 Understanding basic human psychology can be really helpful. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel of Defense, and I was recently out in public and I got to witness this interesting interaction that I thought would be helpful to talk about here. So some guy had parked his car and was waiting by a lamp post with his like small daughter or whatever. And I see some other car pull up and the guy starts to chew him out from the passenger window about having stole his parking spot, right? He had said, you know, you stole my parking spot and the other guy didn't really hear him, just kind of like shrugged and muttered him. He was real just kind of casual about it, just like, yeah, okay. And I think I heard the guy in the car say, you're a liar and you stole my parking spot and he was like all hot and bothered, right? Stayed in his car and drove away. And this was taking place at an event that we were all kind of going to in the same area. So as I was going over to my spot, I see that these two interact again and the guy who had stolen the parking spot was just kind of setting up his chair or whatever. And the other guy came walking by and was talking trash again as he continued to walk away and yell at this guy who stole his spot. And that was it. That was the whole interaction I saw there. But I thought that was interesting because it made me think of how people operate. I'm sure you've heard of fight or flight, right? When your adrenaline hits, you're either gonna fight or flight. That's true. I think there's also two more missing to that. There's fight, flight, posture, and submit. Posture meaning, I'm big, I'm tough, don't mess with me because it's dangerous for you to do that. You, of course, see that in the wild a lot with animals and birds, like puffing out their feathers, right? And trying to be intimidating, right? The other one, of course, is submit, which is the response to posture, which is okay, don't hurt me, I'll do what you want. Those are generally the four options and four ways it can go. If you wanna know more about that, I would highly recommend reading on Killing by Lieutenant Dan Grossman. He talked more about that concept there, and that's where I'd first heard it. And as far as I know, he's kind of the one who talks about that concept a lot. I think it's super helpful. So, if you don't know, right? The most common one of those that happens is posture. That's the most common one that you're gonna happen. And people, people in general, and animals in the animal kingdom, posture because they don't want to fight. That's why you posture, right? You're trying to avoid the actual fighting part. Like, if this guy was actually wanted to fight about his parking spot, he wouldn't have pulled up and started talking trash, right? He would have pulled up, got out of his car and started swinging. Or when he was walking by this guy, he wouldn't have been walking away, still talking trash. He would have stopped, planted his feet, turned and attacked, right? But he's posturing. Now, with humans, I think there's another interesting concept that I don't think exists in the animal kingdom, which is ego, right? Which is pride. So, often we have to posture, or people will posture to protect their pride. Meaning, I'm gonna talk trash so that I feel good about myself. So, I feel like I didn't get walked over. I didn't let them just get away with it. So, I'm gonna talk and say a bunch of things to protect myself, essentially. They handle their ego and their pride. Now, we all know that can lead to stupid things, right? Because you're gonna get all puffed up and prideful, then they're gonna get all puffed up and prideful. And then you're both gonna work yourself into a fight, even though neither one of you wants to be there. But you've worked it up and you can't back down now. Otherwise, your pride or ego will be damaged. So, you have to fight, right? So, you can work yourself into really stupid situations that you should have never gotten yourself worked into. But, I thought this case was interesting because it was a very good demonstration of the posture-ego thing, where this guy who's upset about his parking spot, rightly or wrongly, whatever, don't know, right? But, he wanted to protect his pride and so he just wanted to talk trash. And I thought the most interesting part was, is that he was talking trash from a safe distance, right? He did it in his car and then drove away and then did it later. Again, as he's walking away from the guy, he's talking trash. As long as his feet keep moving in that direction, I would tell you, if that's you, let him talk the trash, right? Let it go because at that point you can easily recognize, okay, this person just needs to protect their pride. They just need to posture. Let them do that and that's all it's ever gonna be. Now, if you wanna get upset again, you wanna pump them like, I didn't steal your spot and now you're gonna get puffed up, now you're encouraging them, you're forcing them into a corner, right? Where they're gonna have to protect their pride because they're already invested and now it's gonna escalate into a fight. I can't remember which book it is but I saw someone call that the monkey dance, right? Like two wild animals who just kinda work each other up and then they get in a fight. And how that's a pretty common thing. If I can remember the name of the author that I'd read that from, I will drop it in the description but I can't remember right now. So the point being, understanding some basic human psychology about the fight, flight, posture and submit and being able to recognize that in the wild when you're out and about in life can save you from a lot of stupid situations because again, if you see someone posturing and then your instinct is to posture in return, well then either one of you is gonna submit and you're gonna lose the pride battle, right? And then your ego will be shamed or no one will submit and you work yourselves up into a fight, right? Those are really the two main ways that it's gonna go. So if you've never thought about that or never considered that, I hope this is a little helpful piece of information to kinda base some new thinking off of and let people posture all they want in order to avoid the fight. That's probably not worth it anyway. In general when people posture over things it's pretty stupid, right? If someone breaks into my house at 2 a.m. to threaten my life, my family's life, there's not a lot of posture going on at that point, right? We're skipping straight to the fight part because this is really important. But over a parking spot, people need to posture to protect their pride because it's not that important and they don't actually wanna get in a fight over it. So I hope that's helpful. I hope that gives you some context for humans and how we operate. Do brave deeds and endure. Thank you.