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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:24
But - Isn't Martial Arts Basically Just Hitting People?
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What's up, my friend? How can I help you?
Hi, Steph. Thanks for having me.
My pleasure. Well, thanks for a lot of things.
Since I found FDR, you've really reignited my passion for philosophy, and that's helped me out a lot over the years.
I'm kind of used to sort of going it alone, and I'm very skeptical.
I've a long time been very skeptical of mainstream science and things like doctors, Physicians, therapists, dentists.
And I don't know.
I feel like if I would start seeing them again, because I've stopped seeing, stopped going to the doctor for checkups or just for little things.
And the martial arts that I mentioned do really help out whenever I feel like I have a problem.
I just kind of do some movements and that seems to take care of the problem.
So, I don't know.
How would I deal with that?
How would I... Sorry, are you asking me whether you should regularly see a doctor?
Not regularly, but just...
I have trouble trusting them, to be honest.
And I have trouble trusting them with my own well-being at heart rather than just either doing their thing or...
Trying to get some unrealistic advantage out of trying to treat me.
Why don't you trust doctors?
Well, I've always, for a very long time, tried to look into what the general accepted science around physiology and diseases and medicine And you always hear a lot of problems and disagreements.
And I also looked into the mainstream and, you know, some of it seems to be a lot of quackery, but at other times, some of it appears to be more effective, just not very profitable.
Sorry, some of what? Do you mean sort of prevention and avoidance and alternative medicines and so on?
Exactly, yeah. Look, I mean, obviously I can't give any kind of medical advice, but...
Of course, the whole point of life is to stay away from doctors.
I mean, of course, right?
I mean, that's not where we want to go.
But if you get an infection, I think it's a good idea to go.
I mean, I just think it's a good idea to go to antibiotics and so on, right?
So as far as regular checkups go, I don't know.
I mean, I guess it depends on your age, whatever, right?
But it doesn't do any harm to give some blood or whatever, right?
I mean, go and get a bunch of different opinions, do the research and so on.
And look, maybe... Maybe medicine is bunk, but I personally don't have the time to check.
So I'll just go.
Maybe I don't need to brush my teeth.
I'm sure there are websites out there that say, you don't need to brush your teeth.
I don't have the time.
To go and research all of that.
And I don't want to take the risk of, right?
I mean, maybe that's cowardly. Maybe there's, you know, it could be higher priority.
But, you know, the websites out there that say chemotherapy is just poison.
It's death or whatever, right?
I don't know. Maybe it is.
But maybe I'll research it if I ever get sick that way.
But I can't, you know, for me at least, I can't sort of question everything.
Yeah, I have sort of picked my battles about what it is that I'm going to question and what it is that I'm going to oppose.
I'm just telling you my thoughts, right?
Yeah. Nobody, of course, can tell you what to do, but there's a fair amount of science behind medicine, right?
There's a lot of double-blind experiments, and there is a fair amount of science behind medicine.
You can see videos of antibiotics killing harmful bacteria.
You know what I mean? So, you know, that kind of stuff is valid.
You can, you know, do those little purple things.
That you chew and you can see that there's less plaque after the dentist cleans your teeth.
And I think plaque is the thing that causes your gums to recede or whatever, right?
So, you know, where there's science, I think, I placed, I mean, that's a UPB thing.
I mean, I have to, you know, I can't say UPB is the way.
UPB is an umbrella term for science, but I'm going to reject science.
So... I mean, nutrition seems a slightly different matter.
There's so much that's out there that's up and down, black and white.
Eggs are bad for you. Eggs are good for you.
Bacon is bad for you. Bacon is good for you.
Meat is bad for you. Meat is good for you.
I mean, so I'm a little more skeptical about that stuff because there doesn't seem to be quite as much of a consensus.
But, you know, I would just trust the science.
I mean, nobody trusts doctors.
I mean, doctors are just people. You don't put your faith in people.
You put your faith, I mean, at least outside of your personal relationships, But you don't.
You don't put your faith in people.
I mean, I was telling people, for heaven's sakes, don't put your faith in me.
I mean, I hope that I earn people's trust over time and they will not, you know, double or triple check everything I say.
But, you know, I can always make a mistake.
I can always get bad information and so on.
So, don't put your faith in people.
Put your faith in philosophy and that means putting your faith in reason and evidence.
And so, medicine that has...
The legitimate science behind it seems to me something that is worth having in your life, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, I think it does. I don't know the doctor as soon as I step into the doctor's office, but I guess it's some trust that could be earned or gained after time.
Well, I mean, there's ways that you can figure out whether a doctor is trustworthy.
Does the doctor appear to be patient?
Does the doctor answer your questions?
Does the doctor, you know, if you bring in articles that you've read, will the doctor take the time to, you know, I mean, don't have to spend all day because he's got to eat too or she's got to eat too, but will the doctor take the time to answer your questions and apprise you of what's going on?
Is the doctor comfortable with you getting a second opinion?
You know, those kinds of things.
Those are things that you can check on and that can help you to make a more reasonable decision.
Yeah, it's not as big as the first question, I guess.
Okay, so what's the first question again?
So I used to go to this very traditional martial arts school, and we don't...
We didn't share the same values, and one of the reasons I left was my passion for philosophy, and I felt that I didn't exactly get as much truth and knowledge, especially about ethics, there as I could.
Would it be a good idea at some point to go back once I've advanced in self-knowledge and understanding?
I'm going to just answer a question with a question.
I don't get the martial arts.
I mean, I'm just telling you not from any principle standpoint, I don't get the martial arts.
I get exercise.
I love to exercise. I mean, nothing feels better than a good workout.
I mean, I just love it.
I love the shower, you know, getting all the sweat off and you just come out feeling limber and clean and shiny.
So I love exercise.
I love sports. You know, I'm dying for my daughter to get old enough to play tennis with me and so on.
I mean, you know, so we can leave behind pick up sticks and all the other non-Olympic sports.
So I love exercise.
I love sports.
I don't get the hitting.
That's the part that I don't get.
Me neither. Because to me, martial arts is just a kind of boxing.
I mean, it's just... I don't get why the exercise and...
Why not do dance?
I mean, that's as challenging. That requires the same amount of flexibility and strength and precision, but there's no hitting.
I mean, that's the...
Why not do gymnastics, which is a generally non-contact sport?
I just... I get...
And it seems to me...
This is just nonsense opinion time, as usual, but it seems to me that...
There's not a lot of people I've talked to about martial arts who have an answer about the hitting thing.
I mean, it just seems to me to come out of some childhood thing that is probably to do with excessive exposure or any kind of exposure really to excessive force that leads people in a perpetual state of fight or flight, low-grade anxiety, and hypervigilance.
And one of the ways that they attempt to manage that is to become proficient in self-defense, which is not the same as acquiring self-knowledge, but it's really...
Managing a symptom rather than the cause.
So if you can explain that to me, I would be really happy to be schooled and corrected on all of this.
And I anticipate the tidal wave of enthusiasts of the martial arts telling me that I just don't get it and so on.
But explain to me the hitting. Explain to me why you'd be drawn to the hitting part.
Because that's the only thing that differentiates it from all the other sports and exercises that I know of.
Well, I think you're absolutely right about the hitting.
Well, I guess if you really want to learn to fight, there's no other way than to be really thrown into a fight constantly.
But what attracted me to it wasn't the fighting at all.
It was sort of the other exercises that have to do with health.
And they teach it in a way that makes so much more sense than yoga or meditation or even just, you know, the science of...
They seem to take certain natural movements and they make certain associations that seem to work out.
For instance, if I cough, it requires a specific movement and it affects the lungs in a certain way.
No, no, but sorry. When you say that I wasn't attracted to martial arts for hitting, that sounds to me like saying I wasn't attracted to tennis for knocking a ball around and I wasn't attracted to dancing for the music and the rhythm.
I mean, but that's what it is.
It's hitting. Yes.
I felt there was no other place I could learn about physiology.
When I went there, it was because I wanted to do some sports with some philosophy behind it, and I could choose between yoga and tai chi, which used to be martial arts, but it's nothing like that anymore.
I kind of got into all of the other things, which was fun until...
The peer pressure came on and they tried to, you know, make me a real martial artist, which I didn't like at all.
But it was the exercise...
But see, martial artist, sorry, martial artist just seems to me a...
It's a euphemism, you know?
I always, you know, the moment euphemisms come around, it's like, danger alert, danger alert.
Like, you don't call a sniper a gun artist, do you?
You don't call a boxer a fist artist.
It's not art.
It's hitting. You're a hitter.
You are really good at hitting people.
You're really good at harming people.
You're really good at beating people up.
Isn't that the point? Yeah, well, there's, I guess, two things they teach there.
One of them is hitting and the other is just...
It's not even shadow boxing.
It's just a sort of moving meditation.
That's what attracted me.
But the problem is that I don't feel very...
Well, certainly not now.
And I guess my question is whether it would be ever a good time to go back into that environment.
Wait, wait. Let's go back. I'm trying to understand this thing.
I've never seen a judo competition where they just move around.
Like there's no Tai Chi competitions, right?
I've never seen a martial arts movie where they sway back and forth.
I mean, listen, and please understand, I mean, I have some exposure to this.
I did lots of Tai Chi when I was younger, particularly in theater school and so on.
So I studied movement.
I did movement classes. I did stage fighting.
I did gymnastics.
So all of this stuff was in theater school to sort of be a well-rounded performer.
So I'm not, you know, 300 pounds on a potato couch saying, why does anyone do this?
I mean, I really do. I've been there.
I've never done Martial arts myself because, you know, I've experienced enough hitting in my life.
I don't know why I'd want to put myself back in that position.
You know, that's to me like a guy who comes out of Iraq saying, hey, let's go do paintball with really realistic sound effects.
It's like, why? You just, you know, you've got out of all of that where it really was dangerous and now you're going back into another situation which mimics the same thing.
Why would you want that? So for me, I never wanted to go back into the hitting.
I mean, I've I was hit so much as a kid that I just, why would I want to do that again?
And so when you say, well, there's this movement aspect to it and so on, sure, but it really is kind of fundamentally and essentially about the hitting, right?
Because if you take the hitting out, it's not martial arts anymore because the martial part is the clue, right?
Yeah, and even assuming I could avoid the practices where you get hit and all of that, or where you learn to hurt other people, or even defend yourself and just focus on the moving meditation parts, it's the environment that really makes me a little bit uncomfortable.
It's very traditional.
There's this hierarchy.
I'd like to think I could go back and really benefit again from Just health-oriented practices.
I thought, would that be a good thing for my own psychological well-being?
Yeah, look, I mean, again, so what you'd say is that you do the martial stuff, but without any martial stuff?
So you wouldn't do any hitting or any kicking or any whatever, right?
There's classes dedicated to just the meditation, and there's classes dedicated to the actual fighting styles.
Right, yeah. I mean, I think meditation is a fine thing to do.
Sorry, somebody just wrote, both karate and taekwondo, for me, were entirely focused on defense and moral guidelines.
My problem was that the morality was entirely authoritarian.
It was never about offensive hitting belts.
Well, but see, karate competitions, you know, imagine the karate competition, or imagine the Karate Kid movie, and, you know, it's just a UPB joke, but it's an effective one to sort of underscore what I'm talking about.
So, the room is quiet, the lights dim, the Kitaro music flames up, and two men in six-pack cut fighting form stripped to the waist with Bruce Lee intensity laser stares And quivering arms come out with spear hands and practice monkey gets fruit.
And then the judge says, okay, both of you, on the mat, self-defense, go!
What do they do? They just stand there.
That is like the worst.
Men standing, not attacking.
Who wins? I don't know, the guy stays awake the longest, which certainly won't be in the audience, right?
So that's not...
How it works. I mean, two guys go piling at each other.
Sure, there's a self-defense aspect, but only because self-defense is part of your martial training.
So, yeah, the people who say it's all about self-defense obviously have never been to a karate or judo match or anything like that.
Everybody, don't hit each other!
Go! Okay.
Yeah, thanks, Steph.
I guess I'll think about that for a moment.
Yeah, thanks a lot. I mean, you might want to try dance.
At least with dance, you can be ready for your wedding.
At least in weddings, there's the first dance, right?
I've not seen a lot of weddings, though I'm sure there are some lunatic weddings involving this, where instead of a first dance, the bride and the groom attempt to break several two-by-fours with their foreheads.
There's a slow-motion Kodak moment for the ages.
So with dancing, you can be cool, you can meet women in clubs, you've got moves, and you get all of the exercise, you get all the flexibility, all of the strength training.
Dance is really hard. At least as I remember doing it again in theater school.
You can just do all that. But they don't explain how a movement affects your liver or your lungs or your heart.
And when you get sick that you should do this movement and when you're tired you can do that to feel better for five minutes.
Well, but you see, then we're back to the science, right?
Because I don't know that martial artists explain that either.
Because remember, they believe in crap like ki, right?
That's true. Or chai. And there's a lot of other things.
Yeah, I mean, that doesn't exist. I wouldn't want to go in that environment and go home again frustrated every night.
I would say dance, gymnastics, just regular old sports with some good stretching before and after.
I think those things are great.
Strong body, strong mind.
The consciousness is an effect of the mind.
The mind rests on the health of the body.
I would...
I would suggest that you try it without them.
Because remember, there's a whole culture.
It's not just you going to do some movements.
There's a whole culture there.
That's my problem. Yeah, I mean, there's a whole culture there.
And a lot of people are there.
They're crazy. Right.
I mean, they're crazy in that they don't understand why they're there.
They're crazy in that they believe what they're doing is philosophy.
It's not. I mean, what Bruce Lee writes about is not philosophy.
That's philosophy like Arnold Schwarzenegger saying...
You can't climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.
I mean, that's not philosophy.
That's just a fortune cookie, right?
I mean, it may be true and it's an interesting image in some ways, but it's not philosophy.
That's a motivational t-shirt.
And so they don't know why they're there and they have to cover it up with a lot of abstract nonsense to pretend that it is something other than what it is, right?
The origin of martial arts was to train hitmen.
It was to train professional killers for the ruling class.
And there's not a lot that you can do to pretty that shit up, in my mind.
Thanks, Steph. I get a general feel for how it would affect me if I were to go back at some point.
I might try it, but it's something I'll stay very apprehensive about.
It's something I'll have to really look at.
Were you yourself here as a child?
Yeah, I was. Yeah, so don't go to martial arts.
Sorry. I mean, I hate telling people what to do.
Just throw it out if it's bullshit.
Maybe it is bullshit. That's the kind of answer I expected.
It was more a psychological question.
How it would affect me, sort of my mental state and emotional state.
To me, putting yourself back in a situation, it's a Simon the Boxer thing, almost literally, where you're putting yourself back in a situation where you're trying to master an environment that you couldn't master as a child.
To me, that's not the right way.
You don't deal with symptoms, you deal with causes.
You get to the emotional root of the issues.
You don't go and play fight to defend yourself against Daddy forever.
I just don't think that's going to work.
Maybe there are people who can do martial arts.
I just don't think it's people who've had Who've been hit as children.
I just think going back to a hitting environment is...
It doesn't seem to me to be very healthy.
But, you know, again, that's just my thought.
Alright. Thanks, Seth. Alright.
Thanks, man. Talk to you later.
Bye. Sorry.
And so people are saying there's two kinds of martial arts.
I hear this all the time. Yeah, military purposes, civilian self-defense.
Civilian self-defense. You know what civilian self-defense is?
Don't hang out with dangerous people.
Don't go do dangerous things.
I mean, I have been on my own.
I have been on my own as a fairly emancipated adult.
Lo, these 30 years, from 15 to 45, maybe 46 next month.
And I've never been in a fight.
And so I just, I don't see the need to spend years training for a self, like in self-defense.
Again, that has to come from some psychological cause.
That has to come from some historical cause, some emotion, some fear.
Sort of primal anxiety that is trying to be managed.
The world is really not that dangerous outside of the state and the family.
I mean, the world is really not that dangerous.
People say, well, why do you focus on the state and the family?
Well, because those are the only two institutions that have inflicted violence on me.
The state by definition and the family by circumstances, not to say all families, but I just don't see.
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