Intellectual property, loyalty and what's owed by the modern martial artist?

Discussion in 'General Martial Arts Discussion' started by Late for dinner, Feb 15, 2017.

  1. Late for dinner

    Late for dinner Valued Member

    Over the years we have had discussions about what an instructor can ask of a student, what one owe's an instructor and what one can carry off when they leave a system to go somewhere else or start up on their own. Some people would say we buy a service/knowledge and we don't owe the instructor anything else, a case of exchange of mutual benefit, that's all. Others spoke about loyalty to the 'master' , 'system' etc which sometimes came across as blindly following 'tradition' whether necessary or deserved. This sort of divided the pragmatists (sports/combat oriented) from those who wanted to the whole cultural package. Fast forward to 2017 and you will find that those divisions have become blurred. There are a few videos circulating now in the BJJ community saying '' why should I share with someone who might not be loyal to us?'' or ''why should I give my soul to someone who thinks what I value so much can be simply purchased with no commitment''?

    Seems that the old ways are ? have returned. Is it because of competition and people not wanting to lose money? Is it because people want to keep the system ''pure''? Is this really necessary? I ask because at one time I thought that this sort of position had disappeared from the modern MA world. What do you think about this shift in thinking? Do you think it's reasonable?

    LFD
     
  2. holyheadjch

    holyheadjch Valued Member

    Jerks will be jerks. The more people practice a style, the more jerks will practice it too. I wouldn't worry, they're still a minority.
     
  3. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    can you share the videos please.
     
  4. Late for dinner

    Late for dinner Valued Member

    Not sure how well these will show up but see if this works.

    http://www.facebook.com/CrosleyGracieAc/videos/1326850224020125/

    http://www.bjjee.com/articles/tom-deblass-loyalty-jiu-jitsu/

    First one is a video about training at different gyms by Rorion while the 2nd is a discussion of loyalaty.

    To be fair there are opposing points of view about eg cross train and learn what you can from the best ( http://www.bjjee.com/articles/cross-training-over-loyalty-maximize-your-training/ ) but I thought it interesting to see what reminded me of the old oriental approach to training that amounted to people in the gym being part of a family, us vs them etc. Just wondered whether this is because of the money/competition aspect of BJJ or if this underlying feeling has been there all along but just not emphasied.

    LFD
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2017
  5. Giovanni

    Giovanni Well-Known Member Supporter

    thanks for sharing the videos.

    but i didn't get your questions from either video. what rickson is saying is pretty spot on when it comes to competition. at a competition, a competitor is representing a school/coach. training at two places at the same time does beg the question, under what school.

    deblass made the point only that he would train at his own teacher/master's school and not other nearby schools and he was very open to people training all over, including his own school.

    i don't think either video or post is saying one can't switch schools.
     
  6. Late for dinner

    Late for dinner Valued Member

    I don't have any audio at the moment so I can't find the exact wording so I won't put my foot in it by attempting to paraphrase. I just thought that it sounded like Rickson wanted people to be loyal to his club and felt that going elsewhere suggested disloyalty. I also had the impression that he didn't think one should be committing oneself to teaching a person who would not commit themselves equally to the school owners's team/cause whatever. So to me that sounded like the KF guys who used to say if you want to train here train here, if you don't then leave (classically shown in Iron and Silk where the guy takes tai chi while learning KF and gets asked to go - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099857/ )

    Maybe I am reading too much into it. One reason why I started the thread, to see if this was what was happening.

    Thanks for your input Giovanni!

    LFD
     
  7. PointyShinyBurn

    PointyShinyBurn Valued Member

    The bow-to-your-sensei attitude has always been very prevalent in BJJ, especially in the "old school" and especially on the Helio side. Traditionally different schools were in fierce competition, often on the street as well as the mat and plenty of technique was kept inside the family (read Roy Harris, for example, about the early days of Gracie teaching in the US).

    The "open source"/Globetrotters side is a much more recent development, really within the last ten years or so, and plenty of places very much don't subscribe to it,
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2017
  8. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    I never thought it disappeared, actually, because I've come across the, er, "closed universe" mindset a few times: a guy who taught in his backyard, a silat school, two TKD schools.

    And of course I've also met instructors who were totally open to anything with anyone.

    From my point of view the "closed universe" silat guy I met seemed to totally be into purity, wanting to pass down things without change. The TKD instructors seemed motivated by money ("You're my student, not his."). The guy in the backyard -- I didn't actually understand his motivation.

    You asked if purity is necessary. I believe there is value in maintaining the past, sure. There most definitely is truth in the proverb, "Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it" -- meaning in this context that we're just going to inevitably reinvent things from the past if we're not exposed to them now. To avoid that, there is value in keeping a system so that collectively, taken as a whole, the martial arts community will be able to learn from those former systems.
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2017
  9. Late for dinner

    Late for dinner Valued Member

    Interesting points aikiMac. I would ask you to consider the possibility that arts like BJJ might not exist today if purity was maintained. Kano refined and thinned out traditional jiu jitsu to come up with judo. BJJ developed from judo with a limited rule set. Without the modern aspect of randori that was integral to modern judo I wonder if BJJ would have become the phenom that it has become? Now BJJ is being married and mixed and exposed to things in the MMA world (sambo/lutre livre/wrestling/etc). Perhaps the evolution is still continuing and the end game may be quite different. If purity was maintained from the start then there never would have been BJJ in the first place. Just playing devil's advocate but I hope that what I am saying makes sense.

    LFD
     
  10. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    Very true. Hey, there might not be judo, either, because it was an alteration of JJJ, right?. But I think we can have both. Some of us gravitate toward the old ways, and some of us want to experiment and make changes. I like to think that we can co-exist. (That's what I tell myself, anyway.) :heart: :p
     
  11. Late for dinner

    Late for dinner Valued Member

    I reviewed what Rickson was saying and it was ''you give him love, advice, respect, he becomes family... if you not decide who you are going to represent why am I going to bother, should I give me soul to you? .... this is not my son, this is someone else's son who has just come to suck my knowledge..''

    So here I hear an instructor saying that he is giving too much of himself that to give this information to someone who isn't fully committed to his school. I guess that someone who wasn't going to be fully committed but was still paying the same fees would not get the full amount of information/training that others would get.. the comment by PointyShinyBurn re Roy Harris appears to confirm that this is what happened, at least in one stage of the development of modern BJJ.

    Does that make any sense?

    LFD
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 15, 2017
  12. PointyShinyBurn

    PointyShinyBurn Valued Member

    Which styles would exist if everyone had maintained the 'purity' of everything they did forever? Which fields of human knowledge in general?

    Modern BJJ was invented by Rolls when he adapted the point system from wrestling, for a start.
     
  13. Late for dinner

    Late for dinner Valued Member

    Couldn't agree with you more. My initial query was are instructors realistic in trying to stop their systems from morphing as students gain experience and interact with others in the world. I just thought that the move towards not teaching because a person wasn't affiliated sounded like old school MA rather than the sort of Heinz 57 approach that appears to be affiliated with some MMA.

    Good points though. Didn't know about the wrestling thing. It will be interesting to see if BJJ starts to go through what Judo has experienced - some people longing for the old days, the old ways and the training that was not focused so much on winning in sport competition.

    :' D

    LFD
     
  14. PointyShinyBurn

    PointyShinyBurn Valued Member

    It's not a move towards anything, it's a traditional attitude that's persisted among many.

    What or who are "some MMA" and what do they have to do with Brazilian Jiu-jitsu?
    Yes, again as in any human endeavour there's a lot of that. Partly with legit reasons and partly because getting old and having teenagers choke you with moves you don't know is inherently unpleasant.
     
  15. aikiMac

    aikiMac aikido + boxing = very good Moderator Supporter

    Realistic only to a degree. In time we'll (sadly and unfortunately) probably get political battles something like in JKD -- "We're the real BJJ" vs "No, we're the real BJJ" -- because one side changed something that the other side didn't want to change. :(
     
  16. SWC Sifu Ben

    SWC Sifu Ben I am the law

    These ideas are bourne from a very primitive tribalism which permeates the majority of cultures, affecting everything from inter-group dynamics to enforcement of norms. In short, it's a group of humans doing exactly what humans do. So yes, it's exactly the same as the kung fu schools used to do, as corporations do, as any groups in competition do. Secrecy is valuable because surprise is an asset. As for whether it's "reasonable," I'm not actually sure what you mean by that question. I think the question we ought to be asking is what is the utility of this kind of tribalism, and I'll break down my thoughts.

    The passing of vital knowledge via an intimate relationship between instructor and student is timeless. More than tradition it too is a longstanding behaviour permeating different groups within society over millennia. One of the first things my Sifu constantly stressed to me was that relationships give you greater access to someone's resources, in this case knowledge and effort, as you become more intimately intwined in their life. This is a facet of human relationships in ours, and most societies. In a sense this transfer via relationship de-commodifies the knowledge, returning it from being a thing which can simply be bought and paid for, to a living familial tradition in which a vital part are the traditional values so often highly esteemed; deference, obedience, etc. This increases the value of instruction which, as many discussions here have pointed out, is often a problem as a non-labour related endeavour in a consumerist culture is often devalued.

    The drawback is that this required intimacy for passing of knowledge makes the art vulnerable to the pitfalls of traditionalism; cultishness, traditionalism, and secrecy. The last could be significantly troubling for efficacy as openness and exchange allows for better and easier adaptation of combative systems. The competitive aspect of BJJ both creates a certain amount of this type of miserliness but is also enough of a balance that it will not allow those potential traditional pitfalls to be a problem for any schools which maintain a healthy inter-club competition to allow for the competitive exchange of knowledge and Darwinist selection. So although I would prefer an open exchange of information to increase everyone's efficacy, I don't foresee this hamstringing BJJ. So as long as it doesn't affect the general standard of practice and instruction I don't see it as a significant detriment.
     
  17. Late for dinner

    Late for dinner Valued Member

    I guess I was referring not so much to one person as an attitude. MMA fighters can have a reputation of looking for coaches who can help them to win fights. It's can be about what can I learn in order to counter my opponent. I guess if you knew you were going to go up someone with a particular grappling style you might look to different BJJ/grappling coaches to try to be certain to know how to deal with that opponent. How common is this? I don't know. I do know that there have been MMA fighters, with a BJJ foundation, who said get what you need to win the fight wherever you can find it. It didn't mean that they forgot their original coaches, just were pragmatic about where and what to learn. An example? How about Wallid Ismail who beat Royce, Renzo and Ralph Gracie? His comment? ''You have to look at what is best for you, look for the best coaches. You can add more coaches but do not forget where you came from.''

    Hope that makes more sense.

    LFD
     

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