Me too. However in the case of sword arts
- There aren't really any instructors in this day and age who have significant real world background. Maybe you can find someone who subdued a burglar with a bokken, but you aren't going to find much in the way of instructors who have fought duels with a real sword or fought on the battlefield with a real sword. Best you can hope for is to find a lineage where an instructor a few generations back did one of those things.
- Fortunately, the odds of having a practical need to use a sword in the modern day are practically nil.
Essentially, we (sword art practitioners) are like aviation enthusiasts in an era where airplanes have all been banned due to the pollution they cause, studying the manuals and practicing in simulators just for the fun of it and to get an idea of what it must have been like for real pilots.
Understood. Once again, I don't think we disagree on this. Relevant to this thread, the concern I have is, when we talk about martial arts and in particular styles where there is 100% reliance in simulation, the folks who train in these styles exhibit what I believe is an unearned degree of confidence in their own ability.
Pilots learning to fly planes in simulators in an era where real planes have been banned... I think should bake into their training a healthy respect for the very real possibility that they have it all wrong. Or that they may not have it all wrong on a macro level, but that they individually are not as skilled as they believe. Or, as you suggest, they disregard any concerns about whether they could pilot a real plane, because the entire exercise is academic, and so they focus on ancillary benefits of the activity.
So, again, trying to tie this back to the topic at hand, the stakes go up a little because folks are being told that they may, in fact, need to fly the plane at some point, and are assured that they will be well prepared if/when that time comes.
Absolutely. If there's a choice, you want first hand experience or at least an immediate connection to someone who has first hand experience. But if there is no choice, then you have to do your best with what you can get.
yes, and when you do the best with what you can get, you really should be realistic about what you're actually getting. Again, in the context of threads like this, I cringe when I read a post by folks who have proudly claimed they never fight, and have little or no experience in fighting, who are nevertheless very confident that what they learn and teach will be effective, for themselves and for their students.
All that said, I find this topic interesting. I know that some folks get defensive. At the very least, I appreciate your comments, though this really seems more directly related to the discussion in the Dunning-Kruger thread.
