Welcome to Gaia! ::

Any fighting, no matter if its self defense or murder, is senseless. Violence shouldn't be necessary if people learn how to control themselves, and focus on bettering themselves rather than pushing people into corners. You've been changing your argument from ninjas to martial arts not needing philosophy at all, to philosophy being a by product, to blah blah blah etc etc etc. I can't keep track of what you're saying because you keep changing what you believe, aside from the central fact that fighting is necessary because...fighting is necessary? It wouldn't be necessary if people didn't go out there proving they were better because of offensive abilities.

I have sparred and I have fought, and while I find it fun, I don't find it the reason for being a martial artist. If I master myself, I don't have to worry about being in fights, because if one is presented I will be disciplined and skilled enough to avoid it. If someone wants to shoot me, they will shoot me. You can't dodge bullets even if you learn Shaolin Kungfu for like 1000 years. Or if you learn ninjitsu razz

When I said philosophy of warfare, I more or less meant mental combative strategies, not just "play starcraft all day long" although I'm sure SOMEHOW Musashi could be applied to RTS game...
Anyways being able to creatively learn and adapt to situations is more of Miyamoto's teachings through those warfare strategies, same as Sun Tzu. And yes, I'll admit I haven't read either of those texts in their entirety, but some of the number one buyers of both things are Businessmen, and I'm sure they're not all using them to become Patrick Bateman psycho killers. The philosophy can still be valuable to a martial artist, regardless of his need to kill or fight others.

I never said Bushido was used in all MA. That's a really drastic misconception in an attempt to be nit-picky. I specifically said that bushido itself dealt with Life and Death questions. I did not say that affected TKD or MT or UFC fighters. But like Miyamoto and Sun Tzu, the books on Bushido are widely bought and read by non-fighters.

Of course you need to be able to defend yourself, but you shouldn't judge your ability to do so by who you can beat and who you can't all the time. Sparring is necessary, but not to the need of destroying your opponent, and certainly not with padding. Padding implies you're going to do everything you can to decimate your opponent, not everything you can to defeat them while sparing their lives. Your ability to protect yourself mainly derives from the ability to stay IN CONTROL of situations that arise when least expected.

You never gave an example of WWII soldiers learning martial arts. And I'm talking about the Americans. Therefore you didn't even supply an argument for that.

Marksmanship, unless they've begun training how to disarm people using bullets more than killing them, is a killing tool, not a martial art, because the weapon is a tool, not an extension of the body as in all eastern (and mideviel western) arts. Unless you've got really twisted perceptions about hte movie Equilibrium, you're mistaking guns for martial weapons rather than killing tools.

What's a kick for? Kicking someone, or kicking a ball, or stretching your leg, or moving something out of the way, or dancing, or jumping, or nudging. You have legs to do many movements, with many meanings. Not just kicking and destroying. If I can learn what my leg is for past just beating the hell out of someone, I can get closer to learning about myself. Unless you're actually digging holes and planting flowers with a gun barrel (whcih I am sure is possible but certainly not what the military trains it for) then its not a martial/selfpreservation art. Its a killing art. The knife from Rambo would be a much better example of what you're trying to get at. I just wish you thought of it first.

If you think that martial arts are for fighting first and self improvement second, that's just an error in syntax. How can you beat someone if you haven't improved your own abilities in the first place? This argument you've made is completely arbitrary to the most basic of logic.

Self improvement leads to enlightenment. If you don't improve to that point, if you don't focus all your energy on becoming more focused, stronger, and centered, yet you still fight like the Devil's child- you will be KILLED. Or at least curb stomped. "MY" martial art isn't for self-improvement. By definition, ALL martial arts are for self improvement. You just wish to remove the enlightenment portion of it in order to make your martial arts sound more...robotic in their use. We have heavy weight boxers who make millions. But let's look at literature for example, though i know you despise all things editorial or fictional:

In the movie Rocky this guy has no chance of beating Apollo Creed. However he does fight him anyways, not for the money, and not for the show, but to know he can do it. To learn more of himself. This fight isn't against Apollo- Apollo WILL win. It is against himself. There are many boxers, football players, swimmers, hell the Curling olympic teams, who believe in beating themselves more than beating their oppenents. That's just, how you've termed it, a by-product

Its the same thing with ANYONE who plays Golf. A "game". Yet its one of the most challenging games ever created.

Next: Realize martial arts would barely be alive as we know it today without the media keeping it so. Everyone would be a Western Boxer, and everyone would be equal anyways.

Stop calling all movies fictional- some of them actually demonstrate the fighting potential of their actors- Jet Li, Bruce Lee, Tony Jaa. Whether or not they had choreographed fights, wireworks, or really bizarely over the top stunts, they still did these things and did them well. That's the difference between Karate Kid movies and actual martial arts films. The people in the movies still had the surgical prescion. And by the way- if you DARE bash Bruce Lee for not being a great martial artist, watch the videos on Youtube of his competition days in black and white from California. THAT'S surgical as hell. WWE is fictional. Bruce Lee or hell even Chuck Norris's display of talent isn't. My two friends performing Street Fighter moves in a spoof film I made is fictional. Displays of actual prowess are NOT.

One of my most lasting martial arts training experiences (two months with one specific school) was a "McDojang" in Salisbury maryland wiht a complete idiot named Sun Kim. Yeah I'll use his name, because every martial artist I've explained his teaching method to has laughed their asses off and called him absurdly ineffective- he was a badgering, blisteringly stupid 25 year old who just got his black belt and was allowed to teach from that point on. The dumbest thing you can do is take a newly elected black belt and say "Hey! YOu're initiated, tehrefore you can teach!".

Now jeez, I wonder where this method of teaching came about? Oh yeah- warfare times, when cultures needed to speed things up in order to make sure that fighters would be ready quickly for war. Confident, strong, and full of useless KIHAP! Not to say its always useless, but yelling stupidly at your enemy is really a silly, silly thing. McDojos are just an excellerated rate of an already excellerated system based on the necessesity of warfare. My communcications teacher at college took Karate as a kid. Now he's 45 or something and has arthreitis because they beat him with sticks to train "iron body". What bullshit. VRROOM VRROOM LETS GO TO WAR!

And its the same reason you shouldn't say martial arts= learn to fight.
Martial Arts = Learn to not need to fight. Learn to master oneself to avoid fights, to avoid needless confrontation, if necessary through intimidation. You ever backed down from someone just because of how they looked at you? They're in control. They're at the front line of themselves, not an entire army. The byproduct of martial arts is that the fighting is a last resort, rather than the primary one.

I already knew about Kenjutsu- when I go back home I'll have the ability to learn it too. However its recommened that when you start learning it by the person teaching me, that you make a non-kill vow. If you're good enough, you shouldn't have to kill.

As for your next statement, you are being entirely ridiculous. Martial arts not for self defense? From the begining of time man has harnessed rocks and fire and stick and pointy things to keep the monsters at bay before they decided it'd be a good idea to turn on eachother. Don't believe me? I might have failed an Anthropology course, but being lazy when it comes to one paper assignment doesn't mean those B tests count for nothing.

And what is wrong with people only willfully fighting for self defense? Obviously you don't understand the concept of Yin and Yang: You need someone to attack you in order for you to defend yourself. If there are no punk assholes out there trying to kill you, you have no need for a martial art. Oh...wait...I forgot...martial arts can keep you healthy and calm and steady, and disciplined, and if you're willing to believe in it, can bring you towards enlightenment. Your byproduct theory fails once again. The Yin and Yang of martial arts is yourself versus yourself. Not alway evil opponents.

As for aesthetics...where the hell did that argument come from? Look, one person once told me she thought the poomses for TKD were beautiful...it was pretty sad. The poomses of TKD are stiff and albiet not completely useless but they might as well be.

I never said aesthetics were mandatory. The simplest thing for a Taichi student to do in a fight is just redirect an attack by shifting their weight- they don't even have to display a large, obvious motion. Now you could have Steven Segal snapping people's fingers...but that's just stupid brutality. Samurai sword swings, the perfect western punch or epee thrust, the TaiChi fluidity- none of it is about how good it looks, but about how fluid and complete the movement is of the person doing it. Bruce Lee could do a hardly noticeable one-inch punch, but everyone still prefered seeing his long high kicks. Whoopty doo. Who cares ? The aesthetics are what the fighter decides (usually) to do with his own expressive art.


And yes you were offensively making fun of Kung Fu because you don't even understand the purposes of the names they make for attacks. You know its a useful art- we both know the downfalls of TKD so I won't even bother allowing that come up as a counter argument- but the movements are used to harness ones flow of energy/mass/body placement or yeah "chi". A fictional principle- which I suppose YOU would consider fiction- of the aforementioned One Inch Punch, is an example of why the movements of Kung fu are placed like that.

I don't see the point of you talking about Guns as you did- if you need a gun, you need a gun. Not martial arts. If you need martial arts and a gun, you must be a merc or a hitman or a psychopath. Not someone trying to defend yourself- in which case you'll learn one or the other, or you'll carry the gun around for fun/higher levels of self defense. This topic doesn't need to be argued further because I actually find guns to be cool and useful, but I'd hate to use one on someone unless I attempted a disarm. If you can end a life as easily as pulling a trigger you've gained a godlike kill complex where its that easy to end a life. What the hell is that about? Its about power, not self defense.

...you don't need beliefs to be a martial artist?

Yeah. I'm just going to end my argument there. If you have nothing to believe in, you have nothing at all. All those armies you listed- romans, greeks, egyptians, japanese- they had Gods and dieties to believe in. Hell the Indians too. Native American's. ******** CHRISTIANS. Learning how to fight for some god-needed course of action. It was a belief oriented training program- all original military arts stemmed from this, and many self discplining martial arts did too.

Either way you cannot be a martial artist without beliefs. If that's the case you're a fighter for hire.

Also: You want to see martial arts sparring videos of me? God damn that'd be embarrassing. I won one fight because my opponent was a stoner who lead only with a really, really poor right hook. My younger brother had a better right hook than him cause I taught him how to swing. I ducked under it and then played with the guy to make him get the point that I didn't want to fight to the death or anything cause he was ******** stupid. I got one good hit in when I was starting to get tired because of bad cardio.

I also only fought him for two reason: It was part of my belief that no one should own a public area by default and he was going to ******** with my car on a bad day. Even my Shaolin teacher promotes standing up for personal beliefs. But it took me over 10 minutes of standoff to get to the point of punching that guy. Last Resort. Therefore a sparring video of me would be nearly useless because I don't find any desire to physically injure anyone, ever, unless they come at me first. Tai Chi, therefore, is good for me, because it IS a form of boxing- it works JUST like western boxing only with a cleaner flow and more harnessing on deflection and redirection rather than taking hits. It takes much longer to become efficient at, but you learn your whole body, mind and soul in the process. Let your opponent in and have them defeat themselves. Because in the end, you don't lose because your opponent was stronger, you lose because you were not strong enough.

And as for traditional Martial Artists preaching s**t about people taking martial arts for the wrong reasons, they can all go ******** themselves. I train for survival and so that if anybody tries to ******** with me I can swallow them up and spit them out. As well as that full contact gives me the horn.