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Great works on strategy, martial artistry in the broader sense

Lark

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A thread dedicated to the topic in the title, anyone any favourites or recommendations, I'm always looking for some. :happy2:
 
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WALMART

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Yagyu Munenori has a philosophical text on The Sword and The Mind, strangely titled The Sword and The Mind.

I guess it depends if you're into that kind of stuff, mixing beliefs and actions. It really doesn't have much to do with exact martial arts; In fact, many places he explicity states the techniques he is trying to exemplify can only be taught verbally, so he doesn't even try. I guess it was written when paper was much more valuable than it is now, or he honestly feels it is something that cannot be described in text.




Another book I've enjoyed reading is John Keegan's The Face of Battle.

It has to do more with the evolution of the human aspect of battle, how soldiers react in the various situations battle has evolved into. The book is divided between three battles, Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme, all of which occur about 600 years apart but each fought within about twenty miles of each other on the same typography. It has really helped me develop the concept that modern battles have evolved into controlled skirmishing, that the average man no longer fights with honor but with fear and uncertainty.
 

Ene

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Are you asking about martial arts in a general sense or are you interested in any one particular school of thought? I will ask my teacher if he has any thing he highly recommends.
 

Lark

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Are you asking about martial arts in a general sense or are you interested in any one particular school of thought? I will ask my teacher if he has any thing he highly recommends.

I was thinking of it in the sense of strategists and martial prowess beyond giving battle and individual fighting abilities.
 

DiscoBiscuit

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Tokugawa Ieyasu's manipulation of the Council of Regents and his strategic moves prior to the battle of Sekigahara during his assumption of the shogunate in Japan at the tail end of the 16th century have impressed me immensely.
 

Ene

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I was thinking of it in the sense of strategists and martial prowess beyond giving battle and individual fighting abilities.

I think that is a wonderful way to proceed. I will see my teacher tomorrow at our training session I will ask him what he recommends. He's a great guy that walks on a cane [he was in a car accident, but as you know, a cane can be a mighty weapon] and has been training longer than most of us have been alive. If anybody knows, it will be him.

Also, you would be interested in the healing aspects of martial arts and in the understanding of how energy moves and circulates throughout our bodies?
 

RaptorWizard

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The Warrior Within about Bruce Lee's Martial Art Philosophy is a good book.
 

Lark

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I think that is a wonderful way to proceed. I will see my teacher tomorrow at our training session I will ask him what he recommends. He's a great guy that walks on a cane [he was in a car accident, but as you know, a cane can be a mighty weapon] and has been training longer than most of us have been alive. If anybody knows, it will be him.

Also, you would be interested in the healing aspects of martial arts and in the understanding of how energy moves and circulates throughout our bodies?

Like Chi? I've been interested in that in the past and the distinction between so called hard and soft martial artistry, it disappoints me that this has been almost exclusively the territory of eastern martial arts and culture, I say that without racisim because I love those things myself but I wish that the western equivalents were preserved and as popular.

Instead things like MMA or UFC stand in for it, those things are fine, I wouldnt knock anyones enjoyment of them but it seems like more brawling than anything else. Certainly these days, I remember when those things were young and it seemed much more like the ultimate matching of different styles of fighting but now its all like prison fighting or determined by viciousness.
 

Lark

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The Warrior Within about Bruce Lee's Martial Art Philosophy is a good book.

I havent got that, that's interesting, I've got his book JKD and the artist of life one. I like him but I've read good biographical examinations of JKD which suggest that it was a by product of American culture and a tendency for constant reinvention and novelty.
 

Lark

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I really liked this. One of the things which struck me about it is that it appears that this course of studies which is probably expensive and open to quarters of the elite and society spectrum as a result appears to have a lot to do with what I would have considered basic socialisation in terms of how to handle, anticipate and reckon with failure, think and theorising styles etc. It almost seems like at a certain level academia is attempting to undo the sorts of conditioning which is fine for the plebs, that mix of certainty about free market fundamentalism and patriotic hubris has got to be understood and dispensed with but only if you're part of the ruling elect.

I liked the question about whether or not democracies can do grand strategy, the reality, I believe, is that they can but they can not do the sort of elitist grand strategy which is typical of oriential despotism, deep states and oligarchs, it takes a certain level of education and cultural elevation of which I dont believe the majority of market democracies are willing to contemplate or pursue. The reason being that they're more marketplace than they are democracy and marketing deals more in fantasies, impulsivity, novelty, excitement, exhortation than thinking and judging.
 

Lark

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BTW Peguys post was really the sort of thing I was thinking of for this thread.
 

Ene

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I'm sure this is not what you're looking for after viewing the video, but my teacher recommended a book called Chi Kung by Master Lam Kam Chuen.
 

Lark

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I'm sure this is not what you're looking for after viewing the video, but my teacher recommended a book called Chi Kung by Master Lam Kam Chuen.

I'm not excluding anything at all, thank you and thanks to your teacher :)
 

Ene

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Your are welcome. I hope it contains some useful knowledge and inspiration for you.
 
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Sniffles

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BTW Peguys post was really the sort of thing I was thinking of for this thread.

Here's a few books that may interest you:
The_Dynamics_of_Military_Revolution.jpg

The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050

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The Sociology of War and Violence

Both very good reads, adressing the too often neglected role of social factors in shaping the nature of warfare.
 
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