Martial Arts and Atheism
really cool article I came across over at The Atlantic, the videos are priceless.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdUxPLIJVgI#![/youtube]
In the second video, he confronts a martial artist not in on the delusion, and that second martial artist punches Yanagi in the face.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jf3Gc2a0_8[/youtube]
Yanagi's students seem to be under some kind of spell. Why would they be willing to go along with Yanagi's charade for so long? Are we seeing a phenomenon like religion?
The whole article is well worth reading, and really, it's actually about atheism.
_________________
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”
-- Robert Anton Wilson
thomas81
Veteran
Joined: 2 May 2012
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,147
Location: County Down, Northern Ireland
The first video looks fake to me however I used to attend the Bujinkan and I've seen this sort of technique used before. Its nothing to do with hypnotism. What you are doing is using psychological trickery to encourage the attacker to lose balance and fall over. For example, if you place your hand over the intended target (your face) the attacker gets confused so if you move it at the last moment the attacker will try and hit your hand which can cause him to be diverted allowing you to make a counter attack.
You can apply the same principle to make the opponent fall without touching them.
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,150
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
I haven't watched the above but I did a while back buy a Systema series by Vadim Starov just because I was hearing excellent things about it, and it looked fascinating until I saw them doing them 'empty-force' throws and I realized about that point that I'd been had. The ballistics striking, ie. the weird figure-eight flail punches *could* work but wow - talk about broadcast.
I'm clearly not an atheist but I do see a lot of quackery and 'magick' in certain styles, especially the belt-factory stuff. Needless to say you're either in it for the practicality of the martial arts or... you're an AD&D nerd looking for more AD&D. Seems like the later siphons off a certain group of people where the practical, as I consider myself incredibly blessed to have found, tends to draw FBI and law enforcement which we have a fairly strong contingent of in our class.
In the second video, he confronts a martial artist not in on the delusion, and that second martial artist punches Yanagi in the face.
Yanagi's students seem to be under some kind of spell. Why would they be willing to go along with Yanagi's charade for so long? Are we seeing a phenomenon like religion?
More like a scripted scene from a chop-saki movie - you know, where the hero is attacked by a hoard of students who fall down without ever being hit...
Yanagi: "Okay, disciples, here's how it's going down. When the camera starts rolling, I want each of you to fall down as if I had struck you. Anyone who does not do as I say gets a boot to the head. Got it?"
Chorus: "Hai, Yanagi-san!"
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,150
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
thomas81
Veteran
Joined: 2 May 2012
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,147
Location: County Down, Northern Ireland
Well I can assure you the Bujinkan is no 'belt factory' however these sorts of techniques, while decidely shady in these videos are possible to the right practitioner.
"Empty Force" in this case is most likely to mean "Staged Performance", as there is no evidence of "magick" being involved, even if "magick" existed in the first place - the concept of "magick" is, at best, mythical...
_________________
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,150
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
There are some serious shakers and movers in the world who'd disagree with the mythical part. From the best I can tell the Aleister Crowley model where reality and BS meet somewhere in between and reality has an elastic attraction to BS - there definitely seems to be something to that.
Links, please?
Aleister Crowley claimed to hear the voices of angels - a common claim among schizophrenics and other delusional types.
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,150
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
Links, please?
Aleister Crowley claimed to hear the voices of angels - a common claim among schizophrenics and other delusional types.
If you're sincerely interested in taking that puzzle apart I'll PM you - just for the sake of not derailing the thread. In exchange for taking it off-thread I'll shut up about it from here out.
Fwiw, Daito-ryu isn't quite the same thing as aikido (not that some aikido dojos don't have *exactly* the same issues).
There was one part of the original article which I disagreed with, which was when a bullet is described as basically making a little bullet-sized tunnel through the body and nothing else. That's more akin to what a lazer might do that a bullet; the latter can basically liquify the tissue around and in front of its passage, depending on the size and speed of the projectile.
I caught that too, but since I wasn't trying to make a gun thread, I let it go on by. I've had to explain hydrostatic shock and some of the other gorier aspects of terminal ballistics to certain medieval fetishists overstating the effectiveness of middle ages weaponry; the metaphor I use is that it's like a sonic boom going off inside the body.
_________________
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”
-- Robert Anton Wilson
You can apply the same principle to make the opponent fall without touching them.
That doesn't seem to be what was going on here though. Look at the second video, the guy's technique is completely ineffective when he tries to fight someone who doesn't know that it's supposed to work.
_________________
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”
-- Robert Anton Wilson