Let us look to a single historical instance that
illuminates a lesson in Task-Saturation or what Musashi called “Sword Flowers.”
Here Jiu-Jitsu just happens to be the vehicle
of the combat strategy lesson. The art is not being picked on, not at all,
The focus here is less the art itself, than
it is the mind of the combat athlete that “fixes” beyond good sense, or good
health.
We will begin in France, then spend time in a
Blackhawk chopper cockpit, then allow a samurai to throw shade and wind up,
hopefully, with pupils dilated for wiser tactic and strategy choices.
Early 20th-Century France
Edmond Desbonnet, was a physical culture
purveyor and entrepreneur, like all good businessmen he kept an eye on how to
increase clientele.
During a trip to London in 1905 he encounters
a physical exhibition that was currently the rage, that of the “exotic art of
Japanese Jiu-Jitsu” [Judo.]
Taro Miyake was wowing the public and physical
culturists alike with his adept use of leverage to toss larger and stronger
ones willy-nilly.
Desbonnet sees an opportunity. He hires
Miyake and his equally able colleague, Kanaya, to come to France for a few
months to teach his core cadre this new sensation. The French public is likewise
enthusiastic for the “new” form of martial art.
Desbonnett then contracts Ernest Regnier, a combination
man, that is a boxer who is also a wrestler, to go to London and learn all he
can from Miyake and Kanaya, then bring it home and teach the art in Desbonnet’s
establishment.
Regnier, not only an able boxer-wrestler, he
was also a powerful [if smallish] man who took to the art like a duck to water.
Regnier is immediately smitten by the art,
and thanks to his conditioning base and solid foundation in wrestling he is
soon deemed as able as his worthy instructors.
The newly combat evolved Regnier then returns
to France and to show his commitment to the new way decides to “Japanize” his
name, he is now dubbed, Re-Nie.
In the summer of 1905, Desbonnet opens a
studio in the upscale Champs-Elysees quarter of Paris and dubs it, The Japanese
School of Jiu-Jitsu.”
It is a rousing financial success and Re-Nie,
Miyake, and Kanaya become celebrities, touring the continental capitals giving demonstrations.
Re-Nie sees the financial success and decides
to go it on his own without Desbonnet and comes up with the idea of a
moneymaker of an exhibition.
With the confidence in his newly mastered art,
he schedules himself to fight all-comers at the Folies Bergere.
The evening of November 30th, 1905,
one of those all-comers happened to be a wrestler named Witzler. [he is
described as “savage and surly.”]
Witzler possesses good-condition but…only one
art, that of wrestling.
Whereas, Re-Nie, has good conditioning and
boxing, and wrestling, and the ace in the hole of Jiu-Jitsu.
In short, he is no stranger to any type of
scrum
So how does the match of the triple-threat celebrity
go against the single-arted challenger?
Witzler opens with a head-butt to the nose
and then pummels Re-Nie’s face so thoroughly he is unable to continue because he
can’t see through the blood.
All fads must end, but this event sped the death
of this one for Parisians.
Business after this debacle dried up, and
Desbonnet closed his Champs-Elysees Jiu-Jitsu school declaring, “Jiu-jitsu was
dead.”
I Emphasize…
No, jiu-jitsu clearly was not dead, merely this
fashionable moment.
The match did not prove the superiority
of wrestling over jiu-jitsu.
What the match did do was highlight and spotlight
the hazards of task-saturation.
Which brings us to…
Blackhawk Helicopters
The human animal often reacts less than
ideally in chaotic or unfamiliar circumstances, hence the importance and value of
intense methodical training for military, law enforcement, combat athletes, et
cetera. Training for chaos with chaos in mind is not a 100% bet that you will
perform up to snuff, but it is a nice bit of insurance.
Task saturation is, in short, being
exceptionally focused on your training protocol to the exclusion of new data.
That is, it is possible to have an operator performing
everything scrupulously, in perfect order no matter what.
But to their detriment.
Task-saturation is well-studied by the
military because the nature of military training requires high-performance under
so many chaotic circumstances that they will have a higher likelihood of
manifesting. Where this can go awry is when one aspect of the hierarchy or
checklist is no longer available or ideal, an operator who is task-saturated
will fixate on completing the task despite its loss of validity and in face of
it being a potential harm.
Example: There were some puzzling cases of helicopters being ditched in the
sea and pilots being found drowned within the cockpit. The latches were not
jammed, and in some instances, harnesses had sheared so “seatbelt entrapment”
was not on the table.
It was determined from a bit of forensic backtracking,
that some pilots were following the ditch checklist so assiduously they continued
to struggle with the latch even if the step was no longer required.
Some pilots were trying to free a belt or harness
latch even in cases where the harness had separated, in other words, no need to
release a latch. The pilots could have gone on to the next step and swam out.
Task saturation is a tough glitch to
overcome, as it is the opposite of bad form in training, here, we have an
operator/athlete so well-trained that the protocol will not be broken come hell
or literal high water.
Task saturation is seldom experienced by good
improvisers, folks we would call quick on their feet, what David Epstein calls "Generalists" in his book Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. We must walk the fine
line between being very well trained with an eye on protocol, and having an
awake eye for when the protocol [or aspects of it] need to be tossed.
[I plead the case that the history of Rough 'n' Tumble Frontier fighting, with and without weapons, is one long case study of how the Frontier Indigenous Generalists triumphed, influenced and changed those who "invaded." See The Black Box Project for the fun physical proof.]
The military training attempts to thwart
task-saturation by varying tasks and programming scenarios in training where
the protocol must be scrambled, that is forcing improvisation upon the operator.
We Return to Paris
Witzler scrambled Re-Nie’s protocol. The highly
trained Re-Nie sought Jiu-Jitsu answers where they no longer applied.
When Jiu-Jitsu answers apply they are manna.
When they do not---they are anathema.
But, we must not rest on assumptions that
scrambling our methods is enough.
Sometimes the glitch is in the complexity of
the approach itself.
To Our
Samurai
Miyamoto Musashi’s
Book of Five Rings is a foundational text in Samurai lore.
Musashi grouses that
he too sees danger in blind adherence to “Just because…” tradition that no longer
fits combative realities, but…
And this is the
chewy part of Musashi’s observation…
He also warns that
much “innovation” that comes after “tradition” [read that as foundational and
effective] is equally rife with superfluities.
He places the
blame on turning the war arts into commerce, the supplier needs to keep the
buyer at the teat, so to speak, so the “master” multiplies complexities to keep
the milk flowing.
“As I see
society, people make the arts into commercial products. They even think of
themselves as commodities, and also make implements for their commercial value.
This attitude is like flowers compared with seeds: the flowers are more
numerous than the seeds, there is more decoration than reality.”
All martial
tactics and strategies have an essence, often a thrusting point of simplicity
as the chaos of true battle will support nothing more than the Occam’s Razor of
stripped-down choice.
The flowers may be
beautiful but how many are as useful as a head-butt to the nose when you were
expecting a collar-tie-up?
That zumbrada may be lovely, but there is
the pig-stickin’ to contend with.
Again, I could have
selected from many an art: boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai, et cetera, where we
see examples of something that is without a doubt effective in most circumstances, but may provide the wrong answer simply because it is the task-saturated answer, or the
post-foundational sword-flower answer.
[For nothing
but seeds and rip-roarin’ to the point Old School tactics, historically accurate
and viciously verified see verified see
our RAW/Black Box Subscription Service.]
Or our brand-spankin’
new podcast The Rough and Tumble Raconteur available on all platforms.
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