FMAT: Personal Examination of your Self

[Clark Kent]

Personal Examination of your Self
By GrandTuhon Leo T Gaje Jr - Wed, 05 Sep 2007 03:02:44 GMT
Originally Posted at: FMATalk
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There are many ways of learning as to be educated with Batchelors Degree in Education , Computer technology, Languages, Mathematics, Engineering , Law or as Lawyers, Expert and Scientist lastly to be a real expert skilled with authority in the science of a Combat as what the military people had done and still doing today. Since we are not in military we substituted the Military Discipline with Civilian Discipline and that is the Martial Arts. When the Japanese popularized their Judo, Karate and JuiJitsui, Chinese Kungfu and Korean Tangso do and Hapkido then to Taekwondo, their purpose was to educate the American public the art of cultural discipline in a Japanese way like Bowing towards each other , a sign of respect, no shaking hands addressing the teacher as Sensei and the Chinse as Sifu and Taekwondo " I don't know"

With all purposes what these three countries wants to do with the Americans is to teach culture as Judo, Karate , Kendo and Jui jitsui and all forms of Martial Arts, and the Japanese had included Ninjitsu, the art of disappearing and now comes the Chinese Kungfu made Bruce Lee a hero of his style of no style and the Koreans went farther to the Olympics.

Meaning that all who studied this martial Arts have embrassed the culture which was not Americans. But after Bruce Lee declared that his Jet Kun do is Style of no Style , meaning you don't need to be identified as a Karate person or Judo or Taekwondo or Kungfu but making your own , then it becomes a system of a person who gathered techniques and call it his discovery. When this happens , there was a severance of American teachers and made their own style American Karate and American Kungfu others calling it a different title.

Now that we are in this year with more years to come, what do we want or why you are in the Martial arts. You want culture, you want techniques so that you can be called a Sensei or Sifu or Gruo and wants to make money or you want to learn because of self-defense or you want the fighting culture a part of your life. Then examined your self where do you belong. You just want to play games or you want a real discipline that will save your life.

"Ask not what your friends can do for you but what you can do for yourself"


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[tshadowchaser]

I understand much of where MR. Gaje is coming from but I for one did not start learning a martial art and expect to have to learn all of the culture of the place that art came from. Yes I have learned some of the words from that culture and yes i bow to show respect but i do not feel i need to become a member of the culture to learn to defend myself.
I live in America and what happens on my street, what food I eat, how i want my children and their children to interact with me are all concepts that came about from my living in this country so why would I want to start doing things differently just because I study an art from a different place.
I do understand that some things in some arts may not translate will or the concept may be different to me because I was not brought up in that culture but dose that really exclude me from learning

 

[arnisador]

I agree. I learned the FMA in the U.S. from an American. But I do agree with Mr. Gaje that as some familiarity with bowing and basic terms and such is expected in the JMA, the culture from which the FMA came does have some relevance to the arts themselves.