Re: The only things certain in life are death and taxes.
Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2012 8:25 am
I think this is a complex question.
Common sense tells us that nothing’s fixed or ever has been; the nature of all things is change, of course it doesn’t always mean that change is for the better.
I think that in some quarters a resistance to the forces of change can betray weakness and insecurity. But change must originate from real authority, as opposed to assumed authority.
Then there is the problem of how we in the West perceive and approach the martial arts, which after all came out of an alien culture. We unconsciously bring to it our own cultural biases. The western attitude towards ‘tradition’ has some similarities to the eastern attitude but it is the differences which cause the problems. Also, in Japan the current generation are moving ever closer to an homogenised western outlook and the torchbearers of traditionalism are looked upon as dinosaurs.
Also, within Wado in the UK and elsewhere there have been those who have held up their hands in horror at what they perceive as ‘changes’, but when you dig deeper these so-called ‘changes’ are not the heretical changes that the insecure panic-merchants indicate; in some cases they are because the perceived authority has been acting in error, in other cases the ‘changes’ are reinventions, or come out of restorative decisions. They may even be a step up the evolutionary ladder!
Just a quick posting.
I’m sure I’ve missed something out.
Tim Shaw
Essex UK
Common sense tells us that nothing’s fixed or ever has been; the nature of all things is change, of course it doesn’t always mean that change is for the better.
I think that in some quarters a resistance to the forces of change can betray weakness and insecurity. But change must originate from real authority, as opposed to assumed authority.
Then there is the problem of how we in the West perceive and approach the martial arts, which after all came out of an alien culture. We unconsciously bring to it our own cultural biases. The western attitude towards ‘tradition’ has some similarities to the eastern attitude but it is the differences which cause the problems. Also, in Japan the current generation are moving ever closer to an homogenised western outlook and the torchbearers of traditionalism are looked upon as dinosaurs.
Also, within Wado in the UK and elsewhere there have been those who have held up their hands in horror at what they perceive as ‘changes’, but when you dig deeper these so-called ‘changes’ are not the heretical changes that the insecure panic-merchants indicate; in some cases they are because the perceived authority has been acting in error, in other cases the ‘changes’ are reinventions, or come out of restorative decisions. They may even be a step up the evolutionary ladder!
Just a quick posting.
I’m sure I’ve missed something out.
Tim Shaw
Essex UK