Among the 3 martial qualities, will to endure stands alongside awareness and skill as a crucial determinant of martial power. One can develop their awareness and skill to the point that they are sage-like in vision and remarkable in prowess, yet crumble under the pain of a single blow or be unable to persevere long enough to ensure victory. Therefore, only will power in conjunction with the other qualities facilitates full martial development.
Some martial philosophies go as far as enshrining will power as the single most important attribute to martial development. The argument proceeds as follows: With unstoppable will, a warrior will persevere unto death. However, this reductionism fails to acknowledge that only a warrior much harder to kill than their opponents can succeed through will alone, and only awareness and skill can increase their prowess in combat. Great will without awareness or skill becomes impotent rage in consequence. Nevertheless, some arts do place a great emphasis on force of will and have good reasons to do so.
Martial arts such as Krav Maga, Karate, Kenpo, and other arts emphasizing the warrior spirit place a great premium on will power and physical strength. This emphasis applies especially to situations where trainees are openly expected to fight to the death as an occupational requirement. Military combat, law enforcement, criminal activity, and contract work all require strong force of will in order for one to prevail. In these situations, aggression dominates over all other qualities. One might be sloppy and stupid, yet possess enough physical strength and raw anger that they are able to overpower and kill opponents of superior awareness and skill. An example might be the barbarian northern warrior who brutally slaughters hundreds of well armed and trained Roman enemies despite a complete lack of refinement or foresight. As such, will power arts do not care much for philosophical, personal, or artistic development as worthwhile endeavors. They are more likely to develop practically useful skills for immediate victory in place of less applicable pursuits designed for holistic development. To a will based system, time is of the essence. A trainee cannot spend 10 years to become fully competent when they are going to war in a month. They must learn basic killing abilities quickly and competently. This emphasis may be dismissed as hasty and sloppy by traditional systems, yet will power training undeniably crafts soldiers of great capability in a short span of time, even if those same soldiers might remain impulsive, lazy, quarrelsome, sloppy, unrefined, and harmful outside their job. Will power arts develop good soldiers, not good people. Much like a good soldier, a practitioner of a will based art learns to accept their expendability while valuing aggression and physical strength above other 'softer' qualities.
This form of martial development could be conceptualized as dark in the sense that efficiently promoting death, rather than life, is the primary focus and natural outcome of will based arts. As such, scumbags are particularly advantaged in these arts and may become fanatics capable of great success in criminal enterprises. Those who can tolerate the destruction of others, such as sociopaths, can use a combination of anger and will power to accomplish most goals as long as they are able to evade capture and destruction at the hands of good people. Those good people who train in these arts do so under a certain duress, as their commitments to nonconfrontation, fairness, and discipline predispose them to labelling as pushovers, suckers, and softies. Those individuals prevail by holistically supplementing their awareness and skill outside the confines of the will power dojo through meditative and sporting activities designed to compensate for aggressive training which can only promise survival, even if such survival is nasty, brutish, and short as a result of the aggressive zero sum strategy taught therein.
The value of learning to use aggression to accomplish one's ends lies in a fuller understanding of why aggression should rarely be used. Civilization is a scheme for controlling aggression and sexuality to promote net growth for all citizens. Aggression is antithetical to this advancement and can only be opposed through the explicit valuation of peace. First, the martial artist must conquer aggression in themselves, then lead others by example. Dipping into the dark side of the martial arts can teach a warrior nuance in how they predict and control the actions of their enemies in addition to developing a truly fearsome physical and motivational presence.
No comments:
Post a Comment