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| Hero Worship |
Martial Arts Heroes: How Legends and Hero Worship Are Created
Why We Create Martial Heroes — and Why We Should Be Careful With Them
Human beings have always created heroes.
The monsters may have changed.
Most people today do not expect dragons beyond the edge of the map or supernatural creatures hiding on unexplored islands. Yet our fascination with exceptional individuals remains remarkably strong.
We admire soldiers who show courage under extreme circumstances, explorers who accept extraordinary risks, scientists and physicians whose work saves lives, athletes who accomplish things that appear almost impossible, and ordinary people who sacrifice their own safety to help others.
Martial arts have their heroes too.
Some were historical fighters.
Some were famous teachers.
Some were founders of martial systems.
Some probably existed but became surrounded by legends.
And some may never have existed at all.
The interesting question is not simply whether these stories are true.
It is:
Why do martial arts need heroes in the first place?
Why Humans Create Heroes
Psychologists who study heroism have found that heroes can serve several important functions.
They provide moral examples.
They can inspire us during difficult periods.
They represent qualities we admire or wish we possessed.
They can give people hope.
And their stories can provide models for how someone might behave when confronted with danger, injustice or adversity.
Research by Elaine Kinsella, Timothy Ritchie and Eric Igou identified three particularly important functions people associate with heroes:
enhancement, moral modeling and protection.
Other research into heroism has emphasized needs for meaning, inspiration, wisdom and personal growth.
There is therefore nothing strange about admiring heroes.
Scott LaBarge of Santa Clara University expressed the idea particularly well:
“Our heroes help define the limits of our aspirations.”
The people we admire tell us something about the people we would like to become.
And that is precisely why heroes can be so powerful.
Heroes Tell Us What a Culture Values
A hero is rarely just an extraordinary person.
A hero is also a symbol.
Different societies and different periods celebrate different qualities.
One culture may emphasize loyalty.
Another may emphasize independence.
One period may celebrate military courage.
Another may admire scientific achievement or humanitarian service.
The hero therefore tells us something about the society that created the heroic story.
Even when a hero was a real historical person, later generations frequently select particular aspects of that person's life and ignore others.
The historical person slowly becomes the ideal person.
That distinction is extremely important when studying martial arts history.
The Historical Person and the Martial Hero
Suppose a martial artist lived one hundred years ago.
Perhaps he really was an excellent fighter.
Perhaps he taught an important system.
Perhaps his students respected him enormously.
Those facts may all be true.
But after his death, something else can happen.
Stories begin accumulating.
He never lost a fight.
He defeated ten attackers.
He defeated armed men while unarmed.
He possessed extraordinary sensitivity.
He could break unusually strong objects with his hands.
He knew secret techniques.
He learned from mysterious teachers.
He was selected from hundreds of students.
He mastered techniques nobody else understood.
And, naturally, shortly before dying he revealed the true history of the system to exactly one person.
At this point we are no longer studying only the historical individual.
We are studying the creation of a hero.
Legends Do Not Necessarily Begin as Lies
This distinction is important.
A martial legend does not require somebody sitting down and deliberately inventing an elaborate false story.
Legends can grow naturally.
Imagine a teacher who genuinely wins an impressive fight.
A student tells another student.
Years later the story becomes:
“He defeated several men.”
Another generation later:
“He defeated seven men.”
Eventually:
“He defeated seven armed men without receiving a scratch.”
Nobody necessarily decided to fabricate the final version.
Stories grow because human memory is reconstructive, because dramatic stories are remembered more easily, and because communities tend to preserve stories that reinforce their identity.
This is how historical people gradually acquire legendary biographies.
Martial Arts Are Particularly Good at Producing Heroes
Traditional martial arts provide unusually fertile conditions for this process.
Skills can be difficult for outsiders to evaluate.
Historical records are often incomplete.
Transmission frequently takes place through teachers and students rather than public institutions.
Stories are repeated orally for decades.
And martial organizations often possess strong lineage structures.
Chinese martial arts provide an especially interesting example.
Many traditional schools organize relationships using the language of family.
Teachers, senior brothers, junior brothers, uncles and ancestors form what scholars describe as fictive kinship.
The relationships are not merely decorative terminology.
In some traditional organizations, becoming a disciple symbolically means entering a martial family.
The founder consequently becomes a kind of martial ancestor.
This can provide powerful social cohesion.
It can also make historical criticism emotionally difficult.
A Founder Can Become More Than a Founder
Consider what happens when the founder of a martial system performs several functions simultaneously.
He may be:
the technical origin of the system,
the symbolic ancestor of the lineage,
the source of institutional legitimacy,
the moral example students are expected to imitate,
and the person whose reputation supports the school's authority.
Now imagine discovering evidence that one part of his traditional biography is wrong.
The problem is no longer merely historical.
For some practitioners, questioning the biography feels like questioning the family itself.
That is when normal historical investigation can easily be interpreted as disrespect.
Respect and Historical Evidence Are Different Things
There is nothing wrong with respecting the people who transmitted a martial art.
Without earlier generations, none of us would have what we practice today.
But gratitude does not require historical certainty.
A teacher may have been a wonderful person and still remembered something incorrectly.
A founder may have been an extraordinary martial artist while stories about his fights were exaggerated.
A lineage may preserve excellent techniques while its creation legend is historically impossible.
These things are not contradictions.
The difficulty begins when admiration gives a person immunity from investigation.
The Perfect Martial Ancestor
Heroic biographies often follow recognizable patterns.
The founder is not merely skilled.
He is extraordinarily skilled.
He is not simply decent.
He possesses exceptional morality.
He does not merely win fights.
He is undefeated.
He does not simply learn quickly.
He masters what others cannot understand.
His opponents are numerous.
Their weapons are dangerous.
His victories become effortless.
And somehow documentation becomes less common precisely as the achievements become more extraordinary.
That last point should make us curious.
Extraordinary claims are not automatically false.
But extraordinary stories still require evidence.
“Everybody Knows the Story”
One of the most common forms of evidence in martial arts is repetition.
A story appears in one biography.
Then another author repeats it.
A student repeats the second author.
A website copies the student.
Eventually dozens of sources appear to confirm the same event.
But when the chain is followed backward, all of them may lead to a single undocumented story.
Ten repetitions do not create ten independent sources.
They create one story repeated ten times.
This is especially important when dealing with famous martial heroes.
The more famous the person becomes, the easier it is for later repetition to create the appearance of historical certainty.
The Impossible Fighter
Some stories eventually collide with basic physical reality.
A master supposedly breaks a firearm with his fingers.
Another senses an attack from behind while asleep.
Someone defeats a dozen armed attackers without meaningful injury.
Another achieves almost supernatural fighting ability without ever engaging in realistic partner practice.
Could unusual things happen?
Certainly.
Human beings occasionally perform extraordinary feats.
But the more extraordinary the claim becomes, the more evidence we should expect before accepting it.
Martial arts should not reverse that principle.
We should not demand excellent evidence for ordinary historical claims but accept miraculous fighting stories because the protagonist happens to be our lineage founder.
The Modern Hero
Martial heroes are not restricted to the distant past.
Modern martial arts can create them remarkably quickly.
A living teacher may accumulate claims that he possesses:
the only original version of a system,
secret knowledge unavailable elsewhere,
an undefeated fighting record,
special understanding transmitted privately by a famous teacher,
or technical abilities that supposedly invalidate every competing interpretation.
Once enough authority accumulates around the individual, an interesting reversal can occur.
Evidence is no longer expected to establish the reputation.
The reputation itself becomes the evidence.
“He must be correct because he is the master.”
That is circular reasoning.
Heroism and Marketing
There is also a commercial dimension.
This does not mean every famous martial teacher is deliberately running a fraud.
That would be another unjustified generalization.
But heroic narratives are extremely useful marketing tools.
Consider which advertisement sounds more attractive:
“Our founder was a competent teacher who learned from several people and gradually developed his method.”
or:
“Our founder was an undefeated master who received a secret system from the final inheritor of an ancient lineage.”
The second story sells much more than techniques.
It sells participation in the legend.
The student is no longer merely learning punches, throws or forms.
He is entering a heroic tradition.
Buying a Piece of the Hero
Once identity becomes connected to the hero, ordinary commercial behavior acquires additional meaning.
A seminar is not simply instruction.
It becomes access to the source.
A certificate is not merely paper.
It establishes proximity to the lineage.
A photograph with the master becomes evidence of legitimacy.
A particular uniform, patch or organization membership identifies someone as part of the group.
None of these things is inherently wrong.
Every organization needs structure, money and symbols.
The problem begins when symbolic proximity to the hero becomes more important than actual knowledge or ability.
Complexity Can Also Create Authority
There is another phenomenon worth considering.
A teacher can create an enormous technical curriculum:
a counter for every attack,
another counter to the counter,
multiple variations,
secret levels,
advanced applications,
increasingly complicated forms.
Students may feel that they are receiving an extraordinary amount of knowledge.
Sometimes they genuinely are.
But quantity does not automatically equal understanding.
A student can accumulate hundreds of techniques while never developing the ability to apply a small number of principles under pressure.
Complexity can create dependence.
If every problem requires another technique known only by the instructor, the student always needs the instructor.
Good education should eventually move in the opposite direction.
The student should understand enough principles to solve new problems independently.
Hero Worship Changes the Question
Without hero worship, a practitioner can ask:
Does this technique work?
With hero worship, the question can become:
How can I make what the master taught work?
Those questions appear similar.
They are not.
The first allows the possibility that the technique or interpretation may be wrong.
The second begins with the assumption that the authority cannot be wrong.
This difference has enormous consequences for martial development.
What Happens When the Hero Fails?
Living heroes present an interesting problem.
A legendary ancestor cannot be tested.
A living teacher can.
Occasionally somebody with an enormous reputation performs badly in competition, sparring or a public challenge.
The reaction of followers can be revealing.
Perhaps the rules were wrong.
Perhaps the opponent behaved improperly.
Perhaps the master was too old.
Perhaps he was not really trying.
Perhaps revealing his real skill would have been too dangerous.
Any individual explanation may sometimes be true.
But if every possible result is interpreted as confirmation of the master's superiority, the belief has become impossible to test.
At that point we are no longer evaluating martial ability.
We are protecting a belief.
Heroes Can Still Be Valuable
None of this means we should stop admiring exceptional people.
Heroes can inspire us.
A great fighter can show what dedication can accomplish.
A courageous person can remind us that fear does not always have to control our actions.
A generous teacher can provide an example of how knowledge should be transmitted.
A historical martial artist can inspire generations long after his death.
The problem is not admiration.
The problem is idealization without limits.
A useful hero encourages us to become better.
An unhealthy hero requires us to stop asking questions.
Hero, Role Model and Historical Person
It may help to separate three different things.
The historical person is the human being who actually lived.
The role model is the part of that person's conduct we choose to emulate.
The hero is the symbolic figure created from the person's life and the stories subsequently told about him.
These three figures can overlap.
But they are rarely identical.
Once we understand that distinction, we do not need to destroy heroes.
We simply stop confusing heroic narrative with biography.
Do Adults Need Heroes?
The original version of this article ended with my opinion that mature adults do not need heroes.
I would state that differently today.
Psychological research suggests that heroes can serve useful functions for adults as well as children.
So perhaps the question is not whether adults need heroes.
The better question is:
What kind of relationship should an adult have with a hero?
Admiration is healthy.
Inspiration is healthy.
Gratitude is healthy.
Trying to imitate someone's courage, discipline or generosity can be healthy.
But surrendering critical judgment is not.
No teacher becomes infallible because we respect him.
No founder becomes historically reliable because his portrait hangs above the training hall.
No fighting story becomes true because generations of students repeat it.
And no martial art becomes stronger by preventing its practitioners from asking questions.
Choose Your Heroes Carefully
Heroes tell us something about ourselves.
The qualities we admire reveal the qualities we value.
So there is nothing wrong with having heroes.
But perhaps the healthiest heroes are those who point beyond themselves.
A great teacher should make us want to learn.
A great fighter should make us want to train.
A courageous person should make us want to become more courageous.
Eventually, however, we have to stand on our own.
Admire the example.
Study the history.
Test the claims.
Keep the inspiration.
And never surrender your judgment simply because somebody has become a hero.
References and Further Reading
Kinsella, Elaine L., Timothy D. Ritchie, and Eric R. Igou. “Lay Perspectives on the Social and Psychological Functions of Heroes.” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015).
Research examining why people value heroes and identifying functions involving moral modeling, protection and enhancement.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00130/full
Allison, Scott T. “Hero Worship: The Elevation of the Human Spirit.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 46, no. 2 (2016).
Examines psychological needs fulfilled through heroes and heroic narratives, including meaning, hope, inspiration and growth.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jtsb.12094
LaBarge, Scott. “Heroism: Why Heroes Are Important.” Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University.
A useful philosophical discussion of heroes as representations of the ideals toward which individuals and societies aspire.
https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/more-focus-areas/resources/heroism-why-heroes-are-important/
Guo Ye. “Canton Kung Fu: The Culture of Guangdong Martial Arts.” SAGE Open 9, no. 3 (2019).
Discusses fictive kinship, lineage organization, ancestor relationships and authority within Guangdong martial-arts culture.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244019861459
Takacs, Jeff. “A Case of Contagious Legitimacy: Kinship, Ritual and Manipulation in Chinese Martial Arts Societies.” Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (2003).
An important examination of kinship structures, lineage and legitimacy in Chinese martial organizations.