Indigenous Ability

  “ We are rough men used to rough ways .”—Outlaw Bob Younger of the Cole-Younger Gang. The above quote was Younger’s simple explanation for the “why” of he and his compadres’ life choices. The explanation does not excuse evil or crime, but we can use it as a jumping off point regarding immersion as shaping the animal via environmental response. Younger refers to hardscrabble frontier upbringing and delving in guerrilla warfare in the Bloody Border States of the Civil War period [both pre and during.] These organized, live-off-the-land, shoot-with both hands with reins-in-the-teeth tactics continued on into the bad choices of post-war crime. The “rough ways” did not and do not justify the bad moral choice. Plenty of “rough raised” men and women chose the bright and true. The “rough ways” merely points to the fact that often there is more to shaping the animal than the specific assumed tactic. What do I mean by that? “Rough Ways” vs. Compartmentalization Training vs....

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  [Part of The Science of Warriorhood & Survivorship Series] First -Our latest articles are out in the new issues of Black Belt & The Backwoodsman magazines. One is about combat the other on matters outdoors and wild-awareness. Guess which magazine has which—Never mind, don’t guess, they overlap in my estimation. Moving on…   S alience in common usage refers to details that stand-out, as in “ The salient points of Christmas day are gift giving and conviviality.” Salience in cognitive science is a bit more nuanced—it is the ability to recognize survival apertures that may or may not be salient in the common usage of the word. The pertinent definition for our path: “ Salient events are an attentional mechanism by which organisms learn and survive; those organisms can focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the pertinent subset of the sensory data available to them.” Salience in the Backwoodsman, Scout, Survival sense is less about the bi...

  Let’s begin with a prickly quote to set our stage. The following is quant Nassim Nicholas Taleb on how systems can become fragile even when the intent is to improve, as is the case with conditioning training. “ Our ancestors mostly had to face very light stones to lift, mild stressors; once or twice a decade, they encountered the need to lift a huge stone. So where on earth does this idea of “steady” exercise come from? Nobody in the Pleistocene jogged for forty-minutes three days a week, lifted weights every Tuesday and Friday with a bullying (but otherwise nice) personal trainer, played tennis at eleven on Saturday mornings. Not hunters. We swung between extremes: we sprinted when chased or when chasing (once in a while in an extremely exerting way), and walked about aimlessly the rest of the time. Marathon running is a modern abomination (particularly when done without emotional stimuli.)” — The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable The above quote view is meant ...

  Ready for an obvious statement? The Vikings were a seafaring warrior people. Obvious statement, Part II. They were mighty comfortable and proficient in and around water. Obvious Statement, Part III. Vikings knew that nothing comes naturally to a man, that to be proficient in anything—from sailing, to swimming, to mastering the flute, to battle, to the art of negotiation, love, and friendship—all require dedicated attention and practice. Obvious Statement IV. As one might expect, a rough and tumble people, did not brook tippy-toe methods to mastery. Proficiency, to Warrior cultures, is often hard-earned via stark ways but such hard-earned knowledge and skill creates confident and able warriors. Let us turn to a passage from one of the sagas to illustrate hard ways. The following passage is from The Saga of The People of Laxardal , Chapter, 40. It tells of a “swimming” competition [drowning, really] between Kjartan Olafsson and King Olaf Tryggvason. “ Kjartan ...