When Gunmen Practice Social Distancing

I was going to write a blog post on Wu Wei, but a week ago when I was halfway through with it, the breaker box in my house shorted out and mysteriously Word did not save the document. I was going to look a little deeper into the subject than people usually do and talk about some overlooked aspects. Most likely I will eventually go back and start that blog post over. Instead this time, I am going to discuss a subject which I have been asked about many times.

In this blog post, I will not be talking about snipers, active shooters, or people wielding a gun less than 6 feet away from you. This is about having a gun pointed at you from more than 6 feet away, out of distance for the average person to be doing disarms. (Okay, if you are Magic Johnson, go right ahead.) While awareness of your surroundings and others will usually allow you to avoid any type of dangerous self-defense situation, circumstances beyond your control or current level of awareness do sometimes happen.

While it’s important not to walk too close to hedges, or parked cars without looking under them and scanning rooftops for people is also a good precaution, that’s really not what we’re talking about here. If someone is pointing a gun at you from more than 6 feet away and you can’t immediately jump behind a car’s engine block or a brick wall, then most times the best thing you can do in reality is freeze. Sudden movements and loud noises can cause people to jerk or flinch and accidentally pull a trigger. It is generally good to comply with the demands of a person pointing a firearm at you. If compliance happens to bring you closer to them, so much the better.

Unbelievably, crime statistics say that if a gunman does not shoot within the first 3 seconds, the likelihood that they will shoot goes down by over 70%. The problem with statistics is that it’s like gambling; it doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods, but your chances improve again at 10 seconds and at 30 seconds. Basically, the longer you go without getting shot the better off you are, like anybody had to tell you that.

Every second of delay humanizes you to the shooter. In fact, engaging them in conversation is usually not a bad idea unless you just antagonize people.

Now it should go without saying if at all possible, you want to be off the line of fire to the outside of the arm holding the weapon, but that may not be possible. If you are in a narrow alley or hallway without any obstructions that you can get behind then your best weapons are your brain and time.

While most altercations with firearms occur within 20 yards with poor lighting and partial cover, we are going to look at the worst-case scenario where the lighting is good and there is no cover. Let’s also say within 10 yards because at further distances, the average shooter misses 90% of the time. Don’t count on them missing, there are many people out there that are superb marksmen. I am also going to assume that you are not like O-Sensei who was filmed dodging bullets in a live warzone by a newsman.

So first off, don’t scare or startle the person with the gun. I would note at this point that if the reason the person is pointing the gun at you is that they are a jealous mate or worse the jealous spouse of someone else, then I would recommend that you either bend over and kiss your ass goodbye or start singing “Give me three steps Mister” …

The most likely circumstance is that you are being robbed at gunpoint. As you slowly take out your wallet, ask them if you can keep your driver’s license or other ID, not only does this further humanize you, but if they say yes, it will save you a lot of trouble. Most often, muggers will ask you to toss them your wallet because they don’t want you to get really close to them for the same reason that you want to get really close to them. Even if they don’t tell you to throw it underhanded, which they probably will, throw it that way anyhow, but toss it a little high. This works best if it’s a little above their head, but it doesn’t really mater as long as it reaches them at least at about chest height. The reason for this is that when you say toss it over here, most people expect it to fall a little short. Most people under these circumstances will forget that they are holding a gun or a knife for that matter, and will drop it while they attempt to grab the flying object with both hands. If that happens, you immediately get off the line of fire (the gun could go off when it hits the ground) and rush them, hitting them as hard as you can with both fists in different locations or push them really hard. Either way, while they fall down at some distance from you, you bend over and pick up both the gun and your wallet.

Of course, the other option in this circumstance is that you are dealing with the much more dangerous experienced opponent who will let the wallet bounce off them and then reach down and pick it up while looking at you and keeping the gun pointed at you. The best thing to do under these circumstances is to let them keep your wallet. I don’t care how much money you’ve got in that wallet, it’s not worth your life. Even if you had the nuclear launch codes, you can’t do anything about it if you’re dead on the ground.

In short, if you want to keep your head, the first thing you need to do is keep your head.

I know this all sounds simple, but that’s because it really is. Remember, you are not Bruce Lee in a movie. Suddenly tossing three darts out of nowhere into the back of the hand holding the gun is not something you’re going to do and in real life might well backfire (pardon the pun) Reckless and suicidal behavior like trying to charge the gunman while he’s pointing the gun at you is unlikely to end well for you.

Now let’s discuss a best-case scenario. You’re driving your car and some fool jumps out in the middle of the road and points a gun at you and tells you to stop the car. No, really, this is one method that people have used to engage in carjacking. Okay, so in this circumstance you duck down behind the dash so they would have to shoot through the engine block, floor it, and run their sorry ass over. Then while the police are on their way, change your underwear.

I wish I could tell you that there was some magic trick to surviving this situation, but really the only magic trick is to not act really stupid. Of course, sometimes doing something that is completely unexpected can work, but it is very dangerous. One of my students, before they became my student was out for a walk because they were really pissed off and a little bit suicidal and a mugger jumped out pointed a gun at them and delivered the standard soliloquy. She ignored him and kept walking. Apparently, he followed her for a while saying, “Hey, didn’t you hear me? I said this is a stick up.” After a while, he gave up in confusion. I don’t recommend this method, but the truth is that most of the time they just want your money and don’t want a murder hanging over their head.

In my classes I teach specific techniques to use against guns and knives as well as telling my students stories about the various ways that people I know have successfully dealt with muggers. One of my students used the tossed wallet trick mentioned above and showed up in class the next day yelling about how cool it was as a method for getting free knives while waving one over his head. In short, stop, think, use your head, look for an opening and think about that cool new wallet you’re going to get in the next week or so.

In, this kind of situation, your physical prowess is much less important than your ability to think under pressure and not freeze. Remember you can choose not to move but not actually be freezing. If you find yourself freezing, remember to breathe. Actually starting to breathe will unfreeze you. It’s brains not brawn.

In my classes, I tend to assign a lot of reading material, not to teach Kung Fu from the books, but to get my students to learn to think in terms of martial situations.

Five Signs of a Bad GM

While we have all encountered the What the hell is going on DM (GM) that is generally just a sign that they are new and have not run a game before.  These are associated with an established game. I don’t say this to discourage any beginning or aspiring GMs, as learning to run a game is a difficult and rocky road.

 

1. The most well-known, “The Montyhall” GM: The Gm giveth the GM taketh away. Named after the famous game show were people dress up in costumes and hope to get picked to play for the chance to win. Now do you want to stop here or do you want to give that up to get the chance to when this bigger prize?
2. The Killer GM: Well that is self-explanatory. “No, you can’t beat my world, you won’t even survive my dungeon. MWAHAHA!”
3. The God Wars GM: All players start out at an extremely high level with a lot of equipment, (The GM’s friends get more and powers that are not in the books in most cases.) the GM’s friends cannot get killed no matter what they do or what happens.
4. The Cow Herder GM: All players are led around like they have a ring through there their nose. usually seen as a subset of The God Wars GM.
5. The Celestial Ego GM: This GM has their ego invested in being GM and in their world. (NO YOU CAN’T HAVE FOUND THE FAITLE FLAW IN MY DUNGEN AND BEAT IT THAT FAST!) . May just be a new GM who has not figured out the game does not work that way and is supposed to be impartial…who am I kidding!
6. The Game on Rails GM…..

The Six signs of a bad GM

1. The most well known, “The Montyhall” GM:
2. The Killer GM
3. The God Wars GM
4. The Cow Herder GM
5. The Celestial Ego GM:
6. The Game on Rails GM: May be a subset of all the others. The GM has a plan that requires that the players do things in a certain order. This is like The Cow Herder GM but he does not necessarily tell the party what to do. May just be a new GM who has not figured out what the job entails.
7. The Axe To Grind GM:

SEVEN,  The Seven signs of a bad GM:

7. The Axe To Grind GM: Some times it is the thief or another class but usually it is the Magic user, but it can be any class in any game. Signs include, one class can not be in the game, all players HAVE to be the same class, or more common, for some reason there is no way to play the character as intended. If one monster attacks each player regardless of marching order and how narrow the hall is. This not only destroys the point of the thief and mage it removes all strategy and tactics from the game. It is understandable that most GMs cannot handle running a decker in Cyberpunk or Shaddowrun (Oh, look. Those are affiliate links, so if you buy something linked here, it helps support the VulcanJediTimelord.) because it is like having a psionic combat in the middle of a D&D game.

And now for something completely different:

There are numerous smaller problems with GMs, but many of those have an easy fix. One of the most frustrating is the GM who is chronically unprepared. Now as a GM, I have to say that all of us are unprepared sometimes even if the players can’t tell. However, if the GM is chronically unprepared and it is obvious to the players and affects game play then it is a problem. There are different solutions that frankly are based to a large extent on the age and experience of the GM. With a highschool party, it’s good to pick a game that involves dungeon crawls of some sort, compare designing a dungeon to creating a maze and spend at least an hour up to a full game session having everybody draw up dungeon floors which can be mixed matched and populated by the GM. Everyone, including the GM will of course be competing to design the best maze, labyrinth, or dungeon depending on what you want to call it. If it’s a college party, then you’re going to have to contend with such annoying interruptions to your gaming as labs, midterms, finals, and the greatest danger to the group of all, the GM having a date or worse yet, a relationship. Unfortunately, these are things you’re just going to have to work around. College is just the price you pay for room board and enough time to game. Now if you are adults in the working world, real life just happens to get in the way. Suck it up, it’s called splash damage. Hey kids, don’t worry, a lot of the con goers will get that joke. More experienced gamers/players will be able to work around these difficulties and have a decent game that seems prepared. For newer GMs the thing to do is pick a game that has modules and use them at first to train yourself to run a game and then to fill in on days when you are not prepared. This is an expense the players should chip in for, just like food unless you’re playing at one of the member’s place and happen to have a case where somebody is cooking or is the manager at a food establishment and they bring food. A common solution is to all chip in on a pizza in which the most difficult process in the game may well be agreeing on a pizza. Hint, a way to deal with this is to start with a super supreme or the equivalent and let people veto ingredients until you see what’s left. Start with food allergies and hope you don’t end up with a sauceless cheese pizza with a gluten free crust since that’s just bad cheese toast.

 

GM is such a nit picker to the rules that it’s just a bunch of mechanics and not an actual game. Talk to your GM, and if this situation can’t be fixed get a new GM. Hell if you think you can do a better job….

 

GM is all about story telling and ignores the rules to the point that you may as well be a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers. The rules create the challenge and inspire creativity. Talk to your GM, and if this situation can’t be fixed get a new GM. Hell if you think you can do a better job go for it. There is always a short supply of good GMs and most of us would rather be playing.

 

 

 

Now this isn’t entirely one sided. Players can do a lot of things to screw up a campaign, such as metagaming, rules lawyering, the party up and moves to the other side of the continent every time the GM has a minor challenge for them to deal with, splitting up the party, and stealing the GM’s dice. If you want to play, don’t steal the GM’s pencil, paper, or dice. Honestly, I can’t think of anything more annoying to the GM than these last three.

 

In summation: The five signs of a bad DM…I mean GM

• A big ego that interferes with the game in some way.
• Inability to maintain an impartial balance whether due to a big ego, lack of experience, or failure to have the ability to control disruptive players.
• Lack of creativity.

No wait, that’s it, there are only three.

The problem with the way most martial arts are taught

There’s a problem with the way most martial arts are taught. If you’re just kind of copying the forms, and the applications are not explained, then you would probably be better served taking a dance class. If you don’t understand the applications, then your movements have a tendency to be off by a few degrees. Often one or more inches, in fact, are enough to result in losing in a life or death battle. Martial arts masters of the past have said that when you’re mastering forms, you should always keep the opponent in mind, but how in the hell are you supposed to do that if you don’t know exactly what it is you’re supposed to be doing? In fact, sometimes even the instructors do not know what some of the moves are supposed to be doing.

Worse yet are the representative forms, where this move is supposed to hint at or imply one of these four moves, which we won’t even show you until after black belt, by which point the useless move is trained into the person.

I realize that these teaching methods were intended to hide the specific techniques from other schools, and sometimes were originally designed to hide the fact that these people were learning martial arts at all, but the dead hand effect has rotted. All these tactics have ever done is slow down the learning process and degrade the quality of entire martial arts styles.

I know I say this a lot, but I see people doing Tai Chi for their health who are “not interested in learning the martial applications,” and they never do the moves correctly, and as a result they get somewhere between a quarter and a half of the benefit to their health that just doing the form correctly would give. Of course, even the people who are practicing Tai Chi in America with a more martial outlook are not doing the Chi gung most of the time, which means that they are only getting between a quarter and a half of the benefit you can get from Tai Chi, possibly less. So you’re getting a quarter of a quarter of the benefit if you’re just taking Tai Chi for health.

This has led me to decide that I am going to take a more active concentration in integrating the Chi gung into the Chi Ping Tao practice, as I don’t think the average student really practices the Chi gung that I’ve been teaching, or even necessarily noticed that it was there.

So, this dance class you’re taking. It gives belts? When the student is shown the application first, and again after practicing it a few times (in a single class), then they do much better at learning the techniques, they learn them faster, and are more likely to get the correct position. This is my philosophy of teaching.

I have seen so many practitioners of hard styles doing the hard blocks with the elbow at a 45 degree or less angle. If it’s one person, then usually I will tell them, “You know you’re not doing that correctly,” and if they argue I usually pop them on the back of the hand lightly so they punch themselves in the face. I have had a number of people say to me, “It’s the way my instructor does it.” Usually, I just tell them, “No, it isn’t,” but one young 18-year-old “teaching” a class in Athens was so arrogant about it, I told him, “Then your instructor is doing it wrong.” While they’re doing this, they usually have their arm either too high or too low, and on their outside blocks, go past their shoulder. If they’re willing to learn, I always show them how to do the technique correctly. The easiest way to do that is to go through the moves in slow motion, so they get to see themselves getting hit without getting hurt.

If they understood what they were doing in the first place, and why, then they wouldn’t be doing the moves incorrectly.

As students, we don’t want to waste our time learning a series of techniques that can’t even be used in real situations, and as instructors, it can become very frustrating when students don’t pick up techniques quickly or correctly. It is also humiliating, or worse, when you realize your techniques don’t work. The only way to keep the opponent in mind is to walk through applications, and even the forms, from time to time with two people so that you can see what’s really happening. That is the reason I think you need to know what you’re doing and why.

Frequently, you will see people in forward stance whose lead knee is past the edge of their toes. When I see this I know two things; first off I know that they have been told that they should push their knee forward until they can’t see their toes over the edge, and secondly, that they are destroying the ligaments and tendons of the knee by straining them in an incorrect position. I have also talked to people who have been trained this way a few years later and listened to them tell me how they had to quit martial arts training because their knees became too damaged. When a person pushes their knee that far forward the bones of the lower leg will be leaning forward at a 45 degree angle. In the correct forward stance, which is the same leg position as Warrior Pose from yoga,the bones of the lower leg should go straight up and down between the ankle and the knee. To achieve this the easiest way if you don’t have someone there correcting your movement every time is to make sure that you can see the entirety of your toes and only your toes past the edge of your knee. This will work for you so long as you have relatively normal shaped feet. I was born with clubbed feet and this still gives me the exact right position. The other big problem with forward stance is people who have their hips pointed to the side rather than to the front. This is often toward the side with the rear foot because the rear foot is also not in the correct position.

The point of forward stance is to be extremely stable, even if you are standing on slick wet basalt. Originally in India it was used to keep you from falling off the back of a chariot as you attacked an enemy with a weapon. For forward stability the weight goes on the front foot and the back leg is in a curved position to act like a spring and absorb energy impacting you from the front and allowing you to return that energy as part of a forward strike. It’s very similar to one of the stances used by surfers a lot but the front and back foot are in a line for the surfers because they are keeping their feet on the center line of the board whereas on the ground or on a chariot, the greater side to side stability also protects you from side strikes and you don’t have to worry about your “surfboard” tipping.

Rote repetition is a good way to train the muscles but it also discourages the thinking which is necessary for applying strategy and requires your opponent to use the exact attack you were taught in class in order to effectively apply tactics. We have learned a lot about how to teach better in the last hundred years but most of it is not being applied in schools and even less is being applied in martial arts classes. There are easy ways to teach faster and better with better results even if we just stick to innovations made in the 20th century by martial artists themselves.

Unfortunately, the only way to have a successful martial arts school that makes money in this day and age is to attract large classes where there is usually little or no personal attention and even the instructor going around inspecting and correcting the positions of students just doesn’t happen. Small classes with lots of personal attention these days are usually taught by people who learned the other way or their instructor did and this compounds errors.

When you’re teaching a big class of kids by having them repeat one or two moves over and over again and they don’t even know what they are doing or why, they don’t learn anything and they get bored, which is one of the main reasons there is such a high turnover rate in most martial arts schools. Between 75-85% of all white belt kids drop out at or before yellow belt. If you want to hold on to your students, show them a whole kata and start them with one or two moves and add another one every class. You will still lose some students this way, even in adult classes, but they will have gotten more out of it even if they don’t realize that until later.

The other really big problem I see is a highly prevalent problem wherein instructors fail to understand the application, basic anatomy, or both. I have had many students who came in with handicaps and/or injuries who were given instructions that would be impossible or even harmful given their condition. I had a student who had advanced cerebal palsy. She had difficulty standing at all with a cane or a crutch. She had tried to take a martial arts class before and while I don’t recall what style it was that she said she had tried, they expected her to struggle through karate style kata while using crutches to hold herself up. That got nowhere, so I taught her drunken monkey ground fighting where your first move is to intentionally fall to the ground without getting hurt and strike your opponent from the ground. Another student had lost two of the main tendons to hold one of their knees in place. In a previous class they were told, “You just have to strengthen the muscles so it will hold the knee in place.” No, you cannot use muscles in place of tendons, they don’t work that way. Making them try to do low stances only resulted in further injury and making sure that they did not continue the class.

Remember, you are not just teaching the art, you are teaching a person.

Teaching martial arts is like walking a tightrope

There’s this problem with teaching Americans; most of the time you can’t just tell them things that are easy for them to understand and give them things that are relatively easy for them to do, slowly pushing their boundaries, but you also have to be careful because if you tell them something they don’t understand they will decide it’s gibberish and give up, and if you give them something that’s too hard to do which they can’t currently do they will decide it’s too hard and give up. As a teacher you have to try and spoon feed them ideas that are just a little bit of a stretch and give them forms and sets (Kata) that are just difficult enough that they can kinda sorta do them. Most of the time, you can just forget about them understanding the subtle points of the art whether in technique or in the philosophical/strategic aspects.

Make no mistake, almost always there is a direct application of either technique (tactic) or strategy to every piece of philosophy in martial arts. Sometimes they are more subtle than that and apply to how you live your life so that it will be more pleasant, work better, and you will be less likely to have to use your martial skills. Many statements will have an “obvious” meaning, but the true meaning is buried much deeper and can only come to be truly understood after many years of practice. Many times, it’s like having to explain a joke. Until you have the whole picture though it doesn’t make sense.

I told a joke to one of my teachers once but he didn’t get it because his english wasn’t good enough, so I worked on helping him with his english for a year and in the process I worked in every concept I had used in that joke. Only then did I tell him the joke again, and yes, he laughed. If all the parts of a concept are not connected, you can’t get the big picture and sometimes the small pictures aren’t good enough, they just aren’t complete. The first sentence in this could easily be broken apart into a bunch of individual sentences, but the whole thing together creates one concept. This is how forms (techniques) and sets (kata) function. You work on learning the set or the kata while learning techniques in class which cover not just the techniques in the kata but the techniques related to a particular technique in the kata so that as you come to understand the parts, you are also coming to understand the big picture.

While this can be done with the physical parts of the art, it frequently cannot be done with the deeper mental aspects of an art. Like many Zen Roshi have said, explaining the concepts that you want the student to understand can actually stand in the way of progress and understanding. On the simplest level if a student does not learn to pay attention and work out for themselves what they are looking at then they will never acquire the skill that allows them to analyze the subtle aspects of what an opponent is doing and how to defeat them by merely looking at how they stand and hold their hands.

Most students will not practice techniques at home let alone meditate. The percentage of students who continue on to truly master an art has always been low, but in the modern world where people don’t see the value to martial arts (to be honest, most people through history have not understood the value of martial arts.) and 75-90% of students drop out before achieving yellow belt or the equivalent, even most instructors do not truly understand what they are doing.

Forms and sets (Kata) teach you how to move. Bunkai teaches you how to use the movement as applications. Two-man forms teach the feel and flow of combat, blinding, timing, and to use the techniques you learned in class in combat. Sensitivity exercises like sticky hands, push hands, Filipino Hubud Lubud Drills, and Chi P’ing Tao’s slippery hands teach blinding, timing, to find openings, natural flow of combat, how to deal with varying amounts of force and speed, among other things. Chi P’ing Tao’s Three step drills teach continuous attack with broken rhythm. Sparing teaches students to overcome fear and build ego at the cost of forgetting to use the techniques you learned in class in combat, building ego, and ingraining repeated mistakes. Chi P’ing Tao’s Counter drills teach you to see into the heart of combat and to understand that everything as a counter. If you have to always be told the bunkai and don’t think it out yourself you still have not learned to defend yourself. If you have to always be told the bunkai and don’t think it out yourself you still have not learned to defend yourself. Think for yourself. Ironically, even practicing martial arts poorly changes the way you move enough that it massively decreases the likelihood that you will ever have to use them.

Even the most devoted and studious student, who learns from a teacher who lacks understanding and whose techniques are sloppy who was passed on by another teacher who was the same, is at a serious disadvantage. Even if you don’t lose students by going over their heads when they say to themselves, “Ooh, an incomprehensible mystical statement,” they have put it in a category where they don’t have to think about it. For the vast majority of people if they don’t have to think about it, they don’t. When you add to this the difficulty of trying to operate a martial arts business and make enough money to keep your school going it is not surprising that there are so many McDojos and black belt academies where the only concern is making money. Flash is often the fastest way to die; but it is also how you get students.

Good-Bye, Harlan said the Tick-Tock Man

“For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered” — HE 1934 – 1918

I considered Harlan Ellison a friend, even though I suppose he was more of a long-term acquaintance.  When I first met him, 32 years ago, he was surrounded by a circle of 20-60 sycophants, and he was telling a rather dark joke.  When he reached the punchline, simultaneously they all stepped back and gasped in horror (never guessing that it was a joke) and I burst out laughing so hard I could hardly breathe.  We hit it off immediately.  I went away thinking I had just met a D&D Gnome.  It wasn’t until later that I realized that was the author of some of my favorite stories and television episodes.  I know this will cause a big outcry, while I personally liked Ray Bradberry, I did not like his writing.  In the case of Harlan Ellison, I have always liked his writing.  While I always thought that Harlan’s writing was good, I have sometimes been hesitant to read some of his stories.  I Have No Mouth yet I Must Scream is one of the few stories ever to creep me out, and it’s definitely well written.  To me, Bradberry’s stories, and I mean pretty much all of the them.  And yes, I mean somewhat dull, boring, incoherent, and not that well written.  While I know that I well may be the only person with that opinion, I know that I am not the only person to think that; not even one of Harlan Ellison stories can be described that way.

Harlan always reminded me a great deal of my mother, 5’1”, drove like a bat out of hell, serious temper issues, a great ability to instill an emotional response in people through spoken word alone, a really dark sense of humor, in case you were wondering, I’m just describing my mother.  Unlike my mother, Harlan never hit me.  My mother, on the other hand, pretty much hit everybody.  As a part of conversation, she would hit you.  I only know of two people that she never hit.  That’s including family, friends, coworkers, her own bosses, you name it.  Harlan also never had an unkind word for me.

I think the first story of his that I ever read was Repent, Harlequin, Said the Tick-Tock Man.  The first television episode that I ever saw was City on the Edge of Forever.  While he had creative differences over that episode with Gene Rodenberry, and I see his point, Rodenberry was right.  What Harlan wrote not only wasn’t Star Trek, but would not have been let on the air by the censors during that time period.    It’s still one of the best Star Trek Episodes.  One of my mother’s favorite movies was also one of Harlan Ellison’s: A Boy and His Dog, starring Don Johnson and Cybil Sheppard.

I went and told Harlan when I finished my first book, and he said to me, with the most genuine sincerity of anyone I told, “Congratulations!  Good luck with your book!”  I don’t think he ever could have realized how much that meant to me.  Of course, I did NOT have good luck with that book, but that’s a story unto itself that’s considerably longer than this piece.

Harlan earned my eternal admiration when a reporter came up to him in Atlanta  and shoved a microphone in his face, like an attacker with a weapon and Harlan decked the reporter.  Not only was this funny, but I really think it should happen every time a reporter invades someone’s  personal space and tries to bully them with a microphone.

Another thing that he did that increased my respect for him was his lack of willingness to put up with stupid or ill-informed people’s opinions.  I was raised to put up with an awful lot, and I do, but when around Harlan, at the same time I’m bracing myself  to try to explain something to some moron that won’t be insulting, he was there pouring cauldrons of condescending Greek fire over their heads, and what’s better, is that I never saw him do that when it wasn’t deserved.

I sincerely think that Harlan Ellison’s death is a loss not just to Science Fiction, but to Man Kind itself.  Of course, I automatically like anyone who will go toe to toe with me using the precisely best word in English, not just the most well-known, jargon words from a half-dozen specializations and four or five different languages.  Ellison would do not only that, but sometimes even whip out a piece of information I didn’t even know.    While he never used a word I did not know, unlike Berl Boykin, Cynthia Middleton, and on one occasion, Charles Strobel, (OK, in Strobel’s case, I didn’t know the definition) Harlan introduced me to new concepts.  Until the words came out of his mouth, I had never heard the phrase Enhanced Reality.  Interesting new information is something I almost always research, and I never found him to be bullshitting or even wrong.  In fact, when I come right down to it, I think he is the only person I’ve ever known, including myself, that I never found to be wrong at least once.  So, yes, he was alive for a short period of time, and his life mattered.

Some interesting trivia found in researching this article, most worthy of reading.

The Cure is More Fun than the Problem.

Vulcan Jedi Time Lord: I entered this contest, and if I had known what they wanted, I would have given it to them.

City Druid: It shouldn’t be a matter of what they wanted—it should be a matter of quality, and of fulfilling the requirements.

VJTL: Yes, but they always have an agenda these days.

CD: I think you weren’t PC enough for iO9.  Funny.

VJTL: Yeah, but it’s not just them.  Everyone seems to have some sort of agenda, or they want you to write the same thing, or at least the same quality as everyone else.

CD: Right.  It’s not about having better quality, or superlative quality, but about being of the same quality.  That’s pretty sad.

VJTL: Yeah, I would tend to call that “death by mediocrity”.

CD: This is what comes of giving kids certificates for participation.

VJTL: I’m not so sure about that.  Over the past twenty years or so, I’ve seen Fandom and conventions and publishing houses and television shows taken over by cliques—high-school-esque cliques, with writing being done by fans, starting with Star Trek: The Next Generation, with was nothing but fanfic with no consideration for consistency.  Now a lot of stuff seems to be written by fans of fans of fans writing fanfic of fanfic of fanfic, so that you end up with Fifty Shades of Gravy.  You know, if there are fifty shades to your gravy, it’s gone bad and you should throw it out.

CD: You have a point.  Even Miyazaki, of Studio Gibli, said that was the biggest problem with anime currently, that it’s got too many anime fans, Otaku, writing it.  OK, he didn’t say Otaku, but he didn’t have to.

VJTL: Well that’s the thing: I’m a fan of science fiction, but that’s not all that I read, or watch, and it’s not absolutely everything that I write.

CD: In other words, it’s not all that you are.

VJTL: Right.  And the thing is, it should be about quality, about good writing.  And when it comes to science fiction, it should be about expanding our thought, considering the options and situations that are coming up, looking at the facts, not at a political agenda or, worse yet, looking around and copying what everybody else has already written.  Bad science fantasy is now being hailed as great science fiction, as if it even qualified.

CD: I think one of the problems is that everyone’s gotten genre-happy.  They want to break everything into smaller and smaller sub-genres, and they will defend their particular subgenre to the death.  Those are supposed to be suggestions of direction, not stone walls dividing one part of literature OR fandom from another.

VJTL: Well, as a science fiction writer, I write science fiction, whether it’s Space Opera, Time Travel, Alternate History, Steampunk, all of the above or, most especially, none of the above.  In-fighting in fandom only ever destroys things.  It never creates anything good or new, and B.S. politics has destroyed more conventions that I care to think about.  We need to unite against the common enemy: Mediocrity.

CD: And yet, mediocrity seems to be the order of the day.  I suppose the easy thing would be to blame the internet, though it started before that was commonly available (though it was already more available to fandom.)

VJTL: No, I think the internet just shows you the trends faster, and if you’re just writing for the trends, then you’re just a hack and should be drowned for the good of humanity anyway.

CD: If you’re just writing for the trends, it’s not going to last anyway.  You’ll sell for a few months and then be forgotten.

VJTL: True, but those guys can afford a nice house and a nice car, and get their way paid for conventions.

CD: At least until they’re forgotten, which doesn’t take that long.

VJTL: Oh, I’m sorry; who were we talking about?

CD: Yeah, that’s my point.

VJTL: Still, the core problem is that our society in general seems to have acquired this belief that an opinion has the same value and quality as a fact.

/CD: That explains high school science lately.

VJTL: I mean, when did the Texas school board get to decide what was science fiction?

CD: When it became harder science than what was in their curriculum?

VJTL: Oh, come on.  That happened hundreds of years ago at this point.  You know, this guy told me he didn’t evolve from monkeys, and I said, “I can see that.”  He thanked me.

CD: <facepalm>  Of course, Texas hasn’t been a state for hundreds of years.

VJTL: See, that’s where our science fiction story should start.  A contest should be about the quality of the stories and the ideas, not about being all the same.  Hell, even a collection of short stories should be about giving the reader the best entertainment you can.

CD: And even if there’s a theme, they shouldn’t all be the same.  Seriously, though, for writing to be published, or for it to win a contest, it should be exceptional.  Not just good.  Not just OK.  Not just the same as everything else.  Exceptional.  Exceptional in quality of writing, and exceptional in ideas.  It should make the reader sit up and think.  I’ve read a lot of books, and the recent ones are really running low on that.  At this point, I’d settle for exceptional copy-editing.

VJTL: Look, I’m not going to say that my writing is exceptionally good, but I will say that most of the things I’ve seen that have been published in the last two decades would have caused me to fill up my recycle bin, empty it, have a nice, stiff drink, and start over.  At the very least, I give my stuff more thought, and I’m not going to wallow in some dilemma that everyone else has wallowed in without offering a solution, or at least looking for one.

CD: Well, that is what science fiction is supposed to be about: finding solutions to problems.  You present a problem, you lay out all the ramifications of the problem, then you start looking for solutions to the problem, you weigh the pros and cons of all your potential solutions, and finally you implement the most useable solution.  I mean, ultimately, science fiction is a way to work through society’s problems.  It may not always offer the best solutions, but it offers options.

VJTL: Yeah, the fans aren’t even listening to that part any more, even when it’s offered.  I mean, the greats have gone ahead and offered solutions to some of our current problems, and the attitude seems to be, “Yeah, yeah.  This is fatal in the long run, but what’s going to make me a buck today?  I don’t care if it kills me tomorrow.”

CD: Well, that’s certainly society in general.  And, yes, fandom seems to be catching that, too.

VJTL: I’ve heard people say, “Oh, it’s just entertainment.  You can’t learn from it.”  Well, obviously they can’t, but that’s not what it’s about.

CD: If you’re not learning something, what’s the point?

VJTL: Well, they seem to think it’s all for funsies.

CD: Learning something IS for funsies.  As I said, if you’re not learning what’s the point?

VJTL: Well, to learn you have to be smart enough to be able to learn.  Science fiction, at one point, was for intellectuals.  It was for scientists and engineers and people who knew how to think.

CD: And now?

VJTL: And now even the colleges don’t teach people how to think.  I mean, sure, I’ve known how to do it for so long that I have no memory of not being able to, but the faculties of reason have to be learned in and of themselves.  Despite the technology, many people these days have a world-view that more properly belonged in the Middle Ages.  I mean, I know people running around claiming to be fans who brag proudly about the fact that they don’t read.

CD: At least some of them are sad that they don’t read.

VJTL: Yeah, but there are others that don’t see that there’s anything wrong with this.  They don’t see that they can’t properly be fans if they don’t at least want to be reading.

CD: So, what’s the solution?  Science fiction is about finding solutions, and this situation clearly needs one.

VJTL: Well, if the writers, the fans, and the publishers don’t demand something better, if there is no market pressure to repair this situation, then these genres will simply die out, because while they can live for a while this way, eventually even the people who are most strongly demanding it be this way will get tired of it.

CD: So, as with all other things, vote with your dollars.  And your demands.

VJTL: As with the music industry, when the record companies took it over and insisted that boy bands were more lucrative and more consistent than The Stones, the Beatles, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd and Hendrix, and instead decided that we should listen to Justin Bieber, new genres burst forth.  When all the music in America had become incredibly bland in the 1950s, jazz and blues gave birth to Rock and Roll.

CD: So you’re saying we’re going to get new genres of literature.

VJTL: Sure.  It’s already happening.  I mean, right now we’re getting these little subgenres that aren’t necessarily any better, they’re just people going, “Ooh, I can do this and it will be a little different, and I’ll have my own niche.” But out of this we will get some, just like in the 1980s while the Punk movement was giving music a much-needed shot in the arm, Sting, the Police, Genesis, Devo, Huey Lewis and others were busy giving CPR to Rock and Roll.  J.K. Rowling is the greatest thing to happen to Fantasy since J.R.R. Tolkien.  I’m sorry, but some of the things that have been best sellers in that genre in the past two decades were written by people who couldn’t even make proper sentences.  The next Wells, Heinlein or Sheckley is overdue.

CD: “Best sellers” do not necessarily mean “best”.  They just really mean that more people wanted something to pretend to read on the beach.  It’s why I have historically avoided best sellers like the plague, no matter the genre.  I would love to be the next Sheckley, or Simak.  I don’t know that I have the chops to do it, but I would love to try.  Unfortunately, our culture does not value art or science, and does not want to admit that a writer can be either an artist or a scientist.  How many of our future Wellses or Heinleins are stymied merely by having to pay bills?  As for not being able to create a complete sentence, where are they supposed to learn?  I mean, the best way is by reading, but that does not teach one the rules, and with much of modern writing it does not actually teach one to write a complete sentence.  Are we doomed by a shoddy legacy?

VJTL: Yes.  But that’s not all there is.  As long as the past masters are still read we have a chance.  I grew up on Pirsig, L’amour, Gilman, before I even heard of science fiction.  As a child, my mother read to me the complete works of Shakespear and then, while they were reading Dick and Jane at school, at home I was reading Kahlil Gibran and The World According to Garp.  When I discovered science fiction, I cut my teeth on Clarke and Asimov, fell in love with Wells and expanded my viewpoint with Sheckley and Simak.  If I didn’t read Poe, Shelley, Lovecraft, Tolkien, and Tom Robbins, I would not be half the writer I am.  Greats like Niven, Spinrad, Delaney unfortunately will not last forever.  And while we have people like Steve Perry, Steven Barnes, Christopher Stasheff, and others, it’s just not enough.  Writing has become too much of a mob scene and the proliferation of writers and the drop in quality is choking the business like a garden full of weeds.  Now excuse me while I jump down off this soap-box and do a load of laundry real quick.

CD:  I read the classics.  I grew up, as a fairly young kid, reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Henrik Ibsen, Harold Pinter, George Bernard Shaw, Sir James George Frasier, Edward Albee, Sophocles, Euripides, Homer, O’Henry, my relative Samuel Clemens the steamboat pilot, and even the occasional modern writer like Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke.  They made me, to a very real extent, who I am today as a person and as a writer.  Of course, they had editors, and they had actual courses in English grammar in school (in the case of the ones that wrote in English, anyway).  I fear that fewer people are reading these authors, and I am fairly certain that English grammar is no longer taught to any effective degree, at least before the post-graduate level.  I am frequently horrified at the level of editing that is not taking place in printed or virtual articles and books.  Now, I’m aware that language evolves, and I’ve seen a bit of it in my lifetime in the form of slang that moves from rare to common to a part of the language (take a chill-pill, OK?), but I fear that we’re looking at a re-randomizing of spelling and grammar after a huge and concerted effort by Messrs. Webster and Fowler to standardize these things.

VJTL: Yeah, Clemons was the Terry Pratchett of his day, and I’ve read a fair amount of these sorts of things myself, but I can say with a certainty that English grammar was not taught to any effective degree in any class that I was in in school, but I’ve had rants about the quality of school that I ended up going to on numerous occasions.  As a small child, my mother read me the Deer Slayer, and of course I’m not talking about the modern Vietnam War era movie, but rather the book that the aforementioned Mark Twain blasted as utter crap.  As a small kid, it was a lively enough adventure story, but the holes in not only the writing but its connection to reality were somewhat obvious even then.  As an adult, I would not consider this to be writing worthy of my time but, then again, White Fang by Jack London really isn’t any better.  Nonetheless, these used to be exceptions.  As a reader, I demand better quality than that.  However, even they teach proper sentence construction.  It’s bad enough that movies have stopped having continuity editors and most books no longer go through an editor, but if you can’t make a proper sentence, then I don’t think you really have any business calling yourself a writer.  I admit that I can’t spell due to brain damage, but my computer can, and I have my friends check my writing to make sure that there aren’t any glaring mistakes.  Hans Christian Andersen never learned how to read and write and had to dictate his stories because he was dyslexic, but he made proper sentences.  Despite my difficulties, I continue to read, but I have talked to a number of people who are handicapped in no way, have plenty of time, want to be writers, and just don’t bother to read.  I’m not quite sure why someone who has no interest in reading would want to write, but there you have it.  I think we’re all going to have to do our part if there’s going to be a future worth reading in.  Put simply, I think the cure is reading.

CD: That, I can do.

Related media: My Dinner With Andre , Sideways, and Stranger Than Fiction.

How much is too much? (Classical vs. Modern)

I have always thought,”reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.” I just learned that has a name, Chesterton’s fence.

It is easily seen when someone buys a successful and growing business and starts by changing large parts of it–because of ego–and then the business quickly goes away. This is true in the Martial arts as well.

Some people change things to make them “easier” or just so they can claim they are doing a different style and call themselves “Grand master.”

The other side of this is when people cling to “tradition” and will not change how they do a move even when a better way is discovered or a fatal flaw is literally discovered. Ironically this violates several principles of warfare, business and combat.

Henry Ford refused to change from the model T until he was almost put out of business by a far superior Chevy. Many businesses have done this until they were gone and forgotten.

There is an inherent obligation when you find a problem in an existing system to look for a better way to replace it, but you are not obligated to be the one who comes up with it.

When I was first learning, my Sifu said, “If you find something that you think works better come show me and I will show you what is wrong with it, or I will change the way we do it.” That is a really traditional way to look at things in Kung Fu. In the Shaolin Temple they started with the 18 hands of the Enlightened One for 250 years then the top fighting monk traveled around China and collected more moves that worked. He expanded the style to 75 moves, and later masters did the same to expand the art further.

Once again it comes down to balance.

Further suggested reading: History, Philosophy and Technique,  Tao of Jeet Kune Do: New Expanded Edition, and The Shaolin Grandmasters’ Text: History, Philosophy, and Gung Fu of Shaolin Ch’an

Mastering a single form is a lifetime achievement?

Well, that’s certainly a traditional saying, but I think if it takes you an entire lifetime to master a form, there is something seriously wrong. Actually, I can think of three things that would have to all be wrong.

1. Your instructor would have to be crappy.
2. You’re not practicing enough, and not spending enough time thinking about the form.
3. You ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

Of course, I know number three because you’re putting up with number one, and continuing to engage in the two aspects of number two, and you can’t just figure it out.

I have generally found that instructors of the “just do what I do” category fall into two categories: Really good at doing and really bad at teaching, or Really bad at doing and really good at conning people.

When I was taking Kali, Wing Chun and Muay Thai, we were allowed to go to all of the instructors various classes in different locations. I don’t know of anyone other than me who did so. At one of the locations, the instructor was teaching a Kali class and a separate Wing Chun class. The only people in the Kali class were a 60-something and a 70-something pair of little old Southern ladies. There were more than ten students in the Wing Chun, and the instructor wanted to concentrate on the Wing Chun class.

Now, we were halfway through the quarter, and the two little old ladies had not yet managed to get down the first move. The young Chinese instructor from Hong Kong really didn’t understand them at all, and had more ego than teaching skill.

I readily agreed to teach them for him, and started going over the course material. It was readily apparent to me that they just weren’t getting it. Now, an important thing to remember is that Kali is actually a double sword technique, and you practice with the rattan stick so you don’t kill people in practice class. I looked at the women and asked them if they cooked from scratch. The younger one had only been doing it for fifty years. At that point, I knew I could teach them. I explained every technique in terms of kitchen uses of a butcher knife that they had been practicing around twice as long as I’d been alive.

Before the regular instructor came back, they had mastered considerably more than that quarter’s course material in Kali, including all the basic attack and defense moves. Then one of them asked me, “How would I use this for self defense?” I answered, “Cut up a chicken.” They then answered, “Oh,” followed by a horrified, “Oh…” and then a delighted “Oh!” of realization.

Now, I realize that I had certain advantages in having cooking the same way as these ladies since I was 8, growing up studying German long sword, and having had at least three quarters of Kali prior to this, but what really allowed me to do this was that I have an open mind, think about what I’m doing, and understand it.

When the instructor came back and asked how the class had gone, he was obviously gloating. He had been spending the last quarter competing with me, not very successfully. I was just there to learn. Of course, when they showed him the techniques that they had mastered for over fifty years, he was more frightened than astonished. He never did ask me how I managed to teach them that. As soon as they thought of it as a butcher knife, and were told what cooking techniques applied, they were masters of at least everything I had shown them that day. There are very few people who want to fight someone with a blade who can filet meat in less than a second.

This is what I call using the same experience points twice.

I know that there are people who will say that you can continue to get things out of a form indefinitely, but that is really dependent on two factors.  One is the person who is doing the practicing, and the amount they’ve managed to get out of it so far, and the other is the type of form in question, and how they were taught it in the first place.

There are three types of set, or kata: sets that teach the basic moves, sets that teach a particular strategy, and sets intending to recreate a particular fight or battle.  Siu Nim Tao from Wing Chun, and Skip Knees from Muay Thai are examples of sets intended to teach the basic moves of a style.  That is like learning how the pieces move in chess.  Thunder and Earth from Shaolin Kempo Ku Shu is a particular tactical attack.  That would be roughly the equivalent of  learning the Indian defense in chess.  No chess master is going to spend the rest of his life just practicing the Indian defense.  Certainly, there are perspectives that you can add to your practice as time goes on, from going back and practicing the sets and techniques you started with as your perspective changes, but saying that you have not mastered that technique would still be a stretch.

Every form or set, every technique or kata, has to be understood from both sides.  If you do not know the technique that you are defending against, if you cannot visualize it as a two-man form, then you really haven’t been taught the form.  When I go through sets with my students, I will go through the motions on the other side so that they understand what they’re defending against and where they’re attacking.  Since they understand what they’re doing, it’s much easier for them to learn the form in the first place and grasp its meaning and intent.   Yes, continual practice is needed to hard-wire the form and techniques into the body, and so that you will remember the form, and honestly to help you stay fit, but, hopefully, you understand what you’re doing and aren’t only waving your harms in the air like you just don’t care.

While mastery itself is a life-long process, the mastery of a single form should not take very long at all.  While continued practice will increase your proficiency, and thinking about it should continue to bring greater insights over the course of a lifetime, those insights really come from you and your understanding of martial arts in general, not from the form itself so much, unless of course you were missing stuff.

For some further reading to help you understand the process of learning, well, anything and put you on the road towards mastery, try The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life, by Timothy Ferris.

Money, Mojo and the Muladhara

Yeah, if it wasn’t for Wan Kim’s Urban Meditation (https://www.facebook.com/daoism), I never would have thought of the connection between the chakras and money. Having thought of it, of course, I find myself contemplating it from a theoretical standpoint.

While the existence of money itself is a product of the brow chakra, being an intellectual construct, its primary placement with regard to the chakras would be the root chakra as a necessity for life and security, at least for those who can’t just walk off into the wilderness and survive, which, quite frankly gets boring after a few months, in my opinion.

Yet there are other aspects to money. It has a relationship to the second chakra, because it is part of how we relate to other people. (Many people mistakenly think that the second chakra is about sex, but this is an oversimplification that largely depends on the individual person. The second chakra is actually about how we relate to the world and other people.)

A lot of people get very emotionally attached to money, or spending it, and that is a third chakra issue, especially learning to gain self control with regards to our spending habits.

When you use money for altruistic purposes, or even give it to the person begging on the side of the street, this type of a mitzvah relates directly to the fourth chakra.

Any time you are using money to “vote with your money,” either boycotting something or buying something or donating to a particular cause, or spending cash to boost a post, you are utilizing the throat chakra.

Returning to the brow chakra, you can purchase school, or books or classes, or educational toys or any number of things that will stimulate the intellect. In a way, this illustrates how you have to have sufficient energy in the root chakra to supply the other chakras when doing spiritual work.

Still, when you’re talking about basic money and getting enough of it, you are talking first chakra. This is just off the top of my head, but I hope that it’s useful to someone.

Flim Flam, Thank you Ma’am or: Spotting the Great American Con Artist

“Those who speak do not know, and those who know do not speak.” — Lao Tzu

Over the last week or so there, has been a conversation going around my house circulating between the topics of “The average person can’t tell the difference between a con man and a real martial artist,” and how sad it is that the most popular “martial arts” in America are not even real martial arts but sports.  There is a rather cantankerous old part of me that would be perfectly happy to tear apart and stamp on the grave of the common argument that these sports are even better for teaching you fightin’ than a traditional martial art with all the zealot that a convert can muster, because in this case that’s what I am, but that’s not what I want to talk about today.  Please rest assured that I would be more than happy to rant about the fact that, while we are supposed to respect all martial arts, some arts really are better than others. That having been said, it is the teacher and the student and how much the practitioner puts into the art that is more important than the art itself.  I realize that I have just made a really large post so far about what I’m not going to talk about, but please bear with me.

Over the years, I have seen my share of con artists trying to pass themselves off as the real thing, so now I’m going to pass along some of the telltale signs that I have identified, or just immediately spotted when dealing with people who are masters of the mystic art of “Who Flung Doo.”

The number of teenagers I’ve met that claimed they had been adopted into the family of, and had been taught the style of, the Grandmaster’s family while overseas in high school when I already knew the white suburban middle class neighborhood they spent their entire life in up to that point, approaches the number of styles there are in Japan.  A frighteningly large number of them have been ninjas, but there have also been mafia hit men in New Orleans. (Both of the people who told me this story had the distinctive feature that I knew that they had never been to New Orleans, but I had.)  There is also the occasional master of 108 wooden dummy techniques style or whatnot. Remember, this is their super secret family style.

One outrageous claim that I have actually heard went like this: “My Master made us stack uncooked rice and peas alternating on top of each other with chopsticks until they were at least six inches high. It’s really a lot easier than it sounds.”  This same person told me he was a master of Ishinryu and demonstrated by slapping both hands on his chest and flopping them out in random directions over and over again like a sloppy drunk doing calisthenics. Even if I hadn’t taken some Ishinryu before that, I certainly knew more than enough martial arts to know that there was a tractor with a nitrous injector on the other end of the chain that was wrapped around my leg.

In another case, a person I knew in Little Five Points wanted me to check out this couple that were telling her they were Baguazhang masters and wanted her to come over to their place so they could teach some to her.

Yes, I had in fact been walking the circle for some time when this happened and, being a practitioner of Baguazhang, I was really hopeful that they were telling the truth.  As soon as she introduced me, they started telling me that they were masters of fire dragon bagua (there is no such thing to the best of my knowledge) and discussing its precise linear attacks while describing it like the karate Movie of the Week, right down to the special effects.

You might get the impression that con men assume that you are very gullible and ignorant and that anything flashy, real or not, will drag you in. You are right.  The problem is that there are people who have been adopted into traditional families and have been taught, and some martial arts have some extremely flashy techniques.

The good news is that if they are for real, they probably aren’t going to brag about it all the time.  It may come up in conversation, they may have pictures of them with their class on the wall of their school, they may have a copy of Inside Kung Fu or Karate Illustrated with them on the cover framed, or some famous martial artist might suddenly walk in unannounced into one of your classes, but most likely none of those will happen.  While they may never mention it, you may find out through word of mouth.  It is possible that this will come from one of the other students, but it also may come even more impressively from a teacher or student of another style.

As to gigantic flashy moves, well, there’s good news and bad news.  The bad news is that there are quite a number of legitimate arts and sports.  The good news is, big flashy moves are generally a sign that you are looking at an inferior art, if it is even real.  Unfortunately, those styles make the most money.

The harder thing for most people to spot are the quasi-real instructors. There are many examples out there of the classes that we refer to as the McDojo or the Black Belt Academy.  The cookie cutter McDojo is designed to sell things, but it is really just an after school daycare with uniforms.  The Black Belt Academy, on the other hand, is a term for a “school” where, as long as you regularly pay your enrollment fee and occasionally show up, you will automatically be advanced until you, too, are a black belt with no regard for whether or not you have actually learned anything.  Still more insidious are the schools that are teaching but don’t really know very much or are claiming to teach something that they are not.  In the 1970s, when Kung Fu became popular, an astonishing number of Kung Fu schools popped up overnight.  The years of dedication it usually requires for someone to learn any given style of Kung Fu was no barrier because these schools were being opened by people who had never even taken a class of Kung Fu.  Many were Karate practitioners, some were even Judo practitioners, and an incredibly high percentage of them were actually just dance instructors.  A similar thing happened with ninja schools in the early 80s, of course.  More recently, I found a school with an instructor claiming to teach Judo, Aikido, Jiu Jitsu, Hapkido, and Taekwondo. Before you get too impressed, you might want to ask what this man’s qualifications were.  Upon investigation, it was revealed that he opened the school on the basis of the fact that he had been a policeman in this small town at one point, although if you really dug into his background, there were rumors that he had a black belt in American Taekwondo from somewhere.  I took some time out to observe his classes and never saw a single technique properly performed from any style.  I did, however, end up inadvertently picking up one of his students after they were injured in class and quit, but I did not actually know that until after the student’s first lesson.

One of the big giveaways that a school is not good, or is not planning to teach you, is that they will not give you a free introductory lesson.  This means they don’t want you to see what they are doing until they get your money. There’s an even bigger red flag if they won’t even let you watch a class until after you’ve signed up.  Another thing to look out for is if the head of the school never teaches the class, it’s always or almost always the top students who do all the teaching.  At one time, them wanting you to sign a contract was a way to know they wanted your money but didn’t care about teaching you.  These days, with the difficulty in keeping a school in operation, many people have turned to contracts in a desperate attempt to be solvent.  However, if they won’t actually teach you without a long term contract that is still a red flag.

As for me, while I have had many Masters, I am 85% – 95% self taught.  One elderly Chinese woman who was teaching me thought it was hilarious and would laugh every time I called her Sifu, because it means father, but she never corrected me because it was the correct title under the circumstances.  Please try and remember it is as much about the path to enlightenment as it is improvement in health, and that learning to kick ass really is more of an incidental benefit than a goal.  Be thankful, Grasshopper, for few learn so much of Ti Kwan Leep so quickly.