The Path Less Traveled

I got this question yesterday:

Do you feel that showing this kind of thing(Piper/Silat Knife) in such a public forum is ethically or socially responsible? I know that anyone with enough money could probably find and learn such things, but do you feel that it's really socially responsible to make it free? In my experience, the money + hard work barrier is, more often than not, all the deterrent needed to keep this level of lethal techniques off of the streets.

It's a tricky thing to answer in simplistic terms; Am I responsible for the actions of another? No. The first thing our parents teach us is “You are responsible for your own actions” (right behind “Chew with yer goddam mouth shut, you Neanderthal!”)

Would I feel responsible if someone used my teachings to maliciously hurt another? Yes. Because underneath the cynicism, I would know in my murky black heart that I had a hand in this person’s ability to harm others, and that he used that ability injudiciously.

About Piper, and all the Pencak Silat/Knife Techniques I show on youtube…It’s not that easy. In fact, the complexity is one of the safeguards against someone hijacking it and going crazy with it. It’s NOT typical of any other martial system, and you need more than “Kung Fu” to interpret it. I consider myself an advanced martial artist and it has taken me over a year to absorb the timing, fluidity and rhythm to a SMALL degree, and I'm a friend and kind of distance student of these guys and Mushtaq Ali, a proponent of Cape Knife systems. I am a former dancer. Needless to say, I know my way around a vivisection. After a year of slow-motion mimicry daily work and analysis, sweat and flow, flow, flow…All I could produce was that “Slipstream” concept, and that’s really just an expanded move that Nigel does in one of the videos. So understand: It takes near-fanatical dedication to be able to learn this stuff.

On top of that, Piper has a specified corridor of application. you can't just bounce around with those moves and win a knife fight, you have to know how to enter, evade, counter, etc. It's just as easy to get killed using it if the person doesn't know how to apply it.

So to me, a person who simply tries to mimic the moves will have to put in SERIOUS work to achieve anything close to ability in Piper. I don't believe it's possible in just a passing effort. It would take commitment on an unbelievable scale. I know this because that's what it's demanding of me. So, having said all that, I don't believe I'm simply giving this knowledge away. I have posited a sample, but nothing over-telling. It's like the blueprints for an atomic bomb being online...You're still going to need a nuclear physicist and an atomic engineer to assemble a functional bomb.

Looking over a few Google results, I see that the majority of online teachers refer to some Eastern philosophy or religion for their moral bearings as far as Martial Arts are concerned. There are some I actually know personally, and I know they are Christians, yet they quote the Tao Te Ching when it comes to the responsibility of warriors (I hate that word) in a societal structure. Others, of course, bend to their various religious leanings, sometimes throwing in a good one liner to cover their tracks. "Jesus said love thy enemy...I love them with all my heart and a good right cross!" I really wonder if the moralistic essence supposedly found in Martial Arts training isn't something like a placebo, something we imagine is there because it sounds good or makes a wristlock appear less sociopathically violent.

To address the question of martial morality in broad strokes, morality in the Martial Arts suffers from the same crippling effect that instructor standardization does: It’s entirely up to the individual. There is no governing body that regulates Martial Art instructors the way it’s done in, say, the medical profession, so anybody can be one through either hard work, sleight of hand, or both. By the same token, morality and spirituality

Morality and spirituality are normally coupled together in conversation as if one automatically guarantees the other. This is nonsense. A lawless man can believe in God. A moral man can be an Atheist. I believe a person’s moral development and their spiritual development are mutually exclusive more often than not. In other words, you can believe in God, but your conscience won’t bother you enough to stop you from cheating on your wife.

I am included in that equation, by the way. Not the adultery part(!) - For me personally, Martial Arts was never about becoming a teacher, I wanted to be a good fighter. To that end, I worked hard on my martial education, trained with good teachers, and as a result I have a solid teaching base. However, this is just luck on my part. It wasn’t because of a standard I set myself to at a young age or anything.

On the other hand, my moral compass isn’t as finely developed as my physical abilities, and I don’t include any spirituality with my teachings. This is not to say I advocate violence or lawlessness, although many religious leaders will try to sell you on a definitive “one side or the other” view. I am not a subscriber to the school of thought that Martial Arts are for spiritual or moral development. I do agree that they can be, with proper guidance, but I find that's usually up to the religious leanings of the teacher. I look elsewhere for morality, I look to Martial Arts for understanding of combat principles and body control.

The responsibility to society is another thing.

With all the murders occurring in the world due to the Baretta 9mm semiautomatic, why isn’t Baretta being sued for “moral negligence”? Does anybody at the Baretta factory feel the least bit responsible for the crimes committed with their chief export? Why not? If McDonald’s was found “criminally negligent” to the tune of 3 million dollars for scalding hot coffee, why aren’t the makers of Rohypnol (the date rape drug – Roche Laboratories) made to stand testament for their “Insomnia Cure”? Because morality and social responsibility are, when all is said and done, up to the individual. A corporation doesn’t feel “morally responsible”, it feels lawsuits and governmental strictures that (supposedly) keep it in line. A Martial Art system doesn’t feel socially irresponsible for being deadly, the only stop-gap is in moral judgment of the practitioner.

Last year in a public forum I proposed someone should introduce a measure of heated lead at a high velocity to the upper parietal region of our current administrative leader. Repeatedly. Now, as erotically stimulating as this thought is to me, it was socially irresponsible to suggest such a thing, even in jest. In retrospect, what if someone HAD done as I suggested? What if he had gone on national television and said “Thank you, Bobbe Edmonds! Your words were a guiding light for me!” as they carried him away in a shackled straightjacket? I love a good rant, but I really don’t want my articles to be the deciding factor in a person’s life choices.

If you don’t care about the world around you or the person next to you, you won’t feel responsible for his welfare, nor he for yours. So, morality, at least in part, means accepting responsibility. If we accept that some of our actions have consequences outside of our scope of awareness, then the table is set to change the outcome on our end before it spirals out of control. If one of my students used what I had taught for criminal or homicidal means, would I feel responsible? Probably. Would I stop teaching? No. I would use the example to become a better judge of character about whom I was distributing knowledge to.

There have been some examples. I have had students that I tossed to the sidewalk because they were untrustworthy. In almost all the cases, I tried for at least a year (in one case, three) before I said “Y’know what? You’re just an asshole that’s never going to change, and one day you’re going to get your ass kicked. I think that would be the best thing for you, and I don’t want to impede that in any way by teaching you how to successfully defend yourself. Get lost.”

Nowadays new students have a month. If you don’t make the grade within the first 30 days, I’m sorry, but I’ve learned the hard way: I don’t waste my time on people who I don’t trust.

Something that has served me well over the years is a piece of advice I was once given: If you are ever in a situation where you are unsure of your moral footing, look to what is the most difficult thing for you to do, the thing that you would rather avoid. The easy road is almost never the right one, and the hard path will almost always allow you to look at yourself in a mirror the next day.

That’s as close as I can get. I’ve tried to develop some definitive moral corridors for myself the past year, but there’s nothing that wasn’t really there already. I almost feel like a hypocrite, writing this stuff. It’s not like I’m an Angel or anything. I’ll still give Todd a hard time about his religious bearings in class this weekend. We’ll still be practicing neck stabs and killshots.

But I'll try to keep the psychopathic killers to a minimum.