Indigenous Ability

  The erudite martial scholars among us will recognize that title as a quote from the ancient Chinese essay The Thirty-Six Strategies . It is tenet #14. [FYI-I use the masterful Thomas Cleary translation.] The tenet is vaguely cryptic, but only a smidge. Those steeped in the poetic metaphor of Chinese teachings will immediately divine the advice. Let us dig into “ Borrow a Corpse to Bring Back a Spirit .” The advice is an urging to resurrect tactics and strategies that have fallen by the way. To burrow into what may have been unjustly forgotten. Let us allow our translator, Mr. Cleary himself, to still the waters. “… don't use what everyone else is using, but use what others aren't using . This can mean reviving something that has dropped out of use through neglect, or finding uses for things that have hitherto been ignored or considered useless .” The advice is to resurrect the useful, NOT to reanimate the deservedly dead. It is a directive to become marti...

  You are a hunter. A stalking predator. Your species was borne and shaped by forces that led Y-O-U, the only “hunting ape” on the planet to stalk game, read sign, divine past and future behavior of prey. You are descended from gimlet-eyed Sherlocks Holmeses of the prairies, deserts, jungles, mountains, and seashores. Whether the personal Y-O-U still hunt or use your evolved skills to gather sustenance or not, that innate urge to stalk, seek and emerge victorious is within you. We “window shop” and “scroll” in attempts to satisfy a psychology and physiology that craves the hunt, that burns to seek anew. We have turned these skills from matters of survival and sustenance to attempts to divine “ Why Carol gave me that look? ” or “ What do these disparate events in the news really mean? ” We seek to fill the tangible concrete skill gap that was formerly used to look for the overturned leaf and snapped twig that said “ prey/dinner went this way.” We have turned survival s...

  Cold water plunges. Cold showers. Polar plunges. Many a claim is made for such practices, but it turns out that all may be based on little more than fad du jour. Such training practices are cyclical, in six months, we’ll all be shouting from the rooftops about the benefits of UV exposure on our nether bits [t’is an actual claim]or holding oat bran under our tongues while we train [that, too], or some such thing, hell, leg-warmers may be back in fashion by then. What’s more cold-water immersion studies have shown that the practice may actually inhibit strength and muscle adaptation—the exact opposite, one would assume, of those who use such tactics. We’ll get to the science, but first, let us begin with the “why” of the practice for many and how this why may be sought elsewhere. Let’s look to a passage from Conrad Richter’ well-researched novel, The Light in the Forest that mentions cold “training” which was indeed a part of many a tribal culture. “ The boy was ...

  Let us begin with an historical snapshot, this is but one of the multitudes I could have chosen to illustrate. The following excerpt is from Whitman Mead’s Travels in North America [1820.] The author refers to an incident he witnessed in 1817 while travelling though Georgia. Such gatherings, according to Mead, occurred 2-3 times per week where folks would gather to fellowship, feast, drink, dance, gamble, exchange wares, and often following the ever-present horse-race a public challenge may be issued. At which time: “ A ring is formed, free for anyone to enter and fight…After a few rounds, they generally clinch, throw down, bite and gouge, and the conquered creeps out under the ring as a signal of his submission .” Mead tells of meeting several past combatants who had noses bitten off, eyes gouged out, and more than a few who had been castrated in such affairs. Many of these now unsavory tactics were not mere desperation moves in the heat-of-battle, but sought for ...

  Let us dive into a topic that has been addressed many times in the past, many times in the present, and likely on into the future; the perennial question of “Can a boxer beat a wrestler?”, or we can rephrase it as “Can a striker beat a grappler?” We could, and perhaps will another day, offer the record of how often these early mixed matches occurred and all the commensurate outcomes from such matches. But today let's look to another sports authority who examined the same question, David Willoughby. Mr. Willoughby dove deep into the historical record of boxing, wrestling and combination matches, which is the mix of boxing and wrestling. In some cases the rules stated, “This round is boxing and this round is wrestling,” in other cases it was actual mixed matches where the competitors got to use whatever discipline they felt comfortable with. Well according to Mr. Willoughby and his studies the question of “Can a wrestler beat a boxer?” should no longer be a question, since it...

  “We must be polite. If we look at the skin of a white man, he said, you can see how thin and weak it is. Even such a small thing as words will bruise and cut it open.”— Conrad Richter, The Light in the Forest . That quote is from the Pulitzer-Prize winning author’s 1953 novel, The Light in the Forest. The novel is a tale of the Eastern Woodland frontier, particularly the story of a young white captive who has lived with Natives for years and is being returned “home.” Before we plunge on, I must get the reader- reaction  out of the way. As fiction, I found it a bit stilted, a bit too Rousseau “Noble Savage” in dialogue but in all other particulars a fascinating read. Richter has done his research here, there was a marked number of “white” captives who, once “freed,” escaped time and time again to return to what one would presume to be a harsher life, a harsher culture, one with less amenities, and yet… The historical record gives us tale after tale of these dissatis...