Everyone has biases against those of other ethnicity. The question is what do you do about these biases? How effectively you approach this question determines, in my view, just how racist you actually are. Using a simple scale of 1 to 4 stars, here's how I would categorize an individual's level of racism:
One star are people who have a high level of awareness of their own cultural biases, they actively work to keep their own biases about groups of other ethnicity in check, and they actively use any privilege they have to keep their environment as friendly to people of all ethnicity as possible. These are people with a solid intellectual understanding around racism and actively work against racism. The best historical example of this is Dr. MLK Jr., the one with the holiday in most of the US.
Two stars are friendly people who focus on treating everyone equally, but who aren't particularly focused on issues of ethnicity. They openly recognize racism as a problem in our culture and address issues around racism as soon as possible before they become more problematic. Without meaning to, these people will frequently make minor social errors like bringing up others ethnicity in casual conversation.
Three stars are people who generally feel racism isn't a significant issue in today's society. These people are often out of touch with their own cultural roots, and have given very little thought to how their ancestor's behavior influences their behavior today. They frequently make major errors around diversity issues without realizing it, creating potential lawsuits against their employers. The vast majority of people who say "I am not racist" fit into this category.
Four stars are people who are overtly racist per say. For example they may exacerbate racial conflicts for political agendas, or belong to groups that have recently been known for being unfriendly towards specific ethnicity. These people are either very defensive of social errors they make, or they are making comments that are intentionally offensive. For example someone with a tattoo that identifies them as unfriendly to certain minority groups is most likely in this category.
The vast majority of the USA are 3 stars racist. The next largest group is 2 stars, then 1 star, and 4 stars racist is the smallest but yet incredibly common category. The number one thing that seems to reduce racism IMHO is education level, though I have certainly met more than a few PHD's who still fall into the 3 star category, and I have met 1 star activists who did not have much more than a GED level of education.
There's a lot of explanations of what the relationships between the various internal martial arts are, with lots of stories about ancient masters and inclusions of styles so obscure you will never encounter them. I am going to try here to summarize it in a way that only mentions common styles and their relationship to each other. First, understand what Tai Chi is: http://bfgalbraith.blogspot.com/p/what-is-tai-chi.html
Tai Chi comes from "Wudang Quan," which refers to the old Toaist Martial Arts, just like "Shoulin Kung Fu" refers to old Buddhist martial arts. Wudang Quan is practiced as a style today, and generally looks like a very fast and athletic form of Tai Chi:
Older forms of Wudang Quan also gave birth to the following martial arts styles, starting in the 1600's:
Chen Tai Chi
Other old-school Tai Chi like Chen but not Chen, like Wudang Dan Pai, Zhang, etc.
Hsing-I (a very linear style with a high emphasis on strikes)
Pa Kua (a very circular style)
In the 1800's Chen Tai Chi was mixed with Hsing-I and Pa Kua and highly standardized by the Yang Family, forming Yang Tai Chi. This became the most popular of all of these arts, and was spread far and wide in China. Yang Tai Chi then in turn gave birth to other styles of Tai Chi:
"Wu Shu" Tai Chi (has a low emphasis on application and sparring, and a high focus on aesthetics.) This is often called Yang Tai Chi but real Yang Tai Chi has a high focus on application and sparring, and its forms are focused on application rather than on performance aesthetics. Unfortunately this is the most common type of Tai Chi today, and is the style that gives Tai Chi a bad name.
Chi Kung is exercises originally taught in the Yang Tai Chi, but in Chi Kung no thought is given to application, sparring, or performance, it is only a set of fitness & meditation exercises.
Sun Tai Chi heavily elaborates on the movement in Yang Tai Chi, expanding it into more of an elaborate kung fu style.
Wu Tai Chi emphasizes application and sparring, it is a natural evolution of Yang Tai Chi and is most common style of Tai Chi besides Wu Shu Tai Chi.
All of these above 9 Tai Chi related martial arts are still practiced somewhat commonly today. The Japanese founder of Aikido was a student in China, and had exposure to at least one of these above martial arts there, and Aikido is the Japanese variant of the decedents of Wudang Quan, heavily influenced by various traditional Japanese martial arts.
Yi Quan comes from Hsing-I, and is highly abbreviated and focused on "the basic essentials."
In summary there are two general historical categories of internal martial arts. First are the styles that came before Yang Tai Chi: Chen Tai Chi, other old forms of Tai Chi, Wudang Quan, Hsing-I and Pa Kua. Second is Yang Tai Chi and those that developed at the same time or later, including Wu Tai Chi, Sun Tai Chi, Aikido, and Yi Quan.
Martial Artists success in fights is multi-dimensional, and doesn't come down to any one attribute:
There are 5 factors I look at in a martial artist to gauge their probably success in a conflict; skill, strategy, size, stamina and spite:
Skill is where martial artists excel. There are two considerations here: variety of skill and depth of skill. Keep in mind there's no such thing as a technique mastered outside of full contact sparring, so when considering the variety of techniques someone has, consider their sparring practices and what variety of techniques they often spar with. How perfected a technique is depends on how strong of opponents they are sparring and how much resistance can their technique overcome consistently.
Strategy covers those techniques not normally practiced in sparring, such as eye gouges and groin kicks, but also running away, using the environment to full advantage, situational awareness and so on. Non martial arts related activities such as team sports, study and gaming can build strategic thinking. If a nerd waits for you to use the urinal and comes out of the stall with a mechanical pencil between your shoulder blades, you just got outsmarted through strategy.
Spite is having an aggressive mental mind set that will assist you in doing what has to be done to win. Some call this "will to win," but there are many motivations and reasons to lack empathy that can increase spite in a conflict. Spite means you can't let yourself lose, there is too much on the line for you to let up on your opponent for any reason. Spite is your mental mindset beyond skill and strategy
Size matters a great deal in self defense. The two sizes mentioned in professional fighting are the two dimensions to pay attention to: body weight and reach. People who are larger than you are harder for you to hurt, and it is easier for you to be hurt by them, just because of simple physics. However superior reach gives your opponent options you simply don't have: this is obvious at striking range where you can easily be "out reached," but even on the ground grappling they have a wider variety of places they can grasp you than your grasping options, and often can land submissions on you that you can't do on them.
Stamina or in other words physical conditioning also plays a key factor, for two reasons. Most obviously the longer a fight goes on, the more stamina comes into play, and can completely determine the outcome of a fight if one fighter has poor conditioning. Less obviously and more importantly, the more stamina a fighter has, the more they can train and spar, and the more rapidly they can build skill.
Age can take its toll on all of the above, as less techniques become safe to spar with, strategic options decrese, wisdom overcomes mental brutality, bone and muscle density decay, and effectiveness of working out in the gym declines. Keep this in mind:
However some martial artists age faster as fighters than others, and that mostly comes down to how serious and frequently they are injured. One fighter might retire from MMA competition because of permanent injury in his late twenties, while another might not start competing until his early thirties. It is important to spar full contact, but it is also important to spar safely.
Let's take Brock Lesnar for example. With a background in real wrestling and money for the best private coaches around, Lesnar had formidable technical skill in the ring. Strategically he focused on exactly what was likely to win against each individual opponent, maximizing his personal advantages. He maintained a bully like fearless attitude that enraged critics and dominated in the ring. At six foot three and 286 pounds, he had superior body weight and reach. His stamina and conditioning is the stuff of legend, considered extreme even in the world of professional fighting.
From 2008 to 2010 he was the MMA fighter to beat, but then his health soured and he went back to professional wrestling after a few less impressive fights. The following is pure fiction portrayed by Lesnar, but illustrates the five fight factors:
My careful study of why I despise TKD so much led me to one conclusion: it's all about sparring practices. I don't care if you trained at Miletich if you were doing their non-sparring aerobic kickboxing class. Even worse is if you are a master of kickboxing because you trained under someone who trained at Miletich's non-sparring kickboxing class.
All light contact and no contact martial arts run the risk of being worse than no self defense training at all, since they could create bad habits that a completely untrained person may not have while giving no real actionable skill in return.
The name of a Martial Art is too broad, we need to look at individual schools. I trained at a Choy Lay Fut & Tai Chi school that eventually dabbled in MMA and boxing, while consistently training kickboxers, but your average Choy Lay Fut or Tai Chi school is not on that level. Likewise I have seen an Aikido school where students do Judo at the same school, but not all Aikido is on that level either.
My rating of martial arts is dependent on sparring quality and range of sparing. There are four ranges relevant to martial arts classes:
Grappling on the ground.
Grappling while standing up, including close range strikes like knees and elbows.
Striking standing up with punches, kicks, and weapons with very little reach like box cutters and brass knuckles.
Weapons with significant reach such as billy clubs and baseball bats.
When I say "full contact sparring," I don't mean contests where there is a permanent record and the object is to prove who has superior skill and strength, and participants do anything they can within the rules to win, that is "fighting." Full contact sparring means the participants are really trying to execute techniques against each other while fully resisting each other, and there is continuous action throughout the round, while the action is never broken up for more than a few seconds by the participants or onlookers. Many consider Kendo and Fencing to be full contact, I don't.
One star includes no contact/light contact* instead of real sparring is worse than nothing at all.
Two stars includes full contact* with extremely limited techniques: Olympic TKD, Boxing
Three stars includes full contact with a reasonable amount of techniques to master a general range of fighting: BJJ, Kickboxing, schools that compete in San Shou, Knock-Down Karate, etc.
Four stars includes full contact with a enough techniques to cover multiple ranges: schools competing in MMA, Sport Jujitsu, Pankration, etc.
To be "four stars," you really need sparring with three of the four above ranges. Two stars refers to schools that focus on only one range, or have extraordinarily restrictive rules in two ranges (such as wrestling having no submissions what so ever, Boxing no kicks, TKD no leg kicks or face punches.) It does not matter what range of techniques is covered by one-star schools because the sparring isn't serious enough to deliver skill superior to whatever bad habits they might be teaching.
This is a declaration of my love for industrial and my hate for the criticisms being leveled against Aesthetic Perfection in 2014.
I listen to more industrial music than any other kind of music, and strongly identify with the themes frequently presented in that music - studied those themes in college, and wrote a Masters Thesis related to some of those themes. Growing up in Bremerton I have been wearing a special blend of clothes seen as military surplus, hip-hop sports gear and office casual, as well as hair styles involving the 1/8 inch shear since long before they started selling imitations of that style to Nine Inch Nails fans at Hot Topic. My first CD I owned was the "Head Like a Hole" 60-Minute EP, before any of the music stores in my area carried "Pretty Hate Machine."
Industrial started with a highly experimental pre-disco band in the 70's focusing on what kind of music they could make if they threw aside the normal ways of making music at the time (electric guitars and other instruments) and focused on important yet ugly subject matter neglected by other music genres at that time. This band was Throbbing Gristle, and as designed, they were genuinely unpleasant to listen to (do not try to listen to all of this song unless you are feeling it right away):
The heavy use of electronics, the insistence of approaching subject matter directly without any sugar coating, the video back drop behind the band, carefully composed music, and the heavy use of musical experimentation are the hallmarks of this musical style. So called "industrial metal" bands are only worthy to be called industrial in so far as they embrace most of this tool set.
The band that took Throbbing Gristle's vision and turned it into a musical genre was Skinny Puppy. This band started off in the early 80's in a very ugly place, basically equating violence to animals with violence to humans. This band paved the way for more popular acts like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, and today is more prolific (including side project Ohgr) than those bands:
Starting with Skinny Puppy, individual songs on an industrial album are like a 20 second clip of a pop song, industrial bands don't write songs so much as they write albums, each song is only part of the whole album, and by itself is out of context.
In the 90's when industrial had its day in the spot light, it was very focused on dark themes mostly avoided outside of metal at that time. Consider Sister Machine Gun's "Nothing":
At this time there was a lot of Rap/Metal fusion going on, such as Public Enemy & Athrax's "Bring the Noise," and so at this time industrial was considered to have a "heavy hip-hop influence," which you can hear in "Nothing," but yet the over all album "Torture Technique" is clearly something beyond metal or hip hop both in its style and its depravity.
Understand that the Hip Hop of that era was itself more experimental and dynamic than what "gansta rap" would later become. Consider the industrial qualities of Sir Mix Alot's "Gortex":
If you haven't identified a few unrelated and ironic connections between this song and industrial music, listen to it again, paying attention to the electronics and content of the lyrics.
Industrial of this era was incredibly influential, heavily involved in movie sound tracks and pushing the use of electronics in other music genres. You probably wouldn't be able to pick Pop Will Eat Itself out of the industrial acts at that time, but one of it's band members went on to write one of the most important meme songs of all time, "Requiem for a Dream" (strong relation to the film of the same name):
Now think about this song for a second: is it not everything that industrial should be? Yes, it is probably THE industrial masterpiece. You can hear the anxiety, despair, frustration, and the all consuming urgency that it conveys without a single lyric, and it does this through the tool set established by Throbbing Gristle and Skinny Puppy.
Soon after Skinny Puppy started to be known in the music world there were parallel developments in Europe. They were not as constrained by American marketing definitions as industrial, so that when industrial's popularity fell in the USA, the music continued to evolve in Europe. This was "aggrotech," aggressive techno music, a type of industrial that evolved from disco, as opposed to predating disco. Consider Grendel's industrial classic "The New Flesh":
In that song you clearly hear the club/dance/rave elements. Remember when Depeche Mode got darker and darker album after album until "Violator" was released? That movement was the genesis of aggrotech/euro-industrial. But they didn't stop there, they radically experimented and continued to evolve the genre. The one ultimate example I would give of this is "Desperate Youth" by The Retrosic:
Notice that it is a natural continuation of the genre: massive amounts of dynamic innovation, similar themes to "Nothing" and "Requiem for a Dream."
European band Combichrist and related side projects most clearly define industrial today, with songs like "Throat Full of Glass":
Combichrist does not avoid or deny the hip hop influence on industrial music:
Incredibly prolific, some of their artists were involved in other projects, notably Panzer AG:
Notice the similarities between "Battlefield" and "Requiem for a Dream." Notice the actual singing in "Throat Full of Glass."
Here's where things get controversial in today's industrial scene - apparently if you aren't screaming with voice distortion, you are "selling out" and "not really industrial." These guardians of industrial style (or "GIS" for short) actually have a far more narrow definition of industrial than this, so much so that some of the more important works above would be disqualified from being industrial by their definition. Keep in mind that this trend towards singing is even embraced by the above mentioned Grendel, arguably with more intense effect than what their previous voice distortion vocals had:
If Depeche Mode's "People Are People," Tears for Fears's "Shout," or Eurythmics's "Sweet Dreams" came out the decade after "The Downward Spiral" instead of the decade before, they would have been classified as industrial.
Aesthetic Perfection is the most innovative major industrial act going today, and they are getting all kinds of flack for "not being industrial," and even for playing in front of audiences who are not already dedicated industrial fans. Even though numerous Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy/Ohgr songs have heavy piano elements, these GIS take huge issue with this Aesthetic Perfection song:
(Aesthetic Perfection did an excellent song, "Under Your Skin," using only human vocals as instruments on the same album.) Does "All Beauty Destroyed" fit into the genre of music started by Throbbing Gristle and established by Skinny Puppy? Careful how you answer because it's the same answer to this question: do you understand the industrial genre well enough to be able to say what is and is not industrial?
Aesthetic Perfection has PLENTY of aggrotech-style in other works, but in the songs and albums they are being criticized for, they are taking on industrial's most important obligation: to innovate. Aesthetic Perfection - like them or not - is the SALVATION of this genre, keeping it alive and growing, and from becoming an inbred inaccessible mess like Death Metal. More willing to play for audiences not already established as industrial fans than lot of other acts, their spreading the industrial gospel earns them my official title of "Industrial Messiah."
Industrial must continue to innovate in order to continue to be the king of musical genres. If we define industrial through static marketing terms, we are rejecting the tradition established by Throbbing Gristle and Skinny puppy - if it's not innovative, it's not industrial. Such narrow views blind us to industrial's future. Consider the following Tom Wait's song "Filipino Box Spring Hog," which has an industrial sound and is clearly on a level beyond most industrial being produced today:
Hip hop has some artists bucking marketing definitions as well. One of these acts - Die Antwoord - combines extremely aggressive rap with rave music - essentially a South African styled aggrotech - and seems to be lost on most industrial fans in spite of obvious industrial overtones in the art in some of their videos:
Be very careful, GIS, before you declare what is and is not Industrial.
Now this is a whole lot of very dark music I have mentioned here. How can I listen to so much of it? Well back in the early days there was religion-themed industrial that didn't "preach" (thankfully,) but had more progressive listener-empowering messages than say "The Downward Spiral," so I could mix in a little Mortal with my Sister Machine Gun. However in today's scene the progressive industrial band that really sticks out for me is Imperative Reaction. The first album they made that has the sound that they are developing now is called "As We Fall" and I have been listening to it a lot lately:
I recall one GIS online referring to this Imperative Reaction sound as "more electro-punk, not so much industrial, IMHO." Well his opinion was humble indeed, because you could say the same thing about Throbbing Gristle. If you think all industrial out there should basically sound like Psyclon Nine, then I have bad news for you: you aren't an industrial fan, you are just a fan of "bands that sound like Psyclon Nine," and you need to take it easy with your parent's credit card at Hot Topic.
There is a martial arts food chain, some martial arts are much better than others:
Here's the basic formula to understand: light contact martial arts < boxing/TKD (any full contact striking sport without knees in the clinch or without kicks to the leg) < kick boxing (any sport with full contact kicks to the leg and knee strikes in the clinch) < grappling < mixed martial arts.
This formula is sound and highly accurate: an MMA guy will typically take out a grappler with no striking, a grappler will typically take kick boxers off their feet quickly, while kick boxers consistently make short work of boxers, who in turn make short work of light contact martial artists.
The problem is it takes time, work, and often money to train in any of these martial arts. Depending on how dangerous an individual's natural instincts are, it's possible light contact martial arts could be worse for self defense purposes than no training at all! However once we get into the realm of full contact martial arts like boxing, training clearly trumps "killer natural instinct."
I categorize Boxing and Tae Kwon Do (as well as "American" kick boxing and Savate) as the least effective full contact martial arts, and suggest they are actually closely related:
Neither allow significant amounts of fighting in the clinch, depending on the referee to reset the match every time they get too close to each other.
Neither allow full contact kicks to the leg with the shin.
Both are injury prone (TKD practitioners suffer from frequent knee injuries, when boxers fight without glove hand injuries are common.)
Both are practiced first and foremost for sport and glory, and only secondarily for fitness or self-defense purposes.
Both tend to use very long stances inappropriate for most kick boxing, MMA sports, and self-defense situations.
Few who practice real kick boxing (with knee strikes and shin-to-leg kicks) ever expect to be famous or bring home trophies, be that sport San Shou, knock-down karate (Kyokushin, Enshin, etc,) Muay Thai or one of several other southeast Asian kick boxing sports:
Kick boxing delivers very efficiently in terms of time, energy, and money on its promise of fitness and self-defense skills. Nothing delivers on the martial arts promise of being able to take on multiple attackers like kick boxing.
More fundamental to any self defense situation however is a fighters grappling abilities:
Not all grappling styles are equal. Judo, once hailed as the only martial art anyone would ever need, becomes so bogged down with new rules every year that some are starting to question its relevance:
However grapplers, unlike previously mentioned martial arts practitioners, are almost always open minded enough to exchange ideas with grapplers from other sports. For example, most Brazillian Jui-Jitsu practitioners have exposure wrestling techniques not normally emphasized in their sport.
Mixed Martial Arts is what happens when grapplers get so open minded that they start adopting kick boxing techniques:
In a nut shell, the more like MMA your martial art is, the better off you will be. This is why when someone says "I have been thinking about doing Tae Kwon Do," I often reply "how about if you just Tae Kwon Don't." See also: http://www.bullshido.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-47730.html
I hate push ups. However in absence of another strength-training exercize, if you do them right, they are a much better than nothing at all:
Push ups are an indicator of minimum body strength. In general there are certain thresholds for how many push ups a person should be able to do. When I was doing kickboxing in the mid 90's, the standard held by some professional athletes at the time was 1 set of 100 reps or 3 sets of 50 reps. In particularly demanding martial arts such as Judo and Choy Li Fut, 1 set of 50 was considered a standard minimum to work for.
I have seen good arguments for 4 sets of 10 push ups as a minimum workout, and of course there's all sorts of workout routines that use different sets and reps of push ups. However, the least number of push ups I have seen as standard in any full contact martial art is 1 set of 20 reps.
1 set of 10 reps has in fact become a warning sign that the martial arts class is a no-contact "karate for kids" type waste of time. In general I would suggest to you that if you can't do 1 set of 20 push ups, you are not "in shape," (though just because you can do 1 set of 20 push ups does not mean you are in shape.) All people concerned with their health, male and female, should be able to do 1 set of 20 push ups, in my opinion.
