Zenjael
Purple Belt
As a Martial Artist, what is honor to you?
The text below I have quoted is the background as to why I am asking this question.
Sorry for typos, my arms hurt after typing this.
The text below I have quoted is the background as to why I am asking this question.
I have an interesting 400 level class I am taking this semester which tracks the history of emotions. An example; in the 19th century, the feeling we know as nostalgia today, was then, a negative emotion capable of even being fatal. Emotions change from location to location, and within time ranges. So in this field it's important you always add where, when, and a theory as to why. Being as the study itself is less than a quarter century old, it offers great potential for aspiring scholars to contribute to a field which is often seen as being already choked full of too many people trying to contribute. When you read papers on how menstruation was a minor causation of the Great Depression, you can see how desperate people who have majored in history are in that they have to stretch things to such rediculous degrees. Sometimes, they're just idiots, also, but that's an aside.
Right now I am writing a paper on honor, as an emotion. I am not tracking it's development, nor discussing how it exists per culture, only that it is or is not an emotion. Right now my thesis is that what we call honor today, which is considered behavioral, is actually both sense, emotion, and behavior. Behavior, as it is is an action, is in response to something causually. This response is to the sensory data which conveys, in a given setting and group, how one should behave in it. If we had to think about it everytime we met someone, how we should treat them, we would never get things done. Instinctually we can enter a room and find who is the teacher, who is subservient, in the situation who is more confidant, and so on. So the reaction of behavior we have labeled as honor, actually is in response to that thing which is honor. We do not act honorable, which denotes our actions carrying a value to honor. This is not the case, just as we do not act angrily. We act because of anger, or sadness, or guilt, or nostalgia, and so on. The emotion does not dictate the behavior... it can if our will is not strong enough, but it heavily influences it, oft to the point it may as well have swooped in and picked up the flight controls to our brain and body. Chemicals can do that.
Essentially my thesis is trying to prove that what we call honor exists beyond just how we interact, but is also something innate to the human experience, cross-culturally, even if honor is defined relativistically by location, and timeframe. Now I'm not REALLY saying anything new in this paper- I am really just trying to clean up what is already there, and fill in the gaps. Well, it's kinda new to divide honor between 3 component processes which loop, and self-correct, but that's really moreso just recognizing the process already there and differentiating. It's a different way to organize, more efficient I think, as we react to a situation, internalize, and this feeling is what causes us to act. When you meet me, or any martial artist, you will treat me a certain way based off how I walk, how I appear, sound, and even if not consciously, by smell the pheromone and hormones given off. The Taijiquan practitioner who I have such great respect for, I actually first met 3 years ago, when I was living in a dingy apartment, and I was a total pothead. It was before I got in trouble, haha. A friend brought Christian over to my home (Am I the only one who finds it somewhat unusual to meet a very skilled tai chi practitioner, who because of his age alone, would not be called a master... he himself doesn't believe in the title) One day, two years later, I am at the club practicing, and Christian comes in. Turns out we both were of comparable skill, at least in Bagua. I have only gotten to raise arms with Xtian once, but I am greatly looking forward to the day again. However, as he pointed at that very day we ran into each other again, he had thought me just a stoner, when at the same time I was a 3rd dan. And he has treated me differently, ever since.
While it might be disingenuous to some, I change when I enter a dojang, I suppose like how some very religious people may change when they enter a church. My back straightens, I do not laugh quite as easily, and I am much more focused, and in the past, serious. It's like a light switch. I tested it last night when entering the old school I am returning to before I go to basic, literally crossing that metal line where the doors open and close actually gives a different feeling internally. It's not like freedom to me, though it feels similar. It's like a release as if I was holding my breath. I feel less stressed, if just by a tiny bit. I don't have to be extra cognizant of what I say or do, how low I bow. I don't have to bow at all. And just the fact we behave differently, outside the dojo, than we do in, be it just a little or a lot, tells me that our behavior is not without a reason or cause. I actually like being in a dojo, even those little stresses. I like to think people in the military enjoy being in the military, but when on leave, can enjoy that also. To me, who I am in a dojo is who I actually am, strangely enough. It is not as though I have some alter ego, but moreso that the way I act in there feels more to me, like me. And that is a bit unusual I think. But then again I have spent more time in a hall than I may have my own family home, so its debatable that the causation of my comfort not stem from a feeling of honor, or anything really than the fact it feels like home to me. Wish I knew why I was like that, but I think it a decent example to give about how we can act differently without even realizing it, though of course that behavior is going to differ from school to school.
The sound of hands touching the sides of a thigh is unmistakable to me, and I have a pavlonic response any time I hear it to straighten my back. It used to be if I was sitting I'd jump to attention, because at Khans, God help you if you didn't like up to pay attention to those taking class and teaching and the school and country, and Buddha have mercy if you were the last to assemble. I was, once. I kind of miss the hair-trigger tension which kept us on our toes everytime a class came to an end. Because it didn't matter to assemble when they did, though that was safest, it was only important you were standing, and not in a rush, when the actual bowing, and ritual respect to the teacher, flag, and location came to effect. Combined with the fact he would often go into long speeches... about whatever was on his mind at the time when not actively working with people, this could, and would, easily amount to up to 30 minutes of standing at attention, when you had intended to practice all your forms in the back quietly. You almost had a 6th sense after awhile, of when exactly he was lining up and going to bow out, or if he was just lining up and going to talk.
To be honest, between practice and listening to him speak, both were equally beneficial toward one's own knowledge of the art, life, and even oneself. He may have been somebody who liked the sound of his own voice- but boy did he have a lot worth saying. And at 6th dan, I think that's fair. Some teachers are preachers, while others are coaches. He happened to be both.
We have a lot more senses than people usually mention, and I strongly believe that the 'feeling' of respect is one, like anger or sadness is dependent on situation. Depending on what is being considered a sense, you can have up to 25 potential senses. Please do not ask me what they are, I only recall the number because between wikipedia, and everything else I could possibly find online and the GMU library, and it listed even the most obscure sensations. I also included senses humans are capable of acquiring, such as echolocation, though we don't use sonar. I actually would like to learn the technique for clicking or using sound-vibrations to find those around you, not just because I love avatar the last airbender, but also because I think it is related to how kiai operates, in creating a connection. Against an opponent, in a sense, one can establish themself. When you consider kiai means to join with spiritually, and if the supernatural does not exist, then that means all that is left is you. In essence, to join with something spiritually, is to sever that thin line which we think seperates us from everything else. So, I honestly wonder if this echolocation-like sense is a more pure form of that... being as you can actually see with it. I wonder what would happen if you focused it on a single thing, though as I do not actually know how to do it, I can only guess and read the literature as to how it works. The point is, most of our senses aren't acknowledged, we can acquire knew ones or hone existing one's to a point that it appears as though different senses are now operating. The katana wielder who can cut airsoft bullets relies on, the professional opine there is to be believed, an anticipatory analyzation so precise, it appears as though he is reacting, when he isn't... he moved either before it was fired, or with enough speed to get the blade where it's line would intersect the oncoming pellet. That means his sense of chronology, his sense of distance, balance, and so on, were so perfectly in harmony it appeared as though he knew where the bullet would be, before it was even fired. This is all relevant because emotion can only exist as a reaction to a prior perceived event, when we are aware of that event. So if we're going to talk about honor in the sense of emotion, or if I am, scholastically than I also have to explain how or where we get that feeling from, how that sense operates.
I can't answer that last one yet.
Trying to prove anything, scholastically, outside of philosophy, is extremely difficult. When one does that, it's even more audacious, and thus risky than the type of paper which is correcting a previous theory. It is essentially telling everyone in the field, that in relation to the topic, they have flat out gotten it wrong, or muddled it up in a way which necessitated a paper be done this way. Because when you try to study honor, as it is an emotion, it is impossible. I must have poured through a hundred sources, and while I have great evidence of how it's changed, and how it affects where we place ourselves socially, nobody has actually bothered to consider the actual feeling, from the sensory data we receive, might actually be the cause of the behavior. Because unfortunately the working theory labels honor as a behavior, but there is no behavior without causation. In essence, as it is commonly accepted, the definition of emotion is broken, since it advocates action without a reason for it to exist. It's like saying somebody angry, is acting a certain way because of their anger, but one hasn't defined anger yet.
And I get that- the field is less than 30 years old, so I expect there to be a lot of this. Because the field is so new, the professor's expectations are for us to contribute and help the field grow. Considering my school also has the essential founder of the field as a provost, I get now why my professor from Cambridge came here. What I don't get, is why psychology and psychiatry hasn't studied honor as in-depth as behaviorists have. Because I looked for brain scans of people interacting in a setting regarding honor- say when one enters a dojo, and see's their master, and then his grandmaster, unexpectedly, and monitoring the activity, and so on. I can't imagine im the only martial artist to be curious enough to find a definite answer that they wouldn't mind getting hooked up to a machine and actually get one. If there is a repeating pattern specific to the behavior we call honor, cross specimen, outside of the ranges of the brain which dictate we act that way, then we would be experiencing either thinking, or more likely during the action of say bowing, we aren't thinking, we are internally feeling what I would call respect. Our 'sense of honor' though a common phrase, is also a literal one. That is what I am calling the process, biologically, which is what allows us to tell how to place ourselves in the group. Essentially, this means 'honor' is the established acceptable norms within the group, which might actually give us concrete data to define honor as a feeling. When we are angry, or sad, our brains alter. Likewise, if honor is an emotion, if the brain does this it is further proof that we can say there is something emotional, which is honor. A feeling of it.
And to think, this all started with me noticing that at nova I get bowed to, just because I entered the room and who I am, while at say GMU I am not when I enter the classroom there. And it is because in one location I am considered a superior, while in the latter, an inferior, a student. I'm not bothered by this, but I would like to have it scientifically explained and defined, so that as a historian I can work with something more than theory, or guesswork, if I'm going to try to define how it has changed. Because honor has. We'd all be dead for how we first bowed when starting. At least I would have been, my form probably still crap compared to the finely honed and precise one what even the most lowly commoner possessed a thousand years ago in feudal Japan. Because less important to me is understanding where honor came from, and how it is now (though this is more important than either because of its affect on us now), as it is to try to glean where it is going. Ultimately I hope, after proving honor is relative to our emotion, if not as an emotion, than something which influences either our behavior or emotion. Ultimately this translates to how we treat each other in a martial way, because the ultimate paper I would like to write is an analyzation of how honor behaviorally affects martial arts, if honor is integral to the art, and so on. Because we live in a day and age where the gut answer is, of course, yet we have new martial arts coming to existance which sometimes don't have that notion grounded at all. People who practice parkour usually don't bow to each other, they treat each other pretty much like gymnasts and rock-climbers do each other. A lot of people are probably going 'meh' to parkour, but even though I know but the most rudimentary maneuvers, I can tell that it will become something which marks the difference between someone who is a modern martial artist, and somebody who isn't. Neither is incorrect, but I consider parkour to be something essential for my own growth as a martial artist, because I would like to master control over energy channeling. What bagua does in re-guiding and directing the force of a strike aikido does with the full body, and parkour extends this control, when mastered, to not just ourselves, and others, but our environment too.
I understand people being skeptical about this, and its verboseness, but understand that what we consider 'parkour', the people in it, would be no different than if we went back to 1962, and looked at the people learning it then. In hindsight, we would have to say at least to ourselves that although a new art, with 50 years more practice, bringing them up to today, how skilled they would be. And the same applies to parkour. These guys are novices compared to what will be practiced by those when I am 50, and that includes the people who founded the very sport itself.
Sorry for typos, my arms hurt after typing this.
However, this to me is my way of demonstrating honour. 
