The Purpose of Martial Arts

It’s easy to see why martial arts systems originally developed. When battles were a summation of hundreds of individual fights between warriors, and when the technology used in warfare was limited to some shielding and perhaps a particularly imaginative weapon, or just a sword, the deciding factor in combat was the physical prowess of the humans involved. Therefore it’s not surprising that many sought to improve their fighting technique, through observation of what worked well, and what did not.It could be said that the original purpose of martial arts was to grant the wielder ultimate skill in combat, so that when a war was waged, it could be won.Why then are martial arts still popular today? And now that we live in an age of relative peace between countries and stability within most of them, what is their purpose now?I have been careful in the above paragraph to avoid stating that wars are not longer waged. Of course they are; they’re happening right now. It is important not to overlook the fact that modern soldiers are still taught martial arts. What they learn would be considered by many professional practitioners to be a shadow of the real thing. Soldiers are taught a syllabus which extracts the best and most relevant of all the combat techniques in the world, combined with knowledge of the human anatomy to further improve it. They don’t really learn a martial art in the commonly perceived sense. Nevertheless martial arts still have a purpose in modern warfare.The majority of students however, are not soldiers. I would also reckon that a large proportion of students, never have any intention of using their knowledge in a real situation, or rather, never have any intention of being in a situation that would require it. With this in mind, the purpose of martial arts seems to have been made redundant. So what then is it’s purpose now?I’m not going to look into the reasons why any one specific student might choose to learn. Ultimately one could define a purpose based on why people choose it, but that’s commercialism and that would lead to knowledge becoming more and more diluted. If we were to say the purpose of combative arts is to give people what they want out of it, then the system starts to compete for students by changing what is taught.When one thinks about the original purpose of martial arts, it actually seems rather at odds with what actually goes on. In almost every school there is an essence of moral code. Almost every master teachers their pupils to use their knowledge with caution. Yet apparently martial arts are simply a collection of techniques used in war, and do not require ethics.What is the purpose of this system of ethics. It can only be to guide or restrain the practitioners, so that they use their knowledge wisely instead of greedily. I think this shows us that the purpose of martial arts in the modern world, is to prevent wars from being waged, or fights being fought, both by giving moral structure and discipline to the people who use it, and then by using it.