From a few recent threads and a conversation today, I've noticed that some practitioners place a high regard in terms of the "Core Principles" of a martial art. From my experiences, I have met people where a MA/gym/dojo/etc Core Principle is the selling point for training that MA.
Not all MAs have a distinct set of Core Principles, nor would they want to write them down as a set of goals to be attained.
Bruce Lee has a little to answer for, but not too much. Back in the early 70s most of what was out there was rote learning. There was the Revealed Wisdom of the Orient that shambling big-nosed foreign devils were barely worthy to receive. And that was pretty much the martial arts world. Then along came a half-breed Chinese guy with four years of martial arts and an acting career. He did all sorts of things wrong. He didn't have "Twenty years, no can defend". But he analyzed and asked inconvenient questions. And do you know what? It worked.
Some of his analysis was off. There was a lot he never got to see. And he called a lot of things "principles" that were observations or limited-use rules of thumb. But the idea that you got better results if you did what worked instead of always copying whatever the guy with the fancy uniform told you was a good one. If you had some way to analyze what you saw and make better guesses based on it you might do even better.
All of a sudden everyone had principles, lots and lots of principles. They were usually an elaborate mess of everything they'd ever been told with no attempt at organization or coherence, but they had the latest buzzword. The Revealed Wisdom was renamed and became just as rigid an orthodoxy. The problem is that a lot of people who weren't that bright and didn't really have analytically trained minds wanted to appear wise and marketable.
It's a lot like flow, weapons, trapping, groundfighting, military usefulness, multiple attackers or no-rules fighting. In the thin-margin world of martial arts business you have to have whatever is trendy. And you have to have
always had it. Otherwise you're just selling one more product like everyone else. Brand recognition and loyalty require that there is never and never has been a deficiency in what you're selling.
What are the Core Principles of your art?
The Core Principles? That's a tough one. I can give you any number of heuristics that are useful at different levels of development or in different situations. Some of them don't make sense without context. Others are simple. But what's important is usually simple. And what's simple is seldom easy.
Some are pretty universally applicable like "What you can do high, you can do low. What you can do inside you can do outside," or "Always have a backup"
Others are useful simplifications that you use until you develop more understanding and skill like "A throw works on Base, Angle and Leverage. Two out of three will work. Three out of three work first time, every time."
Some are simply things that are obvious once you know them like "Weapon before body for speed. Body before weapon for power," and "There's no such thing as a fair fight."
Every one of these and many more is useful. Every one of the rules can be broken or the principles ignored. But that's only true once you've achieved a certain level of skill and really understand what's going on.
Do you think that Core Principles have the potential to "get in the way" of properly training the functionality of an art?
It's all about your level of understanding. If you have people memorize huge lists of "principles" you'll just screw them up. If you introduce ideas gradually and use them as a vehicle for enhancing training and making sense out of things they won't get in the way. If you don't have any sort of organizing principles informing what you do you'll just have huge steaming piles of unconnected technique.
Do you think that all MAs have to incorporate a moral compass to a practitioner? If so, what makes that different from a cult?
When you fire a gun you are responsible for every bullet that comes out of it. When you teach someone to be dangerous you're responsible for the consequences of that action. If you really don't give a **** who you teach and couldn't care less if they're rapists, murderers and thieves that's certainly a philosophical position. But even if you don't have any ethics there's still a legal term known as "due care and diligence". If your conscience doesn't bother you the Law still can.
What students learn from you isn't always what you meant to teach them. If you treat breaking necks the same as blocking you're providing a moral compass. It's a thin, puny wobbly one. It's still there.
If you exercise strict control over all sorts of aspects of your students' lives with iron rules for everything you're providing a different sort of training and teaching them different lessons about the relationship between judgment and authority.
Children can not be counted on to exercise their judgment in serious matters. Adults are supposed to.
"Kick-the-dots" tournament-oriented sports require a different level of concern than lessons in throat slitting.
Somewhere in there there's a balance. You'll just have to figure it out for yourself. After all, you're the one with the fancy uniform and title.
