Bad Advice

If you like to bleed, then use the following bad advice that I am sure you have heard before from parents, teachers, friends, and others. This is the type of advice you will hear from people who think that, after millions of years of warfare, they have the solution to world peace.

Just be nice to people who bully you and they will be nice to you

Did this ever work on the playground? We all know how useful this information is. Try telling the little bunny to be nice to the hungry fox; the kindness will be tasty. When you are nice to bullies, they will interpret your niceness as weakness and naivety and either terminate you just for the fun of it or use you in ways you never intended to be used. Nice is the best way to get along with strangers, but once they establish their bad intentions, nice is a waste of time

Just ignore bullies and they will leave you alone

Tell the bunny just to ignore the fox and the fox will forget he is hungry and leave the bunny alone. Sure! That will work. Any show of weakness just encourages a bully. If you exude confidence, predators control easily determine whether you are a victim or a warrior in disguise. Therefore, they will test you. They move into your space, crowd you, make conversation to put you at ease so they may get close enough to grab you, or approach you from your blind spot. Most martial artists spar with opponents who are directly in front of them; they are not trained to be aware of people approaching from behind or from a blind spot.