Clashes of Civilizations Gave Rise to Martial Arts, but Enlightened Martial Philosophies Reveal the Better Way

Andregg, Michael M.Mar
2012-06-08
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Clashes of Civilizations Gave Rise to Martial Arts, but Enlightened Martial Philosophies Reveal the Better Way

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2012-06-08

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Human beings have studied how bodies can move from time immemorial. Some of those studies have focused on the disciplined development of various skills, like acrobatics, dance and martial art. Millennia of genocides, wars and lesser atrocities have concentrated more attention on the latter than the former, although the former are more beautiful. Thoughtful practitioners of the deadly forms have often devoted considerable thought to ethics or other philosophies that should accompany their craft. This is especially important in martial arts, because to teach those skills means arming people for life with deadly capabilities. So thoughtful teachers in particular have had to worry often about what their students might do with skills once learned. Most of this brief review will be academic history, since ISCSC is a Comparative Civilizations Society, but one of the truisms of martial art is that it is never strictly ‘academic.’ Words on paper cannot begin to express some things at the heart of the art. Therefore, I will begin with a very modern example, towards which the history leads, and end with a physical demonstration. The modern example is the attempt to teach martial ethics to soldiers in the context of learning technique. The soldiers are US Marines who study the forms described by the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP) adopted in 2001 CE (1) and logoed thus:

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This short, think-piece was presented to a conference of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations in June, 2012 which concluded with a joint, physical demonstration by the author and a colleague expert in Yoga and Eastern Philosophies (Ashok Malhotra), It has never been published, but has been widely shared among philosophical martial artists and a few military or intelligence organizations. The version attached was lightly updated in 2015 for one of those.

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Andregg, Michael M.Mar. (2012). Clashes of Civilizations Gave Rise to Martial Arts, but Enlightened Martial Philosophies Reveal the Better Way. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/208779.

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