Less time worrying and arguing, more time training.
The main point, in a nutshell. It's all in the training. The primary source of satisfaction from the art
must come from the activity, because if it doesn't, then the MA (TKD or whatever) becomes... well, a
job (at least, given what most people's jobs are like). The whole point of doing something you don't have to is the pleasure of the immediate experience, and the secondary pleasure of knowing that the activity which you find rewarding to carry out just for the pleasure of doing it has very useful applications, should you need to call upon for those purposes.
Truth. At the end of the day most TKD people know that there style came from Shotokan, at least any of them that cared enough to do any looking. Yet we still see adds and documentries proclaiming it as a 2000 year old art. Yes, there is a continous trail backwards in any style to the beginning of time, but that doesn't make the current practices 2000 years old.
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The need for an invented ancient lineage is again something I take to be an indication of an external need that has nothing to do with the satisfaction due to the activity itself. As Gm. Kim Pyung-Soo in Rob Mclain's interview in MT's magazine points out, Gen. Choi himself didn't begin the `ancient lineage' business until much later in his career, when he was consciously trying to purge TKD of any connection to Japan (including, ironically, Okinawa, another victim of Japanese colonial occupation).
Exile, your post is all too rational, but I really don't think logic can or should apply here. Martial arts is obviously something we all spend a lot of time on. We believe it's a worthwhile activity and many of us, particularly those that teach, even evangelize martial arts as a life-changing opportunity.
Stoneheart, that's precisely why logic and rationality
must apply: they're our best method for guaranteeing that we can identify and focus on the essentials, undistracted or misled by things which only look important, but which turn out to be irrelevant. Particularly when there's a big emotional investment involved, clear thinking is crucial. And if we're trying to interest others in this (or any other) activity, it's very important I think to understand exactly what it is about the activity is important and beneficial. What I was trying to suggest in my earlier post, for the reasons stated, is that what is important and beneficial has nothing to do with the perceptions of people whose impressions are based on complete lack of familiarity with the art, or on a casual awareness of only the tournament sport side of the art, or on what they read on other MA fora , or see demonstrated on TV specials intended more to generate a big viewership than to inform and educate. It has to do with the benefits and advantages of the activity itself, and these are exactly the sorts of thing that logic and rationality are necessary for.
For example, take Andrew's point about Shotokan. Understanding that the technical content of TKD arises directly from that of ShotokanĀthe nature of its strategic plan, the use of deflection to divert attacks and impose control over the attacker's limbs to force vulnerable points on the upper body into range of explosive strike to crucial weak points, such as eyes, throat, or the carotid sinusĀgives TKDists insight into the fighting tactics embodied in their own hyungs, largely borrowed from Shotokan kata or reconstructed and mixmastered on the basis of subsequences from these kata. The tremendous wealth of research on the inherent combat logic of the Pinan/Heian kata, for example, which is currently being carried out, can be directly applied
and trained in hard, noncompliant `live' format by TKDs who either have been fortunate enough to learn the Korean `translations' of these kata, the Pyung-Ahn set, or have discovered the many subelements of the Pinans that persist, in recombined forms, in the Palgwes, for example. Understanding how the `down block', in Rick Clark's brilliant analyses of classical kihon elements in karate, can be decomposed into a series of pining moves, elbow strikes, and hammerfist, is something we can apply directly in our own practice, training, and teaching. Focusing on these
essential kinds of elements, as vs. worrying about why people on some of the nastier discussion boards of our acquaintance seem to love dissing TKD, seems a far more constructive and therapeutic activity, no?
I myself am a teacher. I have a responsibility to my art to advance it, and that means educating others about the benefits my art has to offer.
Of courseĀbut doesn't the kind of focus I'm suggesting, as vs. the kind of fretting people do about why outsiders don't take TKD as seriously as we think they should, lead to more advancement of the art, and more content to the education that we hope to offer others?
Telling people is never quite as good as
showing them; that's why I believe that if we cultivate our own garden, and develop the TKD that we want it to be, we'll communicate its value to others much more convincingly than otherwise...
