Well said.
r.

Quote Originally Posted by RenDaHai View Post
Of course History is important and necessary. Here is a Quote from Diodorus of Sicily;

'History offers us a schooling safe from the pitfalls of life through a presentation of events that have proved advantageous in the experience of others'.

A fine way to describe form also. Do you practice form? Do you study the techniques passed down from before? This IS history. ALL traditional Kung fu is history. If you ignore the history, then you ignore the tradition. If you ignore this, you are not studying the Kung fu style you claim to. Sure, you are still studying martial arts, and if your mechanistic mind reduces kung fu entirely to 'martial arts' then that is precisely what you are training. If this is your only interest then that is fine and all success to you, but do not believe that it is you who are seeking kung fu and call the traditionalists pretenders.

Any of the myriad disciplines of Kung fu is an indivisible whole. It comes from a culture not as suited to reductionist thinking as ours, and a time where reducing such a discipline to its constituents was impractical. You may not believe that a whole is more than the sum of its parts. You may think you can exceed Kung fu by isolating the specific techniques that work relative to your specific training method in your limited experience, ignoring all other aspects of the style. But when you do this do not userp the name of 'KungFu'. Even if you can defeat all the kung fu masters of the world with your method, do not be persuaded that you have the real kung fu, because kung fu is irreducible to one quantity to be matched.

If you want to be a good martial artist and take what bits of Kung fu suite you then that is fine but don't think you are the master of kung fu. Similarly if you are the opposite, a traditionalist, do not think because you understand some deeper aspects of Kung fu that makes you a better martial artist than those who don't. It does not.



History is passed down to teach you something. Don't ignore it, or believe it. Try to LEARN something from it. When we say 'this style was created by a woman' what does that teach you? Women cannot match men at strength, a style invented by a woman relies on structure not strength. Its strikes rely on stabbing weak points rather than bludgeoning. Remember this history as you train and you can correct yourself.