The Reverse-Jenga-Playing Shaved Apes, or, a history of MA

[Chris McKinley]

I'm gonna toss out an idea for discussion that the military professional blog kind of touched on. It's an analogy. It goes a little suh-in' like this:

One-on-one H2H combat is, at its essence, a fairly simple but extreme thing physically/physiologically/emotionally/psychologically. Not sport combat. Not martial arts. Not beer-brawling at the local honky tonk. Not "blue steel" posedowns between fratboys at the local metrosexual/sorority chick STD clearinghouse. Just combat. Ya know, the old-fashioned kind where one guy dies and the other might also if he doesn't get prompt triage.

Now, combat starts off kinda simple this way. Eventually though, one dude comes along who seems to kinda do it pretty well. Being the shaved apes that we are, the other guys start to emulate him as best they can to see if they can't up their survival percentage when the shitstorm blows in. Monkey see, monkey do. If this works enough that a distinct method or tactic arises and is found to provide an advantage in combat, it gets absorbed into the culture at large of those very same shaved apes.

Over the course of time, and it can take generations, other apes come and go, and they get bored with the simplicity of the whole thing, so they add their own spin onto it, making it into a codified ceremonial thang of one sort or another. Once this happens, the shaved apes can now, finally, engage in their favorite pastime....separating themselves into the star-bellied and non-star-bellied categories. You gotta clique it before you stick it.

All this, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with real combat in any discernable way, since combat itself still remains the fairly simple and ugly thing that it naturally is. Empirically, objectively and experientially, there's no such thing as having an "authentic" or "complete" approach to combat. What a given shaved ape does when trying to kill another shaved ape either works, or it does not. The dead ape doesn't get a free do-over just because he fought using an authentic style, or had the complete transmission of a given system of whacking people. The ape who won fought authentically and completely, as evidenced by his opponent lying dead in the dirt.

Much like religion, in fact, often exactly like religion, the apes (apparently no longer suitably distracted by all-over body hair) like to spend their time taking concepts with a simple yet effective message and creatively placing their own conceptual, ceremonial, ideological and spiritual barnacles all over it for decoration. After all, the elegant simplicity of that idea was nice, but it lacked pizazz and flourish, and it certainly didn't match the drapes.

So, as the apes are wont to do, they continue to play a giant game of reverse-Jenga with their simple elegant ideas. Having the attention span and cool, long-term perspective of a panicked lemur, they also begin (rather quickly) to confuse the original simple idea for their own aggregated trappings, seeing each new barnacle as absolutely and uncompromisingly essential. And as the apes are also distressingly wont to do, each new generation believes virtually everything they hear or read, so they can't be bothered to spend time questioning what the apes of the previous generation tell them about the now not-so-simple idea. After all, they are already quite busy themselves, what with all the cliquing and reverse-Jenga playing to be done.

Eventually, usually after many generations, the apes have devised for themselves (and not those other apes who don't have it) an idea so grandiose in its splendor, so ponderous with the weight of its own mass, and so encrusted with excruciating minutiae that, much like the tax code the apes are quite proud of, the ultimate apex of the idea is reached...a condition whereby no one ape is capable of manifesting the idea in actual practice anymore.

Somewhere along the way an ape comes along and discovers another simple idea, and the process begins anew.

[everything]

great essay. substitute "primates" for "apes". paraphrasing tabby cat's existential rants, apes don't have any tool for total annihilation, though. MA is really utterly meaningless. but, screw that. we like the b.s. ceremony and minutiae. quoting tabby: "and so we pass the days."

[Haoran]

Somewhere along the way an ape comes along and discovers another simple idea, and the process begins anew.

You're talking about Qi, right???

[everything]

lol, i thought he was talking about that ebay $299 deadly yang/chen taiji certification for sale.

[Strange]

wow reverse jenga, shaved apes, ma history hmm.... tres interessant...
chris, do you study white ape tongbei?

[Chris McKinley]

We talking a little racial epithet now, or just a bad joke?

[Strange]

come now my mang...
white ape tongbei is a well known, comprehensive and sophisticated style
liuhebafa also have a ape form in sanpanshiershi
its just a very simple and straightforward question: what form of ma and lineage do you practice?

[Andy_S]

DOES McKinley resemble a white ape? (Shaved or otherwise.) I have often wondered this myself - about a number of members of RSF, in fact. Only photos can get to the truth of the matter.

In the meantime, everyone calm down and have a nice banana.

[Chris McKinley]

Yeah, I know....actually, the Lama Pai that's often associated with your style seems to me very similar to Tongbei, which is a tough straightforward style from what I've seen. Being as Old Guard as I am, I don't usually bother with posting my training background, but since you asked I practice Baguazhang, Kali, Taijiquan and the very occasional BJJ. I've also trained other things in my 32 years of training, but those are the core of what I do.

[bigphatwong]

Much like religion, in fact, often exactly like religion, the apes (apparently no longer suitably distracted by all-over body hair) like to spend their time taking concepts with a simple yet effective message and creatively placing their own conceptual, ceremonial, ideological and spiritual barnacles all over it for decoration.

QFT

[Chris McKinley]

So.....who here gets caught in the trap of thinking in terms of having (or not) a complete system of martial arts?

[I am...]

So.....who here gets caught in the trap of thinking in terms of having (or not) a complete system of martial arts?

I have been down that path before. Fortunately the realities of practice and skill development also helped point to the points you brought up. In the end, bigger is not necessarily better.