Cor-Chat - The Fighting Art of the Circus

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Cor-chat is the most closely guarded secret of the travelling circus. Loosely translated from circus language the name means “Fight Thing”. For three centuries it was a style that was taught exclusively to circus people and passed from one generation to the next for the purposes of self defence. The life of a travelling performer is a hazardous one. When a community moves to a new site or “tober” they are immediately strangers and not always welcome. This prompted the creation of a system of self defence to deal with would-be attackers and practiced in accordance with circus custom. The lineage of the main schools of cor-chat can’t be traced back to a single circus family, although it is believed that Phillip Astley, the father of the modern circus, introduced various techniques taken from his military experiences. Phineas T. Barnum is also credited with influencing a more deceptive style of cor-chat in the USA. Some say that the famous fraudster’s line “never give a sucker an even break” had a hidden reference to the savage joint-locking techniques found in cor-chat.

The art was practised covertly and training was often hidden in the various acts performed in the circus. Certain techniques hint towards these acts. For example, a low sweeping attack is named the clown’s shoe. Training in cor-chat traditionally takes place on a sawdust covered ground, inside a ringed area and in a training place known as the Big Top. New students from the outside are known as jossers and are rarely taught unless they pass the cor-chat initiation trials. Much of these initiations include a series of gruelling exercises known as “building up” and “pulling down”.

When performing a technique, the attacker is often given the term “anti”. Cor-chat is a brutal system that includes a devastating array of techniques designed to confuse and destroy an antagonist. Methods are both unarmed and armed. Armed methods make extensive use of incidental weaponry, including coupling pins and there is a seemingly inexhaustible list of methods for using bailing string. Like all good martial arts systems, cor-chat teaches evasion techniques that come under the title of “scarpering”. Unlike many traditional martial arts there is no set custom or greeting term before starting a training session, however, after training students ritually use the term “nanti palari”.

Today the art has been made available to the general public for the first time. Schools are opening up all over the country and worldwide. These include intensive instructor programmes and long-distance learning plans. Training in cor-chat is a positively enriching experience. You will find this when you begin to teach. In line with circus lore, the cor-chat instructor works for a mysterious commodity known as dinari. It is the objective of any life long cor-chat instructor to accumulate as much dinari as possible. Lack of dinari is often accredited to the lows faced by many circus people.

Cor-chat is a system trained by many different cultures against a myriad of threats. It is a time-tested martial art with a history that goes back three centuries and practiced by many top circus fighters. Now you can also learn this devastating art.





Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com

Ramblings on attitude from a recent self defence course

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I taught one of my corporate courses this week and, once again, got challenged by an ex-South African prosecutor. I don’t whether it is something to do with their education system or the general collective temperament of the country, but South Africans to seem to love argue. I encourage scepticism and criticism in my classes. This, along with accepting no absolutes, helps prevent my method of self-protection/defence, cross-training and mixed martial arts from becoming a dogmatic system or style.

I was challenged regarding my definition of attitude – be confident, be proactive, keep focused and never give in - and how it applies to self protection. The prosecutor, who incidentally sold a car to my cousin’s husband, Brian, said that attitude didn’t matter a jot in South Africa. He used an example of a woman who was trapped between two cars, raped and shot. It’s a common tactic in South Africa. She could do nothing, he argued. How could she take control in such a situation? In another incident a woman was shot and killed in an almost deserted petrol station. Another episode, he cited, a couple were ambushed out walking their dog. The man was held at gunpoint whilst he wife was raped in front of him. How could he take control? Surely giving in was the only option he had.

I countered that for a start there are no absolutes. No one has a tailormade solution to every situation. You can get so far and your chances of survival become very slim indeed. The brutality of South Africa is a stark wake-up call to most citizens of the developed world. Many foreigners often get killed, robbed and raped in South Africa by making the big mistake of not taking local advice regarding personal security. Nevertheless, people have got out of situations where incredible odds have been stacked against them. People have disarmed gunmen, have survived gunshot wounds and used psychology to turn around situations where they were at a seemingly hopeless disadvantage. Even when he was deprived of everything in a German concentration camp - his personal liberty, the lives of his entire family, his work, food and his dignity - Viktor Frankl found a means to develop an attitude of proactivity. He was able not to be consumed by the camp, but used it as a means to strengthen his mental resolve. Viktor Frankl is testament that a person can take charge when, on the surface, it would appear he has control of nothing. Then there was the case of the child who was kidnapped by a serial killer. She was put through hell, but ended up using a type of reverse Stockholm syndrome. She talked to her kidnapper, cooked for him, cared for him and all the while kept planning her escape. Eventually she seized her moment and made a successful break for freedom. In a shorter variation of this, the last victim of Jeffrey Dhamer also used a similar method to pacify his kidnapper who was almost certainly going to kill him.

I explained to my sceptic - who incidentally was a friendly and knowledgeable individual - that for a start none of these incidents “just happened”. Often when people replay incidents they talk about how quick it all happened. I admit hindsight can be a pompous and self-righteous luxury, however, how can we learn without looking for better alternatives to being raped and murdered? And there are alternatives. The two cars did not just beam down in front and behind the woman. Early awareness or prior knowledge of the area may have given her better avoidance strategies. Boxing someone in on the motorway is not an undefeatable tactic. Watch any number of police shows and see how long it can take using this tactic even with more than two cars in contact via radio, and in some instances how a pursued vehicle can even evade this situation. Another question: why wasn’t the woman armed? It is South Africa all, the land where “Freeze!” isn’t in a gunman’s vocabulary. As for the woman in the almost abandoned petrol station, there were surely some similar even more straightforward solutions here. Why pick an almost deserted petrol station? Why wasn’t she armed? The man held at gunpoint may have done the right thing. After all, he and his wife did survive. However, and I appreciate this is much easier said than done, gunmen have been talked down and even disarmed. My uncle made front page headlines in Northern Ireland when he disarmed a gunman and chased the wannabe robber and his accomplice off.

This is all easier said than done, but so is criticism. What is the alternative to my definition for an effective self defence attitude? Be unsure of yourself, be reactive, let your mind wander and give in. While you are still breathing there is hope. If you don’t believe me I will show you case files of children who fought off attempted abductors – despite my critics’ assertion that you cannot teach children self-defence – I will show you documented stories of people who survived numerous stabwounds (ask Eddie Quin of “The Approach” and Karl Tanswell of the “Straight Blast Gym” for a start), I will point you towards accounts of old age pensioners who fought off muggers and, due to my circus background, I have a list as long as my arm of incidents where men have survived being savaged to death by wild animals through true grit and determination. The truth is there is no perfect answer to dealing with real life violence, but at least through developing a strong and decisive attitude you can be better prepared to increase your chances of survival.

Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com

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Challenging Material

Timothy Leary (via last.fm)

Timothy Leary’s “Evolutionary Agents” is not a book one would immediately associate with Geoff Thompson’s Real Combat Method. I doubt even Leary - with his audaciously leftfield views - imagined that his lucid and controversial work would become set reading material for a class training to get certification in self-defence instruction. Yet there we all stood in a circle being questioned by Geoff Thompson, himself, about our thoughts on the work. In truth the course was far more than a simple “hard skills” course for training how to deal with a violent situation. Most of the students who went on the course already had instructor level certification in one respected realistic combative form or another. My take on Geoff’s decision that the reason why books such as Leary’s were made compulsory homework for all who attended the course was because they prompted the internal battle. This is what might be termed cerebral self-defence – as Geoff once put it “self-defence is defence against the self”.

There is nothing quite like tackling what might be called “challenging material”. Such material might repel you or make you feel awkward at first, but ultimately provides you with a deeper perspective over what you might have written off as absolutes. Challenging material is best when it scares you and it has clearly scared others. It should scare you not only because it challenges your beliefs, but because in some way it reinforces them. Geoff presented us with various books that acted as cerebral weight training material. He did not expect us to agree with all the books in their entirety – it is impossible that anyone could given the diversity of their individual philosophies – but to draw positive inspiration from each and every one of them. We were all on easy footing with books like “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin De Becker – a book treated like a bible in my own self-defence class – and “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl; however, it was clear that Yogananda’s “The Autobiography of a Yogi” would herald in the more challenging information. Out of these texts, “Evolutionary Agents” was one I found the most personally challenging.

Let’s get one thing straight, “Evolutionary Agents” is not, technically speaking, heavy reading. In fact, the first thing that impressed me about the book was the way its author got things moving from the start. In fact, the simplicity of the prose is quite daring. It is written as if the author was feverishly scrawling down his thoughts as they rushed into his mind, not stopping to take a breath and then rushing the book’s finish line. This might not be too far from the truth given Leary’s proud stance on the controlled use of hallucinogenic drugs, LSD in particular, to improve man’s capacity for creativity. In fact, he was part of a movement of controversial authors who aggressively promoted this theory. The pace of Leary’s writing style is in line with his argument regarding pace and the back of his book states that it is “not the survival of the fittest, but the survival of the fastest”. He plays with the word race in human race to put forward his theory that everything is about mobility.

Leary goes to great pains to explain the direction all natural progression moves. His all encompassing philosophy sees everything as a race through time with all of us living in different time zones – the progressive thinkers are living in the future and the rest are living in the past. He then gets quite deep into metaphors – so deep in fact it gets a little difficult to decide where the metaphorical finishes and where the literal begins. Likewise his arguments vary from the genuinely original and creative to what suspiciously reads like “shock for the sake of shock” statements. I am not completely dismissive of the obvious shock tactic. Some times we need to go to extremes to re-set a balance. Leary is very much – and consciously so – in line with punk in this respect. However, it didn’t take long in my first reading of “Evolutionary Agents” to really feel the bite of his elitist argument. This is the first stage where you realize you are facing “challenging material”. The fact that the book was compulsory reading, I have to admit, was the first coax to continue my reading. At this stage I feared that what I was reading was typical 1960s undergraduate academia at its most masturbatory.

There is plenty to support this fear. Despite preaching the importance of mobility towards to the future, there is clear nostalgia for the values of “The Age of Aquarius”. He says that the greatest advancements in creativity occurred between 1960 and 1980, his era, and he sees California being a migratory Mecca for all Evolutionary Agents. Of course, California was the place to be in the 1960s as far as the psychedelic movement was concerned – the location has also proven to be fertile ground for some of the world’s strangest cults, pseudoscience and mystical charlatans. Does Leary fall into this category?

My answer is that I don’t know, but one thing I did find despite all this was that “Evolutionary Agents” is an inspirational read. It inspires because it provokes and motivates at the same time. Like Ayn Rand, another hugely influential writer who has also been accused of being a founder of a “cult of personality”, Leary’s main focus is on developing the individual and breaking away from the conventions of society. He has fascinating metaphors to describe the insect-like castes that humans create to keep people from progressing as individuals. Looking at human behaviour in animalistic terms is quite valid. The great anthropologist Desmond Morris wrote some very accurate findings on the way humans act in a group in his “Naked Ape” and “Manwatching” books. Leary may not follow an orthodox biological route on this one, but I completely agree that humans generally follow a herd mentality or – as Leary would say – our “hive” mentality. Those who break away from these castes are what Leary calls “outcastes” – another play on words – and are the pioneers of the future. History certainly backs Leary up on this one. Single individuals who have gone against the norm of the day and stood hard and fast to their principles are those who have affected some of the greatest changes. They have shifted the paradigms of their time and changed our perceptions.

Changing perceptions; now this is a common theme running through the discussions conducted on the Geoff Thompson course. Around the time when I was seriously considering giving up reading “Evolutionary Agents” or, at least, skimming it, I arrived at his “Correspondence Theory”. This actually reinforced a belief I have had for a long time – that everything is connected and that it is a crime to completely break with the past. There is so much we can learn through history and valid foundations for the future are laid there. This is a fairly sound principle.

However, I did not intend this article to be a review of “Evolutionary Agents”, but rather a reflection on what happens when we expose ourselves to “Challenging Material”. This particular book was the first in a long while that exposed my personal prejudices. I don’t like to pigeonhole myself as anything, but I guess I am, roughly speaking, agnostic and sceptical in my life philosophy. I guess this has come about from often wanting to be objective, open-minded and having more than the average person’s experience with charlatans. Therefore books like Leary’s and another book on our list, Joe Vitale’s “Zero Limits” are immediate foils for me to exercise my principles and progress my thinking. The experience is never comfortable, but once you find a connection somewhere in the work – an “energy” as some might say – it becomes quite compelling.

Around the time I completed the Geoff Thompson instructor course I read a short book entitled “The Sadeian Woman” by the feminist author, Angela Carter. The book is perhaps one of the bravest I read in a long time. Carter effectively takes on Sade’s philosophy and not only draws positive ideas amid the scenes of extreme pornography that include torture, rape and a nihilistic approach to life, but actually finds the great libertine’s limit. This is no easy task. Sade is very hard reading and I don’t mean that in a “War and Peace” or “Paradise Lost” deeply profound way. If Timothy Leary’s books are written in a fast-paced style that easily pulls you along, Sade’s are long winded affairs that just seems to catalogue as many perversions and contentious ideas as possible. Having said this, his Libertine characters do have many parallels with Timothy Leary’s Outcastes or Ayn Rand’s Objectivists. After all he is presenting a philosophy that champions hedonism, like Leary, and selfishness, like Rand. Incidentally Rand has one character describe the hero of “The Fountainhead” as “The Marquis De Sade of architecture” for his audacity.

Angela Carter does not react with a counter-argument or the condemnation that many other feminist authors have done when they discuss Sade. Instead she discusses how his heroines, Justine and Juliette, are prototypes for the twentieth century image of women. Sade’s heroine Justine, of the book of the same name, who is punished throughout her whole meaningless life for trying to be virtuous, is seen as the forerunner for the inoffensive and vulnerable blondes of the media like Marilyn Monroe. Likewise Justine’s sister, Juliette, the eponymous heroine of the Justine’s sequel, who is rewarded for her crimes of survival and indulgence, is described as the archetype for the “career women” of the 1980s.

However, it is in his play “Philosophy in the Bedroom” that Carter actually finds that De Sade will only go so far. She demonstrates that far from having the sensuality usually associated with erotic fiction it is all rather mechanical and the orgy that is mainly described by the players comes across as a sort of aristocratic parlour game – regimented and anything but free. The play culminates in a scene clearly designed to derive the most shock possible – the rape and torture of a mother by her daughter. However, it is during this act that Carter sees that Sade will only go so far – that he actually does fear real chaos – and he pulls back. It is this one crucial moment that many a shocked or reactionary critic would have missed in their rising disgust for the horrendous acts being committed that Carter really goes that stage further as a literary feminist. She effectively challenges Sade, a man whose work was far more explicit than anything the controversial DH Lawrence would write and far more aggressively anti-religious than the expelled atheist poet Percy Shelley would publish, on his own terms and ends her succinct criticism with a type of “is that all you’ve got?”

During our course Geoff spoke of a short film he recently completed and was soon to be distributed called “Romans 20:12”. The film apparently deals with that most loathed and feared of crimes in our society, child abuse, and using the titular verse from the New Testament it offers forgiveness as the only real way the abused can successfully claim revenge. Geoff predicts it will be met with opposition and that it is a controversial idea, but he believes in its worth. Keen readers of Geoff’s work will see that it is another connection with his autobiography “Watch My Back”, where he described the abuse he suffered as a child and his adult confrontation with his abuser. I feel it will challenge those who do have religious views and perhaps spark debate on the nature of forgiveness – is it another hidden example of true selfishness and even a type of revenge?

We need material that challenges us if we are to progress. As the celebrated martial arts and self-defence instructor Mo Teague regularly says, “We need traction to move forward”. The challenge can come in many different ways, but I think it is important that it addresses an area we feel fundamentally weak about. I think this is not a million miles away from the Stephen R. Covey principle regarding empathetic listening. If we do not listen, read or face something that makes us feel uncomfortable we allow that thing to become an insurmountable obstacle. Also we allow unnecessary prejudices to feed our ignorance and handicap us from understanding more about our fears. My personal take on what stops certain people from looking into things that scare them is that they worry it will change them. This is every reason to take on the fear. How do you know that your principles are strong if you have never truly tested them?














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A Touch of Puritanism

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Puritanism as defined by most dictionaries and encyclopaedias was the sixteenth century English religious movement that sought to further reform the Protestant Church of England, so that it would be stripped of what followers saw as the old trappings of the Catholic Church. The main thrust of the movement was to get rid of the old hierarchy and all the pomp associated with it, which Puritans saw as the corruption of their faith. This serves as a good analogy with various other movements throughout history and into the modern day. I am a martial arts teacher and writer and have seen the urge to value basics and preserve principles to be a regular urge that prompts our self-defence community.
Therefore when I use the term puritan or puritanical I don’t just think of the term in a direct religious or moral sense, but as a method different groups have applied in order get back to the basics of their particular philosophy or art. I am not alone in this analogy as the 2000 collection of short stories, “All Hail the New Puritans” demonstrates. Part of its attraction is the apparent honesty in its approach and also the clarity it provides. There is an attraction and even a feeling of logical necessity to take a puritanical approach. However, there is also danger in getting caught up in the dogma of Puritanism.

The ancient Chinese discipline of Feng Shui is a prime example of a method that has some good honest principles and some sound advice, but unfortunately the dogma of this art has often allowed it to descend into superstition and make unverified claims. First of all it deals with getting rid of physical and emotional clutter. This sounds like a good rule. We dispense with what we do not need or are not going to use. This is analogous with our relationships with people. There is no point in allowing negative people who sap your time and energies to occupy your time or influence your outlook on life. Then there are rules about not having your chair backed to a door. Many a nightclub doorman or self-defence instructor will back that one up. Okay, so far so much spring cleaning, good time management skills and sound self-protection advice. Now we come to the stuff about certain colours and images being unhealthy in your household or the direction they are pointed. I don’t like the idea of “oppressive” colours in my home and I recently took all my true crime books out of my bedroom – too many of them feature photos of notorious killers grinning at you from the book spine. This is just an aesthetic preference. Despite what some claim, Feng Shui is not an “exact science” and a great deal of it smacks of superstition. However, as I have pointed out, the general principles are very sensible and worth studying. I can appreciate Feng Shui on a base and metaphorical level, but never as a science.

The religious Puritan Movement saw corruption in the Christian religion. It saw it in the excessive hierarchy and in all the ceremony that surrounded the Catholic Church, so it strove to remove all the remnants of this religion from the Church of England. The peak of its success was in its winning of the English Civil War with the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell being made dictator. A new system of government would be installed that would shape the future of democracy, but for the meantime the Puritan law would be enforced. This would see the banning of virtually all forms of entertainment, dancing and even Christmas, despite its Christian connection. Meanwhile the government would not survive. They were torn apart by internal factional disputes between different types of Puritan. It was a cult of personality and once Cromwell died it would fall apart only to be replaced by the return of the monarchy with Charles II echoing in an age of decadence that was virtually the antithesis of Protestant Puritanism. And yet the prudishness and conservatism of Puritan moral values would re-emerge, at least on the surface, during the Victorian age and the urge to scale down the grandiose and the ostentatious would begin in the Edwardian era. By this time, however, the Modernist movement was already beginning to gather steam.

The architecture of the Modernist movement was celebrated in Ayn Rand’s famous novel “The Fountainhead”, which introduced the world to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. From Modernism emerged another movement, which perhaps best describes the visual expression of all these movements and concepts: the Minimalist movement. This began to emerge after World War II and peaked in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Today we often see Minimalism being applied in interior design and decorating as a type of non-spiritual version of Feng Shui. It has also found its way into various forms of music, most recently in the simple 4/4 beats of Minimal Techno. In 1995 a new independent cinematic movement began known as Dogme 1995 (Dogma 1995). As with the Modernist movement, the thought behind Dogme directors and writers was to create a stripped down version of their art with strict guidelines designed to eschew various gimmicks and techniques in order to focus more on the film’s storyline and the actors’ performances. Inspired by Dogme 95, came the aforementioned New Puritans, a group of writers who wrote short stories according to a strict manifesto designed to promote the straightforward and linear narrative form without any so-called grammatical or storytelling gimmickry.

The Dogme 95 film-making movement was quite clear about its own dogmatic attitude from the very beginning, as can be seen in the title chosen. It created a clear-cut and Spartan manifesto that reflected reality and not expressionism. This is in line with the objectives of the Realist movement. However, the very failure for most Dogme directors to strictly conform to the so-called “Vow of Chasity” manifesto (the rules that govern making a Dogme film) exposes a vital flaw in Puritanism in general. Whereas the art of restriction can clearly develop artists of all forms and focus them on a project, too much restriction can actually stem creativity. Furthermore, some times when we strip back too much we actually fall into the trap of forgetting the original idea or objective. We get caught up in all the abstinence and in line with our inquisitive and creative human nature we re-interpret the rules. Sometimes - and this all too often seen in religion - we warp the rules and cherry pick the rules to conform to our own feelings of insecurity or desires for power.

Minimalism and Modernism are not to everyone’s liking or necessarily proof of a higher or a truer art. I was never completely drawn to the aesthetics of Minimalism just as I wasn’t attracted to the ideas behind religious Puritanism. Minimalism can present us with a fresh outlook. At its base we have a clear approach to keeping everything simple and to keep everything down to a bare minimum. We know that organization and simplicity are at the core of any efficient mechanism from a well constructed engine to a successful business. And yet humans are individuals by nature. Our so-called “herd instinct” can often be attributed to lazy or unconfident thinking, which can be overcome by our ability to choose, an ability that has intrigued philosophers and spiritual leaders probably since civilisation began. One thing is for sure, as much as we naturally seek patterns, humans are forever producing exceptions to the rule and history shows us that single individuals are responsible for initiating some of our greatest changes.

Ayn Rand argued that there was a strong connection between Minimalism (in the form of Modernism) and the individuality - in fact she saw this particular movement as the natural artistic expression of the individualist. Nevertheless Minimalism’s greatest criticism has been in its sterile look. How can one compare see the physical embodiment of the chaotic thought processes of a truly voracious creative thinker with his numerous references, abstract influences and dozens of new ideas in the form of featureless walls and sparse furnishings. Perhaps it reflects the discipline we aspire to that will focus our ideas and keep us working at what every project we need to complete, but then one has to ask why was this type of interior decoration was the one favoured by the yuppies of the 1980s? I can say that I have yet to enter the household of someone who I value as a creative thinker or as a serious artist whose interior followed completely down the dogmatic lines of Minimalism. .

Modernism often gets it in the neck over being pretentious. Never has the fable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” been applied so regularly in modern times than to the Modernist or Modern Art movement. Yet the intentions of the movement are virtually integrity incarnate. Again, Ayn Rand saw this in the Modernist movement. Modernists create for today rather then feeling they have to recreate the past. Rand liked the confidence of the Modernist innovators – their sheer audacity to challenge the neo-classical movements that inferred you could not better the movements of the past. Rather than evolving from any other movement, Modernists aimed to break completely with the old school and to use their innovation to create a truly contemporary product. Unlike the other Puritan movements, Modernism has little strict dogma to stick to other than to be original. This is a tough enough rule to follow and in principle it sounds very admirable, but there is a decisive downside. Modernisms lack of conformity makes the whole process very subjective, and without any set structure or obvious contrast it is the most vulnerable to charlatans and the delusional. There are plenty of comedic sketches based on the pretensions and the ignorant pomposity that all too often surrounds bad pieces of Modernist art. The Tony Hancock film, “The Rebel”, is a perfect example of this type of satire.

Even before we had the Modernist Movement there was the Realist Movement in art, which is probably more in line with the martial arts Puritanism I have come across so often. My two passions are writing and martial arts. Seeing as I am using writing to convey my argument I guess martial arts should get the lion’s share of my own personal observations. In the world of martial arts there have been regular eras when different martial arts disciplines have been challenged by their students regarding the arts effectiveness. Arguments have ranged from either the art being antiquated and therefore not relevant for today or that the art has strayed so far from its root that its original intention has become obscured.
My own approach to martial arts was to teach a process that would allow people to develop as individuals. For this reason, I can see the benefits of taking a puritanical approach, but this cannot prohibit the individual from making their choices and decisions, and learning from their own experiences. I do not pretend that CCMA is a wholly scientific approach, but by being a sceptic I can at least put in measures that I hope will prevent it from becoming steeped in dogma. My humble manifesto does not have a long list of stringent rules any more than it has a list of set techniques. It is a principle centred approach, but even before principles I emphasise the importance of common sense, which makes sure that everything starts, where it will end, with the individual.























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Running Scared from Religion: A Review of "Foreskin's Lament"

Cover of Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir

At roughly two thirds through Shalom Auslander’s “Foreskin’s Lament” the author explains in a letter he is trying to write to his unborn son:

“I know it doesn’t make sense. I know I shouldn’t believe it. I know, and I know, and I know, but I just can’t seem to get this Character out of my head. I’ve tried to forget, I’ve tried to reframe Him, to rewrite Him, to move on. I read Sam Harris. I read Richard Dawkins. It all makes sense, but none of it helps. Maybe I am beyond help”.

This really is the crux of book. One man’s battle with the ultraconservative religious conditioning he received growing up as an Orthodox Jew in Spring Valley, New York. However, don’t expect a complete overt ridiculing of religion - although it is far from respectful – this is a battle that is set to end one way: in negotiations.

This is a continuation of the theme Auslander began in his debut book, “Beware of God” and uses the same very humorous commentary style. It is this particular style that makes the whole book reads more like a therapy session than a biographical work with the author shifting between the impending birth of his first child and his experiences growing up in Spring Valley; his time spent studying in Israel, his work as a “shomer” (a watcher of dead bodies) and his eventual casting out of his community. There are plenty of times when you read the work tongue-in-cheek; wondering if this is really the work of an atheist putting across an irreverently satirical idea. The repression and hypocrisies of his family juxtaposed with their holier than thou veneers comes across as classic irreligious farce. It is arguable that Auslander uses God as a disguised metaphor for the very nature of his family and his particular community.

However, Auslander’s discussions, particularly with his wife, Orli, who regularly remarks “They really did a number on you”, are very convincing. You genuinely feel for the idea of a person fighting against his early programming through over devotion then rebellion, a return to devotion and finally an acceptance of a type compromise outside his cultural group.

“Foreskin’s Lament” is very amusing from start to finish - full of quotable lines that would move even the staunchest theologian – and despite the word “irreverent” popping up in the majority of reviews I did not find any intentional malice directed at anyone, not even God.

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Martial Arts Scepticism: Martial Appeals

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“There's a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons and reasons that sound good.”
- William E. Vaughan

The world of martial arts is full of arguments based on irrelevant appeals. From advertising campaigns that argue their style of martial art is the best because it is practiced by a certain country’s elite military to teaching techniques a certain way because this is the way they have been taught for centuries. They are arguments that do not provide evidence to support their claims, but instead use information designed to make you feel inadequate in your questioning. I shall now take you through some examples of the way appeals arguments, “Martial Appeals” if you like, are used as a method of one-upmanship from one martial arts stylist to another, as a form of persuasive marketing or to simply keep control of the way a student thinks.

Appeals to Antiquity or Tradition

The age and durability of an idea is not always an accurate indicator of its value. However, it is very common for a martial artist to somehow connect the antiquity of their system or style with practical efficiency. The reasoning goes something like this: if these moves or practices didn’t work then they wouldn’t have survived. This is nonsense. There are plenty of reasons why impractical and illogical practices are still being carried out today. Many people cling to rituals out of a sense of national or cultural pride. Traditions are often kept so that people feel they have a link to the past. Some people even have their own personal rituals and in extreme cases these can be strong indications of different types of mental and neurodevelopmental disorders. People also fear change, as it presents the prospect of the unknown. Tradition and the illusion of not changing make us feel safe.

An example I once saw was the historical evidence that martial arts have often been linked to magic. This is not surprising, studies have shown that the closer people come to the presence of death the more superstitious they become. In this particular example, the argument was made that even the most sceptical person must concede that there must be something practical in this connection since there is such a long tradition of it happening. This is a classic example of a jump from one set of information - valid historical evidence linking the belief in magic with martial arts practices – to another – therefore it is possible that magic is a part of martial arts. The first set of information does not provide evidence for the latter. There are very long traditions of the belief in monsters found in most cultures, and fairly often different and completely unrelated cultures come up with very similar monsters. This is not evidence that the monsters existed, but probably has more to do with the limitations of human imagination and common innate fears and the superstitions we create around those fears.

The age of a martial arts system is often held in disproportionately high regard despite the obvious advancements made in combat technology. We know old ideas are not always good ideas otherwise we wouldn’t have any progress. In a relatively short amount of time there have been major advancements in what we know about human anatomy, the way the human brain functions, human behaviour and human potential. We also have the hindsight of history to determine how an old idea might not work. It is far more productive and sensible to question why an old idea has persisted than to make positive assumptions about its validity.

Appeals to Authority

As one would expect those who often use the appeal to antiquity or tradition are those in positions of authority. However, often a person of authority is presented as the actual justification for an argument: Hanshi so-and-so said this is the deadliest of all martial arts therefore this must be true. Like the appeal to antiquity or tradition argument, if we just took the words of experts as gospel we would make no progress. Science constantly questions and advances the work of its great innovators understanding that their work needs updating. It is also worth keeping in mind that someone might have more knowledge on a certain subject than their critic, but their method for applying that knowledge might be deeply flawed.

The other issue regarding appeals to authority is when the authority is not an authority on the topic of the argument. For a long period it was common for most martial arts schools to specialize and, even with the advent of more liberal and open dojos, dojangs, kwoons and gyms most schools still do. However, I recall seeing a journalist asking a boxing coach’s “expert” opinion on a mixed martial arts bout. Unsurprisingly the coach’s response was negative and despite the bout being regulated by strict rules, clearly watched over by an experienced referee and a medical team on hand, the boxing coach compared it to a street-fight. Nevertheless, this authority was a respected and qualified boxing coach running a high performing boxing club. His validity for teaching his sport is not in question, however, his opinion on something that he had little knowledge on had about as much relevance as an ice skating coach discussing the form of a champion skier. Now, if the person being consulted on the mixed martial arts bout was an experienced doorman who had seen thousands of street-brawls and made the same comparison that would have been a different matter.

Appeal to Popularity

By the time the 1980s started the “Kung Fu Boom” was over, however, martial arts had clearly taken root in the public consciousness and a corporate side slowly began to emerge. As this spread and more organizations and governing bodies began to pop up all over Europe and the USA, the marketing machines picked up pace. This was more than a few clubs being affiliated to a foreign authority now; whole associations broke away in the western world and grew into their own entities. It wasn’t long before this corporate image was used as part of the advertising gimmick and, as always, size mattered. Clubs, instructors and individual students were encouraged to join the association with the most members. Popularity has a strong appeal. In military and political thinking we can see an obvious advantage of being on the side with the biggest numbers. Popularity is also at the heart of fashion and retail. However, just because an idea is popular it doesn’t mean it is right.

Popular opinion can, and often is, swayed by charismatic and persuasive personalities. History has certainly told us this many times. In martial arts we have seen many trends promising much and often delivering little. Talk to any long term martial arts magazine editor and they will tell you plenty about the various phases and sub-phases of martial arts. In hindsight a craze in a certain martial art often had little to do with the art’s efficiency, but rather the way it was being sold to the general public.

Appeal to Novelty

The opposite of the appeal to antiquity or tradition is the appeal to novelty. The newness of an idea does not automatically make it the superior of what has gone before. There are many new martial arts systems springing up all the time. Not everyone likes to cling to tradition or popular systems, many like the idea of being up-to-date or being different.

One argument here is that this martial art is new therefore it will provide me with information more applicable to the modern world. Just because the system is new it doesn’t make it better suited for the modern world. It could endorse pseudoscience or have no proper basis on efficient training methods whatsoever. There are plenty of new bogus martial arts popping up all over the place, often promoted by the technology that is synonymous with our era: the internet.

Another argument is that a certain martial art is different and therefore better than more conventional martial arts. A key appeal of the oriental martial arts in the western world was their sheer exoticness. Therefore it should be no surprise that within the martial arts world there is always a strong attraction towards more unusual martial arts. However, many previously unheard of martial arts have little historical evidence to back up their lineage or even their validity. There are some societies that are unashamedly resurrecting extinct martial arts and honestly doing their best to interpret these old training methods out of historical interest. There is nothing wrong with these practices. However, there are still others that exploit the gullibility of enthusiastic martial arts tourists and those members of martial arts subculture who have a natural disposition towards learning something that is marketed as being “forbidden” or “forgotten” or simply out of the mainstream.

There is no rational basis in arguing that just because something is new or different that it is any better than what is old or commonplace. In fact, in all rational fact-finding disciplines from science to history the burden of proof is always placed squarely on the shoulders of the new or unusual idea.

In conclusion, if we are to get the best out of the martial arts we can do better than appeal to irrelevant information. By recognizing these types of arguments not only in others but also in ourselves we can focus more on addressing a problem or question than trying to win a debate or live in denial. Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com

Martial Arts Scepticism: Philosophy and Ancient Wisdom

Cover via Amazon

“Prior to the end of the Qing Dynasty, Chinese martial arts had one goal, pure and simple: winning confrontations through intimidation, the use of weapons, or the use of one’s fists…Chinese martial arts were considered to be a physical skill, a manual skill; they were not linked to any esoteric philosophy, nor were they viewed as a from of character development, religious practice, or spiritual development”.
- “Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals: A Historical Survey”, Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo

Philosophy and martial arts have been associated with each other since… well, not really as long as we would like to think. As much as we want to believe that all the great warriors of old were virtuous and wise sages, it seems highly unlikely. Systems of truly efficient combat are developed by, or derived from, the methods of those who are truly proficient at violence. It is as simple and straightforward as that. The martial artists who have made the biggest tremors in the martial arts community are those who have tested and applied their skills in real life violence or, at least, those who have trained under others who have this level of experience. The true roots of martial arts are found in fighters, be they soldiers, pugilists, street brawlers or people involved in security, who passed their knowledge onto others. The philosophy came later and the esoteric and “character building” stuff came much later.

If we look back further than the twentieth century it is difficult to find many texts that see philosophy as an integral part of physical martial arts training. There is nothing, at least on the surface, that proves that famous literature like Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” or Miyamoto Musashi’s “The Book of Five Rings” is about anything else other than efficient combat strategy.

Tzu’s work, as the title implies, is a treatise on waging war, perhaps the oldest in existence, where he states his most famous sentence, “All warfare is based on deception.” That early line, which is the eighteenth paragraph of chapter one in most translations, should have been a dead giveaway: this is not a discussion on the virtues of love and peace.

Likewise the proof that Musashi was a great philosopher is not found in his most famous text, “The Book of Five Rings”. Like Tzu’s work this treatise deals with combat in an efficient, pragmatic and, arguably, amoral manner. It is a book that describes the best strategies Musashi found worked in the practice of Kenjutsu, Japanese sword-fighting. Musashi apparently was also a keen calligrapher. So what? Hitler liked to paint and it didn’t mean he was a peaceful or “spiritual” person. Musashi, it would appear, was anything but a peaceful person. From an early age he wanted to fight, and throughout his life he would use any means necessary to win, most of which involved outright deception. ome historians have regarded him more as a bully than the archetypical figure of samurai virtue. Before his death Musashi wrote “Dokkodo”, which is perhaps the closest we have to his life philosophy. However, don’t expect to find a text that speaks deeply about loving your fellow human beings or attaining spiritual enlightenment. The 21 precepts for self-discipline contained within the text are more in line with the selfish ideologies of Ayn Rand or Friedrich Nietzsche than an altruistic code of ethics.

It is fair to argue that the principles contained within both “The Art of War” and “The Book of Five Rings” has stood the test of time, but there is always the danger of reading too deep into what has been written or, as is too often the case, twisting the meanings and principles in the text to correspond with one’s own beliefs and ideas. This is avoided when you keep in mind the clear reasons why both texts were written; their historical context and their target readership. In short: why, when and for whom. So, Musashi’s seventeenth century manual on Japanese sword fighting strategies for pupils of his samurai school might share some interesting parallels with the ruthless attitude taken by a 1980s yuppie when he attacked the stock market, but I don’t think it is the best text for advising an early twenty-first century suburbanite how to contribute towards a more caring community.

Readership, now that’s another point worth remembering when we consult ancient texts. Widespread literacy is a modern phenomenon and this brings us onto the reason why we have great historical philosophical martial arts writers. Philosophers were learned people. They could write. Therefore it is not surprising that their interpretations of the martial arts are the most numerous. They could leave a legacy where their illiterate contemporaries could not. It has only been since the early 1990s that the “True Crime” subgenre of factual books has spawned dozens of ghost-written autobiographies that detail the “philosophies” of real fighters. Such biographies vary from earlier works where violent men were seemingly repentant about their violent lives to those who see violence as a type of celebratory culture.

There are modern exceptions to the rule, perhaps even pioneers, like the realistic martial artist/doorman Geoff Thompson, who is also a legitimate writer and motivational philosopher. Geoff Thompson, in many ways, is a link to all these sides of the martial arts and gives us a glimpse of what the scholarly martial arts pioneers were like and how they developed in their respective journeys. He was a martial artist first who decided to test his skills in a real-life environment. He became a doorman, a person who would face the realities of fighting. The lessons he learnt were brought back to his martial arts classes. However, once the “fight outside of a chip shop” area was covered thoroughly and the physical limitations were established, it was only natural for the great martial artist to pursue other attributes that had been developed as bi-products through his intensive training experiments. These attributes moved further away from the visceral area of last resort civilian self-defence and more into developing character. Although Geoff Thompson has maintained his roots in “hard skills” it also important to remember that he always had a literate soul. He wrote plays at home and he wrote his autobiography “sitting on the toilet” when he worked at a factory. He worked as a nightclub bouncer, but even in those “blood and snot” days, as he gradually went from a martial arts denier to martial arts sceptic, he couldn’t help but notice the poetry in the language of the door and the culture of the door. With this in mind, it is little surprising that as Geoff Thompson changed there were certain principles, deep within him, that were always going to emerge.

However, it is with an early twentieth century example of the fighting philosopher that historians like Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo say that “for better or worse” our ideas relating to martial arts religious philosophy have been shaped.

Sun Lu Tang was both a highly respected martial arts fighter and an esteemed scholar. He was also a follower of Taoism and was able to synergise his knowledge of the three great schools of internal martial arts training with his religious and philosophical training. Sun had a thorough education in philosophy and taught it alongside the martial arts. His books made links between the martial arts and Taoist cosmology. Furthermore, as China entered a new more open and modern phase that would make martial arts more accessible to the general public, Sun promoted the concept of practicing martial arts for health reasons rather than combat.

This gave birth to the modern idea of Tai Chi Chuan, Pakua and Hsing-I being the “new age” systems for wellbeing, often reinforced with pseudoscientific and superstitious ideas relating to the cultivation of mystical energy. There is no empirical historical evidence to prove that Tai Chi Chuan or any of the other internal arts have their roots in anything more mystical than straightforward combat efficiency.

There are many different reasons why the Asian martial arts became entwined with religion and philosophy, but a major factor has to be China and Japan’s conscious decision to modernize. This modernization, representative of the Japanese change to “Do” from “Jutsu” in their martial arts, meant throwing off the old image of their feudalistic past. The arts’ central message, one that would be embraced by the west throughout the twentieth century, would be about spirituality, health and other non-combat activities. Such areas were the zone of philosophy, and it was the philosophers who pushed it. Sun Lu Tang in China and Ueshiba Morhei, the founder of Aikido, in Japan, lead these efforts. It was no coincidence that Judo was founded by a man who had a high ranking career in the Japanese education system. Education was the way to ensure martial arts survival. If you could prove that martial arts would be helpful to motivate and discipline the subjects of a government then you could rely on the support instead of the oppression of that government. Martial academics led the way for better and for worse, for just as martial arts became more accessible, their objectives became obscure and it let mysticism, showmanship and outright charlatanism through the backdoor.

A point I have tried to make with this essay is that great martial arts masters weren’t also great scholars and philosophers and vice versa, it just so happened that the most influential martial arts teachers in the last one hundred years or so were also scholars and philosophers. By way of a more modern comparison the most famous martial artists in the latter part of the twentieth century and today also happen to be actors. It is just as ludicrous to say that being a good actor is integral to being a proficient martial artist or fighter. In both examples we can see why the philosopher and actor have become successful martial artists. They are influential. They can appeal to a wider audience through their ability to articulate or perform. They might well be good martial artists, and this is in no way a slight on their technical ability, but what has helped keep them noticed is their ability to work another skill set.

Nevertheless, the philosophical martial artist belief persists to this day. This belief is at the root of something I have come to call the “By-Product Myth”. It is of no surprise that fictional martial arts media is the natural conveyor of this idea - after all it was a martial arts novel that started it all in the first place. Stanley E. Henning writes in his article “Politically Correct Treatment of Myths in Chinese Martial Arts” that the idea Chinese martial arts that descended from the Shaolin Temple came from a novel written between 1904 and 1907 entitled “Travels of Lao Can”. Henning remarks that “there is no indication that it was ever a part of an earlier oral tradition”. After the novel there came the book “Secrets of Shaolin Temple Boxing” written in 1915 by an unnamed author. This book is often cited as the main source for the pseudo-historic belief in the Shaolin Temple’s high level of importance in pre-twentieth century Chinese martial arts. It didn’t take long for this myth to be completely debunked by an outspoken native Chinese martial artist and historian called Tang Hao, but it still spread to the West and via popular media was repeated enough times for whole schools of martial arts to consider it a fact.

In conclusion, martial arts survived in the East due to the fact that they became recognised by those who taught and practiced them as a part of their cultural identity. This was also something oppressive governments and occupying powers recognised and it is the reason why they suppressed them. They survived through adaption and taking advantage of the changing times. Those teachers who had skills outside of martial arts used these skills to ensure the survival of their arts, their legacy and, in many instances, their livelihood. This is an understandable reason why the philosophical martial artist became popular. However, there is something else more fundamental than this. In times of peace martial arts teachers realise the limitations inherent in violence. Furthermore, when their students don’t have the short term of goal of having to face violence, as a soldier would, they become more preoccupied with other less tangible battles. Martial arts are then turned into a positive activity. And with positive activity comes a human desire to explore positive thinking. Philosophy is a natural strategy for those who fight intangible battles. With this in mind, I do not believe it is wrong for a martial arts teacher to not only teach philosophy as part of his methodology, but to also use martial arts analogies. After all it makes for good and intelligent writing. However, what is imperative is to understand where the two might not co-exist and also where the analogies and metaphors end. Some argue “Why stay in the forge?” Why indeed, but when you have first looked to martial arts as a means for self-protection it is important to make sure you go through that forge in the first place.
Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com