It has often been my perception that we westerners have an unusual focus or interest in kobudo in martial systems. I often inquire to others who have a sharp and deep focus on weaponry. I have not received a solid and good answer to date. The answer came to me though a recommended book about human behavior (see bibliography at the end of this post).
First, the human body has very little savage biological weaponry, such as sharp claws, horns, hoofs, teeth and jaws, etc. We don’t have any natural weaponry that would allow us to inflict lethal injury without a huge amount of effort that explains why when humans go hand-to-hand the result is often not deadly or savage except on those occasions a fall or take down results in head injuries that lead to death.
Our “Fighting Behavior” is simply meant to preserver humans vs. kill them off and that is about the survival instincts. What came to light in my reading/study is that humans need to other or distance themselves from other humans in order to kill. It also has a innate requirement to achieve a level of savagery and damage as to incapacitate or kill others. Since our human instincts seem to create behavior that preserves life over taking it we humans had to come up with a more adaptable and distancing method ot achieve those goals all in the name of dominance for survival, etc.
We needed to create “the ultimate condition of depersonalized and disinhibited fighting. We needed to create methods and models of fighting that would be perceived as non-violent where an action that results in, an example of one, little more that pressing a button (in combat, a button that fires artillery, etc.) - a dainty action even when compared to pulling a trigger, that is performed at a distance and with a speed that rules out all those human/animal instincts of restraint and control.
Marc MacYoung recommends anyone in MA and SD read this book and now I see why. We all tend to gravitate away from empty handed techniques to those that require weaponry and for the very reasons as the above alludes to from the book in question. It provides distance and removes the muscle-straining violence of unarmed combat where the kobudo practitioner need only perform an act where we stop or reduce the exhaustion in such an act and remove the intimacy, to and fro involvement with the body of a rival that tends to make it more personal and directly triggers our instincts to do no great damage so that our species will survive.
Weaponry, starting with ancient weaponry such as used in martial systems, we humans have brought about several crucial and catastrophic changes in our fighting activities. You will have to get a copy of the book to continue this thread and read the information for yourself. I can guarantee that when you do along with reading, “In the Name of Self Defense and other such publications,” you will see where all this stuff comes from and how we handle violence.
It is no wonder most martial artists gravitate quickly to kobudo and tend to make that a focus of their training and practice. This also explains why even the empty handed techniques tend to remain more sport competitive like in their pension to remain at a distance as if sparring, etc. because we naturally and instinctively want to keep that distance, a comfort zone, and we tend to apply it in a way that will not do extensive damage or kill. To impersonalize it we gravitate to kobudo or weaponry. We have developed combat and fighting to a level that lets humans tell themselves all they are doing is “crooking our fingers and gently pulling on a small insignificant piece of metal” that just happens to send out a piece of metal at high speeds to impact and damage some distant impersonal easily othered human body and so on.
And this is just one chapter in a very large book. Gotta get the books. (As a side note: I wonder now what that says about my practice and training because long ago I decided to drop kobudo as a practice and stick with empty hand karate, etc.?)
It is all about removing the natural obstacles inherent in nature to achieve a goal with the least amount of personal involvement.
Bibliography:
Morris, Desmond. “Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior.” Harry N. Abrams. April 1979.
MacYoung, Marc. "In the Name of Self-Defense: What It Costs. When It’s Worth It." Marc MacYoung. 2014.
Goleman, Daniel. "Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition [Kindle Edition]." Bantam. January 11, 2012.
Miller, Rory. "ConCom: Conflict Communications A New Paradigm in Conscious Communication." Amazon Digital Services, Inc. 2014.
Miller, Rory and Kane, Lawrence A. "Scaling Force: Dynamic Decision-making under Threat of Violence." YMAA Publisher. New Hampshire. 2012
Miller, Rory. "Force Decisions: A Citizen's Guide." YMAA Publications. NH. 2012.
Miller, Rory Sgt. "Meditations of Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence" YMAA Publishing. 2008.
Miller, Rory Sgt. "Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected." YMAA Publishing. 2011.
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