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Thread: MJER Instuctors being sued!

  1. #31
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    Most certainly your view is both timely and accurate. That leaves us with the concern for what will happen to the traditions entrusted to us.

    Already on many discussions about rank and how fast it is earned, or standing and how authentic it is or agencies and how profitable they are. Begin to ask detailed or penetrating questions as to the nature and preservation of a particular art and the conversations repeatedly dry-up.

    What this tells me is that the American Ethic of "if I can't eat it, spend it or F*** it-- what good is it?" has taken firm hold of these traditions. Quite recently I had the good fortune to connect with a person who is the current conservator for a CHOI Yong Sul Hapkido tradition and he was very keen to have the tradition come to the States. I told him point-blank that I could not be responsible for the resulting prostitution of his cultural treasure once it came here to the States. In my own teaching I regularly have students who come and go when they find out the emphasis in a traditional kwan is not a matter of negotiating a series of ranks, like so many hurdles on a track, and come out the other end to open a school of their own.

    I honestly don't know what the answer is. All I have to offer is tradition and hard work. Compared to the immediate gratification and sensorial preoccupation of this culture I am at a distinct disadvantage. FWIW.

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
    Bruce W Sims
    www.midwesthapkido.com

  2. #32
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    The answer, Bruce, is what it's always been. To simply practice and not worry about what you offer your students. They will stay or they will go as suits them, but you can't hand it to them on a plate any more than you can hand on your values to your kids by giving them whatever they want whenever they want.

    The martial traditions aren't entrusted to us any more than our culture is entrusted to us. Our teachers taught us and gave us permission to teach, and that's the extent of it. We either follow their way, find a new way, or go some other way but no matter what we do, in the long run what matters most is that we're good people. Perhaps some of our students will see that and learn how to be good themselves but that's hardly our main concern.

    Beyond that...

    Worrying and watching and playing Koryu Kops may be fun but it really is no substitute for simply practicing. One can't legislate skill, talent, integrity or kindness. One can only embody and demonstrate it oneself.

    One can "teach" how to beat people up, one can only "show" how not to. One can worry about "keeping the line pure" and "revealing fakes and frauds" or one can simply practice. I highly recommend the latter, it saves a lot of time, does your own students a lot more good in the long run, and does no real harm. The "fakes and frauds" of the martial arts world are no more dangerous than any other school of physical skill out there, like dance schools, yoga classes, or what have you. Anyone damaging or abusing kids will be sorted out long before we need to worry about it.

    It's only hubris that leads us to think we need to (or can) protect something that cannot be protected, and does not need protection. No one of us here can "save" a martial art from extinction. If we're not the "last of the line" we're not in charge of that, and if one of us is the "last of the line" it's not likely to survive us the way it was handed down to us (otherwise we wouldn't BE the last of the line), and if we change it (to get more students) it isn't what was handed down to us is it?

    And if we "invented" the line... well that speaks to hubris itself.

    So, to repeat myself yet again, we simply practice. Students find us or they don't, they practice or they don't. Our line continues or it doesn't.

    Kim.

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kim Taylor
    The "fakes and frauds" of the martial arts world are no more dangerous than any other school of physical skill out there, like dance schools, yoga classes, or what have you. Anyone damaging or abusing kids will be sorted out long before we need to worry about it.
    I wish, I really wish, that I could agree with you. Sadly, I've seen some "martial cults" before where the students were being abused psychologically, perhaps physically, by fraudulent instructors (Wayne Muromoto wrote a great article on the subject that can be found at his website). Some of these instructors are still out there teaching (even those with prison records). Some men are adept at preying on young, insecure people who need a place to belong, who feel like outsiders and want to be told that they are inheritors of an elite and secret warrior tradition. These young people fall easy prey to charlatans who spout pseudo-Oriental mystic nonsense and insist on being addressed as "master." Some of these groups might be harmless. Others aren't-- and there are arrest records to prove it.

    Cases like this are the extreme example, I know-- most of the nuts we criticize on this site are only fooling themselves. But in those rare exceptions where they are doing something more destructive, I'm glad e-budo is around to expose them-- there are people who have gotten out of the lies because of what they read here.

    Sorry for the rant-- it's just a subject that weighs on me a bit.

    Best,
    David Sims

    "Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - Terry Pratchet

    My opinion is, in all likelihood, worth exactly what you are paying for it.

  4. #34
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    Hmm, coincidentally I'm copying over my vhs tapes to dvd at this moment, and I'm looking at one of the major cult figures ever to be around the west, a fellow who, as far as I know knew next to nothing, set himself up as a major inheritor of the koryu, and had some of the big guns looking to break his neck at one point... this was quite a few years ago when it was thought that a more direct approach than internet forums was appropriate.

    Thing is, aside from some students who may have felt cheated and or embarassed, I don't see any particular harm from his era. In fact I've met some of his students over the years and they are extremely polite, well mannered, and do what they do with great enthusiasm and precision.

    I see no lasting problem with his teachings, and I haven't heard anything from him in years so I suspect he and his group will simply disappear as time goes on. I've watched a lot of frauds disappear.

    When I was younger, during the ninja craze, we also had our local grandmaster show up and I was actually in the club for a while... helped him start up in fact, since his first adventures as a grandmaster were in an informal bunch of us head-bangers who did several different martial arts and met a couple times a week to beat the hell out of each other and do situps until we threw up. (That particular bunch of frauds even developed their own single and double baton exercises for some reason). It was fairly obvious from day one that he was not legit, but it was all exercise and nobody died while I was involved at least.

    On the other hand, the decidedly legitimate Do Pi Kung Fu group that was around at the same time did have the occasional dislocated hip from the way they stretched. The group was booted out of the full/semi contact circuit in the area because they kept knocking people out in tournaments.

    As for necessary warnings, I don't see too many threads around that are telling of clubs where the women are regularly preyed upon by senior students, where instructors have put cameras in the women's changerooms, where... oh you know what I mean, and these are all things that I've run across personally, not rumours. They are also all things that happen in legitimate dojos as much as in the "fakes".

    But I also know that these things happen in yoga clubs, in volleyball leagues, in schools and in homes. I have taught women's self defence for 20 years so I've heard it all.

    All of that is best taken care of by the police, not by internet chat forums, but by all means, let's discuss those folks here. Oh wait, lawyers. I don't see the value of discussing legitimate lineage but I'm afraid that's what we're left with.

    OY this guy is pathetic, his students don't even fall down nicely for the camera, you want to believe this stuff and study with him, go ahead. It's not going to hurt you, and you'll learn something perhaps... if only to ask questions next time.

    Fakes and frauds? They're everywhere, you can find the same threads on the modeling forums as you find here, all about fake modeling agencies. Those go from harmless twits who simply can't get models jobs but like to pretent so they can be around purty gurls, through small town agencies that make their money selling modeling lessons to scam artists that hook up with photographers to charge hundreds of girls thousands of dollars to develop a portfolio and then skip town to set up under a new name.

    Given a choice between a couple hundred dollars in fees and some exercise and thousands of dollars and a major loss of self esteem just when you can't afford it as a young girl, I'd say the martial arts fraud is an easier lesson.

    Sure it's all sleazy and distasteful, but it's also self-correcting. The students themselves will alert everyone else and parents will involve the police when necessary. I don't have to go looking for it, I find enough just being around.

    You asked how best to serve your traditions. I suggest that for me, it's by practicing but I won't ignore that and advise anyone else to do the same.

    Kim.

  5. #35
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    Thanks, Kim:

    The Buddhist in me knows that you are right and that it is attachment that drives my pain. Your thoughts are much appreciated.

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
    Bruce W Sims
    www.midwesthapkido.com

  6. #36
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    Kim,

    thanks for the post; I find your viewpoint very compelling. On the whole, you're certainly right-- the time we invest in fraud busting has very little in the way of returns (except comic relief for us). On the other hand, there are at least a couple of very self-destructive groups that we've run across-- the ones who set the standard for "Bad" budo-- and I've heard of a couple of people getting out, even getting professional help after reading e-budo and realizing what was going on.

    I'd be kidding myself if I thought that every 10th-dan Perfesser Ultra Soke that we derided here was a deadly menace that we are helping to control. If we ignore most of them and let them burn themselves out, I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem. I'm sure some of them are actually doing us a service-- giving all those kids who want to learn to fire ki balls or perform death-touches a place to call home so that they don't try to show up at our dojo.

    Still, just the fact that I've seen one or two groups that really were problems convinces me that it's a good thing that legitimate martial artists occasionally look into this sort of thing. I feel like the average person thinks of martial arts as stuff for kids to do after school, and doesn't really comprehend just how dangerous martial arts abuse could potentially be.
    David Sims

    "Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - Terry Pratchet

    My opinion is, in all likelihood, worth exactly what you are paying for it.

  7. #37
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    ;-)

    Kim.




    Quote Originally Posted by glad2bhere
    Thanks, Kim:

    The Buddhist in me knows that you are right and that it is attachment that drives my pain. Your thoughts are much appreciated.

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce

  8. #38
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    I won't pretend that I haven't given my opinion on occasion, but largely I have always believed that positive example works well, and I think I said so somewhere in the dinosaur times of early iaido-L posts.

    Best wishes... and I didn't realize I was talking to two Simses! I plead age of course.

    Kim.



    Quote Originally Posted by DDATFUS
    Kim,

    Still, just the fact that I've seen one or two groups that really were problems convinces me that it's a good thing that legitimate martial artists occasionally look into this sort of thing. I feel like the average person thinks of martial arts as stuff for kids to do after school, and doesn't really comprehend just how dangerous martial arts abuse could potentially be.

  9. #39
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    Yep, there are at least two of us on the board, though no relation (to the best of my knowledge).

    I guess my real problem, Kim, is that your approach is too darn mature. I mean, seriously, if someone rubs me the wrong way I outta be able to chew them out online to achieve the results I want, right? Keep my mouth shut? Set a good example? Take the long view? Sheesh. If I could do any of those things, do you think that I'd be online?
    David Sims

    "Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - Terry Pratchet

    My opinion is, in all likelihood, worth exactly what you are paying for it.

  10. #40
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    There's probably a very good reason why you never see many high ranking martial artists online.

    Personally, while pretty junior myself, I feel like I went through a "stage" in my training sometime back in the mid 1990's where I detested frauds and fakes... “How dare they soil our precious koryu”... A decade later and this stuff just doesn't bother me that much anymore. It’s been going on forever and there’re just as many frauds and fakes in Japan... <shrug>

    FWIW

  11. #41
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    With all due respect to those quite senior to me in terms of years in and skills.

    I'm still of the view that "fakes and frauds" should be treated as such.

    Ya got to draw the line somewhere.

    "Bad money drives out good" does NOT just apply to economics, and it functions in more than one way/area.

    Not saying that we should all be roaming the net with a touch carrying mob from a B monster movie.

    But IMO we probably should not be turning a blind eye to "fakes and frauds" either.

    We are all concerned with what goes on in our own backyards--the further removed from what concerns us personally--the harder it is to care.
    Simple fact of life.

    But I don't see how ignoreing the scam-a-rei and faux-fu fakers does anyone any good.

    Tolerence of bad acts encourges MORE bad acts.
    Last edited by cxt; 29th December 2006 at 16:57.
    Chris Thomas

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  12. #42
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    Default Thread drift?

    I have enjoyed the multitude of diverse comments throughout this thread as much as the next guy. But I think it has strayed significantly from it's point of origin. I'd like to suggest perhaps another thread be started to address web related Budo policing? Although I'm sure some folks would prefer to keep posting here...

  13. #43
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    Per Kim Taylor's comments earlier, I must share that I have witnessed more behaviors borne of the dynamics he mentioned in his post than anything else.

    I own that I am protective of the arts which I practice just as I treasure this or that heirloom passed to me by previous generations. However, Kim makes a very good point that there are clear limits to what influences we have regarding not just what happens when we die but even during our own life-time. Where true power and control lay is in my decision to practice what I have been taught and allow it to bring me out of the best part of myself. If there are others who choose to share my path for a while, more's the merrier, yes? But in the final analysis I believe we walk our paths in solitude and it is the journey not the path which is the art. ( Again, thanks for your guidance, Kim.)

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
    Bruce W Sims
    www.midwesthapkido.com

  14. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by A.J. Bryant
    There's probably a very good reason why you never see many high ranking martial artists online.

    Personally, while pretty junior myself, I feel like I went through a "stage" in my training sometime back in the mid 1990's where I detested frauds and fakes... “How dare they soil our precious koryu”... A decade later and this stuff just doesn't bother me that much anymore. It’s been going on forever and there’re just as many frauds and fakes in Japan... <shrug>

    FWIW
    Your comment resonated very strongly with me as I have spent not a few years hoping to build concensus regarding various issues facing the Hapkido community. Quite recently it has been made abundantly clear that the chaotic and contencious nature of the Hapkido community does not occur or has not been maintained by some accident of nature. The angry bickering, poking, criticism, disenfranchisement and so forth are the way that the majority of Hapkido personages want things to remain, all comments to the contrary.

    I continue to teach and practice the Hapkido arts but have increasingly less to do with most of the activities associated with other groups. Its not just that the various events and activities continue to move in circles, but that folks want them to remain that way and take umbrage if anyone suggests otherwise.

    Life is too short.

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
    Bruce W Sims
    www.midwesthapkido.com

  15. #45
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    I'm not saying turn a blind eye and definitely not saying to ignore anything abusive or criminal. But the vast majority of fakes and frauds out there are just ego driven narcissists and frankly, not worth the energy expended to "police" them. As Bruce said, "life's too short". Acknowledge them, have a good laugh and move on...

    Speaking of which, I agree with Mr. Long, let's get this ship back on track!

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