lineage only as important as practitioner (was good WC vs. best WC)

[aelward]

This post started off in the good WC, best WC thread, but then I realized it was diverging a little too much, and didn't relate much to R5A's original intention.

I'm going to go against the grain for a brief moment and say that coming from a reputable lineage is of limited importance.

To someone just starting off in the martial arts, and to many who have been doing it for a while, lineage probably means a lot. Perhaps it is the same subconcious elitist attitude that drives people to trace their geneological roots to some famous knight or lord or other form of nobility, regardless of how benevolent or ignoble that ancestor was. Or the fact that dog breeders keep incredibly detailed lists of their dogs' pedigree, despite the fact that their is a ridiculous amount of inbreeding and exploitation.

For the martial artist, it shows a link to the past, to some great teacher or fighter; and the idea that if this ancestor (be it legendary like Yim Wing Chun, or factual like Leung Jan) was so darn good, their art must be pretty darn good. That is probably why you see some people out there claiming to teach "original" or "authentic" [insert style name].

But as has been mentioned in the previous thread, your teacher being great, or your lineage being pure doesn't mean anything to you unless you do something with it. Perhaps people, being lazy by nature, assume that as long as the source is good, they will become good just by drinking from it; go to class a couple times a week, go through the motions, maybe you will get good. Of course, we all know that is not true.

So what should lineage mean to us? Instead of being a way to validate our respective arts, or a means of rationalizing to ourselves that what we are learning is good, I think it should be a way of challenging ourselves. If our lineage is good, we should take it upon ourselves to uphold the level of teaching that has been passed down. Because if not, we are giving our lineage-- our sifus, our si-gungs, all way up to our si-jos-- a bad name. (especially if we spend less time training than spouting on and on in an internet forum about how great our lineage is)

[stoli]

Personally I feel lineage is of almost no importance. The past is great but that's what it is, the past.

Respect must be EARNED on what someone teaches or does now. Not what their teacher could do or how good his teacher was before him.

[planetwc]

Aelward,

The more you post the more I like.

I think these days the only thing lineage is hopeful for is to weed out those charlatans who claim something they are not.

And even when someone does have lineage, as you say it is not a guarentee of authenticity or skill.

And the student's diligence is still such a large portion of the equation.

regards,

David Williams

[kungfu cowboy]

Lineage is important if it means you are getting quality instruction, and it is consistently represented by that lineage. It is not important as long as there is a quality martial art being taught. But then who taught that person? Somebody from a particular lineage, most likely. Quality comes from somewhere.

[red5angel]

aelward - you mus be careful here, dismissing lineage can be a dangerous thing. For some it is just a connection to the past, as you said, and for the most part I agree that the person is the most important thing.
What if you went out after a month of learning wingchun and started your own lineage? You had enough skill to look good, sort of mimicked the rest and started teaching people. Now for some, they will come along and start learning and fill in some of the blanks. For most they will learn exactly what you teach them and then thier art can really suck.
Lineage is part of the foundation on which you build your skill. without that you have a much longer and arduous journey ahead of you.

or what KungFu Cowboy said!

[aelward]

Ah yes; I assumed that most people reading this would have read my previous post on the good WC, bad WC thread.

The caveat is that obviously, if one of your ancestors just "didn't get it," then you have problems. Maybe you are super diligent; but if your 1000 punches aren't going from your center to an opponent's center, then your Wing Chun probably is missing something fundamentally important.

But if what you got out of my post was that lineage is completely unimportant, than you have missed the point altogether. Hopefully not because of devotion to your own lineage.

My post is to those among us who trace your Yip Man roots to illustrious students such as Leung Sheung, Lok Yiu, Tsui Sheng Ting, or Wong Sheung Leung. Yes, what you are learning is fundamentally sound (assuming that your own teachers were faithful to their instructor's teaching). But that only reflects what you can potentially. Use that as an inspiration to train harder, not as an excuse to validate what you are learning.

(stepping off the soapbox...)

[aelward]

speaking of potential, I just rememberd this joke I heard:

A boy asks his father to explain him the difference between potential and reality. His father replies, "Go and ask your mother if she would sleep with Robert Redford for a million dollars. Then ask your sister if she would sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars."

The boy does as he is told, and asks his mother. She narrows her eyes, looks around the room suspiciously, then whispers in the boy's ears: "don't tell your dad this, but YES!" He then goes and asks his sister the Brad Pitt question, and she replies "OH YES!".

Relating the answers to his father, the boy says, "I think I'm beginning to understand, but I think you need to spell it out to me." The father answers, "Son, we are potentially sitting on 2 million bucks. In reality, we are living with a pair of wh0res."

[red5angel]

ROFLMAO!!!!