Martial Equilibrium Part III Tony Bailey
W
e left part 2 of Martial Equilibrium with a statement – Our intent helps us to use a technique and make it work, but just as we need physical standards to shape our skill, we also need a moral standard that helps us to choose the right technique in the first place. Then the question – What are these standards and how do we know them? Where do we find the right standards to ensure we are working towards the ideal technique and the ideal version of what a martial artist should be? We have teachers setting examples and organisations setting rules and guidelines, but with so many different teachers and organisations, we don’t have complete uniformity of standards there, especially in our world of martial arts. We quite naturally take on the ideals of our teachers, but in the greater scheme of things, who’s to say those ideals are correct? Everyone will have their own ideals, believing theirs is correct. How many wars, for example, have been started and continued by people who genuinely believed what they were doing was right? Who is to say that my ideals, my standards are correct and better than yours? The Greek Philosopher, Plato (428 – 347BCE), would argue that such ideals or ‘blueprints’ for standards are held in a kind of cloud bank of knowledge, to which we are all wirelessly connected. The information is already there before we are born as it forms part of a ‘mass consciousness’ we are all connected to. Plato relates this to what he called the 'Realm of the Forms'. Although the theory of the Forms was later thrown out by other philosophers, it was again revitalised later and anyone who’s read Tom Campbell’s My Big TOE (Theory Of Everything), will see its similarities echoed in the Larger Consciousness System that the former NASA Physicist talks about in his theory. For now, we’ll use Plato’s forms to explain a principle.
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