Social Uses of the Martial Arts
Individuals study martial arts for a variety of reasons. Examples include
body sculpting, bullying, curiosity, personal empowerment, and redemp-
tion through pain. Societies use martial arts similarly, and some examples
of common social uses follow. To avoid giving undue priority to any single
use or motivation, the following arrangement is alphabetical.
Agonistics. Agonistic behavior is aggressive social interaction between
people. Such interaction can be mental, physical, or both, and participants
can be actors, spectators, or both. Although participation can provide in-
trinsic pleasure, people more often use agonistic behavior less as recreation
than as a conflict resolution model or to teach methods of trickery, decep-
tion, and divination not otherwise taught in school. Thus physical agonis-
tics such as boxing essentially mimic dueling, while team agonistics such as
football essentially mimic small-unit warfare.
Character development. “Whatever does not kill us, makes us
stronger,” said Nietszche, and for his part, Confucius said, “By the draw-
ing of the bow, one can know the virtue and conduct of men.” What con-
stitutes good character depends on the society and subgroup, and changes
over time. Thus the Romans thought good character meant the willingness
to watch gladiators kill criminals, while before World War I the YMCA
taught that it was abstinence from masturbation.
Currying divine favor.At various times, most major cultures have
conceived martial art as an appropriate religious activity. (Examples of
monastic warriors include Zealots, jihadists, Crusaders, Rajputs, and
Shaolin monks, and to this day the Salvation Army sings, “Onward, Chris-
tian Soldiers.”) The motivation is often the belief that God will grant vic-
tory to the person or side that is rightly guided. (“Whom shall I fear? The
Lord is the protector of my life,” said the medieval Knights Hospitaller.)
Exorcising demons.Sympathetic magic is at work here. For example,
during the fourth century A.D., Daoists (Taoists) began using quarterstaffs
during exorcisms. The idea was that when the priest pointed his staff to-
ward heaven, the gods bowed and the earth smiled, but when he pointed it
at demons, the cowardly rascals fled (Lagerwey). On the other side of the
world, as recently as the seventeenth century, European medical texts urged
physicians to treat the sword with the same salve as the injury. Often per-
cussion (for example, drums and firecrackers) is associated with such ac-
tivities, sometimes to help the ritual specialists enter the necessary trance
states, sometimes to frighten the demons or inspire observers.
Funerary rituals.Homer described funerary games in The Iliad,and
as George MacDonald Fraser said in Quartered Safe out Hereabout a di-
vision of dead men’s property in 1945, “It was not callousness or indiffer-
ence or lack of feeling for two comrades who had been alive that morning532 Social Uses of the Martial Arts