What about KMA

[terryl965]

That just really pisses you off about the history and the facts as you know it?

 

[terryl965]

For me it is no matter who you ask and know matter what facts you have somebody else has a different point of view of those facts and can bring out another set of facts that just couterdicts everything you just said, why is that?

Karate or Kung-fu has some sort of connection but we have none to the point that GM all across the world cannot and will not agree about anything except for one thing to many hands in the history. Whay can't we get some real truth about the history and then head into the future with a clear vision of our past.

 

[exile]

For me it is no matter who you ask and know matter what facts you have somebody else has a different point of view of those facts and can bring out another set of facts that just couterdicts everything you just said, why is that?

Karate or Kung-fu has some sort of connection but we have none to the point that GM all across the world cannot and will not agree about anything except for one thing to many hands in the history. Whay can't we get some real truth about the history and then head into the future with a clear vision of our past.

Your main gripe, Terry, is connected to my main gripe and I think stems (in part at least) from mine, which is the top-down, severely hierarchical nature of the organizational aspect of the KMAs. Rather than being school-based, with higher levels of organizations being loosely projected `upwards' from autonomous schools whose master instructors set the curriculum themselves, the ideal model in the KMAs—certain the most populated one, TKD, anyway—is central control by what I've called the `TKD directorate'. And when you have that kind of rigid hierarchy, then it means a strict pecking order which everone wants to be at the top of, and so provides these alternative rival histories that wind up with them being on top (whoever it happens to be). It's that rigid, kind of totalitarian social organization that I dislike most of all...

 

[agemechanic03]

I agree with you Terryl...I am here in Korea with the US Air Force and am also studying Tang Soo Do under a Korean master that has been studying this for 40yrs. I mean, every time I get online and research schools back in the states for TSD classes, they all have their own history and they all think they are GM's. Like mine for instance, started in 1942 from an Okinowin line by GM Hwang Kee. A lot of schools I see say the lineage started over 2000 yrs ago! Yeah it did, but not this specific style, martial arts in general did. Just like any regular job, you have those guys that want to be the "Top Dog" and have to ALWAYS be right. Will we ever get rid of it? No! It would be nice. It's sad to see how America portrays things when they have never spoken with someone who has studied the "Original" art in it's home country. What's sad, is that I have seen books that tell exactly the history of my art and I have high ranking individuals that I've seen back in the states tell the story completely different as to if they almost started the art themselves.

My $.02