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Old 11-04-2007, 10:12 AM   #70
mathewjgano
 
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Dojo: Tsubaki Kannagara Jinja Aikidojo; Himeji Shodokan Dojo
Location: Renton
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Re: Aikido is 99% strikes and only 1% preparation.

Quote:
Don Magee wrote: View Post
It wasn't that the kids were not trying to hurt each other, they simply just did not know how.
This is how I would have guessed it likely went. I've not seen a huge number of fights, but of the ones I've seen there were often plenty of ridiculous behaviors (thumbs sticking straight out and other exagerated postures, wildly swinging arms). If those kids really knew what they were doing, don't you think the victim would have been seriously injured? Possibly even killed?

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They were also a lot more off balance then I had previously thought an untrained person would be.
I think this depends on the amount of fights that untrained person has been in, but it's interesting to hear about the whole "real world vs. training hall" argument and then see somehting like this, isn't it?

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The other thing I discovered is that even in emergency's the cops in the mall refuse to get off their little 2 wheeled scooters and run. Which mean the kids outran them.
It wouldn't surprise me if the cops didn't really try to catch them.

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What I mean by thinning the gene pool is that here, we do not live in a bad area. 'Thugs' are made only by bad parenting, nothing more. If these kids live to reproduce, they will produce even more bad children that are a strain on this society. I'm sick of paying for the mistakes of others. Yes, it is harsh and cynical, but I don't think it is possible to reach kids who behave like that in an area with good schools and a very low crime rate. Unless of course these kids came from out of town from some ghetto. But they were dressed too expensively for that imho.
I agree it's frustrating...hugely so. It's hard not to feel an incredible amount of contempt and disdain for the kids and their parents. Both are ignorant and are lacking proper perspective. On one hand, I've often felt similar: "let 'em die, for all i care." Over time I've come to view this attitude as subtley destructive though...not that I can offer any concrete solution, but it is this kind of apathy which permits a society to go on unchecked into the kind of "ghetto fabulous" culture which has slowly formed and which took firm root in the early 90's. Still, I'm willing to bet those parents didn't actively raise their kids to be thuggish. Apathy of some degree allowed it to happen. For that reason, i don't think these folks are lost causes.
If I had been there, particularly with my wife or other family members, i probably wouldn't have done much. I'd like to think though, that if I saw an opening to disrupt it, i would have taken advantage of it. The sad fact is that with so many people around, it would have been ridiculously easy to prevent the attack from progressing. Mob mentality works both ways I think: on one hand, it causes people to act out in ways they normally wouldn't, but on the other, it also causes them to not act.....that's my hunch anyway.
I agree with you though...it's interesting to see stuff like this go down; provides some food for thought.

Gambarimashyo!
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