Styles?

We have a lot of karate styles and until recent years it baffled me as to why. Especially when you finally understand all styles must adhere to the same fundamental principles to function as a system for combatives, fighting or self-defense. So, why do we have so many styles?

It wasn't till I read Rory Miller's books that I first realized the "styles" was about tribal identity. It is about survival and symbolism achieved to identify a group/tribe in a unique way. 

Style survival is dependent on that symbolism, etc.

No wonder there are so many differing symbolic identities in martial arts that end up being points of contention. It is to keep a tribe alive, surviving.

In a style? You are a member of a tribe. 

Are you affiliated with memberships, etc? Then you are a member of a tribe.

Do you vilify what other styles do? You are a member of a tribe. 

Do you tend to justify what your style is or does? You are a member of a tribe.

Do you make excuses for people with the same identity? You are in your monkey brain on that subject.

Are you hung up on the systems/styles trivia? You are protecting tribal identifiers.

If you are resorting to labeling, or engaging in a them vs. us thing, you are not solving the problem but engaging in tribal war.

It is all about identity and survival although the instinct for survival has nothing to do with styles or systems except that as humans we have not exactly outgrown or evolved enough to not need those survival instincts or at least to morph them into appropriate instincts for modern times. We are not trying to escape tigers, lions or bears trying to eat us but when we enter into a modern conflict those same instincts still get triggered. 

This, and many other factors, go a long way to understand why we humans tend to gravitate toward tribal things so when you see those many styles and then actually “see” that the differences are more window dressing while the fundamental principles underlying all styles is the same then you are beginning to realize the “why” of styles. 

Interesting perspective I think. We all, in the karate world, are actually practicing the exact same thing. We are simply creating identifying symbolic window dressing to our practice so we can identify the tribe in relation to other tribes. It is all the same, but different in a human kind of way.

Bibliography:

Miller, Rory. "ConCom: Conflict Communications A New Paradigm in Conscious Communication." Amazon Digital Services, Inc. 2014.