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At its heart though, the quintessential concept of martial arts - the idea that shaped the first arts and continues to color our modern world - is that combat is not something we love. That may be expressed, as it is today, as an imperative to not cause undue harm in Aikido. It may be found in sporting styles like boxing, in that we don't wish to see, suffer or cause undue harm hence the implementation of rules and equipment dedicated to the safety of fighters. Lastly, it can be seen in the hard-nosed battle ready systems that military organizations utilize, in that we want to end combat as quickly as possible. At our hearts, we want to live happy, lazy lives: that is the nature of man. When combat happens, we want the event done and over with, and we'd prefer it if everyone could go home afterwards.
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Originally Posted by DeStRuCtIkOn Humans hate combat, in that we aren't really very inclined to causing serious harm, we direly want to avoid harm to ourselves and it causes all sorts of stress that is not conducive to laying in the grass eating fruit and having sex with beautiful women. However, learning to fight seems like a very good idea in that we want to be able to kill the predator before it kills us and we want to be able to acheive the highest status in our community and get the best foods and women. |
Just spouting out thoughts here to keep the conversation running. Rereading my own post, I can't tell if it's an arguement or an agreement here, or if it's even relevant to anythign that's been said so far lol.
At our core, humans are predatory pack animals. I'll draw my parallels here to wolves since they are the animal I'm most familiar with, though it applies to pretty much all pack predators.
That said, I would assume that violence would be something that we are very much inclined to. In the end, we all want to be the alpha male. That means ascending through the ranks by mental and physical superiority, displayed via acts of violence against your fellows. I do somewhat agree with your statement that we don't want cause serious harm, however I believe that applies specifically to one's own pack. Outside your pack is fair game. That's why the average soldier hesitates before shooting his own man under any circumstance, but doesn't even think twice about unloading a full clip into the enemy.
Your above mentioned safety regulations in sports echo this. We see our opponents in the ring as our fellows, our pack mates if you will. I don't think the hard-nosed military system is so much for not wishing to cause undo suffering, but for self-preservation. It's an entirely selfish reason. It's a go for the throat attitude because we don't want them to have time to injure us.