Anyway, although we’ve been open to practitioners & teachers from other styles for a while, we just wanted to make it clear that martial artists from any style are welcome to join the organisation if they share our aims.

It would be good to cross-train a bit in each others’ styles. We can’t do this through any existing MA organisations because we feel that they seem almost without exception to promote aspects we consider to be extraneous, and they invariably tolerate the concept of qi / ki. The way we like to train is just to get on with the physical contact work – that way you get instant feedback on whether your movements are correct and how they need to be changed. It isn’t that we never do any solo drills, but they are for students to practice in their own time, once we can see they’ve ‘got it’ and all they need to do is practice.

We have a separate site explaining the content of our classes which is aimed at prospective students http://www.joannazorya.com

Regarding Kenny, I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him. We haven’t seen or heard from him for a while – hopefully he’ll respond to your inquiry.

Regards,
Joanna

Anyway, the question on the minds of this blog’s readers must surely be: where’s Kenny??? What have you done with him???

Often, that issue is the Holocaust. For example, I’ve seen people “territory denied” the idea that we live in a Matrix style reality, on the grounds that it would be akin to Holocaust denial.

Is it Holocaust belittlement to have some sympathy for animals in meat farms?

Is it Holocaust belittlement to hold the view point that we are animals too?

If anything, the Holocaust can be used to make us more aware of the nature of what it measn to treat other beings with no thought to their rights or suffering.

Is it an insult to the memory of a child killed in the Holocaust to have some empathy with an animal being tortured?

Personally, I don’t want to dive in to extreme language either way – in this hugely sensitive area, I just want to come to a point of compassion for the suffering of other beings. I should think most of us do.

With the animal rights, well, it does rather get the point across to say, hold on, haven’t we learned the lesson that it’s not all right just to treat other lving beings with not only zero compassion, but in an actively, demonstrably awful way? Is it valid, in response to that, to say “Hey – they’re only animals!” ? Isn’t that what the Nazis said, ironically? “Untermensch” – sub-human.

Just a thought.

And I vote free speech!

Peace – train harder for glorious quan! Heh…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fzi1RX0lpFo

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xjfAC3yYSHc

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ScfIb7oIxBU

http://www.timetogoveggie.com/ttgv/index.html

As people in the USA eat far more meat than British people (almost 3 times as much), even more lives could be saved. By 1998 figures, the average Brit apparently consumed 16 kilos of meat and poultry per year (these figures don’t include fish), whereas the average American ate 44 kilos – that’s 2.75 times as much meat and 2.75 times as many animals.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1626#2

There is no reason we cannot do both. We can make lifestyle choices, such as to give to charity, to become vegan etc. AND we can try to combat the layers of “fake personas and garbage” by being ourselves and arguing for the values that are worth fighting for. Many people rely on the internet as a first or sole source of information, so it is important to put positive messages out there too.

While I can accept that when faced with the reality of animal slaughter, individuals will inevitably decide for themselves whether or not they feel able or inclined to manifest their compassion by becoming vegetarian or vegan and reducing the demand for slaughtered animal products, I can’t understand the moral value of arguing that people should NOT do so.

G.K. Chesterton said:

Of all the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous than the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the expense of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal ties and tragic human morality. If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.

So Julie and I find ourselves in danger of offending others at every turn. The parallels we draw, others find astonishing, but only because our statements are out of step with the commonly held received wisdom – the popular idea that animal lives are disposable, for example. Few seem to realise that we are at least as offended and almost certainly more so by the idea that animals ARE considered disposable. Even by arguing at all for certain moral values, we cross a boundary of decency in our modern age – the boundary that states there are no absolute values, there is no such thing as right and wrong. And here we find ourselves in the middle of a tremendous paradox, since we should in theory, in such a world, find our views entirely unopposed because only we absolutists declare that there is such a thing as truth. Yet others argue vociferously with us that there are no objective standards – no absolute rights or wrongs, and that the “truth” is entirely a matter of personal taste. It is hard to imagine a greater irony. Surely, in such a reality, you have no place to accuse us of being wrong, because we are every bit as right as you are. In fact, your arguments become meaningless, since you profess to know nothing beyond your own opinions. In your view, there are no objective facts to determine.

We believe that morality is an absolute that transcends opinion. Slavery, for example, would be wrong even if every culture accepted it. Of course, there are spectrums of responsibility and some values are more flexible than others, but there are certain core values that transcend our tastes and always will. I think the statement that compassion is preferable to cruelty is just such an absolute. It is an axiom of civilisation, or certainly should be.

In a sense, what matters is not so much how we know this, but that we put it in to practice. By focussing on how we could possibly “know” what is morally right or wrong, the relativist abandons the morality itself – they argue themselves out of having any morality at all. They then proceed to tar every other human with the same brush by declaring that since they do not have any morality beyond their own whims, no one else can have any either. The faithful can trust that compassion is written on our hearts. Once that fact is known, you can either spend your life fighting it, or try to ascertain how to effectively apply it. Our consumer culture values the former more than the latter, as it provides justifications for selfishness – the currency of consumer capitalism – but the latter path is more useful and more compassionate, which in itself is something good.

Oyfe… second half of part one…..

(Sorry it’s wacky and out of order looking, but I think I made part one to long and it posted part two first. No matter as it addresses the points in a stand alone manner….. )