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[Traditional Enneagram] 8s and martial arts?

Lightyear

New member
Joined
Jul 3, 2008
Messages
899
As a rather peaceloving 9 I've never understood the desire to do martial arts (I'll be in the corner chillin', thank you very much :D ).

What draws 8s in droves to this kind of sport? Is it to protect oneself? (an 8 told me, that he was attacked, threatened and hurt as a child by a stranger and that experience led him into doing martial arts) Do you think this is a very common reason for 8s to do martial arts?

Is it also a way to deal with one's anger? (I might get pissed off once in a while but I certainly don't have some consistently simmering anger)

8s, let me understand what exactly martial arts mean to you.
 

Lark

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
As a rather peaceloving 9 I've never understood the desire to do martial arts (I'll be in the corner chillin', thank you very much :D ).

What draws 8s in droves to this kind of sport? Is it to protect oneself? (an 8 told me, that he was attacked, threatened and hurt as a child by a stranger and that experience led him into doing martial arts) Do you think this is a very common reason for 8s to do martial arts?

Is it also a way to deal with one's anger? (I might get pissed off once in a while but I certainly don't have some consistently simmering anger)

8s, let me understand what exactly martial arts mean to you.

I'm interested in martial arts in the broadest possible sense, not simply unarmed combat, melee combat but every imaginable sort of marksmanship, archery, everything else but also strategy, battles, troop formations, table top strategy, Risk, all of it.

Its a huge part of human history, along with politics, although I think of war and militarism generally being the result of the break down of politics or mismanagement of political affairs rather than politics by other means like Clausewitz said, I think that Clausewitz is an excellent theorist of total war but I also think that total war is to be avoided at all costs, the sort of limited warfare posited by Sun Tzu is much preferable and most conflicts involve attempts to de-escalate, contain and limit the actual warfare even as the other tendencies try to get the opposite things trending.

Something that I would add is that I dont believe any of the Mao, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz in the board room stuff, I dont think that business should ever be confused with war, limited or total, and the sorts of competition involved should be totally different, it has been very bad for an country that this mindset has taken root, resulting in monopoly and oligopoly, barriers to entry in markets, the collapse and disappearance of competition. Its a kind of winner take all predatory parsimony that takes over rather than economic order proper when that happens.

I hate a lot of conservatism because it takes all this for a norm, believes in conflict, sows the seeds of conflict or seeks the ramping up of conflicts with a view to cataclysmic conclusion, sometimes with the idea of a harmonious post-conflict era and sometimes not. Its real bad. Sometimes I think its a result of big money, old money and privilege but those things can exist without this sort of ruinous business or political culture. Some liberal causes have this same conflict craving, "fight, fight, fight" philosophy too but not all of them. It looks pretty different when it arises out of liberalism too, usually its some deep seated grievance or susceptibility to grievance but the result's much the same.
 
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