There's thousands of videos like this online - some esoteric, defensive martial artist being absolutely pummeled by a fit, offensive kickboxer.
And there are hundreds of studios in the US alone dedicated to teaching these reactive, complex arts.
All this snake oil - why?
In the 70s, Eastern martial arts had an explosion of popularity in the US, mostly due to Hollywood movies starring Bruce Lee. Later, we had The Karate Kid.
They introduced Americans to the exotic and flashy world of Kung Fu and Karate.
Dojos popped up in every major city.
Karate became a fixture in the Western imagination. With it, a 135 lb. Bruce Lee-type could kick a strongman across a room.
A teenager could block a flurry of punches from a trained assassin, dropping him with a well-placed chop.
Despite this fanciful image, 70s karate training was still very combative. Full-contact was the norm, and "sparring gear" was yet to enter the equation.
Kids and adults were fighting bare-knuckle, without foam-dipped helmets or gloves.
Kyokushin was a global sporting event.
Training was still very physical-fitness oriented. Karate training was something that could legitimately make someone more dangerous.
Many studios functioned like gangs, and dojoyaburi was still practiced.
But all of this changed as the consumer market got bigger.
Sometime in the 80s, the fantasy of karate and kung fu overtook reality. Instructors wanted to "make it big", and lowered standards to appeal to the masses.
They sold a fantastical version of karate, in which *anyone* could learn a few techniques and win a fight by skill alone.
Techniques which were once expert level - advanced parries, joint manipulation, fancy kicks - became standard.
But these just don't work without a baseline of physical fitness, aggression, and a strong grounding in basic offensive fighting.
This notion of *offensive fighting* is the key element.
The lowering of fitness standards shouldn't be overlooked, but the biggest change was from offensive to defensive fighting.
This is where American culture intersected to create snake oil.
1. Mass-market consumerism required making things "softer" and more palatable - no aggression, just reaction.
2. Litigiousness & aversion to violence required that instructors emphasize ***self-defense only***
Of course, anyone who's been in a fight knows that whoever throws the first punch wins 90% of the time. Aggression is *mandatory*.
But weak "martial artists" and money-hungry instructors rejected this. They created a cargo cult of actual fighting, based on defensive techniques.
The "generational cycle" of martial arts is very short - maybe 10 years.
So, four generations after this shift, almost everyone involved in Karate or Kung Fu learned from this idiotic school of thought.
Of course, these notions are disproved by actual fighting.
So, the competition rules were changed. More protective equipment, less contact, fewer takedowns.
Some arts literally stopped sparring.
Think of the WKF - those fights are absolute jokes, compared to something like the UFC.
But these organizations don't care. They ignore the elephant in the room and collect their snake oil paychecks from gullible students.
Then they give 9-year-olds black belts.
Today, it is controversial in the karate community to teach offensive fighting. To teach aggression. To teach the practiced application of violence.
But is that not the core ethos of martial arts?
Every historical martial art was once intended for extreme, life-or-death violence. If they were unsuccessful, they didn't survive.
It's ultra-recent perversions that neutered them, producing fat neckbeards that think they're dangerous.
Karate, aikido, kung fu, and more have been infected by this virus.
And so, they just keep producing fighters further and further divorced from the reality of combat.
The same thing has been happening in BJJ for years, even though there are holdouts.
Muay Thai is next.
I look forward to a revival of martial arts, with a focus on the martial element.
The UFC has done wonders for this, but most places teaching "fighting" are still soy beyond comprehension.
But I hope that people can once again recognize the original purpose of martial arts, and revive their warrior ethos.
Don't let Safetyism and consumerism continue to destroy martial arts.
Dojos must become exclusive. Physically rigorous. Aggressive. Violent.
This is the way.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Normal fraternities, ie 95% white, are under constant scrutiny by IFC and school admin. They are regularly disciplined, fined, or banned from campus for minor infractions.
National orgs do not defend chapters, and are rather controlling in general.
Meanwhile, black fraternities are notorious for extreme hazing and violence — both fistfights and sexual violence against women.
However, it is extremely rare (almost unheard of!) for black frats to receive the same kind of scrutiny or discipline.
When young white men take themselves seriously, the cultural Left has a conniption. If they have fun, the Right loses its mind.
For the former: political engagement, fitness, scholarly interest. For the latter: watching sports, drinking, music.
The intersection is fraternities
Examples of point A:
- Derision & mocking of politically-active young white men, especially on the Right (but really anywhere)
- Extreme distaste for bodybuilding
- Freakouts about "extremist interest in the Classics" or other academic topics
- Mockery of any earnest emotion
Examples of point B:
- "This energy should be directed elsewhere" in response to any video of recreation or fun; old-type whining about danger or foolishness
- Pointless yelling about the evils of "sportsball"
- Reflexive hatred of popular music subcultures, bars, etc.
This is true, but I don’t think it goes far enough. Global military dominance by the West was largely due to drill & discipline, standardization, engineering, and immense feats of logistics & infrastructure.
Technics and organization are spurned today as “soulless” but they are what built the modern world.
This isn’t to say that warrior cultures in the West were built upon nerd-ism or technics alone; I would be the last person to ever say that.
But global dominance does not come from guts & vril alone, or else Gurkhas or some other military people would have conquered the world
But in the desire to reignite thumos among Westerners today, many disregard the fact that we built our culture with incredible feats of technics.
I see this as merely a subset of the same thing; excess energy thrown into creativity, optimization, commitment to improvement
All very old martial arts have a sort of oddness to them, a disorienting underlying philosophy of movement that throws off a modern revivalist because it’s just so *odd*
It’s near-impossible to cut through centuries of unwritten, unspoken ways of movement. Then the natural esotericism of things like kata or manuals make it even harder.
But if these arts (often the only athletic tradition surviving from their time, perhaps aside from dances) can be decoded… broken into phonemes and morphemes, like ancient unwritten languages… much could be learned about their respective cultures
Perhaps about mankind’s development overall, too — the same intangible “flavor” of systematized motion runs through many of these long-lost systems
The key would be reverse-engineering the physical assumptions & surrounding habitus of each one, then drawing connections or distinctions; by way of comparison one could find “lineages” of underlying assumptions about combat & motion, a vast unrecorded network of silent languages
Low-hanging fruit:
Almost universally, every fighting system more than ~200 years old includes *much* lower stances.
Athleticism difference from modernity, different philosophy, or a carryover from weapon-based fighting into empty hand?
Really look at all these people. They’re the exact kind of people that would set up a group picture flipping off the camera to “dunk” on a Twitter anon for wrongthink
Imagine the conversation that led to this. None of them are even attractive! What were they expecting?