Virtues related to martial arts?

[Swordless]

I have a friend whose daughter is in a taekwondo class. All taekwondo bashing aside, if her grades would start to slip or if she starts having discipline problems at school, she is not allowed to attend as many Taekwondo classes, and if the problems continue, she would be kicked out of the school. A controversial approach, but one that makes sense in regards to Zachsan's point about being careful not to train the next homicidal maniac. Although if someone is going to go on a killing spree, they'll find a way to do it regardless of any MA training. Any bloody fool can fire a gun.

[Swordless]

hmmm, I guess I made it sound like only high school dropouts and proven troublemakers become killers, but you can never know, it could be anybody. You take a calculated risk with every student that they might use their skills to hurt others.

[zachsan]

well now, there's all types of homicidal maniacs. there's the walk-into-a-room-full-of-people-and-spray-an-uzi type, and then there's the serial killer type, who are usually so ****ed up in the head that they prefer not to use guns.

there you have it, that's about as far off topic as i can get.

[daodejing]

Zach, I'm not saying you have to learn it from someone. I'm just saying most people don't go about finding enlightenment through a book. Now, you may read a book and then practice on your own, and thus develop a mindful practice, but my point is that you won't get mindful practice from the book. You get the mindful practice from practicing mindfully. In my opinion, you're just as likely to learn proper meditation from a forest as you are from a meditation class.

In reference to your question about hotheaded youths. Depends how old the hotheaded youth is. When they're still pretty young, they can be more easily molded and its simpler to change behavioural patterns for the rest of their life.

Honestly, I'd send the kid to a qigong class.

As far as homicidal maniacs go, I've never heard of an adult martial artist murdering anyone with either bare hands or traditional weapons except for cases involving self defense, where they were attacked by someone else. This is not to say that no martial artist has ever gone overboard and mangled some poor bastard who tried to rob them, but simply to say that I've never heard of an adult MA practitioner committing premeditated murder in the united states, using fists or a MA weapon.

I have heard plenty of folk stories about chinese MA practitioners killing each for various reasons, and I've heard about little kids murdering each other playing "power rangers" in northern europe.

[zachsan]

we used to do that kind of thing as kids in west philly. those were the days.

[zachsan]

anyway -

Originally posted by daodejing
As far as homicidal maniacs go, I've never heard of an adult martial artist murdering anyone with either bare hands or traditional weapons except for cases involving self defense, where they were attacked by someone else. This is not to say that no martial artist has ever gone overboard and mangled some poor bastard who tried to rob them, but simply to say that I've never heard of an adult MA practitioner committing premeditated murder in the united states, using fists or a MA weapon.

well, whether or not such a thing has ever happened - and given the number of people in the U.S. who have practiced some kind of martial art, i'm inclined to believe that it has - the "going overboard and mangling some poor bastard" is really what i'm talking about (the homicidal maniac thing was an extreme hypothetical example).

i'm not going to call my own personal experience conclusive research, but, in my own personal experience, people who have studied martial arts, even for a long time, are more likely to go ape**** for no good reason than your average joe. a kempo instructor that i used to train under - and he was quite good at kempo - once cut a guy in the face in an extreme instance of road rage.

the ego that MA training tends to build up; the fixation upon the ugly details of fighting; the imagining of life as a battleground; the underlying fear of combat that comes with an actual understanding of its realities; all of these things can, and often do, combine, to promote extreme reactions to everyday situations. for instance, (and i've said this all in another thread, somewhere), me and my friends push each other around from time to time, especially when we're drunk, as young gentlemen tend to do. certain MA friends of mine, however, have been known to react to simple friendly shoves with knees to the stomach, throws, or worse. of course they don't mean any harm, but the fear of having to prove themselves, mixed with the deep need to prove themselves, makes them very unpredictable in these kinds of situations.

for an example of what i'm talking about, go through the different MA forums on the net (especially the more popular ones), and compare the number of threads about morality in martial arts (like this one) with the number of threads about how to kick someone's ass the best or about which new reality based fighting system is the most badass. i'm sorry to say it, but these people aren't interested in morality.

anyway, i would agree with you and say that a qigong class would be perfect, or even a yoga class, or a piano class for that matter. something which involves the refinement of skill, if only to occupy them and keep them out of trouble. but sending them to tiger schulman's karate might not be the best idea, and i think that's the question at issue.

[agreenknight]

I think those that's why the people who are scam artists are able to be around, because the fuel on that desire of humanity.