The Value & danger of Experience

Experience can be a valuable thing however it can also limit and restrict our understanding, and prevent us from being open to the experiences of others along with new ideas etc. It may seem that the most battle-hardened and experienced instructor, is best qualified to talk about violence however this may not in fact be the case. In this blog article, I’m going to try and examine the pros and cons of firsthand experiences of violence, and why and how they need to be combined with others things in order for them to be relevant and applicable to others.

There are basically two ways you can end up witnessing and experiencing a lot of violence. One is to grow up or live in a violent community, the other is to perform some form of law enforcement or security role. If violence is experienced when performing as a security professional, some of the relevance for others may be taken away, because of the role that you were fulfilling. There is a big difference between experiencing a confrontation, when you are possibly armed and have backup, than engaging in a conflict where you are unarmed, and alone, with the knowledge that nobody will be coming to assist you. There are of course similarities between the two situations, but the experiences are not directly interchangeable. There may be moments in such confrontations when the individuals involved experience many of the same things e.g. if a security professional has to perform a gun disarm against an aggressive individual, they will be experiencing the same emotions, doubts and concerns as the non-professional. Therefore when we are trying to find ways to make our experiences relevant to others, we must understand what parts of the experience are relevant/applicable and what parts aren’t.

Our actual memories of violence may be flawed. When we remember the incidents when we found ourselves in dangerous situations, we’re probably not recalling all the details correctly. In a dynamic, fast paced assault, our brain will not be able to process all the relevant information, it will simply process the seemingly essential information. When we recall these events, our mind will fill in the blanks for us, creating details that seem relevant for the situation. It seems that our brains want to make these experiences as vivid and colorful as possible (this could be so that we take more notice of them, learn from then, and thus increase our chances of surviving further assaults etc. or it could be some form of stress coping mechanism to avoid trauma).

One thing many people will report during an assault, is that time slowed down for them. This was for a long time a generally accepted phenomena, however recent research has called this into question, suggesting this is a trick of the mind that occurs when we recall highly stressful and dangerous events. A study by the Baylor College of Medicine, involved subjecting participants to a 150 feet drop into a net – something that would quickly induce an adrenalized and stressful state. As the participants fell they were required to read two numbers off a chronometer that was displaying them at a rate that was impossible to normally read. It was postulated that if time did slow down, which in fact involved the brain’s processing power speeding up, it would be possible for those participating to read the numbers. No one was able to. They were also asked to estimate the number of seconds it talk them to fall. This was then compared to the actual fall rate. It was found that the estimate was on average 36% greater than the actual rate. So whilst our memories of such events have us experiencing time slowing down, this doesn’t seem to occur at the actual time.

Perhaps the greatest danger of relying on experience, is that although it is a valuable asset to have it is limited to a sample size of one e.g. how directly relevant are the experiences of a 250 lb muscled man to those of a 120 lb woman? If such an individual only taught according to his experiences, many of his students would not get a realistic picture of what violence would look like for them. It is important for every instructor to try and broaden their understanding of violence, by not solely relying on experience. This involves talking to others, and learning from their experiences and understanding, and looking at what academic research has found to be the case in its studies etc. All of this needs to be combined together if a true picture of what violence looks like for each individual is to be presented.