My Passion

Patience and Power

By: David Mamet
Mar 13, 2008 - 11:35:22 PM

The director of the martial-arts film Redbelt explains the death of boxing, the rise of Brazilian jujitsu, and what America can (and must) learn from the world of ultimate fighting

Each culture has its own particular brand of approved or semi-approved combat. Ours in America has long been boxing.

Here is the difference between boxing and wrestling: Boxers stand off. Their aim is to contact the other fellow’s body only briefly, only with the fists, and with the fists covered with a bunch of leather.

Wrestlers spend all their time hugging.

Now, each country has its own particular brand of permitted confusion. The British are confused about the nature of food. The French are confused about morality and literature. We Americans couldn’t care less. We are confused about sex, race, and the topic of this essay: violence.

The desire to imagine a world in which “we all want the same things,” and in which aggression can be obliterated by a more correct statement of the person aggrieved’s position, invites increased aggression. It took the first attack on the World Trade Center, the U.S.S. Cole, the Marine barracks in Beirut, the kidnapping of the Iran hostages, and so on, before the jihadists finally got the idea that, odd as it seemed, the greatest power in the world, the United States, would put up with anything (anything here being the bombing of New York).

Strength deters aggression. Strength must be cultivated. One method of cultivating strength is through the cultural endorsement and display of nonlethal combat.
There is a fairly regular outcry against the bloodiness of boxing, because boxing is licensed aggression, and, so, awakens in some the aforementioned confusion about violence—that, the world being a fine place full of right-meaning individuals, violence is error.

In a perfect world, perhaps, but the world right now is as perfect as it’s ever going to get; and, every viable civilization, knowing that to be so, has wisely endorsed the notion of preparing for the worst.

Boxing has had it.

There’s too little of it, it has been in the hands of a small, closed corporation of promoters for too many years. These promoters control not only the matchups, but also, many might say, their results. Well, everything grows old, and, growing old, changes in essence.

Prizefights were, from the 1700s, staged in England as illegal, highly popular events. In this country, immigrant kids (starting with the Irish and Jews) in the 1920s took to the professional ring as a ticket out. And instruction in boxing was a matter-of-fact part of growing up in America until the 1960s. Much of the populace that watched the hugely popular Gillette Friday Night Fights on TV understood the tactics and strategy of the fighters, and appreciated the rigor with which they trained, and the strength, stamina, and will necessary for an amateur three-round fight, let alone a professional 12- or 15-round fight.

In the ’60s, boxing became less popular (reawakened briefly by the comet, Muhammad Ali). The Club fight and the Smoker disappeared from the American scene. TV viewers saw fewer fights, understood them less, and so the sport was prone to exploitation by promoters through phony matchups, thrown fights, skewed decisions, and so on.

Enter the dragon.

Canny promoters, perceiving the national ossification and corruption of boxing, began to stage a different contest. This contest is called, generically, mixed martial arts.

The idea was and is to let each fighter bring whatever skills he could into the arena—striking, kicking, grappling—and let the best man win.

The fighters here are allowed not only to hit, but to hug. Un-American, you say? Yes, but no, as 95 percent of all street fights go to the ground. That is, in an ungoverned confrontation, it’s odds-on that the combatants aren’t going to simply trade punches. One will take the other guy down and attempt to merge him with the supporting earth. (This seems to be a primordial instinct, dating back, perhaps, even to the days before men had tools. For, with the empty hand, it’s difficult to throw a punch that is going to do any sort of damage. Cavemen wrestled.)

And mixed martial arts calls upon a more populist understanding of combat. The two guys in the alley were not going to inquire under which rules the thing was being staged, but, like the cavemen, “wade right in.” Its appeal recapitulates the understanding of any who have ever been in or have witnessed a true fight.

Go into any town in the United States and you will find a martial arts academy. Go into any city and you will find one within a half mile.
 
You will be hard-pressed to find a boxing gym.

In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway creates a scene between a young lieutenant and an old European count. They are discussing the great war the lieutenant has been fighting. The count assures the young man that the Allies will win. How does he know? It is always the young nations that win the wars. But, the lieutenant says, will they, then, become powerful forever? No, the count says, they will become the old nations.

Writers from Edward Gibbon ( The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776) through Oswald Spengler ( The Decline of the West, 1918-1922) to Samuel Huntington ( The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order, 1996) have documented the progression. Power attracts sycophants, and worth attracts predators. The sycophants spawn bureaucracy, the predators scheme to overcome might with cunning, and find, as Frederick the Great taught, that he who defends everything defends nothing.

The ­underdog, on the other hand, must pick his shots—when and how he means to fight—and he must have a defined objective. (The notion of an “exit strategy” ­indicates an absence of such. “Exit ­strategy” means the physical implementation of an excuse for abandonment of a failed enterprise.) In a contemporary war—a war between the weak and the strong—fast, audacious, and unconventional are not merely “better,” that’s all there is. Three murderers in caves could plan and ­successfully execute a devastating attack on the United States, while Jimmy Carter, executive of the greatest concentration of power in history, could not extract the Iran hostages.

The hostage rescue failed because its coalescent motive was political (to please all the services) rather than tactical (to extract the Americans).

Here the political solution replaces the martial, and the body politic suffers. The country, as Hemingway’s count predicted, grows old, and growing old, grows weak, which is to say, begins to lack in resolve.

Jujitsu is known as “the old man’s sport.” Why is this? At its essence is conservation of strength.

The operative notion is this: The most important precept on the road to victory is don’t lose. For if one is still in the fight and is husbanding one’s resources (time, strength, resolve, money), the opponent eventually will make a mistake that one may exploit. If, however, one is exhausted, broke, tapped out, or dead, the fight is over.

So, in jujitsu one trains to be conservative. To seek a position where one is safe and let the opponent tire himself trying to get free.

Should the opponent be forced to expend his strength, he may, later in the fight, weakened and perhaps angered or confused, commit an exploitable error, offer an undefended neck or arm or foot.

The wise jujitsu fighter, thus, learns to control not only his strength, but also his emotions, for in a fight or transgression they will be proved to be the same. Expense of strength weakens the body, which can induce pain and confusion; expense of emotion releases adrenaline, which, too, weakens the body.

In the jujitsu academy, one learns patience, because without it one ends up unconscious. One also learns self-confidence, as the size of an opponent means nothing should he be ignorant of technique. Without technique, he’ll be unable to progress toward an opponent’s submission, and without patience, his bulk will tire him out.

Jujitsu, the old man’s sport, then, may be likened to the new understanding of geopolitics: The specter of massive force not only need be no deterrent, but may, in fact, inspire the weaker but perceptive fighter who sees in these displays inherent weaknesses (stupidity, slowness, necessity of bureaucratic and political oversight).

Note that the Bush administration’s responses to September 11 were bureaucracy (the creation of the Homeland Security agency) and blunt massive force (the Iraq War). The terrorists, thus, had made a démarche that invited their opponent to exhaust itself (in politics, bureaucracy, human lives, and treasure), an invitation that was accepted.

Jujitsu teaches that one must conserve strength because one does not know how long the fight will last. A true fight, an alley fight, will continue until one side’s will is broken and it surrenders. In the academy, one is taught, “It’s one thing to be told ‘tread water for an hour’ and another ‘tread water till a ship comes.’ ” And any true fight must be the second.

Applying the principles of jujitsu, a more patient country (less oil-dependent, more resolved) might have declared September 11 the act of criminals and employed its treasure and lives judiciously, conserving its strength and committing its resources more effectively as opportunities ­presented themselves.

But the United States, in this instance, has acquired some of the debility of age with little of its wisdom. It is still boxing while its opponents are engaged in mixed martial arts.

I’ve spent the past five years and change studying Brazilian jujitsu.

My teacher, Renato Magno, came from Brazil with his masters and friends, the Gracies and the Machados.

The lads lived in mat-lined garages in Torrance, California, went out to challenge any fighter of any tradition, and whomped them. This garage challenge was ­elaborated by Rorion Gracie into today’s phenomenon of mixed martial arts.

The Brazilians dominated mixed martial arts, using jujitsu to subdue boxing, kick boxing, and practitioners of karate, savote, muy Thai, et cetera, until these chaps started to learn and integrate jujitsu into their games.

What is the lesson? Just as one doesn’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s rye, one doesn’t have to be Brazilian to learn Brazilian jujitsu. And one doesn’t have to be poor, angry, or demented to learn how to prevail militarily in today’s world.

One, just as in the academy, need only be patient, committed to learning, and frank about one’s goals.

All fights are viewed, after the fact, as the trial of a philosophical proposition. “Democracy must triumph over dictatorship,” “Speed must defeat bulk,” “Mobility will always overcome power,” et cetera.

We will note that the nature of the polemic is available only after the fact, and is, thus, a tautology reducible to “the winning side must always emerge victorious.”

These philosophical precepts, however, may also be employed prophylactically, that is, before the fact, but must, then, be coupled with prescription. Understanding may defeat strength, given patience; age may defeat youth, given knowledge.

The martial arts, at their best, teach this stoical philosophy, preceding, not through an appeal to intellect, but by a habituation of the body such that, in combat, the philosophic truths are incontestably revealed.

And there is something satisfying in watching two guys in the ring attempt to get each other to cry “uncle,” which, and here I will close, is a difference between mixed martial arts and boxing.

The preferred aim of the boxer is to knock the other fellow out; the preferred aim of the jujitsuan is to have the other fellow tap, which is to say, surrender.

The purpose of war is, ultimately, neither to destroy nor kill, but to break the opponent’s will.

David Mamet’s latest film, Redbelt , is in theaters this month.


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