Your Martial Art, How You Say ... Sucks

Your reflexes are pitiful.
The seasons move faster.

Okay, uh, hey everybody! This is a little awkward for me-

Hurry up, white boy!

Yeah. So, uh, I've been ordered-

Hmph!

*Ahem* Asked ... to allow a guest writer on the blog. And, uh, well ...

I am way-ting ...

Right. So, here he is ... the Master of the house of Sinanju, Chiun.

The great, wise, and powerful Master of Sinanju, dumbass. Do not forget it. It is no wonder you have lost so much hair, Jimbo - your brain was not even smart enough to keep it attached to your misshapen head!

Now, where was I ...? 

Ah, yes, your martial art, how you say ... sucks. It is "crappy." Please bear this in mind when writing in the future.  

Sinanju is the 'Big Bang' from whence all other arts were created. Some, like yours, may have generated a small following. How cute you wear those split-toed booties. Perhaps you could fit a paint brush in there and draw crappy calligraphy too.     

But really, why bother training in a crappy martial art? Why bother training in any that is not Sinanju for the matter of that? 

Many years ago, during my college days, I trained with a guy for several years. I left his training for a simple reason: He was a dick.

I liked his art and he was quite capable at it. But, man, he was a narcissistic douchebag. He came off like Chiun from the Destroyer/Remo Williams series. Eventually, I realized I could no longer tolerate training with an asshole. I walked.

Enter any school as a student (or teacher) with an attitude, ready to prove something, and you will quickly realize you cannot accomplish anything. This is an old theme, akin to, “emptying your cup.” We need to provide ourselves with a perspective that can actually give us perspective. This has to do with giving ourselves permission to learn, to discover, and provide it to others - teacher and students - so we can get to a place to gain some understanding. If we find we cannot do this, then it’s clear we’re not ready for training.

I remember a time Nagato sensei and I were talking about my wife (girlfriend at the time), who I was learning Makko Ho from. He asked, "Is she any good?" Yes, I replied, very good. “Then just believe her," he said. This is very indicative of a Japanese mindset, but nevertheless also very true. Faith needs to come first, whether in religion or martial training. The great thinker St. Augustine’s favorite quote was actually a mis-quote of Isaiah 7:9: If you do not believe, then you will not understand. In other words, faith seeks understanding. Augustine was quite convinced of this and would write 15 books on the matter (see, On the Trinity).

Faith can be very powerful because it is, at the very least, a form of assent, an expression of approval, agreement. But in a deeper sense faith in the form of assent is the permission we give to ourselves to accept the outcome, be it rewards or consequences, in regards to an endeavor, relationship, or way of thinking. It is integral to martial training because without it, there’s no training.

Anytime you deal with martial arts you are actually dealing with three (at least three) aspects: The art itself, the teacher, and the manner in which the teacher teaches. Now, if someone does not go to training they don't get the training. Simple. But for those who go, if they do not assent to learn and instead let an unfettered ego or their own issues take point, it causes conflict between them and one or more of the above aspects – the art, teacher, or the manner of teaching.

For newbies, this is especially troubling because of its inherent contradiction: They are usually in no position to understand their opposition - “Why am I resisting this, again?” And because of this internal estrangement they won’t even make sense of the simplest aspects of training.

I’m not saying this should be an all-or-nothing compromise. We should be careful with how we approach this stuff - there are plenty of frauds out there. If you are serious about training, don’t close yourself off from others - you are not part of a cult. Be aggressive in your exploration and discovery, but don't get myopic about it just because it’s what you’re doing. We should be mindful and ask questions, but that doesn't necessarily mean putting the art, teacher, or the teachings, up on the stand and cross examining them. 

To get good, learn deeply, be creative, we have to give ourselves permission and "just believe it" - the art, teacher, and delivery - until we know otherwise.  This search takes time. I searched for years to find what I was looking for. Hell, I had to move to Japan to find it.

There is one simple reason I am the head of my dojo. It’s the same reason my dojo exists at all: The assent - faith - of the folks who have made themselves apart of it. If I were an asshole, no one would make themselves apart of anything with me. This is because the dojo is not just me – it’s a community. And as such, one must comport oneself as part of that community.

If you choose not to do that, guess what? No training for you.

Parva svb Ingenti

Recently, I was treated to the story of a young man who went to the aid of a young woman - she was being beaten. As the story goes, the hero approached and thwarted the attack by attacking the attacker. But unknown to our hero, the attacker’s friends were not far behind, and beat the crap out of him. What happened to the girl is anyone’s guess.

Question: Was our hero’s actions ethical? Did he do the right thing?

If we want to understand warrior arts tactically, we have to understand them ethically. And yes, I get this is not as sexy as learning that sweet new move to make opponents spit up a variety of colors. Or the Spackler technique of cutting the hamstring on the back of the leg, right at the bottom, to affect weight displacement to never play golf again (they'll push everything right and quit the game).

I get that some people believe the ethical and tactical are mutually exclusive - incompatible - of one another. They'll say, "Son," (they use words like, "Son," even though we're the same age), "the tactical is about survival - kill or be killed. And the ethical, well, that shit's for Sunday school, religion, or philosophers whiling away in ivory towers." They forgot obsessive bloggers. I have to admit, to a certain extent, this is correct. But only to a certain extent. Here’s how.

We can be tactical without being ethical. It’s easy, really - far easier than trying to be both, for sure. Take the story above. Our young hero saw the violence and knew it was wrong – this young lady did not deserve to be beaten by a cretin. In his gut, he knew this to be immoral and acted. Our hero, a trained martial artist, gained tactical advantage and took the bully out. 

Now, had the violence stopped at that point, perhaps he could've walked into the sunset, even in the embrace of a newly found female friend ever grateful for a real man. But was he ethical? Did this tactical action provide him with the best option to stop the violence and prevent more?

Some will say, yes. And how would they know? Maybe by his intention to do right. But intending to do right is not the same as doing right. I define ethics as "moral values in action," so we're looking for the thing that is done, not just its right-minded intention. Perhaps then by merit of the outcome – his action caused the violence to cease. But this is unhelpful - just because the outcome goes his way does not mean the action was ethical. The outcome could be borne of pure luck – our Rum-smiling hero dropping that NaeNae accidentally knocks the attacker out. The violence has stopped and further prevented.  

I have to say no, even if the outcome had gone his way. I'd say he was lucky and nothing more – a good thing coming in spite of doing a noble dumb thing. GK Chesterton said, "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." Defending another is a thing worth doing. But doing it badly in this case, the actual case, meant an outcome that was not sunsets and schmaltz, it meant a shitty, in fact, potentially deadly outcome.

I'll assume the hero has already confronted this - martial artists are like that. They don’t naturally like surprises and like less actually being surprised. It informs them that they were “open,” vulnerable. Even though he had been tactical, he had not been ethical first. Had he been, he would have given himself the best opportunity for the very kind of outcome he was initially compelled to affect.

Think about it. Why exactly did he intervene to begin with? Was it to deliver “justice” to a douchebag? I must have missed the part when our hero swung in on a Batarang. Or did he do it to protect a young woman who could not protect herself? Why, then, did he choose a tactic that delivered “justice” upon her attacker?

And once he'd ladled out this creamy bowl of “justice,” the attacker's friends found it unpalatable and beat the chef, creating a new issue: The hero cannot now protect himself. And once our hero is compromised, what happens to the young woman? She’s left in the very same predicament our hero found her in in the first place. 

By unnecessarily attacking the attacker, the hero has placed himself, the girl, and even his attackers in further harm, potentially deadly harm. Yes, even his attackers: Had the hero (or the attackers or anyone else) been carrying a concealed weapon - a knife or firearm - this is the part where he may decide it comes out. And we get an ending shittier than, "No Country for Old Men."    

What ought the hero have done?

He ought to have placed himself between the young woman and her abuser and separated them. Now, no one can foresee the future, but this tactical action is the best ethical action for a simple reason: It protects everyone. 

It physically protects the girl by shielding her from further violence.

It physically protects the hero by not immediately threatening the attacker, which means they aren't forced to fight. And by standing up for the girl, the hero establishes himself as an obstacle to any further attack.    

It physically protects the attacker from immediate harm by the hero and from lawful harm he may pose to himself by his own poor behavior, even if the dumbass doesn't realize it. 

The tactic stems exclusively from the ethical, specifically a protector ethic. Our hero ought to have acted as a protector of self, others, and, if possible, all others, including the enemy. 

This outlines the ethical/tactical continuum, with the “if possible,” as pivot (kaname, in Japanese) of the balance, since one can only engage the continuum from a sober understanding of one’s own confidence and capacity in martial ability under a given context. If the Chang Sing's and Wing Kong's are going at it, you may not feel like Kung Fu-ing a trench between them, but instead calling the police. 

This all boils down to the sticky, black muck at the base of the pan: How one trains martial ability shapes, even drives, the moment and manner of its use. Technique-based training is too often the tactical driving the ethical, rather than an ethical method driving and shaping the use of the tactical in context.

If your core value in training is to slit throats from behind, like a commando, but you are not a commando, be not surprised when your credo, “Kill’em all, let God sort’em out,” takes you horribly off course, even off the map, causing more conflict and violence than you wished. 

Don’t get me wrong, the world is a brutal place and there will be cases when good folks have no choice but to attack the attacker, even at great risk to themselves or others. But that hardly provides license to make Jack Bauer-ing the guiding orientation of training when we are clearly not Jack Bauer.

Ultimately, protecting your enemy has very much to do with protecting yourself, physically and even lawfully. Operating from the perspective that less is definitively more, our default stance when engaging violence ought to be by the least necessary tactic to conform with the protector ethic. 

Balancing the ethical continuum - self, others, and, if possible, all others, including the enemy - is the best way to gain insight for tactical action because it's when you cannot protect everyone, that tactics become clear.