Fear and insecurity are the reasons some people take up the martial arts, but others do so because they live in violent regions or because they simply enjoy the excitement of personal combat.

Recently, I heard a martial arts instructor give a brief psychology lecture to his students. He said people fight because they’re insecure and full of fear and that they try to quell these  feelings by beating people up. It’s only a temporary fix, though, because the fear and insecurity soon resurface, and then they have to get in another fight to make them go away again. That, he claimed, is the mentality behind the never-ending cycle of insecurity and aggression. He also said the way out is through the martial arts because training makes you so  confident in yourself and your abilities that you no longer need to fight.

I’ve heard instructors reason this way for years. There’s some truth to it, but there’s something doctrinaire about it, too. That is, it seems like something martial artists tell each other to reinforce a certain world view—one that doesn’t match the everyday experiences of a lot of people.

Everyday experiences tell us that people are aggressive for a lot of reasons. Ask 10 tough guys why they get in fights, and you’re likely to get 10 different answers. Sure, some are insecure and fearful, and fighting does indeed placate their personal demons. But some are habitually violent because that’s how they were raised. Others simply enjoy fighting. They might be unprincipled bullies or good citizens who happen to like sport fighting, but their main motivation is excitement. Furthermore, the causes of any one person’s aggression can be a combination of those factors or something else entirely. Insecurity is only a slice of the pie graph.

Even when people fight out of insecurity, it’s not necessarily irrational. Some fears are wellfounded, especially for those who live in violent places. People in high-crime areas or countries with poor law enforcement aren’t consumed by some vague feeling of inadequacy.

They worry that if they can’t fight, they will become victims of violence. This kind of fear and insecurity is very different from the kind many First World middle-class martial artists so easily dismiss. So if insecurity isn’t the root of all evil, why do so many martial artists preach and accept that it is? Because it makes them feel pretty good about themselves. In this world view, real martial artists don’t fight, and they look down on people who do as pitiable social inferiors. Aggressive types are seen as tortured victims of their own ignorance who can be saved by learning about the cycle of violence and shedding their insecurity through martial arts practice. People who buy into the insecurity argument get to feel like social superiors and missionaries to lost souls.

The martial arts can change people’s lives, but it’s not always because a wise instructor has guided someone out of an abyss of fear and insecurity. Sometimes an instructor has to teach fear. He has to make students afraid of the damage fighting can do. People who battle on the street risk serious injury and death, not just to themselves but to the people they engage. Everyone should be afraid of those consequences. Sometimes even insecurity can be a good thing. Some students are too confident about their fighting skills or their moral judgment. They need a good instructor to show them that they’re not the second coming of Bruce Lee or to teach them to doubt themselves a little if they’re too willing to right wrongs with their fists.

The important thing to remember here is that there’s some truth to the insecurity argument. But it’s not the whole story, and it’s certainly not something that should make any martial artist feel like a superior being. Every good instructor finds out who his students are and what they need before he teaches them anything. Everyone who is changed by the martial arts finds something he needs in them that touches him deeply. Stories that explain these things, like those about liberation from fear and insecurity, come after the fact.

About the author: Keith Vargo is a free-lance writer, researcher and martial arts instructor who currently lives in Japan.