Hesitance, Initiative and Winning a Fight

I'm reposting in substance, an article from the "LESSONS ON THE ENGLISH LONGSWORD" Blog. If you'd like to read the complete text (Click Here).

"To control the fight, one must "create the fight. To bend an opponent to one's will, one must force the opponent to react; to guide, recognize and preempt the opponent's actions and reactions. This is an integral, shining facet of that jewel of the art that we treasure.

"As the ancient maxim of many a culture says, to defend is to prolong defeat. The other side of the coin being that action beats reaction. The best defense is a strong offense. These sayings are innumerable within the martial arts, and one could scribe volumes on them. Yet one will never find anything advocating the opposite...anyone who has studied these arts, and many who haven't, will tell you that within the tradition continued by Leichtenauer, the seizing of the initiative to end the fight quickly and efficiently and to control the opponent is highly regarded. It is also apparent in that it is by far the favored means of doing so in the contemporary English tradition."

Today everyone stresses defensive martial arts - aikido being one of the most often learned.  For some reason I don't presently understand there is some twisted virtue in giving an enemy the gift of the first move. If you give it to a skilled enemy, you forfeit the engagement.  In nature one lion doesn't give another lion the first bite for control of the pride. 

A combatant must always seize and retain the initiative in order to remain in control of a series of attacks. I use the word "momentum". It's true in life, it's true in business and it's true in politics. Surrendering momentum means losing the contest. 

Requirements

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

A Dish Served Cold

My children know I'm not a vengeful person by nature... ok, maybe I am.  I've been trying to be better about this recently - yes, seriously. By that I do not mean that I'm further perfecting the craft. I mean that I'm trying to be more tolerant and long suffering than I've been in the past.

Karma

fashionably unfashionable

It's always been acceptable to pander to the mob. At most times and places during the course of humanity's journey on the third rock from the sun it's been necessary to provide bread and circus to keep the peasants placated.

Technology advances but human beings are more or less the same as they were a very long time ago. Nothing in our nature has become more noble. There are those among us with valor, many among our number without, but we reinvent the wheel all the same. Thus Buddhists believe it is a cycle of many lifetimes, not for a moment considering that humanity may simply be that screwed up.

As I witness America trying to re-invent Lyndon B. Johnson's failed (so-called) Great Society, I can't help but reflect on the absolute folly of socialism. Margaret Thatcher said it best, when discussing socialism, "Eventually you run out of other people's money."

Why do we sing the same tired old refrains and make the same mistakes that were made a generation before? Yes, I know the answer - humanity is simply that screwed up. We select our heroes poorly.