The Role of the Rich in Martial Arts - Taekwando, Karate, Muay Thai

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

The Role of the Rich in martial arts. Reading a fascinating book on the real history of Taekwando. If you want to understand the fate of Muay Thai, you have to understand the fates of other martial arts and sports. Super interesting is that Karate was basically a rich kid art, when it was brought over from Okinawa, taught in clubs around Universities by only a couple of Okinawans in the 1920s, and then 30s. A few of these affluent youth were also Koreans (Korea was a colony), so they brought back what they learned in those clubs and basically invented Taekwando over the years. Two huge waves of martial art influence, Japanese Karate and Korean Taekwando (which was basically Korean Karate) fell out of that little university scene of rich kids probably affirming a deep and long for sense of manliness through study. Okinawan Karate (I don't know much about it) was probably born across the people of that island culture, but it was the role of the rich, or at least affluent, that created the bridge for its transmission. This tension between the rich who engage in dreamy, ideological theaters of transformation, and the poor who do all the fighting, and through fights/wars, actually develop the techniques, is in Muay Thai as well. It's interesting and important to not undervalue the transmitive-imaginative role of the rich. You see it all the time. Even in the huge influence of The Fighter's Mind by Sheridan, which essentially was a rich kid seeking to find manliness, but in a way that just resonates across the culture. Ultimately, its the affluent, or some mode of affluence, which will end up transmitting a culture and it's arts to other places in the world. The responsibility placed upon them is subtle and important.

 

[Coach James Poidog]

Bjj is another prime example with mostly the wealthy being taught by the Gracies in Brazil. Its part of why and how it ended up here in the states, specifically Torrance, CA.

[Coach James Poidog]

In fact there was a counter point to the wealthy/Gracies and the people who couldnt afford to train with them that still found ways to learn, the vale tudo crowd and the lutas. Better people than me can really explain it, but essentially it created a "gang" like atmosphere with the wealthy being one faction and the poor being another championed by these two groups. Towards the forum topic though, it was the Gracies ability to move to another country and blow up their family's name and sport that led to where we are no with the art. 

[Josephine (Jojo) Kim]

The role of the rich in the arts in general! In the context of History, I’m learning that with wealth comes the birth of the opinionated man. Preferences and taste are socialized by the richness of exposure and education. 

This is a fascinating topic because art is one of the intersection points of the rich and the poor. (I’m thinking of the rich art collector and the “poor artist” cultural motifs). Also, art has the potential to be an equalizer of class, like death, because of the arguably more inherent nature of human creativity. 

As for martial arts, I see money all over the gym and fight scene both locally and internationally (travel, equipment, nutrition science, etc). But, I would like to see...how much of its survival is fueled by human fight philosophy or technology, than pure monied privilege? 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

On 5/31/2019 at 2:38 AM, Josephine (Jojo) Kim said:

This is a fascinating topic because art is one of the intersection points of the rich and the poor. (I’m thinking of the rich art collector and the “poor artist” cultural motifs). Also, art has the potential to be an equalizer of class, like death, because of the arguably more inherent nature of human creativity. 

It's very interesting for you to expand the subject to the level of arts in general. I did not expect that! In combat arts there is an added dimension, which is that fighting itself - and by that I mean "real" fighting as a capacity - tends to favor those who are raised in rough lives. Having to scrap, or be physically competent is something you learn at a young age, generally, and these qualities and their relationship to violence, really seem to help performance in combat sports. The rich or affluent are widely seen as "soft", which is why many of them may be drawn to fighting arts/sports, as a way to prove or improve themselves. In Thailand we are seeing a huge trend of this from the Chinese middle class males who are now coming to toughen/prove their manhood, now that their country is in full economic bloom. This is repeating much of what has happened from the last in previous decades. You saw it in the huge success of the book A Fighter's Heart, by Sam Sheridan, which was basically a rich Uni boy traveling around looking for tough adventure.

So in fighting there is a kind of contrast, it seems. Over generalizing, you have the "real fighters" who come from rougher backgrounds, and then the meeting them on the other side, you have the affluent who are drawn to the arts because of their affluence. I'm not sure it's the same in the arts, maybe you would disagree. Yes, we have the image of the starving artist, there isn't the same feeling that he is a better artist because he's disadvantaged. One might imagine that an affluent person might make a very good painter, or writer.

But, I'm not entirely sure of the argument there. What is "real" art?

In the story of martial sports and arts there is a very interesting example in Karate, as it was disseminated to Japan in the 1920s and 1930s in a very abstract way, to the affluent, and that even sparring was removed from the equation. Funakoshi, was the man most responsible for bringing Karate to Japan from Okinawa, someone who prided himself on never injuring a single person:

 

[Jeremy Stewart]

8 hours ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

It's very interesting for you to expand the subject to the level of arts in general. I did not expect that! In combat arts there is an added dimension, which is that fighting itself - and by that I mean "real" fighting as a capacity - tends to favor those who are raised in rough lives. Having to scrap, or be physically competent is something you learn at a young age, generally, and these qualities and their relationship to violence, really seem to help performance in combat sports. The rich or affluent are widely seen as "soft", which is why many of them may be drawn to fighting arts/sports, as a way to prove or improve themselves. In Thailand we are seeing a huge trend of this from the Chinese middle class males who are now coming to toughen/prove their manhood, now that their country is in full economic bloom. This is repeating much of what has happened from the last in previous decades. You saw it in the huge success of the book A Fighter's Heart, by Sam Sheridan, which was basically a rich Uni boy traveling around looking for tough adventure.

So in fighting there is a kind of contrast, it seems. Over generalizing, you have the "real fighters" who come from rougher backgrounds, and then the meeting them on the other side, you have the affluent who are drawn to the arts because of their affluence. I'm not sure it's the same in the arts, maybe you would disagree. Yes, we have the image of the starving artist, there isn't the same feeling that he is a better artist because he's disadvantaged. One might imagine that an affluent person might make a very good painter, or writer.

But, I'm not entirely sure of the argument there. What is "real" art?

In the story of martial sports and arts there is a very interesting example in Karate, as it was disseminated to Japan in the 1920s and 1930s in a very abstract way, to the affluent, and that even sparring was removed from the equation. Funakoshi, was the man most responsible for bringing Karate to Japan from Okinawa, someone who prided himself on never injuring a single person:

I may be over simplifying things here, but it's all the suffix do. Do or way is seen to be a way of cultivating oneself or for want of a better way to describe it, the way to self improvement. So Karate-do, is a method of spiritual self improvement without a focus on the martial context of the techniques.  Whereas if one practices Karate-Jutsu the emphasis is placed on the physical application of the techniques and there viability in actual confrontation. Spiritual edification coming second to the primary purpose in other words. Having said that, I don't see how you can have one without the other. 

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

Tying this to art is interesting in a few ways, both in that the poor artist had to have "patrons" who supported them - and sportsman have to have an audience and a camp - but also in that the rich practitioner/artist is able to devote himself due to his leisure. Listening to Joe Rogan, I'm always pretty surprised by how "good" a lot of these celebrity Jiu-jitsu players become, but then it's not that surprising at all when they have a lot of time to devote to it. It's not a "hobby" just because they're wealthy, but in a poor practitioner it's a kind of hunger because the way to "find time" to practice is to either devote yourself entirely and kind of let other responsibilities atrophy, or you're a "weekend warrior" because you have to work all the shifts, take care of all the kids, etc. A painter who can paint 20 hours a day is "better" than a painter who can paint 2 hours a day, and whether you're rich or poor doesn't make a difference other than how you go about having the time to dedicate yourself to it.

In the world of Muay Thai in Thailand, this conversation becomes interesting because it used to be like Fighting Chickens, where a rich man would pay a trainer to take care of his chickens, like a patron. A gym supported the fighters so that they could fight. Introduce the affluent (relatively or directly) westerner who pays for training and over enough decades the patterns of the gym space actually change. In Pattaya this is distinct. Kru Nu is the head of the second oldest gym in Pattaya (behind Sityodthong) and holds a certificate that identifies him as a real traditional fighter's gym (of which there are only 2-3 left in Pattaya, despite the small city have TONS of gyms now), as opposed to a commercial business. Kru Nu's gym, Petchrungruang, is still a business. But it has a certificate from the Muay Thai Authority of Chonburi (our province) that identifies him as a different class than the newer gyms, which cater mainly to tourism... and have taxes and certificates from the Board of Tourism, rather than the Sport Authority. The tourist market allows gyms to cover their overhead and it puts much less pressure on the fighters of the gym to earn a living to support the whole operation. That's kind of good in ways. But it changes the priorities of the gym a lot, which I love about Petchrungruang because Kru Nu invites anyone and everyone to train the same way his real fighters do, but they're his priority. He's not catering to the guest, so to speak. The commercial gyms are doing much better, business-wise, and with money comes power and they can throw weight around for opportunities. Something a small gym can't necessarily do, but has very long-held connections with promoters and other gym owners (Thai and western, many of the western gym owners came through Kru Nu's gym at some point). Even Sityodthong, after the death of the absolute Legend founder, Master Yodthong, has completely changed now that it's under the management of his children, who grew up affluent.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

On 5/31/2019 at 5:55 PM, Jeremy Stewart said:

Do or way is seen to be a way of cultivating oneself or for want of a better way to describe it, the way to self improvement. So Karate-do, is a method of spiritual self improvement without a focus on the martial context of the techniques.  Whereas if one practices Karate-Jutsu the emphasis is placed on the physical application of the techniques and there viability in actual confrontation. Spiritual edification coming second to the primary purpose in other words. Having said that, I don't see how you can have one without the other. 

Yes, but we tend to think of the -do as somehow older, more traditional, or grounding. But, from the book on the history of Taekwando I am reading, which is really also a history of Karate (because TKD is basically Karate at root), it may have been the case that the -do movement is relatively modern, that that nomenclature came after the -jutsu. And, at least by that writer's account, the -do movement very well may have developed as part of the affluence of the new Karate students in Japan. I'm not educated in the history of Karate, but I do find it interesting that Okanawan Karate was basically imported to Japan principally in the abstraction of forms. Japan already had a history of sparring oriented martial arts (Kendo, Judo), but instead Karate took on a -do priority in philosophy or orientation, at least in its first decade or so. The non-fighting nature of Japanese Karate seems to meet up with affluence, at least to my ear. You get the same thing in the appeal of traditional martial arts to the west, at times, learning less-applicable abstractions (taught to the middle class), while projecting images (fantasy?) of lethality. Today I was just reading that one of the reasons why mid-century Japanese Karate did not have much "combination" fighting and concentrated on only single strikes was the belief in that a single strike would be deadly. There was no reason to throw and land more than one strike. One could see how a martial art developed both around - do (Dao) and one-death-strike, grows quite far from actually fighting prowess. Perhaps we go to far astray in this, but I find it interesting.

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

On 5/31/2019 at 5:55 PM, Jeremy Stewart said:

Spiritual edification coming second to the primary purpose in other words. Having said that, I don't see how you can have one without the other. 

There is in Muay Thai a definite -do dimension of Muay Thai, which Sylvie expressed some of in the quote below. It's in the scoring aesthetic, in the comportment of fighters and krus, probably buried in the agricultural roots of the fighting and its performance. But any Thai involved in the Muay Thai of fighting would think it strange if you tried to isolate it, or make a discipline of it, make a Dao of it. I think we in the west (affluent as we are), can be drawn to the Dao of Muay, partly because of our affluence, but also because we are outsiders to the culture of Muay Thai. I'm not saying it's without merit or worth to contemplate it, but sometimes the "It's all about respect" western stories of Muay Thai feel like ideological fantasies of our own privileged. I'm not sure about that, but it feels that way.

Sylvie quote:

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

 

On 5/31/2019 at 5:55 PM, Jeremy Stewart said:

I may be over simplifying things here, but it's all the suffix do.

Here's a long selection on the history of -do, you may find it interesting:

 

Here is an amazing passage that lays the foundation of Judo, as an art, right along class lines, in the words of the founder himself, Kano:

 

[threeoaks]

(This is in reply to the discussion up the thread; didn’t manage a quote because I could not choose which one).  In visual art there is most certainly an expectation that the poorer artist will be more “hungry”, “primitive”, “raw talent” & other patronizing terms.  Add in race and you have Basquiat as the paradigmatic “poor genius” (meanwhile he was terrifically sophisticated & strategic).   The rich artist on the other hand, is the “Sunday Painter” (the expression is an insult referring to dilettantism.  It’s not that he only paints on Sunday because he works, quite the contrary, it’s that she only paints on Sunday cause she’s yachting & shopping the rest of the week).  Because of mfa programs in the US, which are now legion & terrific money-makers for universities, art is now evermore a playground for the rich & it’s pretty disgusting.  Columbia, where I taught a decade, costs @140k without housing etc. so you’re either rich, or your permanently in debt for an art degree.  There are many interesting parallels with martial arts.  The comfort with violence as a working class phenomenon has a relation to the common expectation that the artist be rough, drug addicted & possibly disturbed (like me as a kid lol).  It’s a limiting thing, much like expecting a Thai fighter from the North to express him or herself in a non-intellectual (non-femeu) way.  

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

22 minutes ago, threeoaks said:

In visual art there is most certainly an expectation that the poorer artist will be more “hungry”, “primitive”, “raw talent” & other patronizing terms.  Add in race and you have Basquiat as the paradigmatic “poor genius” (meanwhile he was terrifically sophisticated & strategic).

There almost seems a dialectic (geez, I usually hate that word and concept) between the perceived but yearned for "rawness" or "reality" of the poor (visual artist, fighter?), as nearly a fantasy of the affluent, and the transcendence of social strata (or even human strata), from the disadvantaged artist/fighter, in response. The raw "talent" is taken up by the urban elite, polished (in a gym, in a gallery), and brought into the marketplace when suitable for it.

On the other hand, of course, in writing, in music, and in many other aspects of the arts, you don't always have this high/low dichotomy.

[Jeremy Stewart]

15 hours ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Here's a long selection on the history of -do, you may find it interesting:

 

Here is an amazing passage that lays the foundation of Judo, as an art, right along class lines, in the words of the founder himself, Kano:

Thank you Kevin. I found the sections of the book you posted very informative and I agree the concept of do has been romanticized to fit within the ideals of a modern affluent world. I find in the above quote by Kano some relevance to the beginnings of my journey in the martial arts. My first art and love was Karate, I began training in a small rough mining town. Anyway, jump forward a bit and we're back in the back smoke and I wanted to continue my training. However believe it or not there wasn't much choice, the karate I'd been doing out west didn't exist in the city, This was in the eighties. There was a lot of as Kano put it, ill disciplined ryu around. I wanted to train at one of these ill disciplined ryu,  as a lot of my mates did. My father didn't want me to train with these thugs as he put it, so I ended up at a kickboxing school that had it's roots in Taekwondo. So the point of my ramble is Karate at that time and place (at least a certain kind of karate) carried with it unfavourable association.

With regards to the modern conceptualized ideal of do, there was none of this at my kickboxing school. We trained, and we trained hard and I like to think that training in a hard physical combat oriented environment by way of it's very nature reveals oneself to oneself, because in the end it's really only yourself you're fighting. I also think that training in the combat arts gives you a certain strength of character that pulls through persnal adversity like no other art form can.

[Jeremy Stewart]

My version do.

[Jeremy Stewart]

22 hours ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Yes, but we tend to think of the -do as somehow older, more traditional, or grounding. But, from the book on the history of Taekwando I am reading, which is really also a history of Karate (because TKD is basically Karate at root), it may have been the case that the -do movement is relatively modern, that that nomenclature came after the -jutsu. And, at least by that writer's account, the -do movement very well may have developed as part of the affluence of the new Karate students in Japan. I'm not educated in the history of Karate, but I do find it interesting that Okanawan Karate was basically imported to Japan principally in the abstraction of forms. Japan already had a history of sparring oriented martial arts (Kendo, Judo), but instead Karate took on a -do priority in philosophy or orientation, at least in its first decade or so. The non-fighting nature of Japanese Karate seems to meet up with affluence, at least to my ear. You get the same thing in the appeal of traditional martial arts to the west, at times, learning less-applicable abstractions (taught to the middle class), while projecting images (fantasy?) of lethality. Today I was just reading that one of the reasons why mid-century Japanese Karate did not have much "combination" fighting and concentrated on only single strikes was the belief in that a single strike would be deadly. There was no reason to throw and land more than one strike. One could see how a martial art developed both around - do (Dao) and one-death-strike, grows quite far from actually fighting prowess. Perhaps we go to far astray in this, but I find it interesting.

It's not to far afield assessment.  You can see it in general terms at a lot of clubs and gyms. The more genteel an environment a person comes from, the less comfortable they are with violence and the notion of getting hit, especially in the face. It's not always the case but from observations over the years it's an accurate one. Working class people generally don't react that way.The very notion of single shot death blows is far removed from reality and you can really only understand that viscerally if you come from a rough neighbourhood. Look at Alma Juniku for instance, she comes from Logan City. I don't know what suburb of Logan. I come from Logan. To most people from Logan, just merely existing is a daily fight. My point to that, is she feels it viscerally, instinctively that one shot does not make the kill. Such high and mighty deliberations on one shot kills can only ever be made by the rich, as they have the time to ponder such things. Here's a sad but funny anecdote on how people regard Logan City....... My son was out and about in Brisbane City. He starts up a conversation with a girl. She asks him where he comes from. He says Logan. The girl replies, don't people die in Logan?

[Josephine (Jojo) Kim]

On 5/31/2019 at 9:34 AM, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

It's very interesting for you to expand the subject to the level of arts in general. I did not expect that! In combat arts there is an added dimension, which is that fighting itself - and by that I mean "real" fighting as a capacity - tends to favor those who are raised in rough lives. Having to scrap, or be physically competent is something you learn at a young age, generally, and these qualities and their relationship to violence, really seem to help performance in combat sports. The rich or affluent are widely seen as "soft", which is why many of them may be drawn to fighting arts/sports, as a way to prove or improve themselves. In Thailand we are seeing a huge trend of this from the Chinese middle class males who are now coming to toughen/prove their manhood, now that their country is in full economic bloom. This is repeating much of what has happened from the last in previous decades. You saw it in the huge success of the book A Fighter's Heart, by Sam Sheridan, which was basically a rich Uni boy traveling around looking for tough adventure.

So in fighting there is a kind of contrast, it seems. Over generalizing, you have the "real fighters" who come from rougher backgrounds, and then the meeting them on the other side, you have the affluent who are drawn to the arts because of their affluence. I'm not sure it's the same in the arts, maybe you would disagree. Yes, we have the image of the starving artist, there isn't the same feeling that he is a better artist because he's disadvantaged. One might imagine that an affluent person might make a very good painter, or writer.

But, I'm not entirely sure of the argument there. What is "real" art?

In the story of martial sports and arts there is a very interesting example in Karate, as it was disseminated to Japan in the 1920s and 1930s in a very abstract way, to the affluent, and that even sparring was removed from the equation. Funakoshi, was the man most responsible for bringing Karate to Japan from Okinawa, someone who prided himself on never injuring a single person:

Thank you for sharing so much, Kevin! This speaks to the functionality versus symbolism of art. Is it just meant to express the artist or hide/free the artist? I am reminded of the preface in the classic novel, “The Portrait of Dorian Gray.” It’s a page and a half but my highlight is the last line after all is said and done about the greatness of art itself. 

 

[Admin edit: these photo files were lost in the takedown of the site]

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

3 minutes ago, Josephine (Jojo) Kim said:

It’s a page and a half but my highlight is the last line after all is said and done about the greatness of art itself. 

I think Wilde was not a Muay Thai fighter, and lived in an altogether different universe. There are, in this other universe, a trinity of transcendentals (as they are sometimes called), Truth, Beauty and Goodness. Three dimensions of the same thing. All three strike me as quite useful. One of the things that I find extraordinary about Muay Thai is how a truly beautiful move is incredibly beautiful BECAUSE of its efficaciousness. The right move, at the right time, is defined by its utility, without falling into utility. It also has the transcendental quality of mathematics, which has all 3 qualities, a mathematics of the body. At its highest, Muay Thai seems to possess all 3 through its utility. It has an almost Spinozist quality to me.

[Josephine (Jojo) Kim]

On 5/31/2019 at 5:26 AM, Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Tying this to art is interesting in a few ways, both in that the poor artist had to have "patrons" who supported them - and sportsman have to have an audience and a camp - but also in that the rich practitioner/artist is able to devote himself due to his leisure. Listening to Joe Rogan, I'm always pretty surprised by how "good" a lot of these celebrity Jiu-jitsu players become, but then it's not that surprising at all when they have a lot of time to devote to it. It's not a "hobby" just because they're wealthy, but in a poor practitioner it's a kind of hunger because the way to "find time" to practice is to either devote yourself entirely and kind of let other responsibilities atrophy, or you're a "weekend warrior" because you have to work all the shifts, take care of all the kids, etc. A painter who can paint 20 hours a day is "better" than a painter who can paint 2 hours a day, and whether you're rich or poor doesn't make a difference other than how you go about having the time to dedicate yourself to it.

In the world of Muay Thai in Thailand, this conversation becomes interesting because it used to be like Fighting Chickens, where a rich man would pay a trainer to take care of his chickens, like a patron. A gym supported the fighters so that they could fight. Introduce the affluent (relatively or directly) westerner who pays for training and over enough decades the patterns of the gym space actually change. In Pattaya this is distinct. Kru Nu is the head of the second oldest gym in Pattaya (behind Sityodthong) and holds a certificate that identifies him as a real traditional fighter's gym (of which there are only 2-3 left in Pattaya, despite the small city have TONS of gyms now), as opposed to a commercial business. Kru Nu's gym, Petchrungruang, is still a business. But it has a certificate from the Muay Thai Authority of Chonburi (our province) that identifies him as a different class than the newer gyms, which cater mainly to tourism... and have taxes and certificates from the Board of Tourism, rather than the Sport Authority. The tourist market allows gyms to cover their overhead and it puts much less pressure on the fighters of the gym to earn a living to support the whole operation. That's kind of good in ways. But it changes the priorities of the gym a lot, which I love about Petchrungruang because Kru Nu invites anyone and everyone to train the same way his real fighters do, but they're his priority. He's not catering to the guest, so to speak. The commercial gyms are doing much better, business-wise, and with money comes power and they can throw weight around for opportunities. Something a small gym can't necessarily do, but has very long-held connections with promoters and other gym owners (Thai and western, many of the western gym owners came through Kru Nu's gym at some point). Even Sityodthong, after the death of the absolute Legend founder, Master Yodthong, has completely changed now that it's under the management of his children, who grew up affluent.

This is so neat - to use chicken fighting and Kru Nu’s Gym as case examples.

Art seems to draw in community, maybe even form community, because this is the nature of beauty. We want to discover it for ourselves, but we also want to gather others around to celebrate, study, learn from, and test Beauty together. There is a larger, communal validation of the Beauty. 

Also, we want to absorb as much of it as possible. Specifically in regards to Muay Thai, I perceive nak muays want to “inscribe” the Art into our bodies. For it to become a partner of our bodies’ natural flow is a beautiful thing indeed. (On a relevant side note, I think fight photographers want to savor and capture the beauty in a different form. Not on their own bodies, but within different cascades and shadows of light. They can then share something closer to their exact personal perceptions to the onlooker via the camera’s malleable eye and the dramatics of light/color/effect). 

On the topic of patrons, there seems to be layered motives to wanting to support. Some patrons want to tap into this beauty and grow from it and ultimately support it by tangible means. Other patrons want to invest in it because Beauty is also a source of raw power. (These motives are not mutually exclusive, but just two types of motives I am currently thinking of). 

I think the rarer ”Beauties,” like Petchruongrang Gym, are the ones chasing after the art, not the money. They could chase the latter if they really wanted to, with probably just a few tweaks, but they are so consumed by the art itself that may not be their primary concern. In a sense, they have reigned in the true power of Beauty because it is untainted. 

This is a pretty romantic view of power, money, and art, but I think I ascribe to it. 

[Josephine (Jojo) Kim]

35 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

I think Wilde was not a Muay Thai fighter, and lived in an altogether different universe. There are, in this other universe, a trinity of transcendentals (as they are sometimes called), Truth, Beauty and Goodness. Three dimensions of the same thing. All three strike me as quite useful. One of the things that I find extraordinary about Muay Thai is how a truly beautiful move is incredibly beautiful BECAUSE of its efficaciousness. The right move, at the right time, is defined by its utility, without falling into utility. It also has the transcendental quality of mathematics, which has all 3 qualities, a mathematics of the body. At its highest, Muay Thai seems to possess all 3 through its utility. It has an almost Spinozist quality to me.

Absolutely. Wilde was not a Muay Thai fighter, and this was his only novel based off of a Faust legend.

If he had seen a Muay Thai fighter fighting within the trinity of transcendentals, he might have written about that experience/story instead haha 

The arts is such a large umbrella term and often (too?) all-encompassing. I’m realizing now that different kinds of art philosophies don’t always occupy the same “shared venn diagram space” as each other, though they all lead to a form of art. 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

22 minutes ago, Josephine (Jojo) Kim said:

The arts is such a large umbrella term and often (too?) all-encompassing. I’m realizing now that different kinds of art philosophies don’t always occupy the same “shared venn diagram space” as each other, though they all lead to a form of art.

Right? The question is, is a completely useless Martial Art, still a Martial Art? (if there ever as such a thing.) Or, how far do you need to go in the direction of uselessness, before a Martial Art simply becomes Dance? Or, even more interestingly, how far must a Martial Art go in the direction of utility, when it ceases to be a Martial "Art", and simply becomes martial.

along these lines, this is Jigoro Kano, the inventor of modern Judo (and the belt system that Karate adopted). This, the portion where I linked (1:40), is impossibly beautiful to me. But, I'm not educated enough to know what these forms mean, in the complete sense of what they do. It would be disappointing to me though to learn (if anything like that were argued), that they are perfectly useless. It's beauty is invoked at several levels:

 

[threeoaks]

8 hours ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

The question is, is a completely useless Martial Art, still a Martial Art?

Or, even more interestingly, how far must a Martial Art go in the direction of utility, when it ceases to be a Martial "Art", and simply becomes martial.

It would be disappointing to me though to learn (if anything like that were argued), that they are perfectly useless.

 

Utility is a good dividing line in martial arts (love how you frame the question in both directions), but in contemporary art there is not an inarguable line between art and craft, nor is beauty in any form a requirement (debatable what beauty is of course).

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

10 hours ago, threeoaks said:

not an inarguable line between art and craft, nor is beauty in any form a requirement (debatable what beauty is of course

Some of the most un-beautiful things, I find terribly beautiful. For me art or Art always has to be beautiful. It's up to the viewer to discover that beauty, sometimes its buried very deep within there, or at the conceptual edges. It's just a hypostatized version of our relationship to the world. As to art and craft, that is a super interesting one. Muay Thai in Thailand is much, much closer to a craft than an art, in most of the gyms producing fighters. I like that term, Martial Craft, rather than Martial Art. I think we are getting somewhere!

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

1 minute ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

I like that term, Martial Craft, rather than Martial Art. I think we are getting somewhere!

Maybe we are getting somewhere as to the original question of the OP. Does a Martial Craft become a Martial Art simply when it passes into the hands of the Rich?

And even more problematically, is this the case with all crafts and arts?

[threeoaks]

1 minute ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Some of the most un-beautiful things, I find terribly beautiful. For me art or Art always has to be beautiful. It's up to the viewer to discover that beauty. It's just a hypostatized version of our relationship to the world.

Had to look up hypostatized.  I suppose it’s true you can extend the idea of beauty to be “the thing one likes”.  I often have this argument with studio driven artists (who are more craft-driven) and conceptual or “post-studio” artists, for whom obviously the idea is the beautiful thing, and they signal that by making extremely plodding, minimal or otherwise unattractive objects if any object at all.  Neither artist understands or respects the other.

 

5 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

As to art and craft, that is a super interesting one. Muay Thai in Thailand is much, much closer to a craft than an art, in most of the gyms producing fighters. I like that term, Martial Craft, rather than Martial Art. I think we are getting somewhere!

Interesting re; martial craft.  I love that.  I view craft as on equal footing with art, & usually find it’s an extremely specious, class, race & gender driven  distinction.  “Reading in Detail” by Naomi Schor is a good book for breaking down the history of value & the words used to signal it in visual art.

 

btw I love un-beautiful things too.  Cut faces, busted pots - wabi-sabi!

5 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

 

[threeoaks]

7 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

Does a Martial Craft become a Martial Art simply when it passes into the hands of the Rich?

And even more problematically, is this the case with all crafts and arts?

Jinx!  Yes!