Follow Your Instincts
by Agam Shah
Once in a while comes along a martial arts movie that makes you think. I saw one such movie recently. Titled "Dragon eats Dragon", this movie is replete with mindless violence, pithy characterization, bad acting and poor dubbing that would put even Scooby Doo to shame. The moral of the story is as mysterious as the movie, though it did give me some food for thought.
The movie starts with scenes of World War II, when Japan attacks and conquers Korea. Along with the Japanese army comes a Japanese karate master, who opens a karate school in a certain Korean town. He sincerely believes karate is a superior martial art but a docile Korean TKD master doesn't share his extremist views. That angers the mustachioed Japanese karate master, who challenges the Korean to a chopsocky match. After 15 minutes of hooohaaa, the Japanese master punches and kicks the Korean TKD master into submission, and takes charge of his school.
Powered by his broken legs, the Korean master runs for two hours to chance upon a TKD grandmaster meditating in the middle of a jungle. After exchanging bows and vows, the master undergoes intensive training under the grandmaster with only one aim: revenge on the Japanese karate master. After breaking a million boards and the delicate heart of the grandmaster's daughter, he goes back to the city, defeats the Japanese karate master in air-sparring and takes back control of his school.
A happy ending? Not exactly. All that violence in the movie displayed by the TKD master was so flimsy and anti-Taekwondo that I almost gave the TV a bunch of flying kicks in anger!
And what is the moral of the story? When a person has to kick, s/he has to kick. There's no two ways about it. Even though violence is not the forte of Taekwondo as an art form, in the movie, the Taekwondo master was in a situation where natural instinct made him violent, making him kick the living daylights out of the Japanese master towards the end. That is because violence within a person cannot be tamed or controlled - it's a result of the instinct that is embedded within. Taekwondo does not promote violence, but if the aggression comes from within, it is hard to curb.
The same theory of instinct applies to self defense - I'd term it the "fight or flight theory". Just assume you are faced in a position where you are being attacked - your first instinct will be to defend yourself by either attacking or running. By applying the teachings of Taekwondo, you can defend yourself, but the most instinctual and natural line of defense is to run.
Taekwondo theory may extol wonderful virtues of self-defense, but it cannot conquer a human being's instinct. When instinct takes over, the teachings or virtues of Taekwondo don't hold any practical value. It is possible that your instinct and taekwondo teaching agree with each other, but if circumstances ask you to make a choice, follow your instinct. Instinct is Id, and it is ever more powerful than the human superego.
Agam Shah can be reached at the following e-mail address:
katroo@gmail.com
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