Euro vs. Japan

[Jaron Bernstein]

http://www.amazon.com/Military-Revoluti ... F8&s=books

I suggest this as well.

[Corey Roberts]

Interesting, I've never read either of those books, Although in my opinion any individual who states that any one race or group of people is somehow naturally or inherintly superior to another in any fashion whether mentally or physically has some serious issues of their own.

[Jaron Bernstein]

Interesting, I've never read either of those books, Although in my opinion any individual who states that any one race or group of people is somehow naturally or inherintly superior to another in any fashion whether mentally or physically has some serious issues of their own.

Parker does not make that argument in his book at all.

[Rodolfo Martínez]

In my opinion, every etnia has it´s particular characteristics depending of the diverse natural factors of their enviroment. So, that guineans couldn´t ¨handle¨ Maths like europeans, dont´make them less smart or less capable, only they have different habilities wich helps them to survive in their enviroment. The genetic difference between different etnias is insignificant (Sorry, I don´t remember the percentage). So, smartness is not totally a question of genes, it has it´s social and psychologic part.

[John_Clements]

Diamond (who is a biologist, btw, not a historian) gives away the anti-Western philosophy underpinning his ideas when he states (more than once) his theories were prompted by “questions about inequality in the modern world” (p.15). Just a few things out of Diamond's work reveals him to be anti-Western, anti-capitalist, anti-technology, and highly ignorant of military history...and indeed a racist: “From the beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is….It’s easy to recognize…why my impression that New Guineans are smarter than Westerners may be correct.” (p. 20). On the bottom of 21 page we find his most noxious and blatantly racist statement: “in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners.”[!]

The last time we encountered such insanity about “racial superiority” from an evolutionary scientist you might recall he was a member of the Nazi party working for an odd little German guy with a funny mustache.

At one point Diamond even complains that the average Westerner would be lost in a New Guinea jungle and completely helpless while his local New Guinea friends are able to easily find their way around and locate food safely all by familiar sight and smell. Quite impressive to the urbanite Diamond and surely evidence of their “superiority.” So, according to Diamond then, I suppose if equivalently you dropped a New Guinean hunter-gatherer in the middle of the typical suburban Super Wal-Mart and told him to go and find within 10 minutes a ball-peen hammer or a three-quarter lug wrench, when he couldn’t do it that would mean he's intellectually and biologically inferior, right? After all, intelligence is really measure of “environmental adaptation” according to Diamond.

The book has a few gems of insight, to be sure. Otherwise it is revolting in its ignorance of military history, sociology, and anthropology.

In many ways, military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson’s brilliant, “Carnage and Culture” (Doubleday 2001), explaining how ideas and values shaped our martial heritage so that history turned out the way it did, is the much needed antidote to the wanderings of Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” In contrast to Diamond, Hanson’s observations explain not only the past but present conditions and the patterns that continue today. While completely ignoring ideals and values Diamond purports to explain all of human civilization as fitting one cause. Hanson comes along and merely points out that our success in the West was largely due to unique ideas and values (particular manners of social, political, and economic organization independent of geography) that allowed us to achieve military successes that otherwise would have seen us defeated and conquered.

For those of us who study military history and martial culture, Diamond's book is an insulting disgrace to all of us.

JC

[Rodolfo Martínez]

What i wanted to say is that capability isn´t genetical. of course, if you drop an european in a jungle maybe he or she will not be able to find food as a guinean, but surely by the time, the european will learn lo get it. If you take a Massai and you drop him in the Amazonas river, will happen the same. No one can say that someone isn´t intelligent because he or she finds very difficult to survive in an adverse enviroment. I think that Dr. Diamond didn´t worked objectively because his ideologies interfered with his work. And a subjetive work can´t have any value in the scientific comunity.

[kenneth house]

What i wanted to say is that capability isn´t genetical. of course, if you drop an european in a jungle maybe he or she will not be able to find food as a guinean, but surely by the time, the european will learn lo get it. If you take a Massai and you drop him in the Amazonas river, will happen the same. No one can say that someone isn´t intelligent because he or she finds very difficult to survive in an adverse enviroment. I think that Dr. Diamond didn´t worked objectively because his ideologies interfered with his work. And a subjetive work can´t have any value in the scientific comunity.

May I please ask where any of this is going? I am a person of African descent, who rigorously is involved with his ancestral martial traditions but who would like knowledge about non-African MAs, such as displayed here, and who finds nothing constructive in debating the supposed superiority of one "races" methods over all others. There are no superior anything. Everything on earth is relative to something else, and nothing lives in a cultural vacuum.

Just like arguments as to which steel was better, European or Japanese, it is meaningless. You will die no greater death using either. Having your head lopped off from a Katana or European Two-Handed sword equates to the same thing: an immortally generated dirt nap. Would one truly relish a choice of death between the two? I think not....

Fraternal,

Kenneth House

[J. F. McBrayer]

May I please ask where any of this is going? I am a person of African descent, who rigorously is involved with his ancestral martial traditions but who would like knowledge about non-African MAs, such as displayed here, and who finds nothing constructive in debating the supposed superiority of one "races" methods over all others. There are no superior anything. Everything on earth is relative to something else, and nothing lives in a cultural vacuum.

Thank you, Mr. House. I didn't much care for the direction of this thread, either. It is important that we who study and honour European heritage take extra care not to allow our interests to lead us to disparage anyone else's heritage in any way, and not allow our organizations to become havens for those who would.

[kenneth house]

May I please ask where any of this is going? I am a person of African descent, who rigorously is involved with his ancestral martial traditions but who would like knowledge about non-African MAs, such as displayed here, and who finds nothing constructive in debating the supposed superiority of one "races" methods over all others. There are no superior anything. Everything on earth is relative to something else, and nothing lives in a cultural vacuum.

Thank you, Mr. House. I didn't much care for the direction of this thread, either. It is important that we who study and honour European heritage take extra care not to allow our interests to lead us to disparage anyone else's heritage in any way, and not allow our organizations to become havens for those who would.

Thank you as well. Indeed, if said practitioners are to avoid becoming the very thing they so emphatically despise: affiliations positing opinions which serve no other purpose than cultural bravado and mutually sustained disrespect. I enjoy appreciating, as an African culturalist, Western MAs as an authentic warcraft. I am put off by the baseless and needless search for Western supremacy regarding martial arts developement. Western crafts are no more or less efficient than any other.

Fraternal,

KH

[John_Clements]

Actually, I would love to have anyone here provide some historical evidence of there being any kind of cultural relativism promoting the view that "no culture or tradition" being any better or worse than any other, as existing anywhere in history outside of Western civilization. The very assumption no culture or tradition is better or worse is itself an assumption of liberal Western culture modern I'd very much like to see any documentation that such relativistic views existed at any time before it appeared during the 20th century in Western culture among social philosophers on the political left? Seems this nonjudgmentalism is itself an artifact of our modern Western social theory, not of general World history. In that regard alone, it is certainly open to analysis and debate.

As we here are a martial arts organization, studying European military sciences, and since military history is what it is, when two cultures clash on the battlefield the results are pretty objective as to the “relative value” of the martial tradition of each side. Therefore conclusions can indeed be reached as to the relative merits and superiority of the victors core values. (Why imagine this is not so in the realm of other aspects of civilization besides military affairs? How about the realm of the sciences?)

I seriously doubt the Spartans at Thermopylae were motivated by feelings they were no better or no worse than the Persian host they faced. As the saying goes, "Cultural pride is when you think your society's value are superior. Ethnocentrism is when the other thinks it is."

JC

[J. F. McBrayer]

As we here are a martial arts organization, studying European military sciences, and since military history is what it is, when two cultures clash on the battlefield the results are pretty objective as to the “relative value” of the martial tradition of each side. Therefore conclusions can indeed be reached as to the relative merits and superiority of the victors core values.

If this is the case, why study Medieval and Renaissance martial arts at all? In the narrow sense you define above, modern European and American military sciences are clearly superior to pre-modern and early-modern European military sciences, and rather than wasting our time with longswords and so forth, we should be studying rifle marksmanship and small unit tactics, or, preferably, artillery and air support tactics and strategy.

People may have reasons other than martial effectiveness alone for studying any given martial art, European or otherwise. I see no reason to disparage those reasons in and of themselves.

[Rodolfo Martínez]

I seriously doubt the Spartans at Thermopylae were motivated by feelings they were no better or no worse than the Persian host they faced. As the saying goes, "Cultural pride is when you think your society's value are superior. Ethnocentrism is when the other thinks it is."

I truly dissagree with this one Mr. Clements. We should realize that we are in XXI century, 2486 tears later, and we are not Spartans, i want to believe that we have more experience dealing with this stuff of superiority and other relative terms. It´s ok to talk about military superiority, strategic superiority and all the other stuff. But we should not fall in the arrogant discussion of ¨Cultural pride¨ becouse, from military superiority, we can jump to cultural superiority, only to end in the nefastous notion of ethnic superiority.
We are all humans, we all bleed, we all live, we all love, we all hate, we all die, and that´s why we should realize that we think and feel as God lets our minds, in different ways, but that ways must not serve the conflict or disdain to the others.
I know that everybody here is smart enogh to avoid this, and there is no evilness in the phrase, but even we should be alert.

Actually, I would love to have anyone here provide some historical evidence of there being any kind of cultural relativism promoting the view that "no culture or tradition" being any better or worse than any other, as existing anywhere in history outside of Western civilization.

Maybe it´s hard to find that view outside of western tradition (Excepting religious terms, sadly missunderstanded by fundamentalists and racists) but that´s why one should give the first step. Claiming that a civilization is superior to other becouse the theoricaly superior one promotes ¨the view that "no culture or tradition" being any better or worse than any other¨ is absurd. What´s the matter if other cultures does´t have this view (Always without harming anyone, not like eugenists and nazism). It´s our own culture wich should promote this view without a superiority feeling. What´s the difference between african, european or asian martial arts? Maybe almost all, but they are very effective and that´s what make them awesome.
This is my humble opinion, i hope that you can understand me.
Maybe is time to return to the true purpouse of the topic.

[Jeffrey Hull]

If this is the case, why study Medieval and Renaissance martial arts at all? In the narrow sense you define above, modern European and American military sciences are clearly superior to pre-modern and early-modern European military sciences, and rather than wasting our time with longswords and so forth, we should be studying rifle marksmanship and small unit tactics, or, preferably, artillery and air support tactics and strategy.

People may have reasons other than martial effectiveness alone for studying any given martial art, European or otherwise. I see no reason to disparage those reasons in and of themselves.

For the very reason that one is proud of his culture, and wants to understand something of how it did things historically. I think it is cool as hell to learn how the Europeans fought with swords, dagger, spears, wrestling, and so forth. And even if I do not like some of the bad things about my culture, I have a right to pursue its good things.

[Nathan Dexter]

I agree with mr. Clements on this. In history, and even today, certain nations had better technology and stuctures of civilizations. For whatever reason this happened/s, its just a fact that people have to come to realize. Sure I don't like the fact that after the winter war (1939-40) the finns allied with the Nazis, but its something that happened, and I'm not going to deny it.

[Nathan Dexter]

Oh, BTW, I think intelegence must also be seen in a less linear way. It cant be looked at by just one form of criteria. this is why I dissagree with diamond's veiws. the Idea that one race is more inteligent because of there ability to survive in a jungle environment is absurd. Also intelegence has very little to do with genetics, anyone who thinks so could be thought of as akin to the european slave traders who thought of the african race as genetically infereor because of there lack of technology. I don't know why there was this lack of technology, that is up to speculation, but it certainly wasn't because of genetic inferiority. I think that mabye the european and mesopotamian cultures advanced more is because of the interaction with other peoples, and as thought since the begining of historical studies, the presence of good farmland. I have read before, Mabye in GGS, but certainly in other texts, that when geting food becomes easier, you can use your time doing other things like makeing better houses, or developing cultural aspects of civilization. The civilizations in other parts of the world didn't have the luxury of the easy gathering of food, and then where hindered by the lack of cultural advances into the future. Jungles, deserts, and frozen wastse don't make for very good food, however, land by rivers that flood. are the perfect places to start a budding civilization that will become a world power.
(btw Diamond does have some good Ideas)