Formosa Neijia

I ran across this Washington Post story about fight videos being posted on the web. It contains some good comments about this growing trend that I’d like to address here.

I often look at these videos when someone mentions them on message boards because I think we all need constant reminders of just how sick people really are so that we can train appropriately. And yes, I subscribe to a Hobbesian view of human nature: people are basically evil unless they are compelled to be good.

The article talks about a guy named Blake Cater that likes to get into fights with his friends and they record these fights on video. They then post them on the web so certain communities can enjoy this kind of stuff.

Youtube and Goggle video get pinned by the Post for helping this type of entertainment grow so quickly. Youtube has 40,000 videos put up everyday so there’s no way that they can scan all that stuff. Who knows what your kid might be watching if he has unrestricted access to the web.

Of course, the liberal Post is quick to jump on social science research about long-term effects of TV violence, etc. Snooze. I’m not concerned about any of that. What concerns me is that this type of stuff makes the violence that is often hidden in society more obvious. In that way, this might actually be a GOOD THING. My point is that the videos themselves aren’t bad. What is bad is that people are beating each other up for fun. Other fight vids show people resorting to violence out of anger. Street fights and brawls are common in these vids. Violence is seen as a completely accpetable way to resolve conflict.

As martial artists, we are trying to reach a certain level of skill. I fight to learn to defend myself and my family. When I was in the army, I fought to protect my country. These types of fighting have more noble goals. The fights in these videos are people throwing off inhibitions and doing violence to one another that could start to unravel society from the bottom up. The message: violence is fun and completely acceptable.

In case anyone missed the “UFC Effect” that I’ve mentioned before, let me mention it again. The UFC and other fighting events have spread some pretty potent MA information to the general public. Many people now have access to what works and what doesn’t in a fight. Double leg takedowns and ground-and-pound tactics were already known by a lot of thugs, but they are even more known now thanks to the UFC.

Take a look at some of these videos at Comegetyousome.com. Look at how many videos there are. There are thousands of these things on the web.

The message that everyone should get is that society is incredibly violent.

We don’t see it because we TRY NOT TO. But we should wake up and realize that it’s all around us. The web is amazingly democratic. Too democratic for my taste (I don’t like democracy so much either sometimes :)). But it shows us the underbelly of our communities. The things we don’t want to see or know about. Look at the houses and cars in the clips. A lot of these fights happen in middle-class neighborhoods. Most of us don’t want to face that reality.

Are you ready to face that kind of violence? Are you prepared to defend yourself against those kinds of threats?

These vids should be a wake-up call to all of us who call ourselves martial artists, whether we do IMA or not. Don’t let the fact that you do taiji or bagua stand in the way of you learning realistic self-defense. Your life and the lives of your loved ones may depend on you having those skills. Don’t let them down.