Cult Like MA-SD

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Martial Arts are just like any other discipline be it football, hunting game or providing services in the Information Technology industry. They often form tribal like groups where jokes and comics make a living using that cult-like system to make fun. We all have by now heard the joke, sometimes not so much a joke, term used of, “McDojo.” 

The other form of this cult like tribal group forming is the particular and individual style or system of martial arts. This drills down to a point where a single training hall with a particular Sensei becomes identify with its members where they become somewhat “Comfortable” resulting in all their training time and efforts are spent. The costs are students failing to reach full potential especially in the self-defense models. To reach potential in self-defense martial arts means diversity, a type of diversity only achievable through exposure to other ways and teachings unique to other systems, styles and most of all, “Instructors.” 

A driving force in this type of model comes from various human issues such as the logistics necessary to train, travel and the correlation toward convenience. Things like this either directly or indirectly influence the decisions made when seeking out martial arts and self-defense. When it comes to a defense for conflict and violence one must achieve proficiency, at least physically, with a wider spectrum of methodologies, i.e., applying impacts, drives (pushes), pulls, twists, takedowns, throws and compression to achieve your self-defense goals. We are talking about cross training and not just any cross training but the kind meant to teach defense.

A goal in self-defense especially when it involves martial arts is the development of a comprehensive set of methodologies that cover self-defense with extra emphasis on the critical thinking that must be coupled with the physical applications and so on. 

These cult like MA-SD schools also feed off of and/or fall prey to students who have the type of connections where the chance of offending or being disloyal prevent them from branching outward to encompass all that they need to achieve higher levels of ability with self-defense. 

As an aside, this concept of the cult like MA-SD or just MA also presents problems when the leaders and members both fall prey to their beliefs of the system as well as the proficiency and abilities of that same system. Kind of like a human nature thing, i.e., where it becomes so deep seated and ingrained they fail to see and accept others or other concepts or other ways and so on. 

It all is a very dangerous slop that tends to be icy slippery and practitioners and instructors alike must remain self-aware toward maintaining a balance between camaraderie and cult like effigy pedestal blindness.

Lastly, no one single school has all the answers, no one single instructor has all the answers and it takes a holistic melding of many things to achieve proficiency, mastery and a full and complete and comprehensive knowledge, understanding and ability to apply in life those things that make up a martial art and one that teaches self-defense.

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