From one of my texts- Mutation breeding: The application of chemicals or ionizing radiation to whole organisms to produce changes in their DNA (mutations) in the hope that these changes will confer beneficial traits to the organism, e.g. disease or pest resistance.
Dude, these people have read too many comic books. I didn't even know that people seriously did that.
I've pretty much given up on martial arts here in Sweden. They're either not effective (the aikido class), not practical (capoeira) or the people going there take it far too seriously (MMA). It's just not the same as back home, I don't know if it's just difficult for me to get back into the swing of it or what. My rationalization for why martial arts don't seem as good in Sweden is because there's no danger in Sweden; there are no ghettos or bad parts of town, people aren't allowed to carry any kind of weapon around and there hasn't been a war in 200 years. I figured that made the Swedes complacent and that reflected how they train. But now I think it's how Swedes view martial arts, they call it "kampsport" basically "fighting sport". It's not an art. I don't think they take it to a deeper, more spiritual level, it's just like basketball to them. The capoeira (and I cannot comment on how much is derived from the art itself) was always more about play than combat. The one on one fights seemed less like sparring or any tactical training and more like a game. I suppose there's nothing really wrong with that as long as you're aware of it, but back home even we came up with a tactical improvement exercise for playing catch. The MMA people are all really just there to train to be in a tournament, they go there and train and hit and fight as hard as they can. Which again can be all good and well, the most satisfying fight I've had was against mixed martial artists, but they lack a certain...appreciation for the whole concept. From now on, I'm going to try to refocus my efforts on my fieldwork, my social life and hopefully improving my Swedish.
Speaking of fieldwork, I went back to the school yesterday and did some more observations. Not much worth blogging about except for the fact that I do not recommend getting sick or injured in Sweden as, while the healthcare might be free and high quality, no one else will help you. Back when I visited Göteborg I was going down the main street at night when this guy came staggering down the promenade, clutching his stomach saying (in Swedish and English), "Call the police! I've been shot!" then collapsed to the ground. I and one other person stopped to help him, the rest just walked by pretending they didn't notice. The guy wasn't shot, he was off his meds or something, but it was impossible to know that when he's got a big coat on and his hand over the "wound". I was unsettled by the Swedes' behavior but figured that might just be unique to Göteborg. Yesterday, when I was walking from the school to the cafeteria (they're separate buildings and kind of far apart) I saw an old lady slip on the ice right as a group of students were walking by. They stopped and asked if she was OK but only tried to help her up after it was clear she couldn't do it herself. And even then only one helped, she couldn't lift the lady by herself so she asked her friends for help, they just sat there and I helped her pick the old lady up. Ten minutes or so later I was coming back the same way since I was still trying to find the cafeteria and the same old lady was asking passers-by for help. She was apparently deranged and had gotten out of a psychiatric ward that I had come across while I was looking for the cafeteria. Again I was the only one to help her. When I asked people where I should take the woman they didn't seem to understand what I was talking about and acted like I was trying to make small talk. At her insistence, I left her at a bus stop where I figured it would be better to have her sitting still waiting for a responsible human being to come along rather than have her wander around indefinitely.
Am I being too compassionate or something? Is it just me or do the Swedes need to learn some empathy?
6 comments:
Hmm...at the risk of sounding arrogant, I kind of want to say that the KoSho schools back in Tucson have kind of a unique approach/mentality where we have MMA people like Hugh having an appreciation for principle, but also sport-ish people contrasting pure-tradition-people at Honbu, etc - so maybe not just Sweden per se, but maybe it's hard to find a similar mentality at any given school (ie, maybe you been spoiled ;) ). Though, my brother's new roommate is from South Africa, and did almost the same kind of karate as KoSho's, and has a similar mentality...hm. The capoeira sounds just like capoeira, though I've read about more fight-oriented schools in Brazil.
That's actually kind of disturbing about almost no one helping those people...well, not so much them standing by in the first place, but more the ones who didn't move after being directly addressed. Kind of funny that the 'shot' guy was calling out in two languages, though.
Well yes, I can't really hold what the capoeira class did against them since the whole reason why I did it in the first place was so I wouldn't have any preconcieved notions about how it should be run. All I am qualified to say about that is that it seems like it would be quite easy to defeat capoeira with aikido/jujitsu if both people were equally trained.
I should clarify, he was calling out in Swedish first, then when he realized that no one was stopping to help him he switched to English. At which point I helped him.
It's not just you, the "minding your own business"-mentality can go too far. Don't know if I told you about my Civics teacher in HS - she fell in the middle of the busiest shopping street in Stockholm and decided not to get up just to see what would happen. After 15 minutes of people passing by, or occasionally stepping over her, she dusted herself off and went home.
My junior high was opposite an open psychiatric ward. And by opposite I mean right next to.
The high school used to be a hospital, so that explains its proximity to other medical facilities. I'd guess that this was an open psychiatric ward too, either that or the guards are the worst in the world. Come to think of it, why would you ever have an open psychaitric ward here? It's a security risk to have a bunch of crazys walking around outside a school and should they wander off, it gets a little cold here at night.
Exuse me but as an Swedish martial artist i must say your discriminating all the swedish martial artist by saying we se martial arts lika a game! We diden't name it "Kampsport"! And i dont know who did but any way stop saying we sweadich peapole don't know martial art!
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