Niall Keane wrote:Ah yes... the argument gets piss poor entirely...
So if you can't fight with your martial art thats ok, you can still be the best internal martial artist because.... guns!
As for the rest of ye .... with the reduction of martial art to "primitative male ritual", maybe your martial dabbling isn't up to much and never touches the artful? Perhaps consider that you now exhibit primitive herd mentality?
I personally believe that you should be able to use your skills effectively for self-defense, to save your life and others' lives. I enjoy watching competitive fighters, but I don't give a rat's rump whether I can play in the competition ring with it. From an academic standpoint, I like to see someone who has complete command over internal body method -- being able to create and maintain total awareness and a unified structure, 6-directional energy, and be able to manipulate and apply it in a number of ways to achieve specific effects on a non-compliant, resisting, aggressive attacker.
From a practical standpoint, I want to be able to use it combatively to defend myself. That's how I train, under increasing pressure and duress. I also train traditionally, for the beauty of the skills and the forms themselves. There should be a balance of both in a martial art. This is not knocking competitive fighters; that's a whole other thing, and it's fine in its own right. But the ring isn't real life, either. IMO it is not legitimate to judge "who is the best internal guy" simply by how he can apply his skills in the competition ring.
And who said that martial are a primitive male ritual? They are symbolic derivatives of a very primal (not the same meaning as "primitive") human drive, expressed in male territorial displays and dominance-hierarchy ritual in virtually all social animal species. This is objective. Don't take it personally. All of us are acting on drives that are wired into us by millions of years of living on Planet Earth.