I want to talk about very interesting thing in martial arts. Before we start I suggest the reader to check the article about the role of the heroes in human society and especially martial arts
People will have heroes, especially in people who practice traditional martial arts. I am not a psychologist or sociologist but it is more than obvious that traditional martial arts attracts certain kind of people. What is interesting, people not only completely disregard negative things their heroes did or stand for but they aggressively defend those negativities. While many of “martial heroes” were drug addicts, gamblers and abusive spouses and parents, these things belong to the domain of private life and do not impact society on larger scale. As if having a junkie or a man who beats his wife and children as a role model is not bad enough, people worship racist, criminals, fascist, psychopaths… Following link shows some of the most popular martial idols,worshipped by millions today.
When confronted with facts considering their idols, people become aggressive and they are trying a justify their behavior by any means necessary. Let’s analyze few of these people. Probably the most famous and worshipped almost as deity is Miyamoto Musashi, described as a Japanese swordsman, philosopher, strategist, writer and rōnin and a perfect warrior. In reality he was a man who killed others for pure pleasure of killing under the excuse of improving and testing his skills. Among his victims were also unarmed children. I will not debate his “philosophical” achievements, everyone has a right to choose what philosophy is for him. Anyway, when confronted with a fact that Musashi killed people for no real reason, that he wondered around challenging people for death duels just because he enjoyed in that, his worshippers say that he had no other choice, that he lived in a time when something like that was usual practice and that he did nothing wrong. Killing a 13 years old child is wrong in any era, in any culture, just this should be enough to make people rethink who do they worship. About that he had no choice and death dues were norm of the time, that was not true. Without detail historic analysis ( all the data about the period in which Musshi’s lived are publically available and easy to find) it enough to say that Musashi caused a lot disturbance with his way of life and what he did was certainly not a norm of behavior at the time. Even if they claim is true (which is definitely not), what Musashi did is completely unacceptable in modern society and worshiping Musashi today is the same as worshipping a serial killer. There are many heroes throughout history, Japan also does not lack real heroes, many of those heroes killed many people defending their countries and their people. And those people are heroes because they fought for a right cause , for right reasons, when all other options were exhausted and they had no choice.
Let’s
look at another example. Yip Man today is worshipped as a god, his martial
style, Wing Chun, is often practiced more as cult than martial art. Besides the
fact that he was a gambler and opium user, he was also a racist. When
confronted with the fact that he was a racist his followers say he was just man
of his time!!! Hitler was also a man of his time. Racism cannot be justified under
any circumstances. No one in the right mind would say that segregation in U.S.
was right, although it was a social norm of the time. Same Wing Chun people
will condemn the racism in U.S or any other place but they will justify racism
of their idol.
There aremany examples like this but these two perfectly describe how followers of traditional martial arts justify things for which people today would end up in prison.
