I believe that training the knife in earnest requires a certain type of psychological toughness and intestinal fortitude.
Using it, even more so.
The action of driving a knife into somebody is probably pretty straight forward...it's everything else that goes along with it that make training the knife such a "moral test", as I've heard person after person describe it.
As I see it, there are different people that will use a knife in a fight:
-those who lose it in an argument or impulsively, reactively use a knife. Even in a prison situation. (hotheads)
-those using a knife with the intent to kill from the onset, or as a psychological threat to usurp another person's belongings, to rape, etc. (criminals and sociopaths)
-those who use a knife in a minor assault for self defense without understanding the implications. (unlucky good guys)
-those who use a knife in self defense under conditions that warrant its use and who are unprepared psychologically for the implications. (PTSD cases, walking wounded)
-those who use a knowingly use the knife in self defense or combat under conditions that warrant its use and who are fully prepared to deal with the consquences. (military, leo, or very, VERY conscious civilian martial artists)
In order to hurt another human being that way, and walk away from it without destroying yourself...you need to be able to justify your course of action...and I think it's that justification that borders on sociopathology. Murdering somebody outright and being okay with it, and ending somebody through self defense and being okay with it seem to fall pretty close together.
I think that you would have to be truly callous not to feel anything...and I believe that it is the ability, the capacity for true guilt and remorse that seperate inherently good and genuine people from hardened criminals and the truly villanous.
The only way that we as martial artists get around this in training is by detatching ourself to some degree from the meaning behind what we are doing...we intellectualize cutting this and that, but I think few people actively vizualize it and consider the consquences in terms of human drama and the psychological cost.
I carry a knife...but I think I'd have to be completely lost from reality or in truly dire straights to ever use it on another person. To be candid...I could see myself using a knife on somebody in an altered or detatched state (an example would be stumbling across an attempted rape where the person posed no threat to me) and being fine until I had time to reflect upon it. And THAT scares the shit out of me. I think that everybody has a certain potential for psychopathology similar to anti-social personality disorder, and I know that all the empathy and sensitivity I embody could go out the window in a second under the wrong circumstances. Because I know these triggers, which are highly unlikely for me to encounter...I can justify ethically carrying a weapon.
When would you lose your shit? Is there a situation outside of self defense where you might kill another person? Ask yourself these questions honestly without giving the socially OK knee-jerk reaction. How about hurting yourself? These are important questions I don't think enough people reflect upon adequately...look at the gun deaths in this country...most are suicides...others are due to EGO and PRIDE.
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