the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Steve James wrote:They're all descriptions of frozen water in different contexts.

Afa words, snow is not snow in some contexts. Then again, what is grass, weed, skunk, kush, tea, and mary jane?

Funny story...


Stationed in Korea back in the 70s...sitting down chatting with a KATUSA "Korean Augmentation to the United States Army"

Was asking him how to say water in Korean....물 "mul"
Trying to dig deeper,,remarking on all the different ways of saying water, asking again what is the deeper meaning..
He smiled, dipped his fingers in a bowl filled with water that happened to be there, and flicked it at my face...

We both laughed....

Steve James wrote:Well, imo, yeah, they're all just a punch. A hook or upper cut or jab is a description, and there are many more. A palm is just a palm, but it can be a slap or chop. You won't know what it is until it's used. Iow, still a matter of context.

Having words to describe something helps us to evolve our understanding, particularly when we're trying to pass information on to a new generation.

"Go punch that bag."
"No, the other punch. The one that goes side to side."
"No with your other foot forward. Do a punch!"
"Good, you got it. Now.... do a punch."
"No... like punch up"

Everything in judo is just a throw, but having a word makes it easier to refer to.

They have hand throws, hip throws, foot throws, sacrifice throws, then each of those has multiple expressions, seoi nage, seoi otoshi, hane goshi, harai goshi.

A particular word can convey meaning more precisely, either through encompassing distinct characteristics, or through nuance. Fragrant vs smelly, for example.

Then we can build on those concepts instead of having to burden every reference with a parade of explanation.

You know I had forgotten all about what got this diversion started, wayne was saying something about the importance of the words "look" versus the word "gaze or glance" wasn't sure which one he decided was correct there.

But the idea was the meaning of the English words somehow conveyed the truth of the concepts. Would be nice to get back into that thread of conversation.

Afa noun v verb, which came first, snow or snowing? Imo, it's likely that people saw the thing, gave it a name, and whether it became a verb or not depended on whether the thing could be described as a process. There are lots of different trees, with different names, but "to tree" something describes an action.

It's snowing, it's going to snow, it snowed. Look at the snow. It's so bright I've gone snow blind.

But the point being "40 words for snow" okay, snow in what context? Noun verb or adjective?

A snowjob is a confidence hustle, so we could even count con as a word for snow if we wanted to be cheeky.

It's like the joke about how when Cook asked the Aboriginals (Originals) what the funny hopping animal was. The myth was that they said "kangaroo" or "I don't know." Well, you'd figure that people who come in contact with things regularly will have specific names for them. It's the same necessity to state about having different names for punches, except we're talking about survival.

What I meant about words earlier is that it's also nieve, neve, or schnee, depending one which language is being used. There's no connection between the white stuff that falls from the sky when it's cold and the word we use.

Back in the day, in ex-British colonies, the educational system used British materials. So, around Christmastime in Jamaica, they'd have read stories and poems about England. Consequently, they knew all about snow, but they'd never actually seen it. So, there was a joke about them writing about "snow in cane fields," and stories about their amazement arriving in New York or Canada during a snow storm.

Steve James wrote:Back in the day, in ex-British colonies, the educational system used British materials. So, around Christmastime in Jamaica, they'd have read stories and poems about England. Consequently, they knew all about snow, but they'd never actually seen it. So, there was a joke about them writing about "snow in cane fields," and stories about their amazement arriving in New York or Canada during a snow storm.

OH let's go WAAAAAY back. Egyptians had a pigment for blue in like 2,200 BC, but Europeans had no concept for it until relatively modern times.

https://lethbridgenewsnow.com/2021/02/0 ... olor-blue/

In all the writings of the time nobody described the sky or the sea as blue.

In regards to the connection between language and our perception of everything around us, Lazarus Geiger said this: “Here a whole world of antique relics for our investigation lies hidden, not in fragments, but in unbroken, well-connected links. The whole chain of development of each of our ideas up to its most primitive form is lying buried before us in words, and is awaiting its excavation by linguistic science.”

It goes to show just how influential words can be, even when comes down to something as simple as the color of the sky.

That rabbit hole leads to a whole network of divergences into psychology and language and industrial processes and international trade, the main idea being we didn't have a word for blue until like the 400s AD. It was the last color identified in English, and the order in which the others were discovered is surprisingly consistent across cultures globally.

It's not that the Greeks didn't perceive blue; they (Homer) described it as "wine colored," for example. They had the same eyes as ours. Though, there are cultures and people who can perceive more shades of a particular color than others.

The best example is the rainbow. If you check pre-18th century paintings, the rainbow has only three colors.


It wasn't until Newton discovered the ultraviolet part of the spectrum that it was represented. Did that mean they couldn't or didn't see it?


In the photo, what's the color between yellow and violet? Blue or green? The sky, of course, is the background.

In CMA, you have

1. major hand - hand you attack your opponent's body.
2. minor hand - hand you control your opponent's body part.

During

- form training, your eyes should follow your major hand.
- combat, your eyes loot at your attacking target.

FWIW the ancient Greeks had a word for indigo which is considered to be blue today.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo

robert wrote:FWIW the ancient Greeks had a word for indigo which is considered to be blue today.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo

I did not know that!

So Indigo originally meant Indian Dye, neat!

LIke with the marijuana, (and other cultivars) cannabis Indica is evolved from "from India"

Don't know if it's the strongest case for blue.

The Ancient Greek term for the dye was Ἰνδικὸν φάρμακον (indikon pharmakon, "Indian dye"), which, adopted to Latin as indicum (a second declension noun) or indico (oblique case) and via Portuguese, gave rise to the modern word indigo.[8]

This article goes into a bit more detail about theories that the sensitivity of our anatomy hadn't developed to a point where we could even perceive it.

https://successacrosscultures.com/2018/ ... erception/

So not only might our culture cause us to not look for it, but our eyes might not even be able to see if it we were looking at it.

We sort of rely strongly on color and eyesight so we tend to think of them as real, but they're all just the result of stimulation of particular anatomy. The color of something as we perceive it may have nothing whatsoever to do with the natural physical property of the object, but is more governed by the characteristics of the light waves interacting with them and the functioning of our eye anatomy.

It's all maya.

johnwang wrote:In CMA, you have

1. major hand - hand you attack your opponent's body.
2. minor hand - hand you control your opponent's body part.

During

- form training, your eyes should follow your major hand.
- combat, your eyes loot at your attacking target.

My teacher Dr. Xie said that “Of all the mistakes you may make when learning Baguazhang, the biggest mistake is to not look at and watch your major hand when doing forms.” Our eyes and our ‘Yi’ (intention/ inner mind’s eye) are linked together. This aides in getting your Yi into your hands.

.

blue -sometime ago i read somewhere that in early christian times the color blue was the color of either the devils skin or 一of his garment, so the color in it self was seen as evil.
so from that angle the color what ever was its name was probably not to be mentioned in word or writing

Trick wrote:blue -sometime ago i read somewhere that in early christian times the color blue was the color of either the devils skin or 一of his garment, so the color in it self was seen as evil.
so from that angle the color what ever was its name was probably not to be mentioned in word or writing

I think we put the age of references somewhere around the 450 AD?
It could be that association is maybe informed by mold and psychoreactive/poisonous fungus.

Color and vision is fascinating to me, really.

My first computers had 16 colors, it could represent almost any color, but you could only have 16 different colors on screen at the same time.
If you wanted an image to look a certain way you had to swap the pallete and assign the particular color values you wanted to each "slot" in your pallete.

You could flip through the palletes and see the same image but colored in innumerable ways.

And speaking of palletes, what about palates?
Some people love cilantro, but some people are genetically predisposed to think it tastes like soap.

The colors we see aren't reality. They're light of a certain frequency stimulating organic structures in our eye, transmitted and interpreted by our brain.

Right of the bat it's lying to us because the image on our sense hardware is upside down. Our brain processes it into a right side up image.

So between the reality of an object, which existence itself is open for some debate but I'm not wandering into that, and what we see, there is a whole lot of room for interference.

Just look at the stupid internet "blue or gold dress" or whatever fads that come up occasionally.

I'm losing the point.

The point is, light of a certain frequency hits your rods and cones and you call it blue.
Same frequency hits mine and I also call it blue.

But who is to say that what we are seeing is the same? How similar are our pallets?

Is my blue of that frequency a little closer to purple? Is yours closer to green? Is it a completely DIFFERENT area and actually shows up as red?

What if what I see normally would seem to you to be like how infrared thermal vision is rendered? Or more like a blacklight?

We've all got our own unique tastes, preferences, and expressions of self. How much of that is due to reality just hitting a LITTLE BIT different for each of us?

Like we say "there's no accounting for taste" but what if there is? There is a genetic marker for the "cilantro tastes like soap" gene, as well as color blindness.

What if all matters of taste and aesthetics were ultimately genetic expressions?

But who is to say that what we are seeing is the same? How similar are our pallets?

It's all in the brain, though scientists can define colors as wavelengths. These should be interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TypihLhpd-I

Just a little into that first one but that's EXACTLY what I'm trying to say.

my take on it is, there are soooo many possible uses for a movement in a form, don't get locked into the idea that 'my opponent is in front of me'. My taiji teacher back in the 90s sent me flying across the room with Repulse Monkey. I threw a punch, he grabbed my wrist with his thumb and index finger, and as he turned his body he pulled me off me feet sending me flying like superman towards a wall behind him. If he did not turn his head then there would have been a disconnect of his upper body and abdomen... in his case, the whole body moved as one, working together to send me in that direction.

my other teacher (Yang Shifu, bagua) taught me the principles of bagua, and this is the first 2:
principle #1 - first check principles
principle #2 - bu neng duan jin (no possible break force)

if you're twisting (in my context above, sending the opponent flying) your head would HAVE to move in the direction of you torso as your whole body is twisting. if your head didn't move with that you are going against the flow of your effort which is breaking the force

Unless you are backing into your opponent this makes no sense
Each individual RM has finished by the time you would look behind and you are entering another move

RM is the art of advancing while retreating