Why Do Rich Westerners Want To Fight?

[edwardsutherland]

The thrill of doing something dangerous?

Proving oneself as worthy of admiration and respect, attention?

Going to war and winning? Coming home a hero?

Protest against the status quo of regular "straight, boring worklife routines?"

Are there deeper reasons for fighting? Here is Dr. Janovs take on early imprints. Please read the section about free diving, alot of this brings me to think about motivation for fighting Muay-Thai.

http://cigognenews.blogspot.com.es/2016/02/still-more-on-act-out.html#comment-form.

 

 

 

[bakpao]

I'm too lazy to read it.

Going off your topic question alone though, there's many reasons, but I will briefly write my personal opinion.

I think if you spend a lot of time training for something whether its running, swimming, eating, boxing, muay thai, then you want to test yourself to see how good you actually are. A competition really shows you which areas you need to improve, though I don't think this is the only reason I also believe the rush of fighting is something many people love.

I'm not rich, but I want to compete so that I can improve and also because its something I enjoy and I don't want to live life doing things I don't enjoy. Hey they do say you only regret the things you didn't do! 

 

I'm sure someone can tell you a proper explanation with loads of theories etc etc etc.  :sorcerer:

[Micc]

I don't understand the "early imprints" concept. It's too speculative for me to be true and scientific. 

And I also do not agree with free diving bringing yourself close to death and reliving. This is a theory that seems to be put together to match the authors philosophy. 

Freedivers dive, because it's only then - without masks and all the equipment - that you feel truely free and have a kind of katharsis looking at the beauty hidden from most of the people underwater. Some say it's like connecting with God.

Diving down into the water - they never even come close to their breath-holding limits. Of course the amount of time you can spend without breathing while holding still in a pool is different to when you have to dive down and up with a weight around your neck and underwater currents. The death he had mentioned in the post - I'm not sure who he refers to. There was a close-to-death situtation in a small competition last month which I can think of - but it was because of the underwater currents that were irregular and the diver couldn't dive up. She was resusciated and brought to the hospital immidately and as far as I know, she's okay.

There was actually a death of a world-class famous diver recently: Natalia Molchanova, which was a huge loss to the freediving community. She went missing during a dive she had done outside of competition - where she was actually believed to dive without a safety diver (a second, experienced person keeping watch over your dive) on her own and was probably swept away by underwater currents. She was doing it on her own, an exception of the rule, which resulted in a fatality, unfortunately. 

The only thing that might be controversial about freediving are blackouts that happen in competitions, but mostly it happens if the diver surfaces too fast - yes, it can be a shock to the body to suddenly have air again and can result in a blackout even to world-class divers. It's still not a "close to death" experience. The top world class divers are used to different waters and are really all-around trained athletes, they can handle most of the situations in competition perfectly and I assure you, they don't do it for the thrill of "almost dying" - I'm sure they are a scared, but it's with respect to the force of nature they are standing face to face with.

Yeah, so maybe I went a bit overboard in explaining all that, but I feel people shouldn't write about freediving when a) they never experienced it, b) they never spoke with anyone who does it. I have the honour to work with one of the top 3 freedivers in the world and thanks to that I learned a lot about freediving and the misconceptions. I also got rid of my fear - the first movie I watched, I was literally scared to having goosebumps on my skin seeing him dive down. Now, I understand it better.

Regarding fighting: I don't know, do rich Westerners want to fight? I don't know, like Justin Bieber wants to fight? Let's ask him, he'll probably do it, because it would make him look brave and manly, so from my understanding, they do it because they want to be seen as though badasses. I think your question need to be more precise - what do you consider a rich Westerner for example?

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

The theory seems way too speculative for me, but I do believe that fighters are acting out very deep patterns in their body, and are often are attempting to transform or transcend them.

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

Yeah, I don't experience fighting as a "being glanced by death" or super "adrenaline junky" kind of thing. If put to it, I do recognize that fighting is dangerous and all kinds of terrible, life-altering or life-ending things could happen, but I think about it about as much as I think about those being facts of driving my motorbike to the gym or store every day. 

The difficulty I have is that there appears to be an a priori assumption that because many fighters who come out of poverty, that their fight is some kind of necessity. Absolutely a "hungry" fighter has motivations that are quite different from someone whose livelihood does not depend on the outcome of a fight. But I don't believe that the motivation to fight is singular; the "reasons" and motives behind fighting for every single person are legion. And by and large I think they are more similar between persons than they are different. I have absolutely zero interest in free diving, but I can empathize with the motivation and passion for it because it's similar enough to the core experiences of my world.

[Flora]

The theory seems way too speculative for me, but I do believe that fighters are acting out very deep patterns in their body, and are often are attempting to transform or transcend them.

I agree with you Kevin, it is one of the many reasons behind wanting to fight.

Do we ask people when they fall in love why they are in love? Usually we don't, because the answer would be to vague, it is - I think- the same with passion. Passion is something you can't explain to someone who isn't passionated.

I wrote a text, about what muay thai is to me, what it brought into my life. I've shared it with two passionates friends - one loves yoga, the other one is a passionated photographer and artist - and they both told me something like that : I've never really understood before, but now I know, it resonate with me in a deeper way. I still think it is a weird passion to have, but I know what you feel, because I feel it too. (If ever you are interested it is : here)

 

Also, as Micc said : can you define rich westerner?

If rich is living well enough, not to have to fight (against one's will) to make a living : 

I guess I am rich : I have an house, I can eat everyday and not die outside in the cold because I also have warm clothes. 

 

It make me remember of something. To the last fight I went (there is less that in Thailand, here we can be happy if there is two event in a month!), I was in the public, looking at all those people with their eyes on the ring and screaming the sh** out of them. I thought "people are so agressive [the public much more than fighter]... we enjoy watching people punching and kicking each other ... and worse ... some people actually are willing to get into the ring ... have we really evolved since gladiator times? or will we ever be the same? "

Some people fight because they have to. Some fight because they love it, but maybe it is deeper than just love, maybe it is because deep under that love, they are fighting something, someone in their life, and this is the way they found to keep themselves alive.

[Lobo11]

This came to mind...

(from Wiki) In evolutionary biology, people often speak of the four F's ( psychologist Karl H. Pribram) are said to be the four basic drives (motivations or instincts) that animals (including humans) are evolutionarilyadapted to have, follow, and achieve fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fucking (alternatively fornicating). In the case of vertebrates, this list corresponds to the motivational behaviors that drive the activity in the hypothalamus, which responds to these motivations by regulating activity in the endocrine system and releasing hormones to alter the behavior of the animal.