Wrong Thinking

18 Sept 07

Thinking wrongly:

Late last week, Vicki and Diane Nichol presented their famous "Teaching Women to Shoot" Class to several police departments in GA. As always, the most politically incorrect of all questions was asked by several female instructors:

They indicated that a number of female patrol officers, who chronically perform poorly on the range, don't interact profitably with female instructors. Sometimes, there is a racial component. "They refuse to listen. How do we communicated effectively with them?" Was the question.

We explain this in many different ways. This is the latest iteration:

Sub-standard results are a result of the student acting poorly, and acting poorly is a direct result of flawed thinking. So long as students thinks wrongly, nothing will improve, and little we instructors do or say will be helpful.

We instructors present students with the best information we have, information that has been learned and refined, at great price, over many decades, indeed many centuries. There are any number of ways of using weapons. Most produce poor results, but a select few produce good results. Naturally, those are what we teach. We call it The Way, The True Way. While we have not yet reached perfection, and probably never will, we are persuaded that what weare t eaching represents the State of the Art.

However, some students come to us, not to learn The True Way, but to convince us (but mostly themselves) that their way is best. They refuse to repent nor even listen, but instead stubbornly do everything their way, and, as a result, consistently perform poorly. When we point out to them that their repeated poor performance is prima-facie evidence that their way is inferior and that they need to abandon it, they become defensive, change the subject, and start accusing us personally of harassment and all manner of other misdeeds. In addition, they will predictably blame the gun, the target, the holster, the ammunition, the range, the weather, the department, their parents, their religion, ... ad nauseam.

As with all unrepentant sinners, the first thing they need is the last thing they want! Outwardly, they claim to want to improve, but the only thing they really want is coddlers and enables, just as they've had at their disposal their entire lives (until now). They are comfortably being known as losers, because there is no pressure to meliorate. For their sake and ours, we can't accede to this self-destructive pattern of thinking. We have to continue to hold a mirror to their faces and compel them to gradually abandon their fantasy world, as comfortable as it is, and confront the stark reality that is the stock-and-trade of all Operators. Only then will they forsake their vanity and narcissistic arrogance and begin to believe their beliefs. And, when they believe their beliefs, they will start doubting their doubts. Put another way, they will start thinking rightly. As it is, they doubt their beliefs and believe their doubts, and that is why they fail!

It is a tenant of Western Civilization that elitism applies only to ideas. Egalitarianism applies only to individuals. We are a society of Free Men, created equal. We have no kingly line nor elite group that has the privilege of lording it over the rest of us. As Free Men, we come together to discuss ideas, and no voice has more or less authority than any other.

Some ideas are true and right, and others are false and evil. Not all ideas, not all information, is of equal value. But, as our Civilization declines, we find ourselves wallowing in Eastern Mysticism, the kind of wrong thinking that our marvelous ancestors bravely rejected at Thermopylae. An example is the patently false notion that we can alter reality by "believing." Under this fallacy, there is no truth nor lies, no good nor evil, just "what I feel right now." Call it "New-Age," "Spiritualism," or whatever, it is all the same hackneyed wish-wash our righteous forefathers threw out so long ago. Deliver us from this sewage, almighty God!

This is what wrong-thinking students will try to convince us of on the range. "Results don't matter. The only important thing is what I feel." Difficult as it is, they must be guided to confront the fact that, not only are they losers, but that they have never been anything but losers, and, if they're not careful, losers/slaves are all they're ever going to be!

At Thermopylae, when he confronted King Leonidas of Sparta, Xerxes of Persia said, "You cannot possibly think your three hundred can stop my vast forces. Your position is untenable. Victory is impossible." Leonidas replied, " Until now, oh great King, you have fought only slaves and conscripts. Today, you fight Free Men, and, in our vocabulary, you will find the word,' impossible,' conspicuously absent!"

This is the crux of what Western Civilization have given to human history, and, in the continuing (and currently losing) war for its preservation, thegun range, in so many ways, is the Forward Edge of the Battle Area!

/John