about I'm sure some of the folks who might be listening or watching are saying, Yeah, but you know, like, you see people on the street and they kick in, and stuff like that. That's hitting and you're saying that's not natural? Where's that coming from?
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, they had to have learned that somewhere. Exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, this is… Go ahead.
Andrew Adams:
And, you know, we also may have listeners that are thinking, Well, what about a war? Are weapons better? Well, you know, back in caveman days, when they started to hit. Yeah, they use their hands to make something else to hurt somebody where they would go to war with a different clan, but they were using a tool, not their, their own hands, right, because they don't want to damage themselves because they put themselves out of commission, if that happens.
Jeremy Lesniak:
In the length of time that human beings have existed on Earth. And this is often assuming you believe in evolution. Okay. If you believe in a shorter, [00:14:23-00:14:25], christian timeline, you know, 6000 years, this isn't going to work. So those of you who have that worldview? I don't have a comment. Just skip ahead a few minutes. But for the rest of us. What percentage of time that human beings have been on Earth? Have we actually had wars? It's pretty sure. Yeah, right. Like, yeah, there's been skirmishes for a relatively long period of time. But not in the way that we do it now.
Yeah. You know, there was a recognition that life was valuable. And that's why if you go back even not that long ago, tribes would often have picked a champion, and they would fight proxy battles. So now, two people are injured. Yeah, that shows something. Right, it shows an inherent value for the life of the physical body. And that a bunch of people getting together hitting each other, even though we might be able to do it. It's not natural.
Andrew Adams:
Exactly. And you rarely see it in the animal kingdom. That's not to say it doesn't happen ever. But it is incredibly rare for that type of action to happen. And within and…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Outside of predator prey.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
When we talk about an animal bringing down prey for food, it's a whole different story.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, no, we're talking about the same species.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Where else do we go with us? That was cut.
Andrew Adams:
That'd be that those are my thoughts. You know, and I hope that this discussion sparked some thoughts and other people.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I am admittedly fascinated at the psychology that makes people want to fight with each other. Both are kind of impromptu. Somebody's at the bar, and somebody talks to their wife. And they don't like that. And now they want to fight that person. As well as the organized rule based combatives. You know, here's the rule set. I'm going to fight this person to see who the better fighter is. I find both of those fascinating, because I don't want to do either one. Yeah, neither one of those lines up the ladder a little bit more, you know, just as a martial artist, because, you know, testing skill is interesting. But, you know, I don't like getting punched in the face. So let's not do that. So I do spend some time thinking about the psychology of this, and this is a whole other layer. I think we've done a pretty good job, proving the point that this, this is true. And I'm sure some people disagree, and I would love to hear where those disagreements come in. But I'm going to throw one more point of support in here. So many people who have never done martial arts gravitate towards one, if they're going to train they want to do BJJ.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, this is not to say that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu curriculums are completely free of striking. But when they think about that sort of training or to think about grappling, they're thinking about grabbing people and defending people grabbing that. There's something that I think on a primal level resonates because they understand that is something that is frequent to happen. Good point. Feedback, criticism, expansion of ideas, we want to hear all that bring it on, email me, Jeremy@whistlekick.com or, you know, if you want to tell Andrew how dumb I am, email him Andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. If you've got thoughts on subsequent topics, or guest ideas for the show, you can email us as well. We want to hear from you.
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