Practically a Martial Art

One does not spend more than a day among martial artists before the word "practicality" is thrown out like a padded MMA gauntlet.  Growing up in America, there is always a group of people in every situation who doubt everything ever.  My theory was that it was social "little man" syndrome; a feeling that since they knew less, they were less, so anything they didn't know was not worth knowing in the first place.

We all know their arguments: "but what if I had a gun?"  "yeah, but what if they just did ." "none of that will save you if the guy has like... giant arms".  

By this time, we're all preeety much just bored with them.  Denying the effectiveness of martial arts in the days of MMA is like claiming that dogs can't look up.  We've tested that theory daily.

But, this hang-up on "practicality" in martial arts circles is basically the same thing, but directed at other arts.  It's like being a martial arts racist.  I've yet to know of a style where someone who did a different style, did not question the practicality of something.

"Wing Chun doesn't hit hard."
"Muay thai let's you get hit."
"Karate is the Dane Cook of martial arts."

Granted, there is a degree of questioning one should do in every martial art as to "will this actually work?  I mean, I'm pretty sure it will, but I've yet to master the required Hadoken..."  Also, I've been at "demonstrations" where the proposed art did literally nothing.

I'm looking at you "guy who told me he could knock me out from across the room"...

I hear a lot from MMA fighters that their spor- I mean "art"... no, I meant sport, is "practical".  Frequently in regards to "conditioning", "technique" and "realism".  Which, is hilarious to me, to say the least.  Remember kids, MMA is a fantasy sport, where no one pulls knives, friends don't come in, and you never ate too much before a fight.

On the scale of "realism", MMA falls about equal with the SCA combats.  At the end of the day, if you took an MMA fighter and threw him to a gang of thugs, he'd last longer than a non-mma fighter.  Same can be said for any SCA fighter tossed to a group of sword-swinging knights.

Though I will state right now, that proportionately, the SCA fighter would out last their non-fighter, much longer than the MMA fighter would out last their non-fighter.  Because it's hard to run away crying in armor.

Now, is MMA a martial art?  No, it is a martial sport.  It's the equivalent of Mortal Kombat in real life.  A group of colorfully dressed people with strangely diverse martial arts, fight each other for a bit, but no one actually dies*.

*Because they're still available next time you select characters.

Is SCA a martial art?  No, it's live action MMO PvP.  We have goals, group dynamics, different classes (weapon sets), roles (commanders, scouts...), Moderators, and of course, respawns.

Both systems actually require a detailed knowledge of martial arts, I don't know a single fencer/heavy/MMA fighter who doesn't know at least six horrifying ways to murder someone that could never, ever be used in the SCA/MMA.

Are they practical?  Less than actually slitting throats.  Is it a martial art?  Not really.  What is it?  Martial Activity/Sport... and fun.


Side notes:  Things that happen at both types of combat events:
-Theme music
-Drinking/eating
-Hot girls in revealing clothing.
-Gratuitous man-hugging.
-Old guys debating theory while young guys beat each other senseless.
-Tattoos.
-Everyone is scared of the woman fighters.
-Barefoot adults.
-Armchair generals.
-Support teams.
-Folding chairs.
-Muscle-bound-non-combat men feeling immediately inadequate.
-Sweet after parties.
-People selling over priced clothing.
-Broken, bleeding fighters drinking beer and talking about "things".

Disbelief and Wirework

A subject frequently brought up on both sides of the like/don't like argument for books and movies, is the "suspension of disbelief".  It's commonly used as a "this: therefore I win" part of an argument.  It's supposed to be "telling" what someone will suspend with their disbelief.

Spoiler: It's not.

Suspension of disbelief is "how far can a story go, before it pushes away its' audience".  Not how wacky it is, or how realistic it seems.  The "it's a movie" statement is lazy debating, one has to keep in mind that the whole point of a story is to explain something in a manner that is easy to relate to.

We don't question the Iron Man suit's ability to stop inertia from explosions, not "because... you know... he science'd it", but because we can all agree that in this moment; the armor just works. We're ignoring that minor detail for the sake of understanding the story.

The Jaegers can run and jump without falling apart, because of that thing they never ever mention in the movie. We're fine with that.

We're also fine with idiots dying in horror movies, because they're idiots.  Even the "smart" character will become a drooling moron whenever the killer needs to magic their way into a house.  Even though we'd all love a scene in the teen slasher flick, when the crazy killer (who's really the boyfriend) goes to a college party to kill someone, and runs into a marine on leave.

"I have a knife!"
"And a future filled with expensive medical bills..."

What kills this suspension, effectively cutting the wires, is when things happen that defy the basic reaction laws of humanity.  Not when characters make mistakes, but when we're expected to just "go along" with something that no one in the audience could ever truly "go along" with.  It's where movies that try to strong arm political agenda into movies usually fail.

Examples: Transformers, and The Purge.

In our first example, we come across a movie in many people watching it stopped numerous times and went "are you kidding me?  Am I the only non-moron here?"  Not when giant robots punched eachother, we accepted "alien stuff" as the explanation for that, along with "sure Megan Fox would date... him...".  What kills it is "... is he really going to go to college, the face of the human vs. Decepticon war, without his awesome car/best friend/body guard?  That's like Michael Knight telling Kitt "Nah, stay home, I'm going to solve this case with my Hyundai."  That, and the government strong arming giant robots with no allegiance into exile.

"Hi, Autobots?  It's , heard the US kicked you out... man, we have some great garages here... like, a bunch.  Just saying if you lived here... you'd each get your own hanger."

In our second (and far worse) the Purge breaks a rule that even fantasy and surreal genres are held to: human actions.  We accept that elves are perfect beings, because we're not, and they're not us.  Humans in fantasy are always "strong, dependable, capable of great evil or great good, work hard despite their short lives", it reads like a DnD fortune cookie.  The vast, vast majority of the action and thriller genres literally depend on one human trait that we all tend to share: we love ourselves some revenge.

We're revenge junkies.  How many movies, books, shows, entire series are devoted to revenge.  Even our most popular super hero team of the decade The Avengers, name quite literally means those who take that revenge we love so much.  Why?  Because revenge is the one time, the one time, when a good, mild mannered man is able to put down his glasses and beat some ass.  We love it.  We want to be the heroic Gristle Mc Thornbody, beating down thugs because they killed his second best friend ever.  It's sexy and fun.

The Purge breaks this, by saying that should a night be "anything goes" the streets wouldn't be filled with men with guns, bats, swords, knives, superhero costumes... just looking for evil to smite.  The actual purge would have lasted one time, before everyone realized that "most criminals are just not dumb enough to walk out into the world on the night where they can be brutally murdered for sport by angry mobs."

... that would have been a better movie, a bunch of low income drug dealers, gang members, and petty thieves, trying to hide from roving bands of people who believe they're heroes.

There's your political statement.

A God Complex

If there's one thing every craftsman born wants, from carpenters to serial killers, it's someone to understand their work.

"Because God." is literally the worst answer ever.

Me, being the charismatic bastard I am, I believe in a God.  I won't say the God, because that's assuming that out of the infinite universe I picked the right answer on a multiple choice quiz with an infinite amount of answers.  It's beyond arrogant to believe the "my God is the god, and yours is wrong".

I believe in Gods and Science, for one specific reason: God does have laws over humanity, being infallible, we literally cannot break these laws.  I call these laws "physics".

It makes perfect sense to me, that God would use physics to make things.  Like a computer programmer, using a code to make something work.

God: "I need a planet... let me just physics some of these gasses together around this star, bake at a few trillion degrees for a few trillions years... and bam, planet.  Now to physics me up some life forms on it.  There we go, now let's see if I can teach them not to be assholes before they blow themselves up."

Being a god sounds a lot like being a parent, or a teacher.  Which are really very similar things come to think of it.  God makes sense as a teacher, as someone who revels in our little scientific triumphs.  Can you imagine the happy face (if you know, God has one) God made when humans held up the first book?  Finally able to write down all the stuff God handed to them so they couldn't screw it up lat-... who am I kidding?  I'm sure a god, who gave humans free will, would see that coming.

Yes, "free will", one of the few things that existed before the split up of Christianity.  Where God actually put forth "I have these commandments, you can choose to obey them or not, it's up to you."  Where God let's us know that all the suffering in the world is a direct result of our own actions or inaction.  Boring atheists rely on that "why would suffering exist with a god around? huh?", fearful of the moment someone says to them "ummm.. because some people use their free will to be shits."

Saying "well, that's just how the world is" as a response, is just like saying "because God."  Neither take responsibility for it.

Now, how do I look at Science and God and say "that totally makes sense!"?  Because Gravity and I teach martial arts.  Most people I know, have no idea about how to fight.  I've seen it all, every dumb idea by someone who has no idea what happens in a fight.  When I show them something, I get that same dumbfounded look of "are you a wizard?"  No, it's simple mechanics, ignore the pointy hat.

If I had someone push me, and then I used a complex technique to send them to the floor, they won't understand it.  It's beyond them.  Much like Gravity, and why ice is slippery.  We have no idea.  It's not saying we never will, just that the understanding of how that works is beyond our... well... understanding.

If we don't understand things, but someone out there far more advanced than we does, that makes them more advanced.  Our endeavor to understand how they did it, makes us understand them better.

Understanding is knowing, and isn't "knowing God" what all Christians are supposed to want?  I love Science for that reason, it's constantly asking the right question.  Not "ha! I've disproved something!" it's asking "how does this work?"  That's real science.  Real science is looking at Gravity, at the tiniest particles effected by it and asking "how does this work?"  Because when we know, we'll understand how the universe was created better.  Which means we'll know more about that which created it.

Because the universe contains craftsmanship, and if there is a craftsmanship, then there is a craftsman.  They love it when people go "Hey! This is how you did this!"  Learning that the world is billions of years old was like finding out that it didn't "take God time", but that "God took time" on it.

Science is how we understand God, how we understand what all this stuff around us is.  One cannot just sit back and say "well, God space magicked everything into existence, that's how."  Because that's lazy.  That's like one of my students telling me "you just used wizardry to knock me down, that's how." followed by going about their lives, never caring to know how I did it.  Even though I did it to show them how, so that they themselves might one day do it.

We have all manner of Sciencey goodness because we Scienced it, because a bunch of people asked "how does that work?" and didn't accept "because God said so" as the reason.  You could "read his book", but even if you found the ones that weren't re-written by ghost writers, you're still not understanding.  You can learn about me by reading Tale of the Iron Rose but you'll learn more about me, by figuring out how I wrote it.

How did I know how to do those fights?  About survival?  About the personal issues and struggles the characters had?  How did I, a man, know how hard it is to be a young girl?  The book won't tell you that, you have to find out by researching me.

That's just Science.