Defining Survival

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When you hear the word I would guess that it triggers specific pictures in your mind and I would go on to bet that many of those visualizations are from the entertainment industry, i.e., movies, television and books, etc. Am I right?

Defining survival is a bit more involved, survival in a narrow sense according to the dictionaries is, “the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances; Survival is the act of surviving; to stay living; Survival skills, safety techniques used in dangerous situations; and then the definition provides examples in categories:”

• Survival Analysis, a statistical technique to analyze longevity.
• Survival rate, the percentage of people who are alive for a given period of time.
• Survival skills, safety techniques used in dangerous situations.
• Survival companies, organizations, bands, literature, etc.

In a fundamental way, survival is about:

• Walking across the street without getting hit by a car.
• Seeking a job that will pay enough wages to live, i.e., eat, have shelter, etc.
• Developing character and personality skills to get along with others especially in our group, tribe, clan, family, etc.
• Developing coping skills to live safely and securely.
• Eating, exercising and developing an attitude that gets along with others. 
• Gaining knowledge and understanding of survival especially as it is regard to conflict and violence - at all levels.
• Conflict and violence from a discussion of a difference of opinion.
• Conflict and violence from a heated discussion that may escalate into an angry exchange with loud voices up to shouting and posturing to demonstrate one’s commitment to the subject.
• Conflict and violence where one used physical forces to communicate through damage and harm their commitment to some subject, etc.

Note: These bullet points are examples and not a complete, comprehensive or exhausting list. It is to convey the idea that survival spans a wide spectrum beyond what you might have pictured when you read the first paragraphs. 

• Going to the store to purchase food, i.e., a form of hunter and gatherer where gatherer dominates by the act of shopping, etc.
• Performing or engaging in activities that mimic or symbolize acts our species uses as primal reflexes toward a base survival. 
• etc. etc. etc.

Yes, every day living efforts of all kinds, conditions, culturally driven social needs and services all fill the needs of our species toward, survival. It is the human ability to be aware then process stimuli through perceptions as to experiences accumulated in our environment so that we may make distinctions accordingly to act in appropriate acceptable social ways to avoid, deescalate, etc., those conflicts and violences that would hinder our continued survival and create obstacles to our evolutionary processes, also about survival. 

What we do focus on in martial arts and karate is survival skills and as with the above definition, “Survival skills, safety techniques used in dangerous situations,” we may also trigger specific visual-images also from entertainment media that do not span the full spectrum. We assume that safety techniques involve those technique-based instructions when in reality survival skills for safety and security involve communications skills for avoidance and deescalation, actions taken to avoid physical conflict such as turning away or walking away or running if the situation allows and then there are those methods and force options we take when things do go into the physical. 

Take for instance the teaching of fighting skills. It is often glossed over or simply avoided that fighting is illegal regardless of the level and forces used so even a school yard scuffle to communicate and convey information between two persons is considered illegal. Fighting skills are aggressive and aimed toward grave harm. Fighting skills are those necessary actions and deeds only used when the other avenues of conflict resolution are exhausted. Yet, fighting skills to modern martial arts and karate, even under the heading of self-defense, are sports competitive fights and have nothing beneficial to do with a predatory process/resource attack out of the dojo, out of the competitive arena and especially out of the entertainment and philosophical way. 

Once a long time ago while riding a deuce-n-half to the field I noticed a peculiarity in the engine, the way the vehicle moved and the efforts of the drive that the engine had a, “Governor,” on it. A governor is a device that stops acceleration of the engine/vehicle when certain conditions are reached such as a set top speed. It was an effort by the organization to control and govern how the drivers drove the vehicle with emphasis on safety through conditions set to ensure no one exceeded the speed limit. You can call it an inhibitor or a restriction set by device or any number of other descriptive words but in the end it was a form of social conditioning. 

Social conditioning is not something the individual can avoid, mostly. It is something, like the installation of a vehicle governor that is put in place without the driver’s consideration but as a control, an involuntary control, instead of training and other incentives to get drivers to voluntarily control their impulses so they stay within the speed limits. 

Social conditionings can be similar and if those creating and instituting such conditions themselves are unaware of what they don’t know and understand along with what they don’t know they don’t know and what they don’t understand they don’t know they don’t understand can lead to conditions and conditioning that does more harm than good. This seems to be where we are today even in the martial arts and karate for self-fense.

We just don’t know we don’t know this yet. 

Social conditions, conditioning along with rules both implicit and explicit must come from knowledge, understanding and experience. That means we have to take the uncomfortable and balance it with the comfortable. We have to accept that we don’t know and we don’t know what we don’t know so that we can communicate, discuss, debate and then decide as a society what is best for us toward our very survival. 

Extend this down into the microcosmic world of self-fense regardless of the systems used be it martial arts, karate or some other form of self-fense so that we talk, discuss, debate, etc., until a unified consensus is reached in creating a fundamental foundation that spans differences such as styles or systems or individual cultural belief systems. A neutral factual beneficial foundation that everyone can get behind for the benefit and survival of everyone and every tribe, clan or group. 

This is how I perceive and distinguish survival, survival that spans every aspect and facet of our human existence and drives every thing we say, do and believe regardless of differences, a foundation for survival through understanding and acceptance of a fundamental state of principles that are factual and unemotional in nature - logical, beneficial and neutral in nature. 

BELIEF: I firmly believe that “survival” is the very seed that spells out our species drives and those drives are conditioned in our environment as to the stimuli our sensory systems feed our brains. 

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