Talk:Amon/@comment-67.2.0.126-20120610200505/@comment-4888161-20120610202500

In response to someone who asked the question if bending was really necessary, I made up the following response. The person also asked if technology would make bending obsolete, and compared bending to martial arts. So if there is some stuff in their that seems unrelated to anything anyone asked here, that is where I was coming from. But I'm leaving it unchanged because I think it still relates to the topic. 5 reasons why bending is still important:

1. It is an important part of the culture. Even if it eventually no longer needed for practical purposes, bending is still an important part of the culture. This is kind of like bows and arrows in a world of guns. Archery is still an important part of the culture of some places, despite being obsolete. There are still archery competitions all over the world. Pro bending showed that bending even has become a popular sport, which tells you how much people (even none benders) enjoy it as part of the culture. Now there are certainly problems between certain benders and certain non benders, but those can be worked out without eliminating one side of it.

2. Bending still has many practical purposes, and will likely have them for the foreseeable future due to the wide range of what you can do. A waterbender's healing would be one such use. And remember the power plant Mako worked at? It is a green and environmentally friendly power plant, because it doesn't need to burn dirty fuel to create power and pollute the surrounding environment as a result. Notice Republic City's air looks rather clean in most areas. There are countless other uses, but I won't get into that as it's such as large discussion.

3. It is still useful for security/defense. The metalbending cops are an example of this, despite what the Equalists did to them. It was revealed Lin had an excellent track record before Amon and the Equalists took them apart. Despite their weaknesses and failures in these circumstances, they were still very effective in most situations proving how useful bending can be for this.

4. You mentioned martial arts, which certainly has parallels with bending. Self defense is another part of this, and it seems to be something that comes easier to benders then to non benders. However, non benders can learn self defense without bending, as proven by the Equalists. Now I am trained in martial arts, and it is a heck of a lot easier to know you can hold your own in a hand to hand fight when walking around out in the open. You can't just carry a gun everywhere, and it's generally overkill for most situations. Martial arts isn't about fighting or being superior in a fight (although there are subsections of it that have martial arts for sport or the purpose of being superior in hand to hand combat). Traditionally, the martial arts were meant for personal self defense (it's generally all you would need if you don't go picking fights with gangsters or something), teaching discipline, and as exercise. Bending is based off of martial arts, so it could be used for the same purposes.

5. To be a total boss. My personal favorite. You can go all sage on them.