From: ftit@ob.engin.umich.edu (Sergej Roytman)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Re: Fights and blackbelt confidence
Date: 22 Jan 1993 23:34:11 GMT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
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Originator: ftit@ob.engin.umich.edu


In article <C19zr4.4xA@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, shulick@navajo.ucs.indiana.edu (Sam Hulick) writes:
|In article <30324@optima.cs.arizona.edu>, hogue@cs.arizona.edu (Justin C. Hogue) says most sayishly:
|>In article <memo.881091@cix.compulink.co.uk> bburgar@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
|>>I'd be interested to know (from a wide sample of people) how fights start.
|>>
|>  This oughta make you think....
|> At an arcade, two guys my size hog the game from me and some kids.  After 
|[story]
|
|While we're on the topic, I know blackbelts aren't invincible or
|anything, but I think it's a confidence thing.  I know that, personally,
|after I had gone through years of training and had become a blackbelt,
|I'd feel pretty good about myself and sure as hell wouldn't hesitate to
|talk back to someone who was giving me a hard time.  Now I'm just a
|white belt, and when someone starts hassling me, I remain unobtrusive
|and just take it, which I don't really like doing.  This doesn't mean
|that when I'm a blackbelt, and someone bugs me, I'd throw them across
|the room.  As our instructor said, avoid a fight at all costs, but if
|you have to fight, do what you must.  I don't think I'd be egging him
|on, but if someone started making rude comments about my best friend,
|I'm not going to sit there and not say anything (as I do now. me wimp!
|:).  Any one else feel this way?
|

My experience with black-belts is very limited, but it seems to me that
the more advanced one is, the less likely he is to be drawn into a
fight.  I don't know what the idea behind your art is, but in my dojo
we are sometimes told (and sometimes figure it out for ourselves -- it
ain't hard) that this technique, applied thus and at full strength, can
kill a man.  Now to geek-out for a moment, ability to kill is a
symmetric relation; if I can kill you by doing something you can kill me
the same way.  When I think about whether or not it would be worth it
to fight in a given situation, the question becomes, would I be willing
to die for this?  After all, if you're fully comitted to a fight, severe
damage to one or both of the combatants is the most probable result.
Sometimes the answer is yes.  More often it isn't.

I guess what gave me these ideas in the first place was something that
Master Funakoshi said in one of his books: "When two tigers fight, one
is certain to be maimed, and one to die."  Sometimes it's worth it and
sometimes it isn't, but it seems that more and more things begin to seem
too trivial for someone to die over as one becomes more experienced.u
Anyway, I haven't done anything regrettable yet, and hope that my mental
discipline will keep pace with my physical development to prevent me
from doing something rash in the future, when I'll actually *be* an
advanced student.

I study Shotokan karate, by the way; I believe you were the one who
asked about it?

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|  ftit@engin.umich.edu   |   "... a stainless steel rat in the       |
|    (Sergej Roytman)     |  ferroconcrete wainscoting of Internet"   |
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