What's the "art" part of Historical European Martial Arts?

Allert's slightly spicy take on swords...

I actually don't study La Verdadera Destreza because it's an effective system for winning tournaments (although I believe it can be, and is, in hands more skilled than mine).

I study it because I believe it to be true and beautiful. I believe it holds some important lessons about human nature, decision-making, and self-mastery.

Do you walk up to someone in the park flowing through tai chi postures and say, "tai chi sucks in a real fight, I think you'd be more effective martially if you took up Shaolin wushu"?

"Bruh, you guys are never gonna medal, what's the point?"

No. Because you see and appreciate that the goals of the person who is meditatively practicing tai chi are not the same as yours. You'd be more effective martially if you picked up a glock. You both accept that there's more to what you're doing than just that one element.

We know that tai chi assists in stuff like lowering blood pressure, helping in rehabilitation, getting you out socially, and encouraging thoughtful, reflective engagement with your body and the world around you. We feel the practice of perfecting an art form through careful practice has merit.

Why don't we allow this kind of conversation about swordcraft?

Why do we still have modern masters of swordcraft who drop out and never pick up a sword again once they stop regularly winning tournaments?

I think HEMA - and all similar sword-based sports - will mature once we allow students to have different reasons for studying their form of choice and different successful outcomes. It is important to encourage love in what we do. We must celebrate the study and practice of those forms as purposes unto themselves.

Swordcraft can be gentle. It can be beautiful. It can be an intimate dance. It can be a terrible reckoning. It can be a celebration of the human body and what it can do. It can be a tribute to the past. It can be a tool for unlocking secrets about the self. And yeah, absolutely, it can be a thing you do as a sport to wreck people in tournaments.

Do I want to win tournaments? God, yes, do I ever. But that's not the beginning or the end of what we're doing - is it?