Bare-Knuckle-Boxing

One of the questions asked in the recent survey taken of readers is: Why do you people spend so much time studying martial arts? Well, the short answer is: It's fun. The long answer is that we each feel we are morally obligated to protect our own persons and those persons whom we're responsible for, emotionally; and, also, martial training is necessary for character development. Which martial system one studies is dependent upon one's age, gender, physique and skill level; as just as not every religion is right for everyone else (and for some, no religion is right), martial systems are all designed as they are, in order to meet expressed needs of very specific groups. One has to find what is the right one for oneself. But there is an even broader question and that is: What impels us to study any martial art? Self-survival is the straightforward answer. We believe that the inclination to violence is a genetic trait. Note that the word is "inclination" and it means the inclination could be controlled within some beneficial environment. However, in the United States, for instance; a million and a half children, at an early adolescent age, have one or more parents currently incarcerated and are now being brought up by close relatives, usually a grandmother. These children have exhibited very violent and destructive behaviors. The fact that a parent is in prison for violent behavior is an indicator that the parent's children will exhibit similar traits. These adolescents have already left the public school systems prior to the end of the ninth grade, usually by their fourteenth birthdays. By any standard, these are unemployable persons who won't be able to learn a trade or a skill. So, their only means of earning a living is by illegitimate methods; mainly by aggravated assaults upon others. It is because of these persons we should feel a moral obligation to study and to learn martial art systems: We want to survive.