From: bleys@wisdom.bubble.org (Bill Cavanaugh)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Re: Thai kickboxing
Date: 2 Jan 93 06:29:54 GMT
Organization: Xanadu Enterprises, Inc.

In article <MARY.93Jan1145951@martinique.Cayman.COM> mary@Cayman.COM (Mary Malmros) writes:
>
>In article <1993Jan01.075416.1570@wisdom.bubble.org> bleys@wisdom.bubble.org (Bill Cavanaugh) writes:
>
>   I think (hope) what Bob was referring to was the likelyhood that he would
>   be attacked in a place and situation where the attacker had been drinking.
>   Since most of us only find ourselves in such places if >we're< drinking,
>   and since those kinds of altercations usually happen later in the night,
>   it's a good bet that the defender is not completely sober...
>
>I'm sure that's what he was referring to as well.  My point was that 
>drinking messes you up, to a greater or lesser degree.  If you drink, 
>to be on the safe side, you should assume that it will have some negative
>effect on just about anything you do.  It will, in general, assist you in
>being loud, obnoxious, belligerent, and stupid, but that's about it.  
>
Sure, it'll assist in that behavior, but it doesn't necessarily lead to it.
Many of us can go out with our friends and spend six or eight hours in a
bar without becoming inebriated or belligerent.  It doesn't meant that
we're gonna be completely sober, just not far enough gone to be picking
fights.

(just as an aside about the next paragraph, I used to hang in a bar that
was the "home" of a bike club.  It was in a nasty part of the city, the
people that hung there usually had some sort of weapon on them, and it was
the most polite crowd I've ever seen.  In the nicer parts of town I saw a
lot more fights and rudeness than I EVER saw in the bad places)

>Going out and getting drunk, especially in a rowdy bar or nasty part of
>town, is a little like bungee jumping.  You're engaging in a risky 
>behavior that's completely optional.  Nobody is making you do it.  Some
>people decide they want to do it anyway, for the rush or the thrill or
>the exquisite experience of puking against the side of someone's Camaro
>afterwards.  So you use some kind of failsafe...but you want to make
>sure that your failsafe was designed with that sort of risky behavior
>in mind.  You don't take the nifty bungee-cord-chain that your older
>brother showed you how to build as an improvised cargo net and jump off
>a bridge with it, and you don't take the jumping wheel kick that your
>sabumnim taught you and try to take out an assailant in a parking lot
>when you're three sheets to the wind.  That's not the use they were
>intended for, and it's not why they were taught to you.  If you insist
>in trying to use them in an inappropriate situation, you shouldn't 
>blame them for not working.
>

That was his point.  That the the places and situations he felt he'd need
to use the art were, by definition, inappropriate for it.
 
>Personally, I don't have a lot of respect for people who expect a 
>martial art to save them from the consequences of their own stupidity

(neither does anybody else here.  I'm not sure how it applies to this
discussion, though...) 

>(and I am not saying that Bob falls into that category, at all).  I
>have respect for people who are forced to live or travel in risky 
>areas, who do their best to avoid problems rather than court them 
>or create them, and who defend themselves to the best of their ability
>when they must.  I think that any martial art can offer a lot to someone
>like that.  The techniques are tools: they have no intrinsic value, 
>and are useful only when chosen with care and used appropriately.  

Right.  Exactly.  TKD is a wrench.  Bob needs a hammer.  He could learn,
with practice, to drive nails with the wrench, but it wouldn't make any
sense to do that when there are perfectly good hammers available.

bill
p.s. sorry about the excessive quoting, folks, but I really couldn't see
anyplace to trim Mary's post without losing the sense of what she's saying.
Blame her for being concise instead of long-winded, like some of
us...<chuckle>
-- 
 *         Bill Cavanaugh       bleys@wisdom.bubble.org          *
XY + XX = :-)