KC Elbows
03-06-2003, 11:15 AM
Just thought we could come up with some simple rules to avoid creating another cult like group of wingnuts.
In my experience with cultish martial arts, they seem to start from a group who are practicing seriously, are annoyed with people who are running hobbyist schools, sport schools, stuff like that. So, the ego gets a little engaged there, and they think "Well, we're better than them, so our master is better, our system is better, blah blah blah", so they start opening schools, and finding that some people are hobbyists. Plus the master wants his cut from the schools, prices go up, corners get cut(insurance for sparring? That's money that could go to our fliers!). Then, they're in the position where they are selling themselves on being better than everyone else, and no one can ever prove them wrong, because there's no sparring. The instructors start looking down on the newer blood, because they don't train as rough(because there's no sparring because there's no insurance because they needed the cash), the master is still taking his cut perpetually, instructors start wanting to branch out on their own and not pay the master for their work, the master demotes people or some other similar practice to prevent them from branching out, and if he says they aren't good enough to teach, then they can't teach, factions develop for the master, against the master, and the guys who started out just wanting to train hard and honestly have brought themselves as far away from that as they can be.
So here's what I do in my practice and when I am teaching.
1) never use the term master, and never let it be used in reference to me.
This doesn't come up, as I'm still young, but I've seen guys with a tenth my skill get called it, and take advantage of it, which ticks me off when the few guys I know who deserve the title seem uncomfortable with it. If people want to refer to me as a master when I''m stone cold dead, I don't care. At that point, I don't care about anything. They can call my ass Master Ass, I could care less. Until then, I'm just me. I'd rather my name carry any good and bad connotations it deserves without the need for distracting adjectives.
2) never let a school I'm at fall away from sparring. And spar with them.
When I'm old, take it real slow and make it clear that, though I'm in good shape for an old guy, I'm still doing it so that my students don't get the silly idea that an eighty year old man has no more weaknesses than a twenty year old.
3) Make it clear that training hard is good in any field, and that the person who isn't training hard in school X might have trained very hard in medical school, and might right now be saving your grandma from that hamhock that's lodged in her gullet.
4) Make it clear that, for real fighters in all schools, training hard is a given.
In otherwords, don't assume skill by school, but by individual
5) If someone knows enough to teach under me, and they do not wish to be under me, let them go, and earn their own reputation.
Keeping instructors from branching out, especially ones who run schools, is a waste of time. Even if you haven't taught them everything you have, you've taught them enough to run a school. Since most fighters barely use twenty moves, how many forms do they need before they've got a lifetime of work? Fighting to keep them in, or make it harder for others to leave, is just controlling. How many students can you personally teach, anyway?
One art has actually formed an us vs. them approach, and it is actually codified on their website. When their instructors broke away, they went back and CHANGED THEIR ENTIRE CURRICULUM, saying that the guys who broke away didn't have any of the good stuff. It would be like a hsing yi school suddenly saying 'we're a tai chi school, hsing yi stinks' just to be sour grapes.
6) Always be a part of the martial arts community, and involve your students.
This can take many forms. If you like competitions, they can be good for meeting people. I prefer less organized affairs. If you run into someone looking at martial arts books at the book store, start up a conversation, invite them to your class, visit theirs. Compare techniques, spar if it seems friendly enough. Invite teachers to your class.
7) Never become xenophobic as a martial artist.
Just because the style you use is a CME, don't get into the habit of just hanging out/sparring with other CMA'ists. Cultivate the attitude that all fighters are your brothers and sisters.
8) Avoid making convoluted political associations if your only point it teaching what you know correctly.
Okay, I'm biased on this one, I just think that spreading the word usually involves missing every third word. This is bad for kung fu. True, spreading the word is important, but it's also important that some people just teach.
9) Always think of what you do as just another skill.
It's fine to love that skill, but never think for one moment that it is more important in the grand scheme of things than other things. The common denominator I see in cultish schools is that they look at outsiders as either enemies, or lost sheep. They seem to forget that ALL of the great people in history were not part of their circle.
10) If you wish to teach philosophy/religion in your school, be an authority on it, and create some mechanism for debate of those philosophies/religious doctrines, so that, if someone wiser than you comes along, the ideas can become more advanced.
That, to me, is the biggest problem. Most cultish mcdojo's have this sort of 'master is sooooooo wise' thing going on, but I've never seen the proof. Usually, the philosophy seems contrived for a purpose(like discreditting instructors who leave by saying that they are 'not actively thinking'-and that active thinking is important, and, by default, our instructors must be on the right path to be actice thinkers- I won't cite my source on that one, but it's a real example, if paraphrased to make it clearer the actual intent), and doesn't exist to help people. A lot of times, there is some trappings of actual religions(compassion is a popular one), but it's rather difficult to find real examples of the master actually carrying these precepts out. In fact, most of the offending schools who fall into this trap and teach how compassionate their master is, list as the main show of his compassion that he teaches them(again, the lost sheep thing). Wow, thank you master, I thought you were sharing because you loved your art. My mistake.
11) Remember, how hard you train has a direct relation to your chances in a fight. So, if you train harder in style X than someone else trained in style X+1, you very well may win, but that doesn't mean that that +1 is not there, or that the +1 is what lost the fight.
There it is. BTW, number 8 was just me slipping in my own biases, but tough, it's my thread.
In my experience with cultish martial arts, they seem to start from a group who are practicing seriously, are annoyed with people who are running hobbyist schools, sport schools, stuff like that. So, the ego gets a little engaged there, and they think "Well, we're better than them, so our master is better, our system is better, blah blah blah", so they start opening schools, and finding that some people are hobbyists. Plus the master wants his cut from the schools, prices go up, corners get cut(insurance for sparring? That's money that could go to our fliers!). Then, they're in the position where they are selling themselves on being better than everyone else, and no one can ever prove them wrong, because there's no sparring. The instructors start looking down on the newer blood, because they don't train as rough(because there's no sparring because there's no insurance because they needed the cash), the master is still taking his cut perpetually, instructors start wanting to branch out on their own and not pay the master for their work, the master demotes people or some other similar practice to prevent them from branching out, and if he says they aren't good enough to teach, then they can't teach, factions develop for the master, against the master, and the guys who started out just wanting to train hard and honestly have brought themselves as far away from that as they can be.
So here's what I do in my practice and when I am teaching.
1) never use the term master, and never let it be used in reference to me.
This doesn't come up, as I'm still young, but I've seen guys with a tenth my skill get called it, and take advantage of it, which ticks me off when the few guys I know who deserve the title seem uncomfortable with it. If people want to refer to me as a master when I''m stone cold dead, I don't care. At that point, I don't care about anything. They can call my ass Master Ass, I could care less. Until then, I'm just me. I'd rather my name carry any good and bad connotations it deserves without the need for distracting adjectives.
2) never let a school I'm at fall away from sparring. And spar with them.
When I'm old, take it real slow and make it clear that, though I'm in good shape for an old guy, I'm still doing it so that my students don't get the silly idea that an eighty year old man has no more weaknesses than a twenty year old.
3) Make it clear that training hard is good in any field, and that the person who isn't training hard in school X might have trained very hard in medical school, and might right now be saving your grandma from that hamhock that's lodged in her gullet.
4) Make it clear that, for real fighters in all schools, training hard is a given.
In otherwords, don't assume skill by school, but by individual
5) If someone knows enough to teach under me, and they do not wish to be under me, let them go, and earn their own reputation.
Keeping instructors from branching out, especially ones who run schools, is a waste of time. Even if you haven't taught them everything you have, you've taught them enough to run a school. Since most fighters barely use twenty moves, how many forms do they need before they've got a lifetime of work? Fighting to keep them in, or make it harder for others to leave, is just controlling. How many students can you personally teach, anyway?
One art has actually formed an us vs. them approach, and it is actually codified on their website. When their instructors broke away, they went back and CHANGED THEIR ENTIRE CURRICULUM, saying that the guys who broke away didn't have any of the good stuff. It would be like a hsing yi school suddenly saying 'we're a tai chi school, hsing yi stinks' just to be sour grapes.
6) Always be a part of the martial arts community, and involve your students.
This can take many forms. If you like competitions, they can be good for meeting people. I prefer less organized affairs. If you run into someone looking at martial arts books at the book store, start up a conversation, invite them to your class, visit theirs. Compare techniques, spar if it seems friendly enough. Invite teachers to your class.
7) Never become xenophobic as a martial artist.
Just because the style you use is a CME, don't get into the habit of just hanging out/sparring with other CMA'ists. Cultivate the attitude that all fighters are your brothers and sisters.
8) Avoid making convoluted political associations if your only point it teaching what you know correctly.
Okay, I'm biased on this one, I just think that spreading the word usually involves missing every third word. This is bad for kung fu. True, spreading the word is important, but it's also important that some people just teach.
9) Always think of what you do as just another skill.
It's fine to love that skill, but never think for one moment that it is more important in the grand scheme of things than other things. The common denominator I see in cultish schools is that they look at outsiders as either enemies, or lost sheep. They seem to forget that ALL of the great people in history were not part of their circle.
10) If you wish to teach philosophy/religion in your school, be an authority on it, and create some mechanism for debate of those philosophies/religious doctrines, so that, if someone wiser than you comes along, the ideas can become more advanced.
That, to me, is the biggest problem. Most cultish mcdojo's have this sort of 'master is sooooooo wise' thing going on, but I've never seen the proof. Usually, the philosophy seems contrived for a purpose(like discreditting instructors who leave by saying that they are 'not actively thinking'-and that active thinking is important, and, by default, our instructors must be on the right path to be actice thinkers- I won't cite my source on that one, but it's a real example, if paraphrased to make it clearer the actual intent), and doesn't exist to help people. A lot of times, there is some trappings of actual religions(compassion is a popular one), but it's rather difficult to find real examples of the master actually carrying these precepts out. In fact, most of the offending schools who fall into this trap and teach how compassionate their master is, list as the main show of his compassion that he teaches them(again, the lost sheep thing). Wow, thank you master, I thought you were sharing because you loved your art. My mistake.
11) Remember, how hard you train has a direct relation to your chances in a fight. So, if you train harder in style X than someone else trained in style X+1, you very well may win, but that doesn't mean that that +1 is not there, or that the +1 is what lost the fight.
There it is. BTW, number 8 was just me slipping in my own biases, but tough, it's my thread.