WHAT HAS THE WEST CONTRIBUTED?

 By Phillip Starr

After all I've written in previous articles about how the deterioration of the traditional martial arts can be ascribed, at least partly, to the West – commercialization, sportification, and on on, it would seem that I believe the West has contributed virtually nothing of value to the ancient arts. But the truth is quite the opposite, actually...I believe that we have contributed a great deal.

For instance, in China (and perhaps Japan as well), a student NEVER questions the teacher. Ever. To do so often results in a quick and rather painful response. It's a carry-over from Confucianism; to question the teacher is considered disrespectful and an affront to their position of authority and knowledge of the subject as. But in the West that's how we learn. From the youngest age, we're encouraged to ask questions. Numerous Eastern teachers who came to the West and began instructing Westerners discovered that we're always asking questions and many of them responded as they would in their native cultures (my teacher was one of them). But many of them eventually came to understand that questioning the teacher (in the West) is not a show of disrespect. On the contrary, we're asking the teacher because we respect him and we believe that he knows the correct answer.

Some Asian instructors quickly realized that THEY didn't know the answers to their student's questions...they'd never questioned their teachers! So they had to dig deeper and find the answers and this helped advance the arts a bit further.

One of the largest contributions made by the West has been in the fields of physics, exercise science, and kinesiology. Our forefathers knew that moving in certain ways worked very well but they didn't necessarily know WHY. Now we do...or we can find out. Much as many of us hate the admit it, a great many of our martial arts forefathers weren't particularly well educated. Some were functionally or even totally illiterate. Many lacked the verbal skills to adequately express what a student was supposed to do or feel. The “science” of the day was, in many cases, what we'd consider very crude. But thanks to modern technology, we've been able to determine exactly what happens when we move in certain ways and even find the most efficient ways of performing them. This has given the arts a HUGE boost forward.