“A few [MMA] fighters are martial artists, but most just come from a grappling background.”
With one grand gesture, former kickboxing champ and Black Belt Hall of Famer, Bill Wallace, makes a distinction between “martial arts” and “grappling” in his article, Does MMA Have a Future?
[insert hurt feelings here]
On one hand, when Wallace says that a lot of MMA fighters come from grappling backgrounds, he’s not lying. MMA bristles with grapplers like Brazilian JiuJitsuka and American scholastic/collegiate wrestlers.
On the other hand, however, Wallace never explicitly defines what “martial arts” are, except that they seem to contrast against such grappling disciplines. Which leaves me at a loss. Without a clear definition of what “martial arts” are, how can one say that they are mutually exclusive from grappling?
For instance, the largely grappling discipline of “Brazilian JiuJitsu” grew out of “Judo,” which in turn grew out of traditional “JiuJitsu,” which comprises the many combat disciplines of the ancient Japanese battlefield. And, even though Brazilian JiuJitsu and Judo largely revolve around grappling, both of these disciplines nonetheless maintain striking techniques in ritual. To varying extents, there’s even weapons training involved. So how is it that a set of combat disciplines steeped in tradition fail to qualify as “martial arts?”
Also interesting to note, the English term “martial art” derives from the Latin term “martialis,” roughly meaning “like Mars,” a reference to the Greco-Roman deity of combat. Furthermore, many American scholastic/collegiate wrestlers trace their roots to the earliest Olympic games, in which wrestling was a major combat-oriented event alongside other combat-oriented events like boxing, pankration (a mixture of boxing and wrestling), javelin throwing, and others. Therefore, historically speaking, it could be argued that the term “martial artist” implicitly includes these early combatants, wrestlers included.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly biased toward grappling. Growing up, I spent some time in areas where everybody fistfought and grapplers pretty much set themselves up to get stabbed. Further, even though I dabble with grappling nowadays, I prefer to watch boxing.
I’m just saying, Wallace’s treatment just didn’t do it for me.
Of course, I’m nobody special. I’m just a guy.

— quotation by Bill Wallace,
Does MMA Have a Future?
BLACK BELT, May 2008

— commentary by ‘Aries’ Ashkuff

The emergence of fundamentalist Evangelicalism within the United States military has, admittedly, facilitated some religiously driven abuses here-and-there. According to journalist, Jeff Sharlet, these abuses have ranged from spray painting crosses in mosques, to opening fire in Iraqi villages while proclaiming “Jesus killed Mohammed.”
[sigh]
Of course, I’m not suggesting that all, nor even most, Christian military personnel behave this way. However, Sharlet still suggests that there is…
“…a quiet coup within the armed forces … [with] religious authority displacing the military’s once staunchly secular code.”
Yet, I hesitate. I’ve never heard of a large-scale armed force was ever truly “secular.” George Gmelch’s essay, Baseball Magic, illustrates that uncertainty usually breeds magical thinking. By extension, it’s not a stretch to say that, when uncertainty is a matter of life-and-death as it is in the military, magical thinking might develop into spirituality and religion; regardless of what the “code” may-or-may-not have said.
I would’ve liked to see an elaboration on what Sharlet meant by “staunchly secular.”

— quotation by Jeff Sharlet,
Jesus Killed Mohammd
Harper’s Magazine, VOL 318, NO 1908

— commentary by ‘Aries’ Ashkuff

It’s common knowledge that, in the early days of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), fighters were brought together from very different combat disciplines. These fighters usually didn’t know much about each other’s cultural behaviors (like technique and etiquette), nor did they know about each other’s cultural values (like what constitutes “victory.”)
“Basically, each fighter had to deal with what is commonly called the worst fear of all: the fear of the unknown.”
Oftentimes, the fights yielded little notoriety, and even less pay. So why did these early fighters venture outside of their own disciplines? Why did they bother facing the unknown? Well, as MMA enthusiast and journalist, Bobby Pittman, describes it, they fought for a shared “love to fight.” Apropos, it is this one overarching cultural value (the “love to fight”) that brought together countless men from different disciplines and sporting cultures to form a single, almost ancestral, “generation of guys that just went for it.”

— quotation by Bobby Pittman,
They Just Don’t Make Them Like They Used To
TapouT Magazine, Issue 29, pg. 18

— commentary by ‘Aries’ Ashkuff

Leonard Zeskind suggests that, for some, religion is just a way to reassert collective identity. To support this notion, he cites pagan and Odinist devotees “in the skinhead scene…

…where the invocation of the old Norse Gods is not about theology or even ethics, but about style and promoting their subculture.”

Now, I’m not saying that he’s necessarily wrong. After all, growing up, I knew plenty of self-proclaimed “pagans” who didn’t really know the first thing about pagan spirituality in any of its forms; they were just looking to paganism as a way to duke up their still-developing identities. However, I only reached this conclusion after several years of firsthand experience with such teens.

This kind of firsthand experience is called “fieldwork,” and I’ve been taught that it’s the most important part of the ethnographic method. Yea, while good ole’ fashioned reading is an important part of learning about “the other,” the fact remains that a culture cannot be wholly understood outside of its own context, and one cannot truly become an expert on “the other” without having directly experienced (or at least witnessed) their lifestyle. Indeed, people who pose as experts on a culture, while relying only on secondhand sources, without having done any firsthand fieldwork, are usually decried as “armchair scholars.”

And so I wonder, even though he wrote a book called Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, and even though he claims to have “done research,” has Zeskind ever actually hit the field? How is it that he can make such sweeping statements about the relationship between paganism, Odinism, and white supremacy?

— quotation by Bill Berkowitz
“God, Guns, and Blood: An Interview with Leonard Zeskind”
Z Magazine, May 2009, pg. 12

— commentary by ‘Aries’ Ashkuff

Nutritional supplements, argotically called “sups,” can be found in many athletic microcultures nowadays. Now technically, the consumption of any organically-growing substance to supplement one’s diet qualifies as “nutritional supplementation;” a case in point, British sailors used to drink lime and lemon juices to prevent scurvy, a Vitamin C deficiency. In the context of athletics, however, particularly strength and combat sports, sups are usually less-than-organic manufactured cultural artifacts. A common example is dehydrated protein powder, refined and produced in industrial laboratories, facilitating muscle growth. Obviously, sups are meant to enhance athletic performance and, because of this, mainstream laypeople often categorize sups as “performance enhancers.”Perhaps because the term “performance enhancer” has been so heavily stigmatized, it would seem that a number of sups have been banned by law makers with little-to-no empirical data on their actual effects on human health.

Crying out against this “hypocrisy,” Chris Lockwood, MS, CSCS (PhD Candidate), enumerates a page-long list of manufactured substances that have been empirically shown to adversely affect human health, but remain legal — ranging from tobacco products to Acetaminophen products — and sarcastically concludes that…
“No politician, or media talking head or pen would demonize anything that wasn’t truly deserving of such, so of course we should all stand in line and agree that supplements are bad. Hypocrisy’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

— quotation by Chris Lockwood, MS, CSCS (PhD Candidate)
“Justice Isn’t Only Blind… But A Hypocrite”
Muscle and Fitness magazine, Nov 2009, pg. 28

— commentary by ‘Aries’ Ashkuff

While it’s important for an anthropologist to make sure s/he maintains an approachable persona, it’s just as important that s/he carefully chooses an approachable traveling party. For instance, “…one band [of Paliyans] was so shy its members would meet us only at the forest’s edge long after nightfall. I sensed that they were apprehensive about my guide’s rifle, which he told me he carried in case he had an opportunity to hunt a leopard.
I learned six months later, however, that the man — a forest produce contractor — had a reputation for serious violence against tribal people.
He was said to have shot three of them when they refused to collect honey for him.” Furthermore, putting reputation aside, you want to be careful about openly displaying a cultural artifact (like a rifle) that’s expressly designed to kill things. I’m not suggesting stupidity, of course. There’s a good argument to be made for arming oneself when heading into unfamiliar territories but, unless it’s a matter of legality or formality, there’s little need to keep your armaments in plain sight and/or in the hands of anyone other than your own, much less in the hands of a reputation killer.

— quotation by Peter M. Gardner,
Journeys to the Edge, pg. 24

—commentary by Aries Ashkuff

Okay, so the fundamental info is that Imam Hussein is one of Shiite Islam’s most revered martyrs. So revered, in fact, that the anniversary of his execution is considered a holy day of mourning and remembrance, the Ashura. While a number of rituals surround the holiday, of particular interest is the taboo against violence.
For whatever reason — maybe they were trying to encourage a decidedly peaceable protest — activists picked the Ashura to gather in the streets of Iran, crying out against the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. While reports vary, it would seem that Iranian officials fired into the crowds, breaking the Ashura’s taboo against violence and pissing off Iran’s older, more traditional Muslims.
Which is important.
So far, most of the protesters have been Iranian youth; it’s interesting to see how the violation of a religious taboo can change the social dynamic of a riot. As the New York Times described…
“Protesters deliberately blended their political message with the day’s religious one on Sunday, alternating antigovernment slogans with ancient cries of mourning for Imam Hussein.”

— quotation by, Robert Worth and Nazila Fathi,
The New York Times, DECEMBER 28, 2009
pg. A6

— commentary by, Aries Ashkuff