Fight Philosophy: Shame and Why Fighting Signals the Glue of What Holds Us Together

Guest Post: by Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Sylvie and I were driving home from a 4 day training retreat with Karuhat in Bangkok, 4 days of spending morning and afternoon with one of the most graceful, dignified, stinging fighters of the Golden Age - you can study videos of her training with him in the Muay Thai Library, I believe there are 6 commentary hours up. When we travel home from these kinds of excursive events we often have interesting, twisting conversations that really plumb the depths of what the challenges of fighting mean, almost to the metaphysical level. To me fighting signals very important empathic elements of the social glue that binds all of us together. It isn't just gladiatorial smashing of the Bread & Circuses variety. The fighting sports are intimately linked to the Fighting Arts, and what pulls us to these sports are deep veins of what make us human, and bonds us together. (You can see the kinds of things we talk about on the road in our new Muay Thai Bones podcast, available for free on YouTube). In any case, coming off our 4 days of deep immersion with one of the more dignified styles of the Golden Age, and discussing deeper themes of points of evolution that may make Sylvie more liberated as a fighter, it struck me that fighting, in the organized sense, can be viewed as something of a shame contest, whereby each person attempts to put the other person into shame. This shame is strongly linked to the kinds of depression or negative thought chains any and every fighter experiences, having lost a fight. Sylvie and I refer to this as the "stink" of a loss that just stays with you, you can't scrub off, no matter the positivity of your mindset. It's like a skunk hit you, and you just have to hold yourself together through it all, until the stink wears off. (The opposite of course happens, the "perfume" of a fight, which is the sweet smell that accompanies a fighter after a win, no matter how badly they fought, even if the fight seemed fixed. Or if the fighter is beating themselves up after...there is just this extra bit of sweetness, on top of everything, the opposite of the stink.)

above, Dieselnoi possibly the GOAT, training Tongchai Petchrungruang

Shame vs Guilt and Fighting

It would be good to open up this idea of shame maybe, so you can see what I'm writing about more clearly. It is said by those that study these things that there are two kinds of cultures. There are Shame Cultures and Guilt Cultures. Western culture has been framed largely as a Judeo-Christian Guilt culture (where the stereotypes of the forever guilty Catholic and Jew abound). What this means is that much of the policing that individuals do, that keeps the order, is through the experience of guilt. I don't steal that apple, because I would feel guilty if I did, to be overly broad about it. This is a largely interior, intra-subjective state. One feels guilty regardless if anyone sees you. You feel guilty even for having thoughts of one kind or another. There is an external element in the sense that you may feel guilty before the eyes of God, or "before The Law", but it lacks some of the more publicly oriented restraints of Shame. Shame cultures bind individuals, it seems, along more traditional lines. Asian cultures, like the traditional culture of Japan (with his codes of honor), often are help up as prime examples. I contend that the art and sport of fighting operates within the Shame Economy, and in that way draws on, older, more traditional instincts. 

In fact, it's over-broad to say that western culture is primarily a Guilt (not a Shame) culture. Wherever you will have concepts of Honor, you will have concepts of Shame. Irish Pride, the Pride of the Southerner of the USA, British Gentlemanliness are all stereotypes of western Shame Culture. (Note: there are corresponding fighting histories in each of those.)  All this is to say, fighting in the west, but also in the east, very likely draws on and signals Shame Culture. What is characteristic of Shame is that it is externally driven. It is that before the eyes of others we are put in situations where are dignity is at risk. There is a spectacle about it. And this is why fighting is one of the most beautiful acts of humanity, because it pulls on these very sensitive and binding threads, things that hold us together at what I would call a very lymphatic level. It pulls on us. 

above, Sylvie Petchrungruang getting ready to step into the ring, Kard Chuek (an older form of fighting in Thailand with roped hands)

The Shame Battle: Either You or I Are Shamed

What if I were to propose that in a public fight what we are essentially watching is a shame battle? Two people seeking to make the other person ashamed. What is the noble sentiments of sportsmanship, and mutual bonding between fighters is only the fence we build, to keep that shame from spreading, and becoming so acute as to become destructive. What if when one fighter steps in against another the sole aim is to shame the other, just as in a rap battle, it is the same. There is no other aim. The loser will wear the stink of the fight no matter what. The winner, the perfume. But more than this, within the fight there will be moments of specific shame (for instance not being in control of the space before you, when you are repeatedly struck in ways you cannot prevent, or finding yourself down on the canvas, or to give examples of a mild degree, facially contorted, or flinching). 

What is interesting about this perspective of fighting are two things. The first of them is that if fighters understood what this is essentially a shame battle, how they prepare mentally for fights might change. Much of the mental focus before fights is largely on: What am I going to do?, rather than How am I going to be? Much can be said about this. The second interesting point is that this gives light to a fundamental misread of the meaning of fighting in the west. Maybe we can call this the Video-game-ism of fighting. I'm sure there are countless influences and explanation for why this trend has developed, I've written about some of them in my 6 Core Aspects of What Make Muay Thai What It Is , but video game thinking is a nice shorthand for some of these characteristics. In the west we've largely become overly focused on "damage". We've come to imagine that the purpose of a fight is to inflict more damage on an opponent then they on you. And, we have an almost numerical (or in some cases such as fight stats, a literally numerical) sense of whoever "scores" the most, adding everything up, "wins". Because it is very difficult to depict or really structure "shame" in video games, its much easier to think in terms of health points, or lives, numerical moments and changes that add up. But, a very important thing is lost. What is lost is that fighting is essentially a shame battle. It's part of the Honor sense of the world, and as such is linked to our sense of personal dignity and pride. 

Every Fighter Has a Crumble Point

This mis-perception (and I suggest that the west mis-sees this, because the passion in fighting is driving by shame culture, not numerical superiority) really goes to what makes Thai style scoring difficult to understand at the face of it. Westerners look at Thai style scoring and they want to add up damage points in one way or another. But, this is missing the real point and meaning of fighting in the first place. Shame. 

I was talking to Sylvie about the nature of composure. She was frustrated that she's grown to some really beautiful sparring play with Karuhat, but if he really starts to turn it on, especially in terms of energy, it'll crumble. She felt ashamed. She felt like it meant that all that fluidity and knowledge was somehow "not real", or "not her". It was exposed as flawed, under great pressure. Let's leave aside that this is one of the greatest fighters who ever walked the planet, a man whose fighting style and more importantly, fighting heart, was forged against the best fighters ever of Thailand, in the Gladiator pit of Lumpinee. Even though he is older, he is made of magic. He can and should be able to take sparring to a place where it is almost impossible to keep up. Let's leave that aside. What I want to say is that this crumbling of poise, technique, energy, tempo falls exactly on the spectrum that all fighters live on. Every fighter will crumble given enough pressure. If you take a baseball bat enough times to Floyd Mayweather you will get him turtling and turning. The organism and its instincts will take over. The performance of fighters is about pushing that line further out, out beyond where you (as the opponent) feel you can reach it. It's really about manufacturing a kind of illusion. If you want the prime example of that it would be Samart. Why Samart is so beloved isn't just how he moved. Or the beauty of his technique (he has some supposedly "bad" habits, actually). It's that he, in his performance, is able to cast the illusion that his breaking point, his crumble point, is so far out beyond where a fight is currently happening, there is no reason to even pursue it. He looks unreachable. I say this is an illusion, because it really is not as far out as it appears to others, it could actually at times be pretty close, but it is also not an illusion because he is able to perform this illusion under great duress. That part is real. Very real. And that is the ultimate act and performance of the fighter, one is tempted to say. The Art of the Fighter is about pushing both aspects of this threshold, further and further out. There is the illusion of where that crumbling point might be, and then there is the real threshold where you are still able to cast that illusion. This is one reason why the Femeu fighter is more esteemed (often) than the Muay Khao fighter. The Femeu fighter casts the illusion of their crumble point further and further out. The Muay Khao fighter very likely is tougher, their crumble point, their real crumble point, may very well be at a higher threshold, but the depth of the illusion is not there.  This is all to say, every fighter has a crumble point, somewhere when physical duress and emotional duress comes together. That you have a crumble point isn't a sign that you were not crumbling before was unreal. Everyone has it. The aim though is to push it and push it away. When you crumble it is no different than stopping at 10 miles when trying to run a Marathon. If you want to be a Marathon runner you just take that in stride, and in the next run you go 11. Your 10 miles run were not fake. They were just on the spectrum of your goal. 

If you want to see what I mean by Crumble Point watch this highlight of Karuhat's career, and feel what crumble point is by looking at it's antithesis.

What complicates all of this is that fighting is a shame battle. When you crumble in a fight - even a little bit, and then catch yourself - there is shame. When I talked to Sylvie about this she said, "this is the ball that gets passed back and forth in a fight". And this leads me back to why the western view and it's confusion over Thai style scoring is missing something really important. Yes, damage is very, very important in fighting. But the reason why it is important is that it is a primary tool used to crumble your opponent, for the purposes of shaming them. Damage is used as a tool of shaming (in any you vs me, one of us is walking out of here shamed). Counting damage is missing the entire point of damage. What more traditional Thai style scoring keys in on are other modes of shame in a fight in addition to damage, adding in the bigger picture. Looking off balanced, a bit shameful. Being regularly countered, shameful. Not being able to catch someone you are chasing, shameful. Falling on the ground repeatedly, shameful. And, at least in Thai, Buddhistic sensibilities, appearing out of control and angry...shameful. Damaging someone is only a primary tool in a Shame contest. It's perhaps one reason why the knockout never became a huge thrill or aim in the Muay Thai of Thailand. Yes, the knockout ends the fight. Yes, the knockout puts the shame of losing upon the opponent. But it also ends the shame battle, and somehow feels like it's cut the conversation short. It's not really the point. It almost feels like a "cheap" victory at times, in the larger meaning of fighting.  (Note: in interviews with 90+ year old men, men who had actually attended the Kard Chuek fights of Thailand before padded gloves were added, it was said that one of the reasons gloves were adopted was because Kard Chuek fights were just too short, some of them lasting not even a few minutes. Whether this is historically accurate does not matter. It's the story they have told themselves through decades of Muay Thai fandom. Gloves were added to prolong fights.)

above, Dieselnoi teaching the Thai fighters of Petchrungruang how to stand when fatigued, essential to shame battling.

One of the more interesting dimensions of the Damage Game, is that if shame is ultimately the secret stuff that two fighters are battling against, whether you express shame is largely under your purview as a fighter. If disciplined enough you could just not react to "damage". If tough enough you can visibly just appear to shake it off. As fighters, Thais are trained in this to a high degree. And many "points" that will score in the west  will simply not score in Thailand simply because there is no shame quotient. Instead, unseen damage just has to build and build, until the fighter suddenly shows it. Until they start to crumble. There was an interesting anecdote told to us by Sifu McGinnes about how Sakmongkol made his transition to Karate fighting in Japan. Sifu said that one of the problems Sakmongkol faced was that Japanese Karate fighters didn't check leg kicks. Instead they trained against them, mentally and physically. They trained to just take them. I don't know how true this story is, but the image is one of a very decorated Thai fighter going and leg kicking high level Karate fighters in the thighs and there being no effect. It's not that there is no "score", so much as on the shame meter, or the crumble meter, there is nothing. The same thing occurs in Thai stadium fighting with the low kick. It doesn't really score, because it appears to have no impact. But, keep kicking, hit a nerve, and suddenly your very tough opponent has no control over their body. I think in Thailand there is a sense that low kick victories are a bit like knockout victories, they are real, but they do kind of shortchange the shame battle a bit. But, the larger sense is that in order to understand the relationship between "damage" and Shame, you have to understand that damage is only one tool in the larger service of shame delivery. 

This has been a bit of a roundabout ramble, but I believe that sometimes to investigate big, important ideas we need to talk around things, coming at them from multiple angles. Only then do we get a sense of the scope and breadth of a thing. What is compelling about understanding the Shame Culture basis of fighting is that it opens up a new appreciation of just what fighters are, and what their achievements mean. Fighters are those that wade into the traditional waters of shame, honor and pride, and their art is not the art of delivering damage, as much as we might like to fantasize about that. Their skills and techniques are much more elevated than we may appreciate. They are transcendent, and live in the very fabric of what holds us together as a society.  What they endure is the threat of the dissolution of identity, and personal sense of self, which is the "stuff" of what makes us, us. It also means that fighters themselves need to see themselves as ever training for shame battles. This means the purpose of any individual strike or defensive tact is the protection and celebration of esteem, in the Honor Culture in which shame is ever at stake. This means that every emotional timbre taken in training must express that immunity from shame. Working on this mortar, the "stuff" between the bricks of fighting, is essential to all training. Fighters are Spiritual Performers.

This is also why traditional martial arts are so important to the history and future of fighting. Not only are specific techniques and principles preserved, but also their relationship to the Shame Culture, Honor Culture what all those techniques and principles express. This is perhaps why the Muay Thai of Thailand is so special. It's the closest thing we have to a synthesis between traditional moral codes and a living, fighting sport. It is in important ways the most valuable fighting art we have still existing on the planet. 

If you enjoyed the photographs here, you can follow my photography on: https://www.behance.net/muaynoir