Erick Mead

Well, then, the ad populum fallacy of logic has truly run amok ...


But, let me not leave the minor snark lingering and just pass on.

Let's unpack the argument in play here, please:
What is a "valid" martial art ?

I suppose that IS the question isn't it ?

Martial arts touch on violence, combat involves violence, and "validity" of an art clearly depends on the nature of relation between these categories in what an art trains to provide a practitioner.

You can't answer that question about "validity" until you answer what a given martial art is FOR. Not all martial arts are FOR the same purposes, even though they occupy some related spaces of knowledge and application. Muay Thai need only be valid as Muay Thai. Aikido need only be valid as Aikido. Taekwondo need only be valid as Taekwondo. MMA, while a composite of elements of many other traditions in confluence, need only be valid as MMA.

And NONE of these are actual combat. They have boundaries and rules that are far short of the existential limits that exist in combat of prevailing, preferably, though not necessarily, while alive at the end.

Actual combat is not an art. It is an event of violence, and in which many arts (or no art) may be applicable or inapplicable, depending. I haven't yet seen the proverbial "Swiss Army knife" of martial arts which has tools for every possible event, and not even Swiss Army knives have tools for every occasion.

The primary goals in combat are to 1) survive an event of violence, and 2) achieve an objective in the context of that violence (which may or may not be consistent with goal #1, depending on circumstance). Winning and surviving are not always mutually inclusive categories in combat. They are in martial arts contests. To save one's child from death by killing the man attacking her, though at the needful cost of one's own life, is martially valid and achieves one goal of combat, though certainly not optimal in failing the second. Sometimes, even not winning and not surviving in combat are still martially valid, because the larger alternatives may yet be worse. (They tend immortalize these people, e.g - Leonidas at Thermopylae.)

An art which trains one in skills, and mental and physical development to meet these goals in some circumstances of violence is a valid art that can call itself martial. A martial art is no less martial for the fact that there are circumstances, often many, of violent events with which it does not, or even cannot, deal with in the terms of its art. One does not bring a knife to the gunfight, for example. Close can count in hand grenades, artillery and nuclear weapons - but not in edged weapons.

One does not criticize the skill with a knife when faced with a gun. One may certainly criticize one whose strategic judgment finds him in that situation, but that is a far larger lesson than any particular martial art, though any decent martial art should teach it to some degree. "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." "What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy."

So, I simply suggest that constructive discussion focuses on affirming -- and improving -- all martial arts that may be the subject of any discussion on the point, and in their proper context.