Dear Reader! Things are in a bit of a hash today so I’, bringing back this post from 2022 which is illustrative of following the gut – rightly or wrongly and of un controlled pride.
Thanks,
Lou
Pride often gets in the way of common sense. I learned this early in New York. One night, a group of us left the dojo to spend an evening at a Japanese restaurant with our Sensei’s (teachers of martial arts). It was a memorable evening because Sensei’s teacher was visiting us from Japan, and we wanted everything perfect.
Finally, after a beautiful evening, our group broke up, and my Sensei’s and I walked towards the subway.
About halfway there, a group of hoods assaulted us. After attempting to defuse the situation, Sensei’s teacher took the assault head-on. Moving gracefully out of the way of one assailant, O sensei ( senior or older Sensei), tripped another and gently grabbed the third by the wrist, and bent him to the ground. The fight was over in seconds.
The idiots got up, backed away, and began screaming at the elderly short gentleman who had gently put them out of action. Then, not thinking that it wasn’t luck that they had been defeated, they moved in for a second try with similar results. Finally, O sensei grabbed and immobilized one of them to show us how the particular wrist lock he was using worked. He then casually tossed the oaf away. They ditched their idiocy and made a run for it.
My Sensei reviewed the street incident in great detail at our next meeting. He pointed out that O sensei had attempted first to avoid fighting and only defended himself when necessary. O Sensei used only as much force as needed to restrain his opponents. His opponents did not see that their tactics had not only failed but were sure to fail again.
His final point was that O sensei was only five feet tall, very slight, and seventy-eight years old. So, naturally, they assumed that such a frail older man would be no match for three burly men.
He concluded that their pride had defeated them by blinding them not once but twice.
We all allow pride to blind us. We spend years at college learning a profession and think our learning makes us infallible. We consider warnings that there might be unknown factors as spurious. Or dismiss as vulgar rants the opinions of those that disagree with us. We insist that we can do it, and don’t carefully evaluate the actual situation
Worse, we repeat our efforts even when they fail multiple times. I’ve become convinced that we do this because of a sense of investment. We spend so much time working on something, learning something, and owning something that abandoning it is almost impossible. So when we get confronted with the little elderly gentleman, we are confident that there is no threat.
We are rugged, confident, and muscular. He is little, old, and weak. The conclusion is we will win.
Not knowing that he is a ninth-degree black belt could be the weak point in our tactics.
If you have an opportunity Google Murphy’s Laws of Combat, there will be a heading in most versions that states that the guys in the simplest uniforms usually win. They have no medals or fancy uniforms and look very unimpressive. I think this particular heading was added after Vietnam, but it points out that what you don’t know can hurt you and, as the old saying says – Pride goes before the fall.
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That was some great writing.
Thanks!
I wonder if there is also a heading on what proportion a military parade conforms to your actual military competence.
This was quite an event to have experienced, Lou. I’m glad it was dealt with without injury to yourselves and not much to them.
People who follow traditional Japanese martial arts tend to be aware of how much responssibility we carry for our actions.
This is wonderful, Lou. Thank you for re-sharing. I don’t think I was following you in 2022 so I am happy to get to read this.
I’m glad you liked it. Martial arts gets a bad rap from yahoos who don’t really study the philosophy that goes along with it. Years after that and other incidents I studied Japanese swordsmanship, and found the same core beliefs – that much power has been put into the hands of the practitioner aand it must be used wisely.
I think it’s all just really beautiful. Back in 1984, I organized a city wide festival in Denver — the second annual festival of Asian arts and culture. I was a volunteer at the Asian Pacific Development Center — a mental health facility for Asian immigrants. I got the job organizing the festival because 1) I’m white so neutral, 2) I had lived in China. Every culture presented their martial arts during the week of that festival. It was fantastic. And, in China, we had a TV and my students would show up to watch Shao Lin movies. It’s not only amazing self-defense but discipline and grace.
I read a bit on kara-te (“open hand” — only as needed defense — only as intense as needed to divert another’s violence) when I was considering dating a certain submarine sailor whose Sensei had lent his Mercedes for our first date which was wasted when he, rather, sat on my sofa telling me everything about everything except, “Let’s go to dinner”! It’s a sweet philosophy, Lou. My sister- and brother-in-law trained in the violence-limiting martial arts and had their children trained in them as well.
Violence – limiting is a good description. Although in the sword the hesitancy is only before the sword is drawn. It is assumed that at this point all diplomatic efforts have failed. Their is even a built in hesitancy to draw knowing that the sword is such a destructive weapon – but in my Ha, Iado, we are only drawing against similarly armed and trained individuals, not the civilian population.