Striking Beauty by Allen Barry

Author:Allen, Barry [Allen, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO027000, SPORTS & RECREATION / Martial Arts & Self-Defense, REL065000, RELIGION / Taoism (see also PHILOSOPHY / Taoist)
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

I differentiated sport and dance in terms of expressive intentionality. Dance movements are endotelic and look it. Sport movements are competitive, contesting, and look it. Martial arts movements are weapons, and when they are performed well, they express this design, this violent intentionality, though without any violent purpose on the performer’s part. The movements look designed for violence, as indeed they are, visibly expressing that design intentionality.

No martial arts movements are symbolic or merely graceful. None are of merely conventional value. A technique is trained and designed for violence. People who train in the martial arts “are practicing and training in person-to-person violence,” according to a law-enforcement officer and highly experienced martial artist. “As a hobby we practice and play at things that are heinous crimes except in very narrow circumstances.” That is true not only of those who train in connection with their work as law-enforcement officers or in some other professional capacity. Even the practice of kata (forms) is the practice of movements whose design-intentionality is combat and that, when competently performed, visibly express that design, that violent intentionality. Nothing about karate kata or Shaolin forms is merely symbolic. The highest standard of their performance must express the violent intentionality designed into the movements. The practitioner must know where the energies go, and that means competence in their use as weapons.36

INTENTIONALITY VERSUS PURPOSE

The intentionality of movements. Their design, specified by the description under which the movement is selected.

The purpose of action. The purpose for which someone produces movements of such intentionality.

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