Everything posted on social media, everything recorded on video, everything written in articles, magazines and postings, everything both Sensei, Senpai and Kohai present in training and classes. Why fact checks?
Well, because no one person has all the answers and often humans assume the reliability of what they have learned and presented often under the hidden cognizant dissonance and confirmation biases that say, "Hey, I have that right."
Even when we fact check we should, so to speak, write that down in pencil because in the next moment all of it, or parts of it, may or will change.
Fact Check: when you do this, do it wholeheartedly by investigating (the subject/issue) in order to verify the facts. Here is where it gets real tricky, especially in the martial arts and karate worlds, because nothing was really written down historically on the two, at least in the karate and closely associated martial systems that we study and practice today.
There are legends, theories, ideas, quotes and other teachings that were passed down and on without the ability to really fact checks them. Granted there are people out there doing a lot of translations to English, etc., in the attempts to clarify what it is we know and understand but beware that most of those translations are form materials written most recently, say the last one hundred years or so. Not exactly historical either because it comes from those, like me, who can be biased toward confirming what we know and have come to believe.
Be a doubting Thomas, fact check everything and don't assume just because someone has been doing something for many, many years and wears a paneled obi or red one for that matter because today there are more doing it wrong then right. Then ask, who's to say which - in short, fact check that too "IF YOU CAN."
Then there is "faith" for sometimes we just have to accept things on faith then either validate and keep or invalidate and toss it.
No comments:
Post a Comment