{"id":8887,"date":"2018-12-19T07:00:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T07:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/?p=8887"},"modified":"2021-04-01T15:59:40","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T15:59:40","slug":"observational-awareness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/19\/observational-awareness\/","title":{"rendered":"Total Observational Prowess"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More Than Meets The Eye<\/h4>\nSituational awareness is a much-touted attribute of the truly ready and the ready wannabes of the world. Observational prowess is a much coveted and complex skill set possessed by the best indigenous trackers, seaman, scouts, and explorers. But if we are honest with ourselves, what we often call \"awareness\" in the self-protection realm is merely superficial surface skimming of the world around us.\n

True Awareness<\/h4>\n
\n\t <\/div>\nTime spent with indigenous trackers and scouts<\/a> reveals a depth of perception that goes beyond our mere \"I know where all the exits are in my local Home Depot, now let me take look number 1,032 at my phone.\"<\/em> True awareness\/observational prowess is not a faucet-attribute or something to be turned on and off. The top-of-the-heap observers are always observing, always aware.\n\nWhen we hear of this state of ever-ready awareness, we often consider it either an impossibility or at the very least an exhausting endeavor, but perhaps it's no such thing. When thinking of ready-awareness we are often thinking of it only in terms of peak-arousal, meaning we are always scanning for threat. To indigenous peoples, that is really only a tip-of-the-iceberg inversion of what it truly means to be aware.\n\n[dfads params='groups=292&limit=1&orderby=random']\n

Looking At The Big Picture<\/h4>\nThe concept amongst the best observers is to flip from always looking for the bad or potential bad, to looking at everything<\/span>, and that, more often than not, means noticing the good and\/or finding the good where you never thought to look before. After all, the best trackers and hunters will see far more wildflowers and their vivid blooms and golden sprays of pollen than they will bobcat tracks in the mud.\n\nBy knowing their environment in its totality, the good, the beautiful,the seemingly mundane, the danger, the threat, the prey, or the signs of predator will stick out like a sore thumb.\n
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Academic Research<\/h4>\nWe find a similar approach in \"noticing the good to see the bad\"<\/em> in the adoption of the works of a Harvard Professor in the History of Landscape Development by the CIA for use in training field operatives.\n\nThe CIA recognizes that ever-ready peak-arousal alertness is counter-productive, but far less useful is the \"scan every-once-in-a-while\"<\/em> approach. To thwart this dilemma and promote indigenous-styled ever-ready awareness, they have turned to Professor John Stilgoe.\n\nProfessor Stilgoe's work seeks to tutor the operatives in an appreciation for the aesthetics and design of the urban landscape, highways, the power grid, industrial park design, and other similar features of our world. He offers the \"hows\"<\/em>, \"whys\"<\/em>, and methods behind the madness of such designs so that the operatives can gain an admiration and respect for what goes into such constructs.\n\n[dfads params='groups=292&limit=1&orderby=random']\n

Over-Immersion<\/h4>\nProfessor Stilgoe feels that we are so immersed in our environment that we have become blind to it. He seeks to wake up an appreciative awareness \u2014 an awareness of all features \u2014 so that when one looks at a field (which may or may not be a field at all), they know instantaneously whether they are looking at a pasture or a meadow (there is a difference).\n\nThey will have the ability to divine the direction of downtown with a mere glance at the overhead power grid or determine northern or southern exposure by looking at the mortar in the cracks of a chimney.\n\nSome may see such education as trivial (the CIA obviously does not) but it is far from that. An increased visual and recognition vocabulary in the world around us creates a deeper and more rapid intake of what is really<\/span> around us.\n
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100 Words<\/h4>\nThis idea is akin to the myth that the Eskimo have 100 words for snow. It is not so much as having too many words for snow as it is having a specific vocabulary for each type of snow \u2014 snow that will adhere to a sled-dog's foot pads, causing lacerations and impeding travel; snow that makes for easy hauling, snow that camouflages cracks in the ice beneath your feet, snow that will form sastrugi<\/em>, providing a wind-compass, etc.\n\nThe better the polar native knows his world, the better his appreciation of that world and the better his chances of survival. The same with Stilgoe's approach to the urban and rural environment: the more we know what to see or look for, the more we actually do see.\n\nOur brief glance from a kidnapped transport inside the trunk of a car moves from \"I saw a house with a field across from it\"<\/em> to \"I saw a clapboard house with the back facing southwest, overlooking a fenced meadow with a pasture to its left and a tennis court in the distance. We traveled for a length of time on a straight highway, so my guess is no water is along this immediate route unless it is a canal, and the tennis court layout leads me to believe we traveled north on this route.\"<\/em>\n\n[dfads params='groups=292&limit=1&orderby=random']\n

Final Thoughts<\/h4>\nSuch intimate knowledge of one's environment does not come from a mere, \"Here we are in Target. There are the exits, now let's text and shop.\"<\/em> Indigenous people see the world by dint of being immersed in it. Stilgoe advises us all to become just as immersed, whether our world be urban, rural, or off the grid.\n

\n\t Click here for more instruction by Mark Hatmaker!<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More Than Meets The Eye Situational awareness is a much-touted attribute of the truly ready and the ready wannabes of the world. Observational prowess is a much coveted and complex skill set possessed by the best indigenous trackers, seaman, scouts, and explorers. But if we are honest with ourselves, what we often call “awareness” in Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[140,223],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8887"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12839,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8887\/revisions\/12839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}