Re: How hard is Hard these days?

[jsussman@cpcug.org (Jeffrey Sussman)]

Poster: jsussman@cpcug.org (Jeffrey Sussman)

Greetings from Richard!

At 05:56 PM 7/13/96 -0400, atlantia@csc.ncsu.edu wrote:
>
>Poster: James Morrow <Achbar@worldnet.att.net>
>
>Why doe sit take a Nuclear Missle to down guys these days?  I don't know.
HRH and I 
>talked about this today at an Uptown Demo.  Prince Logan  noticed in his
early days that 
>it took an Act of Congress to beat certain people.

>Achbar

I'm going to pick on Achbar, I think, just because I have a high opinon of him.

This kind of general statement serves no purpose.  There are two ways every
fighter can improve acknowledgement levels.  The first and, apparently, easy
way is to serve as an example.  

If each fighter who feels that the required power levels are too high were
to drop their own level a notch there would a dramatic change very quickly.
This is harder the longer you've been fighting.  Personally, I'm working on
dropping my level a notch right now.  Not because I thought there was
anything wrong with where I was, but rather to make a statement about
general levels.

The second effective step is the intolerance of misbehavior.  This involved
finding ways to courteously telling your opponents that you think you hit
them with a telling blow that they did not consider telling.  At practices,
I can do this with a funny look.  At events, when motivated, I find a way to
start a casual conversation and then work around to the fact that I think
that a blow was missed.

Any formal situation, anything including the marshals, creates a situation
with far too much pressure.  If someone complains to a marshal the other
fighter will become immediately defensive and may even become angry.  The
marshals should only be brought in after a fighter goes to their opponent or
in those situations where other factors make a courteous and serious
conversation difficult.

Also, no single conversation or single person's feedback will convince
someone to make a change.  Each of us must try to add a piece to an
environment where a fighter will realize they need to make a change.  Just
because someone ignores a single conversation, realize that the next
conversation may be more important because of the groundwork laid by the first.

Acknowledgement is a combat skill.  It takes practice, effort and continuing
feedback to refine.  No single skill failure, rebuke, catch phrase, clever
saying, or appeal to courtesy will make anyone into an acknowledgement expert.

Definition: Acknowledgement expert is someone who calls blows very
consistently and at a level at, or slightly below, the consensus norm for
acknowledgement.  (I just thought this up, what do you think?).

Richard Fitzgilbert

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