‘Just one thing makes you mad about Martial Artists, Al?’ you ask.

Yeah, really, just one thing.

Do you remember back when you were first starting, and you would encounter the attitude that ‘my school is best/my art is best.’

I’m so mad I could hit…the air!

 
Now, after having done a few martial arts you have the overall picture, and you know that not one art is best.

And, if you are pretty savvy, you understand that people need to think their art is best, at least in the beginning. It is a mark of loyalty, of fanaticism that is necessary to truly immerse yourself in your studies.

You need that degree of commitment if you are really going to learn anything.

Martial Arts are tough, and it takes a person with zeal to make it through them.

Now, having said that, what is the one thing that makes me mad about Martial Artists?

Well, interestingly enough, it is an extrapolation of that stupidity of which we are all necessarily guilty.

It is an attitude that, since we have done martial arts we know everything.

It is a stopping point that happens after somebody has learned something significant, and then doesn’t know how to proceed, and thus doesn’t want to proceed, and falls back on, here it is, ‘I know that/we have that in our system.’

Yep, it is the refusal to move, the inability to learn more, and simply because we think we know it all.

But if you knew it all you could make an orange appear in your hand. Out of nothing.

Or vaporize a rock, into nothing, without the pesky atomic explosion that might accomplish such folderol.

Now, I encounter that attitude more than most, and this because I have gone past it. There is a residue, you see, which accumulates. And this residue of which I speak insulates those who wish to know, but don’t know how, who have succumbed to the one thing that pisses me off about martial artists.

So, you don’t know everything, and I say, ‘Look, here is this matrixing thing, and it can show you what you don’t know! Doesn’t matter if you don’t know what you don’t know, it works for everybody, and it finds out what you don’t know, even if it is different from what everybody else doesn’t know!’

Most people are polite, think I am just drumming up a little internet business with an internet gimmick, and they simply slide over my claims of a science…and the fact that I have over 600 pages of testimonials, and almost no detractors.

Well, I have a few detractors, but the odd thing–every one of those detractors has never taken one of my courses!

But to return to the sane ones, most martial artists smile, relax in their hard won competence, and say, ‘Oh, yeah, I understand what he’s saying, so I must have that in my art. No need to look.’

But if asked if they have ever seen a matrix graph? Whether they have ever come across something called a matrix of blocks? Whether they have seen the martial arts listed as a geometrical arrangement? They can’t say that they have.

Or, sad, if they have, the graph or arrangement is wrong. It is just a compilation of kenpo (or other) techniques that, given enough techniques, will invariably slide one to the other.

Not a logic, but a happenstance when one has information overload.

Not a slim, streamlined way of understanding all arts, of accessing all arts, but a jumble of everything piled in a bucket so you can’t see the bottom.

Well, there you go, that’s the one thing that makes me mad about Martial Artists. The fact that they have reached the top, and don’t understand it is a beginning for a whole new thing. A relaxation into self-satisfaction, and the end of the climb.

An inability to learn because they think they know it all.

Head over to Monster Martial Arts to find out more about how to start your learning curve upwards again!