War and Peace

Fighting is brutal and uncivilised by definition, isn’t it? Fighters are aggressive – it’s kind of a requirement. Isn’t it? So why do traditional martial arts place such an emphasis on serenity and good character?

I’ve been studying the theory of martial arts, and a recurring theme is the philosophy of the warrior code – the idea that the true martial arts master must also be the ideal cultivated (or civilised) human. It seems almost contradictory to find such emphasis – in a martial arts manual – on pacifism. Part of most martial traditions is respect: when everyone can fight and goes armed, respect is the obvious way to avoid blood on the walls. So respect and cool-headedness is expedient, but it goes beyond that. In ‘The Art of War’ Sun Tzu places a high value on the general who plans rationally, choosing to fight on optimum ground and only when he will win. It reads as cold-blooded, but translates into effective strategy even today.

Calm confidence in the face of attack is unnerving for the attacker, which gives a psychological edge to the best poker face.

Fear freezes, anger doesn’t – this fact can save your life if you tend to rage over fright. But anger makes you rash and impairs your judgement. In a fight, you’re so marinated in adrenalin anyway, you may not notice your recklessness in time to reconsider it. Unless, of course, you can cultivate the serenity of the ideal warrior – something most traditional martial arts propose is a product of integrity and strong morals.

In the modern non-military West, we’ve lost contact with the idea of a warrior caste – and alongside that, with the warrior mindset. Martial arts have kept it far more alive, from the Japanese bushido code to the traditional Chinese salute martial artists use at the start of classes, forms and fights. Even Western fencing has its formal salute to the adversary.

As you learn to fight, you learn discipline and accountability. And surely those are cultivated, civilised traits – however at odds with our generic perception of fighting.

Pen, Sword, Words, Deeds

Do actions still speak louder than words? These days, with all the recording and playback technology available to us, words have a power and immortality long denied them. Before radio, what stuck in people’s memory was achievement – not what you promised to do, but what you did. Now, the speeches of politicians and leaders are recorded and quoted and pass into cultural vocabulary: “I have a dream,” “Never before in the field of human conflict…” and so on. So is it still true that actions speak louder and more memorably?

Why do we remember Churchill, Luther King, Kennedy, and Mandela’s words so well? Is it just a fine turn of phrase by the speechwriter, or the well-trained delivery? Is it the capture of a moment and a mood? Or is to do with timing and what happened next?

The truly memorable speeches came at turning points in history, and sometimes were – or at least appeared to be – the pivot on which events turned. Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ expressed the civil rights movement of the time with an eloquence that still rings clearly (although that may be because it’s still, sadly, relevant).

Churchill’s wartime speeches stiffened British resolve to keep fighting and keep believing in victory. If Britain had fallen before America joined the war, the outcome may have been vastly different.

So the great speeches incite action, and express popular sentiment with a view to affecting policy – in other words, inciting action. We remember the speeches that worked – that had an effect. In other words, the ones that could, arguably, actually be reclassified as deeds.

I guess it is still true that actions trump words.

African Women Do Too…

Of the ten worst countries in which to be a woman, 4 are in Africa, including 2 of the top 5 (or 3, depending on which UN/Amnesty International list you read). And yet the historical accounts of powerful and military women aren’t by any means a EuroAsian phenomenon. In Northern Africa, we not only the powerful Queens of Egypt (Hatsheput, Nefertiri, Cleopatra) but also the Nubian Candaces (or Kentakes) of the Kushites. Amanirenas, who took on the might of Rome after Cleopatra’s death, to oust them from Egypt. She failed to conquer, but did manage to negotiate a favourable peace after her defeat – which must have been quite a feat of political manoevring.

She was succeeded by Amanishabheto, who led the Kushites in a series of attacks against Augustus’s attempts to tax the Kushites. In the end, the harassed Romans sued for peace.

Amanishabeto was succeeded by her daughter Amanitore, the last of the great Kushite builders, restoring temples destroyed by the Romans, and building reservoirs to ensure the  water supply for her kingdom.

Yes, all this is ancient history, and historical references are thin oon the ground, coming mostly from Roman and Greek sources, with a couple of references in the Bible (the Queen of Sheba and Tharbis, wife of Moses being the obvious ones). Is there nothing more recent?

Well, in what is now Benin, the Fon tribe had an elite group of women warriors as recently as the late 19^th century. They called them the Mino, recruited them from the royal harem and imbued them with spiritual and religious significance as well as military prowess.

The Europeans who encountered them called them the Dahomeny Amazons, and recorded their discipline and ruthlessness in battle. In the end, it was superior guns that defeated them, but even the French Foreign Legion cited their "incredible courage and audacity." 

So how on earth did Africa go from this to having some of the worst gender inequalities in the world? Second thoughts, don’t answer that.

Hooves and Harlots

It surprises me how much ink has been spent (and how many trees have given their lives) in explaining the kinks in the Ancient Greek psyche that created the Amazons. I wonder why they bothered.
I can see the argument for the Amazons to be a myth, a fiction, because a tribe of a single gender is ultimately unsustainable. But that doesn't mean the myth is down to some psychological twist any more than the myth of Centaurs is. Surely there's some space for the concept of poetic licence and hyperbole?
The Greeks were contemporary with the Celts and the Botai. The Celts tribal territories extended through Illyria, with detours via Delphi. It's extremely unlikely that the Greeks wouldn't have encountered them, and when they did, they would have been struck by the power and prominence of the women - Celtic women fought in battle, and Celtic queens had real power. Is it so outlandish that this strange set-up would have grown in the telling?
The Botai were some of the south eastern tribes of what we now call Mongolia. They would have encountered the Greeks near Macedon, Troy and the area around Byzantium. They were horse-tribes, who virtually lived in the saddle, and who needed no words or whips to steer their horses. It would have looked like a creature of one mind to a Greek merchant. Again, is it so strange to allow for the hyperbole of wonder in the tale's re-telling?
Why do we feel the need to explain everything in arcane terms when common sense ones will do? Or does that just make a better story?