Chapter 169: Karate Lineage: What is it Truly?

First, in my mind lineal has to do with where a person is descended in a lineal, direct line of descent or ancestry, such as family, parentage and a genealogical way. So, when I hear folks use the word lineage to denote something outside those guidelines I wonder if that term is actually correct or even best. 

Lineage:a social group tracing its descent from a single ancestor. Lineal (in a direct line of descent or ancestry.) descent from an ancestor; ancestry or pedigree. (family, parentage, descent, line, genealogy, origin)

It is further stated, “The word lineage is used to describe everyone who descends from a particular ancestor,” that further leads me to think it is about connections with a commonality of parentage and family. I wonder if it is proper to use the term to describe connections to others outside the family because it seems family, culture and beliefs that are derived from that close connection is important. If we use the term about others outside the family are we trying to pull others into a family where Is is pretty much disconnected?

Isn’t genealogy, lineage, about tracing a line of descent continuously from an ancestor, ancestor being “a PERSON, typically one more remote than a grandparent, from whom one is descended.” Isn’t it about how a person is evolved from a line of others from parents, to grandparents, to great grandparents, etc.? 

So, the question then, for me, became, “How do we label those who came before, outside of familia connections, as important people who influenced the discipline, like karate, that is passed down through many generations of many different people to the practiced discipline of, karate, we have today? 

I think of terms like, “house, line, tribe, progeny and succession,” but wonder then how to properly phrase that to demonstrate how because even these terms when associated with lineage, ancestry and genealogy all refer to human familia. 

I don’t think of anyone in the karate community as being any type of family of ancestry with genealogical connection because that is about blood-relatives. 

In karate, and other martial disciplines, the term lineage is bandied about as if they, those who came before, were familia-connected. It is nice people want to give that honor to others outside the genealogical chain but is that accurate? There is no family genealogy in that type of lineage or “family” tree. 

The ONLY thing that connects us today, as individuals, to those who came before, except in rare cases that involve actual families like brothers and sisters; siblings to parents (I think of Mady Sensei who has sons, etc. in his dojo), and so on. 

Of course, all rules could be shuffled aside in any terms use, “symbolically.” Using lineage and ancestry in purely terms of what is being represented or implied, as or by means of a symbol or symbolism, would make the use acceptable. Then again, symbolism is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities so that would put that out of the running, so to speak. You could, tho, invest into things, like karate as a discipline, with symbolic meaning or character, that may do it. 

In the end, I accept the fact that people like to make connections between the now and the past on many things. I accept the fact that when used, karate lineage, that it has a symbolic meaning and character behind its use to denote a listing of people who came before the individual that effected and contributed to the current manifestation of karate in what ever form it is practiced. So, in the end, what they “Hey!”