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It's interesting seeing everyone immediately sort themselves by their assumptions and then argue in those clusters. Are martial arts supposed to be a way to de

by jtolmar 10y ago

It's interesting seeing everyone immediately sort themselves by their assumptions and then argue in those clusters. Are martial arts supposed to be a way to defend yourself? A competitive sport? A way to stay in shape? Some sort of artistry? These are all valid questions, and different martial arts answer different ones. Capoeira is worse than useless as a fighting technique, but entirely viable as a way to stay in shape and express yourself. Olympic-rules Tae Kwon Do is an excellent competitive sport that doesn't have much in common with versions of Tae Kwon Do taught for self-defense. But because we're not agreeing on goals here we get the usual debates about whether MMA is the most effective way to hurt someone. Which has always sounded silly to me: we're talking about a sport. Using just your feet isn't the most effective way to get a ball into a net, but soccer is still a better sport than it would be if players picked up the ball and ran.

hosh 10y ago
I kinda wonder if internet discussions around martial arts are the way they are because practitioners (whatever their motivations) tends to posture / step up to challenges more. Japanese budo went through a similar decline and soul-searching when the samurai went on the decline, and modernization went on the rise. Sure, there was that guy (forgot his name) who wrote this beautiful fiction to try to sell Westerners on the ideas of Japanese culture, only to have it adopted by the emerging nation-state of Japan to drum up nationalist fervor. And then there are works like, _The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts_, an awesome book even if it was not written by a practitioner. A older martial brother put it this way: the idea of the Second Amendment where you can take up arms against a modern, tyrannical government is a dream. Modern technology will overwhelmingly flatten any attempts at that. This is a guy who served in the armed forces, practiced the same Chinese martial arts I do, in addition to Aikido. At one point, he was pitching Aikido to a local Montessori school as a "means for resolving conflict", and he does not mean it in the militaristic fantasizing-being-a-badass way where "resolving conflict" is a euphemism for beating the shit out of someone. It echoes what Scott Meredith mentions -- martial arts, even MMA, does not work well against modern and near-future weapon technologies. So what's the point of practicing if one is motivated by some fantasy of being able "defend oneself?" I've been able to answer "what is the role of martial arts in my life." Among the key lessons are things like _grit_, and identifying how violence can be used through words and emotions. One of the martial teachers I respect (he is dead now) wrote about the connection between rhetorics and the deeper teachings of martial arts. Being able to keep cool and skillfully navigate through intense emotions that arises while people are shouting at each other seems more useful in the modern world than fantasizing, or even knowing a practitioner can break someone's bones. I had been poking around at different philosopher's writings about this. Ken Wilber points to a different philosopher (I forgot the name) about modernity. That view on modernity is a fairly good description of what happens with anything traditional. The modernist (and post-modernist) view tends to deny some of the things learned in the traditions. Some folks have been finding that this is not working out very well for us. We're not a happy society, despite having access to medications, economic prosperity (for some of us), and technological conveniences. Our ancestral traditions are lost, trying to find a new place in our modern world. We need them as much as they need us.

by jtolmar 10y ago

hosh 10y ago

I kinda wonder if internet discussions around martial arts are the way they are because practitioners (whatever their motivations) tends to posture / step up to challenges more. Japanese budo went through a similar decline and soul-searching when the samurai went on the decline, and modernization went on the rise. Sure, there was that guy (forgot his name) who wrote this beautiful fiction to try to sell Westerners on the ideas of Japanese culture, only to have it adopted by the emerging nation-state of Japan to drum up nationalist fervor. And then there are works like, _The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts_, an awesome book even if it was not written by a practitioner. A older martial brother put it this way: the idea of the Second Amendment where you can take up arms against a modern, tyrannical government is a dream. Modern technology will overwhelmingly flatten any attempts at that. This is a guy who served in the armed forces, practiced the same Chinese martial arts I do, in addition to Aikido. At one point, he was pitching Aikido to a local Montessori school as a "means for resolving conflict", and he does not mean it in the militaristic fantasizing-being-a-badass way where "resolving conflict" is a euphemism for beating the shit out of someone. It echoes what Scott Meredith mentions -- martial arts, even MMA, does not work well against modern and near-future weapon technologies. So what's the point of practicing if one is motivated by some fantasy of being able "defend oneself?" I've been able to answer "what is the role of martial arts in my life." Among the key lessons are things like _grit_, and identifying how violence can be used through words and emotions. One of the martial teachers I respect (he is dead now) wrote about the connection between rhetorics and the deeper teachings of martial arts. Being able to keep cool and skillfully navigate through intense emotions that arises while people are shouting at each other seems more useful in the modern world than fantasizing, or even knowing a practitioner can break someone's bones. I had been poking around at different philosopher's writings about this. Ken Wilber points to a different philosopher (I forgot the name) about modernity. That view on modernity is a fairly good description of what happens with anything traditional. The modernist (and post-modernist) view tends to deny some of the things learned in the traditions. Some folks have been finding that this is not working out very well for us. We're not a happy society, despite having access to medications, economic prosperity (for some of us), and technological conveniences. Our ancestral traditions are lost, trying to find a new place in our modern world. We need them as much as they need us.