Of Martial Arts and Liberty
I started out in the martial arts here in the west Denver area, 6 ½ years ago at the age of 50. I was with my first school for 4 ¾ years but then things went downhill there. Then I tried another school for 1¼ year but that didn't work out either. Since then I've tried two other schools and looked at three more but still haven't gotten back
into martial arts again and it's disturbing me because I really loved it, when I felt like it was good for me.
But it seems like schools are their own worst enemies ( aren't we all! ). At best, with any school I've tried, it always seemed like a 60/40 situation, at best 70/30, where I liked most of what was going on, but had significant problems with the other part.
Eventually the significant problem aspect would get to where I just couldn't enjoy the place anymore and had to move on. It's like a pair of shoes that mostly fits but just rubs you wrong in certain places, and after awhile it starts getting so sore that you don't feel like wearing them anymore.
I'm sure working people who have never even studied martial arts, can still relate to that, in the perspective of the workplace. It happens with jobs too, doesn't it.
One disturbing thing I've noticed when I was looking at the last 2 schools I've visited, was that they both indicated that their student base has fallen off for about the last 7 months. Is this just a local thing or national? I wonder.
I can think of a couple of reasons for it though, both possibly nationwide.
The first is the "everybody else's style sucks" problem. It seems that, at every school I've been with, if you talk about other schools or styles, they're always quick to bash the other ones and say how they suck. It's not just the students doing this, the teachers too. But think about that. If lots of students and teachers are going around saying how every other style and school sucks, what impression
does the public get of martial arts? Why they all must suck. No wonder the numbers of students are falling off!
I've always looked with trepidation at such practices because it makes the whole field look bad. There's an old saying, that "you don't have to put out someone else's light, for yours to shine", and this is true everywhere, and we may be seeing the results of such negativity now in
the martial arts.
And the other possible reason I'm thinking of, for the fall off of students, would make that first reason even more crucial to alleviate. One frustrated teacher couldn't understand why the number of students would be falling off, especially in light of the national experience of 9/11. Why wouldn't many, many more people be interested in the empowerment that martial arts training offers?
Well for one thing, the economy also took a dive after 9/11 and for most people, putting food on the table is a much higher priority than paying for martial arts training. The jobs just haven't been there, from what I've seen since 9/11. The Sunday Denver Post jobs section is pathetic, only about 2 pages now? I can remember times when it was maybe 15-20 pages.
9/11 was a traumatic event for this country and I think it really traumatized and depressed most people. It left us feeling vulnerable and afraid, in ways we'd never felt that way before, and I think an awful lot of people have been pretty depressed ever since. And it's not something the average person sees martial arts training as being a
cure for, after all these were terrorists doing mass murder, not just attacking individual people on the street with their fists. And the average person has no idea what a powerful antidepressant and how uplifting martial arts can be, at it's best.
But I think it also has to be understood in the political context. Socialism has been slowly taking over this country for the last 40 years ( some would say twice that long ), in the guise of liberalism. A propaganda machine has been at work, with most of the news media at the center of it, and they've been making most Americans less independent and more like servile sheep.
What was the message sent after 9/11? It wasn't that everyone should arm and train in martial arts, so they could defend themselves, it was that the responsibility for protecting us doesn't lie with the independence of the individual, in the truest original American sense.
No, the message is that the government is the sole shepherd responsible for protecting the sheep from wolves. The government should spend massive amounts of money on what's really an impossible task anyway.
The people are ready to give up anything, pay any price, just so they never have to see something like 9/11 ( or worse! ) happen again, not realizing it's an impossible task, for individuals and certainly for the government.
With all the hundreds of billions spent on security since 9/11, who is more secure from it? Why the government is! "To serve and protect" the government, that should be the slogan! With all that money spent, not a single American on the street is anymore safe than they used to be,
but we have lost more freedom.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
I've observed in previous posts to this blog, that it seems like the global socialists are working symbiotically with Al Qaeda to bring down the west, because it serves their common interests.
Socialists have always known that they had to destroy to conquer. ( Hitler, a "Nationalist Socialist" knew it too. ) They have to bring the whole system to it's knees, and then take it over, like they did in Germany, Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and so many other places. So who better to help them with that than Al Qaeda?
So all the while, the liberals ( socialists ) are cranking on the biased media propaganda machine, putting out that brainwashing message that people can't possibly be free and independent anymore, not in this technological age, no. They have to depend on government to protect them, while being increasingly disarmed and helpless themselves. Dependent on the shepherd to protect them, as servile sheep.
So it's no wonder that interest in the martial arts may be waning. First the schools are helping in their own demise from within, and then the whole culture is being brainwashed to be dependent and servile. Look at UK, where it's practically illegal to defend oneself, and certainly not if there's a risk of hurting the criminal.
And they've been propagating that attitude over to us here in the states for years now. Another gunban, more laws that say people can't defend themselves.
If a schoolyard bully picks on a good kid and the good kid fights back, the socialists running the schools suspend them both for "violence", never once differentiating between the initiation of force, and defensive or retaliatory force. That's a libertarian thing, no one wants any part of that! Liberalism ( socialism ) is the opposite of libertarianism.
So here we are, with martial arts teachers who can't understand why interest seems to be waning, but it seems very apparent to me. Must just be my unusual perspective, I suppose.
But if I were them, I'd work hard to see that teachers and students would quit bashing other schools and styles, and I'd work hard to improve that 60/40 problem and increase the good things about their schools while reducing the things that turn people off. And I'd work hard to teach people about the real principles of liberty and the spirit of independence that originally made this country so great.
It astounds me that any martial arts teacher could be a liberal ( socialist ) but I've seen it. From my libertarian Objectivist perspective it's like working against one's own self interest, but hey, people do that all the time, don't they, without even realizing it.
But I think the schools and teachers need to step back and take a long hard look at what they're doing, if the martial arts are to be saved in this country, along with our liberty and independence. Otherwise they could both die out, and few people might ever understand why.
I actually have a dream for a new school along these lines, something I call my "School of Dreams" ( build it and they will come ), and I envision building it with the philosophy I've learned about from Objectivism and true libertarianism, which I've put together into a proposed Objective Liberty Party.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ Objective_Liberty_Party/
I also envision it being an American shaolin thing, sort of a
combination of the shaolin and the Jedi from Star wars. I think if it were to work out and propagate, it could have the potential of saving this country, possibly the whole world, from what I sense could be the coming dark ages that socialism could sink us into. And there isn't much time, I think the plunge into darkness has been accelerated since 9/11.
So I'm looking for people who understand liberty and how the martial arts could be worked into this ambitious plan of mine, people who would be willing to fund and teach it, and promote it across the land. People for whom martial arts and liberty are a passion. Imagine that.
http://www.lakewoodcolorado<i>.</i>c...canShaolin.htm
http://groups.yahoo<i>.</i>com/group...hool_of_Dream/
"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence [1888-1935]
Yours In Liberty, Melissa - Colorado, U.S.A.
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