Fighting & Chess

The Fighting Spirit:

LawDog was talking the other day about aikido, and what he thinks of its ideas about fighting spirit:

Both dojos were big on instilling the idea that aikido was, for lack of a better description, a way to make fighting civilized.

I can't wrap my mind around that concept. Civilized behavior is what happens prior to a fight, and after a fight.

A fight itself is the antithesis of civilization, and should remain so. A fight is savage, brutal and barbaric. It should tweak the reptilian hindbrain and draw out your inner Viking.

If it doesn't, and you go up against a foe for whom it does -- you're going to lose.

I would like examine that idea further.

For most people, that is probably precisely right as it is written. For most people, including almost all students of marital arts, the right mindset remains: focused aggressive intent, "pushed down" to a level where there is no conscious thought to get in the way. Training has to be repeated and practiced to the point that there is no conscious thought necessary to act on it.

Nevertheless, the most dangerous man I ever met believed that fighting was precisely like chess. Speed chess, but chess.

This position is entirely compatible with finding your inner Viking, as a matter of fact. The Vikings were great fans of both chess and an earlier board came called tafl. Try it, if you like -- there's a downloadable version there. My experience is that it's an easy game to win from the center, and very hard to win from the sides.

In any event, Ken Caton taught me to fight. Take a look at the picture. Doesn't look like much, does he?

Well, he was a former Marine sergeant, instructor of jujitsu and ryu ku kempo -- and he believed that fighting was like chess in three dimensions. A man's arm, like a rook or a bishop, can only move in certain directions without breaking. Based on where it is, and where you are, you can predict its entire possible range of movement. The body to which it is attached, likewise, can only move in certain ways. Each movement creates openings in the defense. Furthermore, striking the body in certain ways will also create openings with complete certainty. If you know how to hit someone, you can strike their arm so as to open their neck. If you know in advance that your first move will create the second opening, you can be moving to attack that second opening before it is even there. By the time your attack arrives, the opening is created, and there is no possibility of defense.

All that sounds very complicated, and one of the most certain rules of combat is that complicated things break down. Nevertheless, I saw it work often enough that I believe in it.

All kinds of people came by to the dojo in the back alley of Gainesville, GA -- Ken referred to his school as the "Alley Ryu" -- to try Ken. We had boxers come by, knife-fighters, stick-fighters, and the like. I never saw anyone win; I never saw Ken try very hard.

They might have been warned by the framed letter he had on the wall, on official stationary from the Army Rangers who train at Camp Frank D. Merrill. It read, simply, "Dear Mr. Caton: Thanks for coming out and showing us we weren't as tough as we thought."

After class, we would often sit and play chess for hours, five or six games running at once all night and well into the morning. I was in college then, and I liked to play chess. I'd won my high school's chess tournament, and at Georgia State University I would occasionally go off with friends to the Groundhog Tavern, drink three rounds of Guinness interspersed with three rounds of tequila shots, and then come back to the rec room and challenge all comers on the chessboard.

Even so, one night I remember surrendering a game at the dojo, and Ken walking over and berating me. "Never surrender!" he said.

"Yeah, but look at it," I answered. "Can't win it; why waste time on it?"

"You don't know you can't win," he replied. "Your opponent may not be as smart as you. He may not see what you see. He may make a mistake. Never surrender."

And just to prove the point, he took over my position and played it out. He won, of course: my opponent made not one but several mistakes, and lost from a position that should have been an inescapable victory.

It's still a matter of training to the point that thought is not necessary; the "empty mind" that the martial arts pursues is exactly the right road. But, like the chessmaster, you can learn to see angles and avenues, to predict and to control, to fight several moves ahead.

A final aside -- if any of you knows how to reach Ken, I'd love to be put back in touch. Neither the address nor the phone number works. He vanished a few years ago, and none of us know what's become of him. I suspect he went "walkabout," as I can't imagine anything except an unforseen accident claiming him.