Slippery Snakes versus Fists of Fury

Sports in EEUU and EU and Australia are bloody affairs; the players are often brutally injured, and the injuries are looked upon as badges of manhood. The sporting events are not performance or endurance contests, they are ordeals to prove one's mettle. This is amazing, since the Eurasian-based societies are active warmongers, the violent sports are in addition to, not a replacement for the real rape, pillage, and plunder of war. In the EEUU, the funniest of all are the over-padded steroid princesses of “American Football”. Even these guys get injured through their tens of pounds of shielding. If you've never seen it, it's like watching Iron Man try and do aerobics. Most interestingly, the padding is also a hyper-masculine caricature- the costume highlights and exaggerates the players' shoulders and asses and jock, while featuring bare arms, abdomens, and legs. “I am manly, ogle me, but don't hurt me.”
Fascinating messages being broadcast.
Bruno Bettelheim argued that sports were our new mythological arenas, war for the civilized new world order. If the real wars had stopped, I'd be apt to believe him. There is one similarity, though- top athletes and violent warriors have a short shelf life, and expire quickly, toppled into obsolescence by a new and more willing and able younger corpse similarly programmed.
We have examined the violent blood-lust in imperial culture recently, and there is still a major discussion point. The point is what are they truly seeking that they keep missing? Let's look at pre-imperial tribal wrestling for the answer.

As discussed on the main site, there are complex and ancient male-only wrestling traditions in the Amazon Basin, in India, in Turkey, and in northern China (Japanese Sumo is an adaption off of the Chinese version).
In all of these traditions, the males wrestle nearly naked, and covered in grease or paint. Much like Capoiera, the males train together, and the entire idea is to display physical ability and rigor, particularly with a partner. No one is supposed to get hurt, and if the slightest injury or discomfort occurs, the match immediately stops, and the opponent tends to the injured. One of my favorite repeating images is from the Turkish tradition, two xi'paals wrestling on grass, and one gets grass or dirt in his eye. Without breaking stride, the other bounces off to get water, and cradles the head of and washes his eyes out, deeply concerned until all is well again.
Much like in a Capoiera display, the intimacy, closeness, compassion, and love is palpable. Even in such a solitary sport, there is solidarity and togetherness, more than most “team sport” athletes.
The comparison between the two sporting worldviews is shocking. In American Football (really rugby), there was Shawne Merriman, who had a light switch and the words “Lights Out” tattooed on his forearm, “Lights Out” was his nickname after he continued to knock unconscious and severely injure his opponents. Much like the famous boxer Mike Tyson, who continued until he began biting his opponents to keep victory, our sadistic rugbyman was heralded as a hero, and a great asset to his team and the game. Sports Illustrated magazine all but publicly fellated him during the peak of his career. Both the Merriman and Tyson are beasts, and deserve jailtime, not accolades and laurels. The bloodletters and bonecrunchers are missing things even deeper besides good sportsmanship and humanity- they are missing the fun and the brotherhood, the very reason people play sports.
Play and fun are the key words here- we “play” sports, we don't “beat them up”. Play is integral and core to being a human male, and brutality isn't play, it's a power trip. If we watch boys playing, they have fun, even if it means breaking into a fantasia free-for-all, where the rules change or are made up as play progresses. Boys left on their own adapt the play and the games to include everybody who wants to play, and contain a high level of togetherness and compassion. Too bad the adult sportsmen have forgotten all of this. I remember being a boy, and all of the boys on three blocks would get together for these amazing extended games that were a combination of capture-the-flag, tag, soccer, and rock-paper-scissors. It included running, hiding, climbing trees, kicking the ball(s) involved, and forming alliances to help each other out (usually based on the street you lived on, or adjoining yards).
I also remember being on the school Greco-Roman wrestling team in junior high and part of high school, a much more formalized system of play. In that time I had two successive coaches- the first encouraged us to bond and play, the second wanted victories. When we were experimenting and monkeying around, no one got hurt, and everyone was learning. With the victory-or-death coach, injuries multiplied quickly, and we went into insane patterns of either crash gaining or crash losing weight, and following a tight “technique” and weightlifting. We also had fewer and fewer victories under the second coach, and he couldn't understand why. I do- we were boys being boys with the first coach.
We were friends who became brothers, we were experimenting, learning our own and each others bodies, and we figured out the proper way to wrestle. I remember hugs, high-fives, and back-slaps from the other wrestlers for good play, and a good match. Under the second coach, it became all goal-oriented, and we came to resent what we had once loved. Where we had once had sleepovers and wanted to spend all our time with the other wrestlers, we became resentful, and really started to hate each other. Fistfights broke out among the teammates, and the bonds were snapped. Fuck, we used to love being naked in the showers together, and circle jerking during the sleepovers, and by the last season, we were wearing spandex so we didn't have to be naked, and the erotic play had totally stopped. The real masculine play had been driven out of us by a power-hungry gurrumiao. The first coach's name was Lewton, he was just out of college (probably 23, 24, or 25), and was a biology major. The second one was Fitzgerald, a middle-aged want-to-be pro-athlete who didn't make it.

When I have read about the North Indian Yogic Wrestling schools, and watched the videos, I begin to see the same energy we had in the early days, only more connected and bonded. We have pictures of wrestlers from these traditions and more at the bottom of the blog, in our galleries section. Please check them out. There are also great videos on youtube of the wrestlers of these traditions.
When I see these wrestlers, I am enthralled. They hold each other, massage each other, spend time together; they care for each other, and stick together in a way the violent diva superstar athletes here could never even conceive of. It is something that even the kicky-punchy-pussy-boys in their suburban fight clubs would be afraid of- real compassion, intimacy and love. The tribal wrestlers have guiarq, quibey, and tekguiarq in spades. They are not some feminized caricature trying to be Popeye after a spinach fix. They are real men, in amazingly talented bodies, who weave together as a matter of course. And they are super fucking masculine without having to try and be. Take that, Tyler Durden and the Space Monkeys.

Since we keep getting xenophobic, racist statements like “OK, so the tropical brown people do this stuff, white men fight and sport by different rules”, I am going to request that everyone re-watch this following video:

It is the third episode of the British TV series Pagans, entitled Band of Brothers. We posted it before, but memories are short. Not a single brown or tropical person in the whole bunch. (That blue is paint, by the way...)
I'd also like to point out that the Norsemen (Vikings) of Northern Europe, considered one of the most violent, dangerous, and masculine cultures to come out of Europe had non-violent tribal wrestling as well. They would only grab onto their belts, and try and flip each other. Violence was reserved for their enemies, not their friends.

If sports are also truly about being in one's body, and test it's abilities- to bring the body to it's ultimate potential and express and display it- I can think of no better way to do that than tribal wrestling. You need flexibility, strength, definition, and speed. All sound like great “in-shape” traits to me. No one gets hurt, you need no special equipment, and your workout includes isometrics and body-weight training. Being in close proximity with another male and his body, you also have the opportunity to learn someone else's movements and structures. That is real-life experience that well supersedes repeating a kata a million times in practice. You are also still in competition and a game of strength with another male- but there is no need for brutality, blood, and bruising.

The kicky-punchy-pussy boys use one other defense for there addiction to violence and masculine brutality- they claim the critic doesn't understand the “Warrior Code”. This code of conduct apparently explains and even renders necessary the bloodying of allies in the name of nobility.
Any code of conduct or costumbre, any lifeway needs to be rooted in a culture, otherwise it has no raison d'etre, no purpose of why. Some, like sharing, compassion, and no thieving, are pretty much universal. When one enters the “warrior” argument, there are a myriad of factors that must be figured out. The first question, since the root of “warrior” is “war”, is who are you going to beat up and why? In Asiatic societies, such as Japan and China, there were amazingly complex and subtle subcultures of warriors and those they effected, and the regular society at large was not included, except for political outcomes from the drama. These subcultures were highly dramatic and ritualized, and were playing out cultural aspects than bloodletting. So in these cases, the code was a formalized ritual context, useful only to the class of society that was directly concerned and involved with it.
In fact, outside of monotheist fempire, this is the pattern that keeps being found. From North American Lacrosse (“Little Brother of War”) back to the tribal wrestling, disputes were not settled by mass destruction and suffering, but by ritualized combat. Each cultural group had their own ways and means to this, and this is where the “Warrior Code” comes from. We have several examples on the main site at the end of the resources page, since these in-context codes explain masculinity in that specific culture pretty well.

We in the monotheist fempire only have Molochian violence and conquest as our examples, and our masclinity is defined by the worker-breeder-soldier unit. The best we can find as a “warrior code” in our own history (without stealing one, out of context, from a vanquished culture) is medieval European chivalry, which is based in Christianity, and is obsessed with females. Whoops- right back to where we started, the worker-breeder-soldier unit. How unfortunate.

When we take pieces of (or the whole thing) another culture's codes, we are taking them out of context, which renders them useless. Much like the new-age/12 step “take what you want, and leave the rest behind” philosophy (how imperial- life is NOT a shopping trip), it disrespects not only the original culture(s) the ideas were taken from, but disrespects and harms the collector and quilter as well. Many of the aspects are not compatible, and were never meant to be. It is an ultimate jury rigging, and at best it won't work or be relevant, at worst it can do massive harm. You wouldn't put a rocket engine on a go-cart unless you were 6 years old or suicidal. Yet everywhere in empire, we have guys claiming to live by cardboard-cutout versions of warrior-monk codes from around the world, and they are claiming this with little or no knowledge of or connection with the original culture and context. Watching anime, seeing a movie, or reading a comic book is NOT the way to immerse in a culture. The desperation, hollowness, and pain will continue the harder you try and hold onto these tissue manifests. The “dojos” that continue the fantasy by pretending to be connected as well are an equally large part of the problem.

Wrestling is universal, intimate, human, and male, and you can easily come up with your own variants to practice with your friends, providing that you brutalizing them hasn't driven them off. Real men aren't afraid of cuddling and massage, and have no need to bruise anyone. So why are you still doing a fake, bleached “martial art” like karate, boxing or fight club? What does it provide that can't be done more humanely and in a more masculine manner?

I'm waiting to hear your answer.

JoaquinRaymundo in Sewaornock, Manahatouac.