drknievel

This is the fourth part of my new book. It's 195,000 words so far, so I'm going to skip all the rest of the introduction after this and start in on chapter 4 next time.
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The Science of Social Martial Arts: Terrorism and akkido are just two examples of conflict and resolution to conflict. Asians and everyone else in the world have figured out all kinds of ways to eliminate conflict. The ones that succeed in the long run are the ones that eliminate conflict without creating new conflict.

The idea that global democracy and free trade would bring ever lasting joy and happiness to the world was based on the assumption that everyone in the world wanted the American Dream. Obviously some people in the world dont want the American Dream and theyre willing to kill a lot of people to keep it from being forced upon them. Obviously in this world where everyone is supposed to be happy now, somebody still wants something they dont have. Now theyve figured out how to make a lot of other people want something they dont have. Is there something wrong with these people, or is there something wrong with the American Dream? Or both?

Obviously, conflict is still being created somehow, so for some reason the world-wide American Dream isnt perfect. The American Dream is very popular with a lot of people, so obviously its a big step in the right direction, but it isnt the ultimate solution to conflict. How do you eliminate conflict? Ask the Asian martial artists. First you dont provoke people in the first place. You tread as lightly upon the world as possible, and live your life without inviting conflict. If someone tries to kill you anyway, you get out of the way. Your enemy can only defeat you if you do what he wants you to doin the case of the knife fight above, that means standing still so your enemy can impale you. As long as you dont do what your enemy wants you to do, he cant win. If that doesnt work, you can try turning his violence against him and let him defeat himself. If he doesnt incapacitate himself that way, at some point hes going to realize that trying to defeat you is turning into more effort than its worth, because all his efforts to hurt you are only hurting himself. If that still doesnt work, you can resort to enough direct violence to leave your enemy feeling that hes been defeated by a better person than he. You prevent him from defeating you, hopefully well enough to make him realize that trying again would be futile, and then you get on with your life without sinking to his level trying to get even.

Is the equivalent possible as a way of life for individuals and societies? Can individuals and societies live in such a way as to eliminate conflict without creating more conflict? Certainly. People have been figuring out how to do that for at least the length of recorded human history. Again, the Asians have been able to and have needed to devote the greatest amount of man-hours to figuring this one out. Could such a thing be created that could work in the Western world today? Obviously for all their conflict resolution strategies, there is still a lot of conflict in Asia, so where have their strategies gone wrong? Could such a thing be created that could work everywhere in the world for all time? Im not an Asian and I dont live in Asia, so Im sure as hell not going to force myself to adhere to a highly developed but imperfect Asian lifestyle just because my neighbors insist on filling the world up with more and more people until America gets just as over-populated as China.

In order for such a thing to work, it would have to be based on objective science and logic, which could be measured by anyone anywhere, regardless of their backgrounds or beliefs. In the search for life on other planets, scientists realize that they will have to conduct communications with intelligent alien life mathematically. One plus one will always equal two, no matter what corner of the galaxy you live in or what language you speak. It only stands to reason, therefore, that the only way for people to communicate matters of the human spirit with each other must be through practical, albeit theoretical, mathematics. We do have two enormous advantages in communicating mathematically among ourselves, because we all belong to the same species and we all live on the same planet.

There is no system of mathematics to measure the forces of the human spirit, but one could be created that would work in theory, as long as it is based on objective science and logic. If such a system of theoretical mathematics was invented, perhaps people would figure out a way to use it in practice. When Ludwig von Beethoven wrote his Ninth Symphony, he wrote it for a nine-octave piano keyboard, even though piano keyboards only had seven octaves at the time. It didnt matter to Mr. Beethoven of course, because he was already deaf by then anyway. And so, in order to be able to play his Ninth Symphony, someone had to build a nine-octave piano.

That means that inventing a useful, practical social martial art is as simple doing the exact same thing that people have been trying to do for thousands of years, which is to use all the resources available to us to try to figure out how people can eliminate conflict around them without creating new conflict. It becomes simpler still because we know more about the world now than we ever have. A lot of cultures over history have tried to eliminate conflict in ways that are crude by todays standards. Some of them tried to make other people understand that swords and guns are dangerous, and we have lots of swords and guns, so do what we say. Other people have tried approaches that have worked better, by teaching people to control themselves. Unfortuantely, since most all of those approaches were invented in previous centuries, they inevitably include beliefs people had about the world at the time that have since been disproven with the advances of science. Some people used to believe the world was flat. That was disproven. Some people used to believe the sun revolved around the Earth. That was disproven. Trying to convince people to eliminate conflict by believing in things that simply arent true is only going to create a new kind of conflict.

In order to fix all of that, all I have to do is to look at other peoples attempts to see what worked and what didnt, and create a social marital art for the world that we all live in.