Cobra Kai, Never Dies
A Rant…
Bad things can happen anywhere, at any time. Sometimes it’s just a roll of the dice. But as Samuel Goldwyn said, ”the harder I work, the luckier is get.“
This is true on many levels.
Society has become soft. I don’t mean this as a judgement, but it’s true — so maybe I do. People have become emotionally weak, spiritually timid, physically delicate. I suppose it’s the nature of things. Wild dinosaurs were certainly tougher than what crawled out of the muck after the meteor hit.
As a child training in the 80s, we were subjected to more grueling training than what goes on in most modern adult self defense classes. Before my age hit double digits I was punching trees in the park with my classmates, running barefoot along muddy trails, getting the wind knocked out of me every week, doing knuckle push-ups for the most minor infractions, and having little regarding given to my physical or emotional comfort.
If you were training back then, you remember.
Times have changed. Partially because that in some respects, for a period of time, the world has been a safer place. Cell phones connect us directly to first responders wherever we are, security cameras and guards deter crime in public places, policing has become more sophisticated and proactive. We’ve had the luxury of safety for so long now that we’ve forgotten what it sounds like when the wolves are scratching at the door.
In the eighties grade school children walked to school, alone. We didn’t have cell phones to keep in touch with our parents on these daily journeys. We left the nest and were unaccounted for until we arrived back home that afternoon. To an extent, we were responsible for ourselves and our safety. We negotiated crossing busy streets without help from adults. We knew not to talk to strangers. We learned how to avoid bad situations.
Sometimes bad things happened. Sometimes we got into trouble, got beat up, didn’t go where we were saying. And when we got caught fucking up we were disciplined harshly.
Today, our society has become soft because, for some time now, we didn’t need to be hard. That was the past, and the pendulum feels like it’s swinging back the other way. An expectation of personal safety has stopped being a statically calculation and started to trend towards wishful thinking. While the likelihood of being attacked is still low, the attacks that do happen are much more violent and much more efficient. In 1984 twenty-one people were murdered in Southern California, it became known as the San Ysidro McDonald’s Massacre. At the time it was the deadliest mass shooting in US history, and it remained so until 1991. It is now ranked number seven.
Three of the top five deadliest shootings have happened in the last four years.
With active shooters, attacks playing out at public events, and both political and racial tensions on the rise, there is a palpable sense that the world is getting darker.
Perhaps it’s time to let go of the halcyon days mentality and embrace a tougher version of ourselves. Harden our minds, develop our spirit, and forego the comfortable illusion of serenity. For those of us watching the gray hairs in the mirror gaining a little more ground every morning, and wistfully remembering a time when people were built a little sturdier, maybe there is still a place for us as well. Maybe there is room for some surly bastards to play Mickey to the next generation of Rocky’s, Sensei Kreese to the next generation of Johnny’s.
Or maybe we will just wait and see what crawls out of the muck next.