Just the other day I stumbled upon a book on "post-modernism" by Walt Anderson titled, REALITY ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE. The book opened a lot of doors for me, and it helped me begin to piece together a lot of the unanswered questions I have had for many decades about the whys and wheretofores of people who get "hooked" on martial arts to the point where they cannot see the forest for the trees.
I was recently laughing at a fellow of high school age here in the USA who believes that the only thing that matters to him in this life is to travel to Thailand, join a Muay Thai camp, and work toward becoming a Bangkok stadium Muay Thai champion. He is a kid with dreams who doesn't really understand all that such a lifestyle change would incorporate, or how it would effect the rest of his life in the future. After browsing through Anderson's book, I now think I understand at least a little bit of the social rationale behind that poor kid's Muay Thai goals. Hell, I think I now understand a lot about why "I" have spent over four decades training in various martial arts.
I have long been aware that many, if not most, individuals involved in martial arts (and the iron game...bodybuilding, weightllifting, powerlifting, etc.) use their training as a sort of alternate universe in which they can step outside of the "real"(?) world that we all walk through on a daily basis when not asleep. Of course there is nothing wrong with having alternative universes in one's life if only because life itself seems to be constructed of any number of "constructs" that allow each of us to cope with, and manuver through, the social world that surrounds us all. Without "constructs" we would not be able to cope with the chaos that we have to deal with every day in the so-called normal world (for example, if training in a Korean Tae Kwon Do kwoon (school) is part and parcel of your regular exercise regimen, you will recognize that you manuver through your "cojang universe" (gear, rituals, performance, status awareness, etc.) in a decidedly different way than you manuver through your FMA workouts, your weight training workouts, your Muay Thai workouts, your Japanese Budo workouts, or the way you approach ordering, eating, and paying for a meal in a classy Thai restaurant.).
What has always bothered me is the way most westerners (european and north american) seem to find it second nature to study a martial art for a period of time and then develop an unquenchable desire to become "masters" of those arts so that they can impress others with accumulated rankings, knowledge of minituae, and an air (stench?) of invincibility and superiority. For instance, I don't know if I should laugh or cry when I see books written on asian martial arts that feature nothing but pictures of westerners on the cover and throughout the book! Oh, you might find a thumbnail sized picture of one or two of the authors asian teachers somewhere in the book, but the only thing asian in the remaining 99.99% of the books illustrations is the name of the art and the uniforms.
Westerners still have a conquerors attitude that holds appropriation to be all that is necessary for ownership. In other words, if you become a black belt or teacher of some asian martial art, you OWN that art and can represent it any way you want. Usually that representation comes across as a watered down bastardization of what was origionally taught. It makes me shake my head in despair whenever I hear a western "master" tellling me that he has had to modify what he teaches so that it can be digested by his western students. Hmmmm, I wonder if those masters ever give any thought to the possibility that "their" asian instructors may have been thinking the same way when they taught them (which means that something was watered down twice before it reaches the typical western student...and the watering down continues as the student passes on his "skills" on to another generation!).
Forget about how tough you are, how skillful you are with asian inspired techniques, or how slavishly you try to "teach as you were taught" (which usually means silly things like speaking in broken english and trying to sound like the blind monk in the old KUNG FU television show...in fact, David Carradine is the greatest example of what I trying to paint a picture of in this article), and just quit "americanizing" or "westernizing" asian martial arts to the point where you are flat out disrespecting the very art and tradition that you "claim" to hold in reverence.
I wanted to throw up a few days ago when I read an american martial artists comments on a martial arts forum blog that literally boggled my mind. The teenager (??) claimed that he was having some great Muay Thai workouts, Ninja workouts, and Brazilian Ju-Jitsu workouts at his local health club, but he wondered when he would know that he was ready to compete in no-holds-barred competitions. WHAT??? Hey, why doesn't he throw in a few "poison finger" kung fu and tai chi classes in the mix? If you're going to be superficial, you might as well be SUPER superficial, eh? I'll bet it never crossed that young man's mind that he would be better off spending a few years training and competing in amateur boxing or high school wrestling before signing up for the "martial arts du jour" that is taught at contemporary martial arts studios, fitness centers, and health clubs by the ubiquitous ""young western masters."
Ah, but it is all a "game" anyway, right? Otherwise don't you think that many of today's wannabe ninja, kickboxers, grapplers, etc. would be fighting to join the Marines, the Army (to get into Ranger or Special Forces canidacy schools), or West Point Military Academy? Nah, all of our western "paper tigers" have no interest in military service or the stress of possible real combat. Wearing a belt with a lot of stripes, Muay Thai boxing trunks, anklets, and boxing gloves is much safer than wearing military gear in a combat zone, eh? Plus, there is a world of difference between being awarded a military service medal, and going through a belt rank certification ceremony in a storefront or commercial gym dojo.
Ah, but I digress (by about 500 miles!). Check out the book, REALITY ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE by Walt Anderson, and see if it doesn't alter your perspective on the ways that martial arts are promoted, taught, and publicized in our society. And see if what you read does not make you realize how most of what we call martial arts training in this country is about as "deep" as a thumbnail full of water.
Please excuse my "incoherency" on this subject. I have expressed myself much better on this stuff in my books and articles written back in the seventies and eighties. It is not that I have observed some sort of decline in western martial arts teaching, study, and passing on of tradition from one generation (and one culture) to another since the early sixties, but rather a feeling of not being able to really help pull western martial arts training out of the morass that it has ALWAYS been in despite the efforts of many, many serious, dedicated, and respectiful martial arts practitioners from both the east and the west.
