The Gift of Violence
The Gift of Violence
“For many years Matt Thornton has been one of the most passionate ambassadors of the martial art of Jiu-Jitsu. His new book, The Gift of Violence, examines violence in the twenty-first century. Matt encourages his readers to apply lessons he has learned in Jiu-Jitsu to every aspect of their lives. Above all, The Gift of Violence makes it clear that Jiu-Jitsu is not just a sport; it is also a philosophy that makes one strong enough to forgive, and when necessary, confident enough to fight.”
—Rickson Gracie, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts legend
About the Book
In today’s modern world, we are largely isolated from the kind of savagery our ancestors faced on a daily basis. Although violence was as natural to our evolutionary development as sex and food, it has become foreign to most of us: at once demonized and glamorized, but almost always deeply misunderstood. Our hard-earned and hard-wired instincts—our evolved and trained ability to survive and overcome violent encounters—have been compromised. Yet, as even a cursory look at news headlines or a police blotter will reveal, the threat of violent crime is ever-present, and those we’ve entrusted to protect us cannot always be relied upon.
The Gift of Violence tells the story of this vulnerability and provides the average person with all the knowledge they need to reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim of violence and to increase their chances of surviving a violent encounter. Based both on the author’s decades of experience teaching everyday people how to defend themselves and on a rational approach to the scientific data, The Gift of Violence offers clear, easy-to-remember lessons for people of all ages and abilities. It is designed to empower those who’ve been affected by violence or are concerned that they or their loved ones could be—in short, it was written to help good people become more dangerous to bad people. Every reader will be armed with the necessary knowledge to harness the power of violence for him- or herself—and, in the process, to be not just smarter and stronger but also safer.
About the Author(s)
Matt Thornton is founder of Straight Blast Gym International, one of the most respected martial arts academies in the world that has dozens of official locations across five continents, including gyms in Australia, Canada, Ireland, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has been teaching functional martial arts for more than thirty years, and his students include champion MMA fighters and world-class self-defense and law enforcement instructors. He holds a fifth-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and lives in Portland, Oregon, with his five children and wife, Salome.
Robb Wolf (foreword by) is a biochemist and author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat.
Peter Boghossian (afterword by) is a philosopher and coauthor of How to Have Impossible Conversations.
Details
ISBN: 9781634312301
Format: hardcover
SRP: $29.95
Page count: 400 pages
Trim size: 6 x 9
Pub date: April 2023
More Praise
“Violence as a ‘gift’? Sounds topsy-turvy—and yet Matt Thornton presents his contrarian take at a moment when society itself has gone topsy-turvy. Writing amid a shocking uptick in violent crime and anarchic calls to defund the police, Thornton lays out a proactive regimen for negotiating a world that increasingly feels like ‘every man for himself.’ Or too often, sadly, every woman. This is not just some warmed-over martial-arts primer; it is a seamless mindset with anthropological and sociological underpinnings. And if anyone is qualified to write such a book it’s Thornton, as even a glance at his resume confirms. Consider this a survival textbook for a troubling new era in American life.”
—Steve Salerno, New York Times best-selling author of Sham“There is an evolutionary logic to violence that makes it part of human nature. The sooner we understand this fact the better we will be at knowing when and where to apply violence in the most moral and practical manner, both politically and personally. To the latter end, this may be one of the most important books ever written on self-improvement, inasmuch as the lessons imparted within will make you stronger, smarter, and safer. Read it and grow.”
—Michael Shermer, founder and publisher of Skeptic Magazine“Our immediate instinct may be to turn away from violence—to ignore it even, but as Matt Thornton’s book powerfully illustrates, it’s only through fully understanding violence as an essential part of our society and psyche that we can ensure that its appearance in our own lives is minimized. Thornton’s book is an important encyclopedic and philosophical record of our relationship with violence, asking us to consider why it’s important to recognize its early signs, how it can be used effectively as a deterrent, how it can be controlled within us and others, and why we need it at all. As a newcomer into the world of Jiu-Jitsu, it’s a base instinct that I’m learning to recognize in myself—something that I never even knew I had, and I suspect lies dormant in each of us. At the wrong time and with the wrong intention, violence is destructive and cruel. Given the correct conditions though, it becomes a moral imperative.”
—Katherine Brodsky, journalist“Matt Thornton's book is something surprisingly rare: a serious and empirical examination of violence, and more broadly of human nature and particularly male human nature. A remarkable number of smart people today, as me sainted mother once put it, ‘feel guilty about the fact people are a predator species.’ That is, they begin with the starting premise that our nature is flawed, there is something wrong with biological reality, and we ‘should’ almost all be very different creatures from who we are. Thornton, a martial arts master and skilled writer, avoids this fundamental error. In an enjoyable 400-pager divided into five distinct sections, he discusses the actual biological and cultural roots of violence, the ‘folly’ of both pacifism and bluff machismo, the strategic behavior of predators human and otherwise, and the best empirical techniques for avoiding having to suffer or deal our harm. The book is, if you will, a hit.”
—Wilfred Reilly, associate professor at Kentucky State University and the author of Hate Crime Hoax and Taboo
Related Titles
About the Book
Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn’t practice yoga or cook Chinese food? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only white people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed so quickly to challenge the very logic of Western society?
In this probing and intrepid volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields. Today this dogma is recognizable as much by its effects, such as cancel culture and social-media dogpiles, as by its tenets, which are all too often embraced as axiomatic in mainstream media: knowledge is a social construct; science and reason are tools of oppression; all human interactions are sites of oppressive power play; and language is dangerous. As Pluckrose and Lindsay warn, the unchecked proliferation of these anti-Enlightenment beliefs present a threat not only to liberal democracy but also to modernity itself.
While acknowledging the need to challenge the complacency of those who think a just society has been fully achieved, Pluckrose and Lindsay break down how this often-radical activist scholarship does far more harm than good, not least to those marginalized communities it claims to champion. They also detail its alarmingly inconsistent and illiberal ethics. Only through a proper understanding of the evolution of these ideas, they conclude, can those who value science, reason, and consistently liberal ethics successfully challenge this harmful and authoritarian orthodoxy—in the academy, in culture, and beyond.
About the Author
Helen Pluckrose is a liberal political and cultural writer and speaker. She is the editor of Areo Magazine and the author of many popular essays on postmodernism, critical theory, liberalism, secularism, and feminism. A participant in the grievance studies affair probe, which highlighted problems in social justice scholarship, she is today an exile from the humanities, where she researched late medieval and early modern religious writing by and for women. She lives in England.
James Lindsay is a mathematician with a background in physics. He is interested in the psychology of religion, authoritarianism, and extremism and is the author of Everybody is Wrong about God. His other books include Life in Light of Death and How to Have Impossible Conversations. His essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Philosophers’ Magazine, Scientific American, and Time. He led the grievance studies affair probe that made international headlines in 2018, including the front page of the New York Times. He lives in Tennessee.
Details
ISBN: 9781634312028
Format: hardcover
SRP: $27.95
Page count: 352 pages
Trim size: 6 x 9
Pub date: August 2020