Jeff Cooper on Training

I bought "To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Tell the Truth," by Jeff Cooper, the other day, and reading through it I found this passage that seemed pertinent in light of that whole "Mall Ninja" kerfluffle the other day. 

From the essay, "Heads Up!"

"The private person who arms himself must remember that he will most likely be fighting as an individual when the flag flies.  The chances of his standing shoulder to shoulder with five, ten, or fifty close friends, strongly motivated and properly armed to confront the foe is unlikely.  Therefore the individual can fave only one objective in fighting and that is the destruction of his personal adversary or adversaries.  He will not have the dubious luxury of giving orders, taking cover, obtaining fire superiority, moving to 'close with the enemy.' He will simply have to shoot to hit and to make every shot count."

 He goes on to say:

"From this it follows that that the overwhelming priority of the individual book of tactics is the first principle of self-defense--and that is alertness."

 And he concludes with

"If you don't know you're in trouble, no amount of ability on your part will save you."

 Anyway, I am not sold one way or the other on the "need" of  some kinds of training vs. other kinds vs. just having an "attitude of alertness."  But I thought that it was interesting that I ran into this essay (which was originally written who knows how long ago) at the same time it came up again.