For Sunday: Thoughts on The Grey Man
Much of what is written about TGM has to do with staying under the sheep’s (and LEOs) radar while being prepared to be a sheepdog if needs be.
If you haven’t heard of the concept here is a great intro:
The Grey Man is always invisible in plain sight.
The Grey Man is totally aware of his environs, his own capabilities or lack thereof, his weaponry and his levels of competence with that weaponry. He constantly strives to improve upon both his capabilities and competence. In public, he is always respectful, even to the point of obsequiousness if the situation calls for it. He always appears to be just a little confused by what is happening around him, while in reality he is alertly doing a tactical assessment.
If the Sheep, Sheepdog, and Wolves metaphor is new to you here’s the canon:
If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath–a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.
Here’s the thing… Is Paranoia healthy? Or maybe better asked; Where is the line between paranoia and caution?
I have a personal investment in the question and may expand on this later (hence the page break).
To begin: I can’t buy a gun legally – I’m a nut because I assume the worst and and plan accordingly.
Category: Geezer Alert!
Ah, yes. Perhaps the very core of why the left fails (always) to understand the warrior class.
Being prepared for the worst while hoping to not actually experience the worst describes a normal human with a will to survive. Lots of cops manage to make it through a career without ever drawing their weapon, and are grateful for it.
Paranoia is seeing the boogie man where there is no boogie man. Sometimes, as is often the case with extremists, it becomes a two-stage paranoia. First they have to define those with whom they do not agree as boogie men so that they can then treat them as boogie men. Reality does not matter.
Most folks live somewhere in the middle. We know evil exists, make some sort of preparation to face it, and then are delighted when we never actually meet it directly. Sometimes that is through luck, sometimes by careful avoidance. Either way, having the ability to succssfully define a threat as one is the first step in surviving it.
We often laugh at the saying “It’s not paranoia when they really are out to get you.” But being able to define a real vs a perceived threat which really isn’t one is the deviding line.
A few comments not on the article itself which I does not make any sense to me but on one of the links. If 2 million Americans are victims of violent crimes each year. If the US has 300 million people. If the Average life span is 80 years. I think that I could take a wild guess that the chances of being the victim of a violent crime in the US during ones life time is around 1 in 2. Now some people are the victim of a violent crime more than once so that makes the odds a little bit better for the rest of us. But Where does that 2 million figure come from? Is it the total of report violent crimes against both people and property or only people. In any case no one can argue with the point that most people are not violent most of the time. Usually they need a motive to become violent. Until we add excessive alcohol and males in to the mix. So with the chance of being the victim of a violent crime in your life time in America potentially being about one in two are safe? Is the glass half empty or half full? Well if feeling safe is not only not being a victim but not knowing a victim then I might venture a guess that we have quite a long way to go, collectively speaking. Now none of this has anything to do with the Grey Man, shit I bet that these grey men are aliens anyways. Perhaps they should be killed. If not killed then deported back to whereever they came from. But the link made crime in the USA an issue. It is not a simple issue. Of course some people might think that it is. A very important aspect of crime was not addressed in the link and that is fraud and profiteering, even war profiteering. War profiteering has been with us ever since 1776. Thomas Paine got in a big dispute over this when he accused some powrful people of profiteering. Most… Read more »
CC: That is the most discombobulated load of cow chips I have read in a long time. What does any of that have to do with being prepared for violence?
Plus, the victim class, or those that haven’t been a victim, yet, but are ready to be at a moments notice; they always say they want to feel safe, thus the entire anti-gun crowd that cowers in fear whenever they see someone in public that is armed. Just the sight of the firearm sends them into a panic, even though the person that has the firearm hasn’t done anything to warrant the reaction from the person. Hasn’t made any threatening moves or actions and probably hasn’t even looked in their direction. They are the same ones who mock those that choose to carry a firearm for personal protection as “paranoid”, yet they are the ones that end up a blubbering puddle when something happens to them. I always tell those type of people that there is nothing that allows them to “feel safe” in our laws or Constitution.
The gist of Zero’s point, in my opinion, has to do with vigilance, situational awareness, and those who follow the philosophy of being prepared without letting the world know they are and hoping they never have to be put in that type of situation, but if they are, can deal with it aka the grey man.
Zero,
If you can access my email address from admin, contact me. I have some thoughts to share and discuss, off to the side.
Good post.
I get the totally legitimate underlying point in the link but that was some cryptic paranoia in there.
“The Grey Man is always invisible in plain sight.”
That is why I will never open carry, and why I think those who do are retarded.
CavFSO #7: I open carry all time – on my own patch. Not really nitpicking your point, but I think the issue needs to be clear?
NSOM #6: Not sure I get your point?
re #9
I’m saying that I can, and do, appreciate discretion as both a character and tactical trait but whoever wrote that WRSA article is nuts. Only shooting in secluded places so as not to “reveal” yourself, wearing clothing to cloud other’s memory of what you look like, driving a run down and nondescript car to blend in, never speed so as to not get noticed or pulled over by the police, etc. This isn’t the advice of someone who values a strong silent, demonor; this is someone who could probably stand to be medicated. Even the language is conspiratorial, melodramatic and obsessive.
@#2“And I am wandering in the wilderness here”. Truer words were never typed.
“I’m saying that I can, and do, appreciate discretion as both a character and tactical trait but whoever wrote that WRSA article is nuts. Only shooting in secluded places so as not to “reveal” yourself, wearing clothing to cloud other’s memory of what you look like, driving a run down and nondescript car to blend in, never speed so as to not get noticed or pulled over by the police, etc. This isn’t the advice of someone who values a strong silent, demonor; this is someone who could probably stand to be medicated. Even the language is conspiratorial, melodramatic and obsessive.”
Agree 100%. Tinfoil hat stuff, that.
NSOM #1o: Aha… I certainly did cherry-pick that link for my citation.
Still, I’ll defend my choice in a coupla ways.
I posed a question Where is the line between paranoia and caution? You have decided that that line is clear. I’m less certain, but I wouldn’t have asked the question if I was.
Personally I think that the line will be defined by a different set of variables, depending on the reader. I’m convinced that TGM is a valid creation. Nothing you note is pathological. No tin-foil hats I could see?
Is someone who collects guns and ammo a nut? Then most of our regular readers qualify. Is someone who prefers to practice shooting in something like ‘Hogans Alley’ a nut?
I do value your opinion, rather a lot, but in this case I will disagree.
If TGM is driving an old vehicle, he is actually more likely to get a looksee from the police. Drug runners use old vehicles because they work, don’t cost much, and aren’t a loss if caught.
To me this sounds more like a vision statement for a revolutionary waiting for his G-14classified code word to unleash the fury that is Courteous Curt. Or is that blathering wordiness?
I’m with Dave O and Jack on this one. This is definitely some “Scotty, beam me up” $h!t! Unless you spend your entire life in a one square mile area, this ‘advice’ is stupid! My ’09 Accord fits right in in my neighborhood, in mom’s it doesn’t. At work a suit fits right in, at my favorite restaurant it doesn’t. My route to and from work varies depending on what I have to do before or after. As for this “left side/right side” thing at the shooting range, I’ve been going to Ben Avery for 30 years! I think people know who I am. He needs another layer on his tin foil hat.
Dear Old Trooper, Is being prepared for vilent crime really what this post is about? I am sorry but I really did not understand that. It is probably because I could not figure it out. When I was in Baltimore in August of 2020 a raven who calls himself Edgar landed on my shudder and she said, among other things, that words will have different meanings to different people. So my dear fellow human beings, especially Old Trooper, if this post is really about being prepared for violent crime I would wonder if it was really just a peice of disinformation. This dude writing about the Grey man sounds to me like it is just a pen name for the Cohen Brothers, you know them right? The directors of the movies Fargo, A Simple Plan, and Burn After Reading, among others. If I were to hazard a guess about the purpose of this gibberish, his gibberish not my gibberish, it is that he or they or THE Man or the grey man wants you to be distracted by vilolent crime. I want you to think about this. What crimes are the most successful crimes? Could it be violent crime which ussually cries out for attention and leaves DNA clues all over the crime scene? What about crimes that never get reported? If a crime never gets reported what are the chances that it will be prosecuted? What types of crimes never get reported? Cerianly some violent crimes never get reported. Especially when the victim is a relative of the perpetrator. But what about crimes in which the victim or victims never even figure out that they were the victim of a crime? If a person steals money through deception and no one even figures it out would that not be then a type of crime that would get repeated over and over and over and over and over and over again? So what types of crimes do we need to fear most? The type that we can somewhat protect ourselves against or the type that we have no defense against?… Read more »
CC: Yeah, I know who the Cohen brothers are, since I live about 4 miles from where they grew up.
What I gathered from the article, which obviously is different from your take, is just what I said above. The writer of the article is creating a name for those that don’t draw attention to themselves for the reasons stated. The examples of what to wear and what to drive were just that; examples, but the moral of it is to go unnoticed in your environment. No different than those working in intel or covert ops, etc. I guess some would see that as the area where the author starts to go off into RED (Moldova sucks), Salt, Bourne Identity, etc. type stuff. I took that part to be examples only.
As for crimes where the victim doesn’t know they were a victim of a crime; that doesn’t fit in a violent crime description, eh? Having situational awareness and preparedness isn’t paranoia, but as Pons was pointing out; where does caution end and paranoia begin? I think he was telling us that in his opinion, it’s a moving dividing line based on the individual. Some individuals have had experiences that make them more cautious than others and would make them appear “paranoid” to the less cautious crowd that hasn’t had like experiences. That’s why I threw in the example of many of the anti-gun crowd, where there lack of experiences leaves them in their own self-assured cocoon of safety and they look on others that choose to carry firearms as being “paranoid”.
Grossman’s sheep and sheepdog metaphor is accurate, the TGM link is unrealistic.
Federal officers carry firearms in airports. Mostly they look like everybody else. For an armed federal officer on a plane, being a mostly-invisible cherry pit in the jam is critical to mission success. For average me, blending in is normal. The difference is mission. While on the job that federal officer must be vigilant and prepared for violence, that is his mission. Some of the rest of us are vigilant and prepared but that isn’t our primary mission. We have lives to live, vigilance and preparation are a healthy part of that but not the primary part. When one adopts those behaviors without having that mission, they are near a line.
When I visit the range, I have a favorite bench — the seat is the right height and I can see all of the berms. That’s not gray. I tend to go when I am the only one so I don’t have to coordinate target changes with a crowd. At the pistol pit, there is a spot where it is easier to pick up my brass. Red corvettes get more tickets than my car. I brag – on my resume. Yesterday my wife said that I put 8 rounds of ACP into a half-dollar at 7 yards. I didn’t but I didn’t have to do double head-shots from a holster with a 1.7 second draw time on an airplane with 130 screaming people after sitting in a crummy seat for three hours and while being shot at.
My $0.02 — the difference is mission and most of us know where the line is.
“If I were to hazard a guess about the purpose of this gibberish, his gibberish not my gibberish“.
CC, the gift that keeps on giving. But, I digress, you’re absolutely correct, you post nothing but gibberish.
As I said, eventually the guys in white uniforms will once again locate you, take you back home and increase the zoloft and lithium doses, and you’ll be back to as close to normal as you can get.
Ummm… what?
There diffinitely is different schools of thought on this subject. Concealed vs Open Carry, Discrete vs Don’t Eff with me attitude. Bottom line just do hat you have to do to be a Sheepdog. “The Wicked flee when no man pursueth. The Righteous stand Bold as Lions.”
meant …what you… Sorry!