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| Cover of Timothy Leary |
I wrote this article in about 2007. This was before my self-help bubble popped (see my Martial Arts Scepticism article, "The New Martial Arts Mystique" on that one)
Timothy Leary’s “Evolutionary Agents” is not a book you
would immediately associate with Geoff Thompson’s Real Combat Method. I doubt
even Leary - with his leftfield views - imagined that his lucid and
controversial work would become set reading material for a class training to
get certification in self-defence instruction. Yet there we all stood in a
circle being questioned by Geoff Thompson, himself, about our thoughts on the
work.
In truth the course was far more than a simple “hard skills”
course for training how to deal with a violent situation. Most of the students
who went on the course already had instructor level certification in one
respected realistic combative form or another. My take on Geoff’s decision for
making such books s Leary’s compulsory homework for all who attended the course
was because they prompted an internal battle. This is what might be termed
“Cerebral Self-Defence” or, as Geoff once put it, “Self-defence is defence
against the self”.
