Karate’s Self-Defense Facade

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Karate’s facade is about an outward appearance and belief, by students and often sensei, that the dojo maintains to conceal or deny the existence of a less pleasant or creditable reality. A reality the hinders things like income, student attendance and school retentions, in other words profits at the cost of possible the harm or death of a student. 

The worst is that of deliberate denial to achieve profit from the fears and angst of students or the feeding of egoistic beliefs that taking the course makes them, “Warriors.”  The second worst is not knowing what they don’t know, the ignorance passed down between sensei who were taught by non-professionals without an iota of experience who actually believe their expertise will be sufficient to defend against violence. They just simply don’t know what they don’t know and live on pure luck that modern society will not expose them to conflict and violence that leads to grave bodily harm or death. In truth that is how most of the self-defense industry and communities survive, pure luck. Those who know about violence tend to know how to avoid and defend against it and that may be a minority while the majority go right along believing. 

Karate is, from my personal view and perspective, the worst offender and I actually don’t believe they do it on purpose. After all, once you become deeply imbedded and have it deeply ingrained from folks who have earned a deep respect of their fellow karate-ka will find the truth of it untenable. When that develops into a generational model, passed down several generations with some of those original folks still alive and in practice, it becomes religious in nature where anyone who refutes or disagrees or presents a possible truth refuting those beliefs will be met as if they are religiously presenting blasphemous rhetoric to be hammered down till the nail disappears.  

I know first hand and from experience for I too dealt out the same old ineffective self-defense courses of karate until one day the light shone in on my errors and I actively took corrective actions to learn, study and teach the full spectrum of self-defense (see bibliography for references to present that same spectrum of completeness referred to as self-defense). It is purely a miracle that I didn’t use it in civilian self-defense for I would have ended up prosecuted and convicted - the luck factor once again saved the day. 

The only way to see past the created false facade is to self-assess and make a decision. I actually wholeheartedly beleive that encompassing all the principles of self-defense into karate and martial arts self-defense programs would actually enhance their models and make it more interesting to the students. You can still open with those physiokinetic teachings along with the multiple methodologies then implement the more academic facts for a well rounded and comprehensive program that would benefit enrollment, etc. but then again I like to dream of such things like truth, justice and the American way!

Bibliography (Click the link)