The middle finger & bad words?

[Traymond]

Very true indeed, on a side base of humor I shall add..

I hope that it wouldnt take that long for me to take my opponent down though, haha.

[JohnC]

A quote from World War II ran something like this, when the gestapo came for the Jews I did nothing because I wasn't a Jew. When they came for the young men I did nothing because I wasn't young. When they came for me there was no one left to do something. This is the slippery slope that "the fellow could have walked away but didn't and so he gets in trouble" leads to.

A second argument is "enlightened self-interest" (implied above) which essentially says, one needs to include the welfare of the group and the long term impacts of one's actions in making one's decisions. This applies in that by making the self-centered short term oriented decision of not risking getting in trouble for resisting these behaviors / not getting involved, one creates / enables a much larger long term problem by enabling a general deterioration of the group's good life. (and, yes, I understand the legal implications of the above ideas and am not advocating the simplistic idea of vigilante-ism. I'd argue that these kinds of operational moral decisions have merit for discussion, else we're simply building pie-in-the-sky "enlightenment".)

To bring this back to the "internal arts" focus, as trained MA do we have any moral duty to help the helpless, to become involved, to risk or is the idea that internal development is essentially ascetic and limited to one's isolated and self-centered physical / spiritual development only? This is the Spiderman question of "with power comes responsibility". That one side-steps a confrontation may be good in the instant but if the aggressor then moves on and hurts another less able to defend themselves do we have any responsibility for letting it happen or is our world limited to those things that only affect us in the 'now'? (And, again, I understand the surrogate question around 'it's the police's job to handle this'. The problem with the argument is two fold: first the police engage after the fact and thus have little pre-emptive capacity, second, they usually aren't there when the incident happens, which means that even though "punishment of the perp" may happen at some later time, the damage is done).

I realize these are philosophical / moral questions rather than technique-cal ones. My interest here is in the practical real world application of MA knowledge and the 'why' of it rather than the how. In my view if these operational conundrums are not discussed then one moves to the argument of why learn all this stuff as one will never use it.

Your thoughts?

[tallgeese]

Because we're odd animals, ma-ist that is. We train a bunch for stuff we hope never happens .

I think that you have to really look at any situation that you might consider interveaning in. Lots of times you could simply make the situation worse. Even more often, you won't even know the whole context of the situation, thereby making any interferecne incomplete or one sided at best.

Simple verbal accostments certainly wouldn't rise to my level of intervention. Not even the finger that got this whole thing going. There's no real correlation between being a juvenile jerk and a violent criminal or we'd have a lot more violent crime in the nation.

Now a violent crime in progress, that might (and I stress might) rise to the occasion of intervention. Certainly, no crime agaisnt any property I'm aware of (except maybe my own ) would warrant my intervention.

I say might on violent action just because there might not be enough informatin for me to become involved in the first place. Maybe both these guys are idiots and have been talking themselves into a fight over the course of the night.

Of course, there are times that it would most certainly be warranted even on the face fo the action. Then anyone, not just ma-ist would have a duty to do something (even if it were simply calling the authorities). Those cases are probibly for most people, few and far between.

[Truestar]

This reminds me of a comedy skit, which reminds me of a question...

Who in Gods name got so upset that they decided to raise one finger and display it!?

Being a New Yorker I think I would bend it back too.

[bushido_man96]

I guess if someone flips me off, I just don't take it to heart. I've got a lot of other things in life to worry about than letting someone's display pique my blood pressure a bit.

[Rateh]

The middle finger does not make me angry. It's more of thinking "um...whats your problem?, is that supposed to bother me?" to them, and I give em a weird look that kinda says that.

Same thing as when kids say "chicken" and then bawk and flap their "wings". I would just roll my eyes at them in a way that said "do you realise how stupid YOU look?".

Then again I don't usually get mad unless I am very frusterated or anxious.