First order of business...  I did not say Hebertism doesn't matter.  I said that the purpose of Hebertism was different from what you said.  Hebertism was designed to better the self in all fields of athleticism and physical training.  It was NOT designed specifically for military training; it was adopted into military curriculum.  Therefore, the intent of Hebertism was never to train more aggressive fighters, even if that was the final product.  You're right, though.  Countries do not GO to war to save lives.  But they do ENTER war to save lives.  It has been a long, LONG time since the French military has acted as an aggressor.  The Indochina War that Belle was a part of was a backlash from nineteenth century imperialism.  France was DEFENDING what was thought to be theirs... Indochina, or Vietnam in particular, was fighting for liberty.  In both cases, it was for the preservation of life as they saw it.  The intent of war is not to kill in almost all cases.  Raymond Belle did not enter into the Indochina War willingly, either, so you cannot say that he had gone to war to fight.  Belle was thrown into the war because he was born there.  He had to fight.  He did not choose to.

Yes, he killed people (at least, probably).  Yes, he fought people.  But the purpose behind Parkour and the way it was developed was so that he could save his own life and save the lives of others.  His military training served the purpose of killing.  Look at Parkour.  Is there ANY aggressive movement in it?  Is there any movement that could even be possibly seen as passively aggressive in the way that Tai'Chi or Aikido are passively aggressive?  Parkour, and Hebertism, were NOT designed to hurt people.

EDIT:  I'm going to cut in right here and say that I really should not be saying so much about Parkour nor Hebertism because NONE of us here have a right to make claims as to what it is and what it is not...  But these are my interpretations as I have come to understand them and I have provided a logical basis for those interpretations, so for the sake of debate, it should be valid enough.

Now, back onto competitiveness...  "Competition... can be a means of bringing everyone up."  That's an argument that is used to defend laissez-faire capitalism a lot and it is logically sound.  However, it does not seem liek the way that the world SHOULD be working.  Do we honestly want the only way for people to get better and to rise above themselves to be a mentality of becoming better than the next?  Even so, you bring everyone up by pushing other people down... and the people who get pushed down rise up and try to push you down... and eventually, everyone is higher than they were originally at...  This does not negate the fact that there was pushing down to begin with.  There are better means to elevation.  There are more communal means to elevation.

Is competition a part of human nature?  I dislike the idea of human nature in general.  I think it's a cop-out argument that people use when they're too lazy to analyze something or when they're too weak to admit that they're weak.  "Oh, it's just human nature."  Those conventions of "human nature" have always been defied time and time again.  Since time immemorial, we've been able to rise against it.  So does human nature even exist?  Or is it a lazy man's way out?

again, good and well thought out points.

My understanding (I could have misread) was that you said THE SETTING of Hebertism didn't matter, which isn't true. take the same argument you used against the root of a word vs usage, if Hebertism at it's root was only for self improvement, but then was used to train more effective fighters, then it was used for competitive purposes. I'm not saying it was designed for comptetition (other than self-improvement), just that it was used that way.

I agree, many times "human nature" is used as a cop-out, I don't consider myself a cop-out type of person, I am not using it as a statement of convenience, I litterally mean that it is "natural behavior" to compete. Every intelligent form of life competes, it could be said to be part of the natural selection process, which I do belive in, survival of the fittest, competition for life and the improvement of species on a grand scale. Young tiger cubs compete so that they can all become better hunters, so that when they compete against food or enemies they are better prepared. Is it not the same with parkour and boys playing tag?

As for competitiveness, you have stuck to your idea that being better than someone can only be achieved by pushing them down, I don't believe this is true. We are having an argument here, a civilized debate, a form of competition, I am learning from you, hopefully I say something of value which you and others can learn from as well, so while we both make points which have validity, are we pushing each other down, or trying to pull each other up? Is a debate not competitive?

I also agree that it is not ours to define parkour, that's done. It does, in my opinion change over time as David develops and his ideas develop, I do not think he has the same outlook that he did as a teen, it would be very unusual if he did. Anyway, my original point was not that Parkour itself is competitive, but that it is based on competitive ideas, even running to save someone's life, the idea is to be faster. Faster than what? Yourself of yesterday, self competition, self-improvement. I do still believe that people are inherently competitive, and that this competitive spirit is applied to almost everything that people do. Even parkour politics are competitive. (sad but true). Look how many parkour websites claim to be "official" "world's biggest and best" ... if there is a best, there is a worst, and that is competition.

In my personal interactions with life I find that people are competitive at different levels or just not competitive at all.  For some people it seems to push them to be better then they were before.  If I have a race for time and a race against somebody else and do the exact same course I would think that I would do better if I were going against somebody else.  Competition can also be the exact opposite of this point though in many cases.  Sometimes I believe that competition can bring out the very worst in people in certain situations.  Overall I think that friendly competition in parkour may help some people more then others but I would hate to see it judged and scored because it goes against what I understand parkour to be.

A simple comment from one of the people here who is not 'thinking'...
com¡Epe¡Eti¡Etion  /ˌkɒmpɪˈtɪʃən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kom-pi-tish-uhn]:
-the act of competing; rivalry for supremacy
-a contest for some prize, honor, or advantage
-the rivalry offered by a competitor
-rivalry between two or more persons or groups for an object desired in common, usually resulting in a victor and a loser but not necessarily involving the destruction of the latter.

on a note of organized competition, i was in a race last weekend called the "urbanathlon". it featured distance running incorporated with obstacles such as traversing a climbing wall, vaulting hurdles, and ended with a rope wall that you could wallrun.

it wasnt a parkour event, but id say familiarity with obstacles probably shaved some time off our team's score. it was alot of fun and ill definately be participating in it, and encouraging other traceurs i know to do so, next year.

word, i havent heard a single person say they started parkour for another reason.

I was trying to comment on your sentence


why think of it like that when instead of pushing people down you pull them up? sorry my keyboard is dying so you may see more sentences like those for a few days

also remember those of us who are pro competition are not saying to compete for bragging rights or for prizes or to be better or to ruin someone elses day even we are doing it to improve ourselves or others

This topic is showing the true nature of the people in this forum. Those who have a competitive drive, and those who would rather not compete and just have fun with what they are doing.
You could get better doing either thing. If you are competing, you are trying to become better than everyone around you and when someone beats you, you simply try harder to beat them. If you arent competing and just doing PK for fun, then you strive to learn new things because, like everything else, the more new things you can do with something you love the more fun you will have doing it.

There, end of argument.