Okay, I'm back from out of town. I was writing this response a little earlier but went out for dinner. Turducken. Fascinating. I recommend you google it if youve never had it.
I'm looking through this thread and thinking, WOW, some people here really put the "mental" in "judgemental". Im astonished that what a few of us wrote would so deeply offend a lot of people here and evoke personal attacks (in addition to some criticisms that were stated in a very reasonable manner). As someone said, even if someone doesnt have any background knowledge, it takes two minutes of googling to get a rudimentary understanding of all the terms that were mentioned in the thread.
The objections appear to be more in terms of process stuff than actual content. I wonder if after all that we can return to the intended purpose and substance of the thread. The idea was simple: people usually "know" that what they're doing is good because it was handed down from someone with credentials, with a lineage, and that person offers plausible-sounding rationales. Other people, who are doing completely opposite things, have the same reason for believing in what THEY do: they too are getting it from someone with credentials, a lineage, etc. To me, this should really cause some of us to call into question our epistemology. Yet people get into these impassioned debates, and what ground do they have to stand on
? Really, they believe it because they do it. They do it because they were told to. But if someone else was told something different, and does that, and believes it, theyll decry it.
If we call our epistemology into question, we call into question EVERYTHING WE DO. That is why this matters to martial arts A GREAT DEAL. How do we evaluate truth and best practice?
A little clarification on cog-dis. The theory goes that when you have this unpleasant clash of cognitions, youll alleviate it IN THE MOST EFFORTLESS WAY POSSIBLE. Specifically, youre less likely to change actual behaviour. Youre also less likely to change in a way that youll lose face, or give up core beliefs that you attach a lot of importance to. When the promised UFO doesnt come, cult members dont generally lose faith, they entrench themselves more. They develop moderating beliefs that kind of bridge their beliefs with the new information. Sometimes their belief systems get kind of wonky. They go through all kinds of contorted rationalizations to make it all fit.
About how to know if you're a hi-dog or not. As people take in new information, they can reconcile it with their existing body of knowledge and beliefs in one of two ways:
assimilation: transform the information to make it fit your belief system/knowledge base
accomodation: adapt your belief system to include the new information, with whatever necessary revisions to the belief system.
Hi-dogs will generally assimilate rather than accomodate. Thats why theyre hi-dogs. Their belief system is inflexible.
I think one way that a person can recognize whether theyre a hi-dog or a lo-dog is to consider how much theyve adjusted their belief system, and your practices, when faced with information which profoundly challenged your ideas. Otherwise, check yourself. If you lack exposure to contradictory information, thats a bad sign too. Consider whether youve been insulating yourself from contradictory info. Has your instructor encouraged you to insulate yourself? Are you forbidden from training someplace else? Reading or viewing videos? Why?
Of course, it may be that youre not a hi-dog by nature, but it happened that the first school you stumbled into practiced The One System That Is Light-Years Ahead Of The Rest, and the practices and teachings there have a level of sophistication and validity that is truly above the rest. They do all the right drills and prescribe all the right books. They do the right things, the right way, for the right reasons. In that case, you might not revise your belief system simply because there is no reason to do so. You were right all along. When you come into contact with other methodologies online, it is quite plain to you why they miss the boat.
Of course, hi-dogs usually believe themselves to have been so endowed. Hi-dogs will generally not recognize themselves as such, its pretty difficult to do. A fish doesnt know what water is. A point of clarification: A hi-dog isnt someone who just happened to get into a martial cult. Its a personality variable. They tend to really hang onto their beliefs with a death grip. If you or I is a very thoughtful person with good intellectual integrity and lo-dog, and we get suckered by a mcdojo and go there for a few years, that doesn't make us a hi-dog. We're still susceptible to the instructor's mind-games to some degree because we're human. We're social beings and susceptible to mechanisms of social control. Hopefully with time we'll come to our senses. We still may say ignorant things on the net, on account of our brainwashing.
Marc MacYoung
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/cults.htm and Matt Thornton
http://www.straightblastgym.com/page.asp?section=philosophy&parent=Press&session= have put forward some ideas about what blocks people from seeing the truth. Of course, these are their ideas, not mine, I think there is much truth in them. Its just more information to consider.
These are all good tools. More broadly, I believe that the real way to put yourself to the test is the aliveness methodology. When you work out "alive" against resisting partners with energy, timing, and motion in the way that Matt Thornton has beautifully described on his site, and which I've linked a few times in a few threads, then this will bring you face to face with the truth. A good start may be
1) spar with at least moderate contact against people from other studios
2) try it against a decent boxer and see if it works.
Matt Thornton is known for saying "if you truly understand aliveness, you'll never be fooled again. That may be an overstatement, but aliveness is probably the best mirror to hold to yourself to see if what you're doing is really True.
So Ive written this in bits and pieces, it may contain some errors or gaps. If theres something I said that doesnt make sense, call me on it. Ill either stand corrected or clarify. I was thinking of spending less time on MT lately, but seeing what's happened on this thread and how upset some people are getting, and how polarization is taking shape, I owe you at least this post.
