The Protector Ethic

Here's a preview of the Preface from my latest book, "The Protector Ethic."

When scientists wished to record data from the stimulation of a frog, they used a bell to startle it into jumping. They would ring the bell and record how far the frog jumped only to then cut off one of the frog’s appendages. Snip!

Again they rang the bell, recorded how far the frog jumped, and cut off a leg; ring, record, cut – until the frog was nothing but a stump. When they rang the bell for what would be the last time and the frog did not jump, their conclusion was this: when all of a frog’s appendages are removed, it loses its hearing.

The moral of this story, told to my father in his first year of dental school, is this: do not disregard the obvious. And that’s essentially what this book is about – rediscovering and clarifying the obvious. The obvious is not the stuff we all agree on – nobody really agrees on everything anyway – but rather the stuff we know we cannot deny.

When I was actively chasing my master's degree I wrote a paper, one among many. It was tough, both long and difficult, in which I made the case certain values were “non-negotiable” and indiscriminate violation of them (such as truth telling, a prohibition on murder, and valuation for the lives of the young) would jeopardize the collapse of any valid society. In other words, these particular values were not simply “good,” or even “good ideas” they were crucial, fundamental, necessary – in short, obvious and for one reason alone: they are each predicated on protection of the value of life. When we don’t protect and defend the value of life, everything predicated upon it is in jeopardy. Who could deny that?

My professor, that’s who – he wasn’t buying. In fact, he wrote flippantly in the margin, “Why shouldn’t we let society collapse?” Such is the modern university experience – simple common sense is simply uncommon.

In fact, exploring “common sense” will be a large part of this book’s effort. We have often heard these words together, but do we actually know what it means? The phrase “common sense” is derived from the Latin sensus communis, (and this from the Greek koine aisthesis) the “common feelings of humanity.” Cambridge dictionary defines it, “the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way.” If this is true, there must be certain “non-negotiable” presuppositions “to help us live” reasonably and safely within the “common feelings of humanity,” otherwise how could it be considered “common” or “sensible?”

It is not hard to conclude (provided one is not a university professor) values that protect, respect, and sustain life are not just worthy of valuation, but also necessary to value. In other words, they are moral, and “obviously” so. This cohering to the instincts and feelings of our human nature is why the “theory” of Natural Law - much like the “theory” of gravity - is the progenitor of our “common sense,” and forms the source of all that we accept as “good,” as well as outlines the disorientation we detest as “evil.”

Explaining all that can be quite a chore and in many cases paradoxical because, much like our pursuit of martial arts and its protector ethic, there is never just one thing that proves it - everything, in fact, proves it. My favorite quote from the English writer GK Chesterton:

A man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, “Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?” he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, “Why, there is that bookcase … and the coals in the coal-scuttle … and pianos … and policemen.” The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible.

Such is the state between the pursuit of martial ability and the ethics of the protector - there is not one thing that proves the relationship, everything in fact proves it. And “everything” can sometimes be so obvious that we have great difficulty in recognizing and accepting it, so much so that in response to the question, “why do you train martial arts?” answers are as varied and incoherent as the multiplicity of training itself: “Why, there is that sword … and the culture of ancient lands … and discipline … and ninjas and stuff!” We see the minutiae, but miss the obvious bit about the relevance and priority of the survival ethic to protect the lives of self and others.

Training the protector ethic can sometimes be a confusing journey, but it can be made downright incomprehensible if we purposely obscure its path, due to our own penchant for hobby-ish distraction, or worse, outright refuse to believe the path actually exists due to some tacit buy-in of intellectual rubbish like “moral relativism,” which is basically like saying it’s okay not to do the right thing, because in our “nasty, brutish, and short” Hobbsian lives there is no knowing the “right” thing.

This book is out to demonstrate the obvious and show how we can see it, train to activate it, and sustain it to forge an actionable protector ethic for defense of self and others, leadership, and our own empowerment.