In 'Why We Fight,' One Man Searches For Self-Knowledge Through Mixed Martial Arts
Josh Rosenblatt's personal meditation on fighting and selfhood is replete with engaging literary and historical excursions — giving the idea of fighting a dignity it might be harder to grant without.
Fighting doesn't have to be about survival. It doesn't even have to be about pride.
At least, this is what Josh Rosenblatt contends in Why We Fight: One Man's Search for Meaning Inside the Ring. He intends to impress that to fight is to know who you are in a very immediate sense. Fighting, as he sees it, is the pursuit of active self-knowledge through self-endangerment, pain and risk. It's about facing and embracing what is dangerous and, in a way, making it beautiful.
To be clear at the outset, though: is a celebration of violence and it's an exaltation of a testosterone-laden self-justification. If it had been either, I'd have put it down without a second thought.
