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Saturday, April 7, 2012

Combo Nation

You hear talk of old school and new school in many topics or disciplines. Are they mutually exclusive? Something new either comes from something old or is suigeneris, maybe not the most appropriate word but I like it.The important thing is to get the most result from the least effort, the more effort the more result. Sometimes the more effort you put into something the worse the result turns out; so how do you discern the best course of action; I ask myself. You go to school, not brick and mortar school but schools of thought about the action you want to take or the result you. want. Fast or slow, hard or soft, straight or circular, how do you generate the best result? One thing to do is get a coach, or experiment and record the results maybe even combine the two. I borrowed the next lines in quotes to illustrate the point. "In its original meaning, kung fu can refer to any skill achieved through hard work and practice, not necessarily martial. The Chinese literal equivalent of "Chinese martial art" would be 中國武術 zhōngguó wǔshù.[4] In Chinese, Gōngfu (功夫) is a compound of two words, combining 功 (gōng) meaning "work", "achievement", or "merit", and 夫 (fū) which translates into "man", so that a literal rendering would be "achievement of man". Its connotation is that of an accomplishment arrived at by great effort of time and energy. In Mandarin, when two "first tone" words such as gōng and fū are combined, the second word often takes a neutral tone, in this case forming gōngfu. Originally, to practice kung fu did not just mean to practice Chinese martial arts. Instead, it referred to the process of one's training - the strengthening of the body and the mind, the learning and the perfection of one's skills - rather than to what was being trained. It refers to excellence achieved through long practice in any endeavor. [5] This meaning can be traced to classical writings and specially to Neo-Confucianism which emphasize the importance of effort in education. [6] In the colloquial, you can say that a person's kung fu is good in cooking, or that someone has kung fu in calligraphy; saying that a person possesses kung fu in an area implies skill in that area, which they have worked hard to develop. Someone with "bad kung fu" simply has not put enough time and effort into training, or seems to lack the motivation to do so." The result then is one's kung fu; good or bad, happy or sad, effort and practice are predicated on one's understanding of what one wishes to accomplish. How did we get here and where are we going? I again ask myself and think you do to. My play on words in the title of this post and the many times the word root combine is used in the text, the old and new, the effort and practice are all related. Pay attention to words that are taken for granted or misused in everyday parlance; is it misuse or misinformation that is intended. Is it manipulation? To view some real word kung fu do a search for a man named Dennis Fetcho and you will see where I would take you if I could.

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