Personal Interviews

Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

In our karate history many people who probably already know that when interviewing karate/martial luminaries the results of such interviews are always biased. Each person is depending on their memories that are creative in nature, i.e., based on what is reconstructed of the past while being absorbed into current memories to make, create, what are actually new memories that feel like correct past memories. They are also being strongly influences by current memories based solely on personal beliefs, environmental influences both past and present, cultural influences and emotional vs. logical expectations that are competing with each other. 

This is why such sources must be fact checked with historical recorded information, by the way which is also subject to the same variables, that would confirm. Add in that such sources are subject to biases and dissonance with confirmation bias at the top of the influential list. 

In the end, personal interviews whether simply remembered; simply recorded by interviewer in notes; simply recorded on video or cell phone video are NOT indicative of factual historical information but merely a persons "memories." 

It has been the bane of peoples karate who have great interest in the past and its historical benefits that such stories, metaphors and memories are not true, factual, verifiable or historically recorded by accepted authoritative sources because that leaves such interviews open to question and validation. It puts them smack square in the middle of, "belief." 

Even when a consensus is reached across a large sampling of the karate communities along with time in the discipline and the level of expertise and mastery toward any one or set of data-information on history or even present moment practices, teachings and understandings all still are subject to biases and dissonances because of the mere participation and membership in said communities. 

Only through unbiased and others outside the community, if they would even take an interest or could be commissioned to take this on as a project, could we come to some consensus as to what is true, truth and factual over interviews and such subject to human foibles. 

You can see this, can you not? If you allow your imagination to consider this possibility, then you can take a more concerted effort to seek out truth, justice and more, the more you can learn and understand. Try to resist the temptation of the human emotions that are triggered into non-belief and try to assume what is presented has truth to it and then move forward to a better understanding. 

Bibliography (Click the link)