Category Archives: pa kua chang

Martial Arts Book technology back in the 1960s

I was sort of struck by this thought, and there is a certain amount of truth to it, but on considering Martial Arts Illustrations over the past few decades it appears that the human intellect is failing.

To understand this, consider the media I have worked with over the past forty years.

Photographs, and the drive up 24 hour developer was cutting edge. Of course, you usually only got black and white (10 cents a photo) because color was too expensive.

Then color became more predominant, people wanted color, and it was actually cheaper to get color photos developed than black and white. Go figure!

And I used to cut and paste those puppies by hand. Then I had to put those sheets through the xerox by hand. Doing that for a while sort of made you want to do more writing and less photos. Yet, photos were the best way to get the ideas across.

Then came the computer age, and I traveled through a variety of software. I made stick figures with appleworks, tweaked with iPhoto to crop and level and such, and the programs kept getting bigger and bigger. Eventually, I picked up a poser, and life became illustrious.

Now, you have an idea of some of the media traveled through, and that is just this lifetime, so I want you to consider the bigger picture.

Cavemen drew pictures on cave walls. There was your history, your daily newspaper, your tribal biography.

Mud tablets were invented, and drawing twigs were picked up by a whole new generation. Of course, the writing was just a bunch of smaller pictures, but it was progress.

Then papyrus was invented, and ink, and actual symbols were used to create language. Pictures slowly went into the background, and the human intellect became more and more able to grasp abstracts.

It is man’s ability to handle abstract thought that illuminates his higher mental abilities. Not the opposable thumb, as some monkeys would have you believe, else the monkey wrench would have been invented long before man came along.

Anyway, (that was a good pun, wasn’t it?) I was looking through martial arts books the other  day. Specifically, I was inspecting a book that came out a hundred years ago, one that came out fifty years ago, twenty-five years ago, and ten years ago.

There used to be more words and less printing.

Well, of course, printing pictures was harder than moveable type.

But, as man became more able to print pictures, words tended to fade into the background.

The point is that we once were cavemen, scrawling pictures on the walls with mud dipped sticks. Then we developed abstracts, and the ability to print them, and now, think about it, we want stuff simple. We just want to look at pictures. He who can make pictures without all the distraction of words sells more.

Well, I suppose that isn’t entirely true, but for some it is, and that means, for some, that the thrust to understand abstracts (because of having to read and write with word symbols) has receded, and the desire for pictures (and no heavy thought stuff, doh!) has risen to the fore.

Remember that the next time you click on youtube and try to follow the moves on the shiny screen thing.

And, if you want some real abstracts, and a mental that is truly mental, drop on by Free Martial Arts Online. You’ll find pictures there, sure, but you’ll also find some of the most cutting edge abstract thought this side of the Lensmen. Pick up a free book while you’re there.