Chris Ouellet wrote:
Hey Tom, you misunderstand me, when I say sparring is "a game" it's in the most general possible sense of the term. I'm a strong advocate of a small *very small* number of rules as evidenced by my the 2nd post in this thread.
Think of flight simulators that soldier use to train for war, they are a "game", the soldiers themselves refer to it that way (I know for a fact). It is not war, it will never completely replicate war, but it's damn essential and you learn a lot.
It's very important in my experience that people approach sparing as a game, with the same mindset that you would a flight simulator. If you approach sparring as if it were war, and you've trained to execute war technique, then loss of control can and will surface in the heat of combat as war technique comes naturally and obviously that's a real danger.
In this sense the first goal of sparring should be that everyone walks out intact (2 eyes, 2 ears, same brain, etc..) and the secondary goal is the accurate representation of combat. It's a game, like a flight simulator, not war.
Tom Reynolds wrote:
Not really, Chris, I don't think we're all that far apart. Of course I agree that the number one goal of sparring is that no-one gets hurt. And I also agree that sparring is a game, and is simulated combat like a flight simulator is simulated flying. The simulation is never going to be, and shouldn't ever be, an EXACT duplicate of the original. Too many people could get hurt if it were.
But in both cases, the value of the simulation is determined by the degree to which it duplicates the reality. The more faithfully it duplicates the reality, the more valuable the simulation will be as training and preparation for the real thing. I doubt if the soldiers you talked about would be very interested in participating in war games that made no attempt to failthfully simulate real combat, on the grounds that this would make the games too dangerous.
In the war games that you speak of, I would think that there inevitably has to be a certain amount of trust. You must teach real war skills to soldiers, because eventually their lives will depend on them. But at the same time, you will never know for sure that those soldiers won't EVER lose control at some time during that training, and apply those skills inappropriately.
For that matter, I just saw most of an episode of National Geographic's "Fight Science" series, on self-defense techniques. It presented a number of genuinely potentially lethal, extremely dangerous techniques. But, then, if they weren't risky then they wouldn't be effective self-defense techniques!
I think the same conundrum applies to RMA. Certainly the majority of our community members are not soldiers. Certainly very, very few of us are ever likely to need to defend ourselves on the street with a longsword. But in the interest of historical authenticity, it is important to acknowledge that these techniques we study were originally intended as preparation for war or for self-defense. Emphatically NOT just as games.
So in the end, my point is I disagree that RMA is either war OR a game, but not both. I like your analogy of war games, which are indeed games, but games for a specific purpose of preparation for the real thing.
And I emphasize (forgive me for repeating myself) that even though most of us don't need to prepare for the real thing, for the sake of historical authenticity we ALL need to study these skills in the spirit for which they were originally intended - as preparation for war or for self-defense.
How we go about designing historically authentic RMA war games that simulate real combat as faithfully as possible without getting anyone killed, is certainly a good question. I for one do not have any easy answers.
But I do believe we can get there, as long as we continue good dialogues like this one. And as long as we don't lose sight of our goal in reconstructing this art.
Thanks, Chris
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