Why do some discussions shift from reality to rank the moment clarity or experience is questioned?
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This question came up recently in response to one of my articles: “Are the views stated your own views, or are they transmitted from your teachers?”
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On the surface, it sounds reasonable. But it reveals something deeper about how martial arts discussions often unfold.
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I write about a practical point, including context as I always do. I question assumptions, and rather than the discussion deepening, something subtly changes. The focus moves away from the subject and onto authority.
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These are the kinds of comments that tend to follow questions like this. “My instructor was Japanese.” “I hold this rank.” “I learned this in Okinawa.”
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Are these the kind of qualifications you must have to put across a different point of view?
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The question itself assumes that ideas must be owned by someone else to have value. That understanding must be inherited rather than earned. That independent thinking is somehow suspect unless it can be traced back to a recognized authority.
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But real understanding doesn’t work like that.
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If a method works, it can be explained. If a principle holds up, it can be tested. If an idea is sound, it can survive scrutiny.
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None of that requires the question “who taught you?”.
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In fact, once discussion reaches reality, pressure, resistance, failure, and uncertainty, rank becomes largely irrelevant. Violence doesn’t care who your teacher was.
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When identity is closely tied to rank or lineage, questioning function can feel like a personal attack. Defensiveness replaces curiosity, and the discussion is shut down rather than explored.
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My views are informed by teachers, training partners, students, experience, mistakes, my work outside of the martial arts, and reflection. As they should be. And after more than five decades of teaching and practice, holding a high rank and teaching title earned through that time, at what point are you actually ‘allowed’ to speak on your own behalf?
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Regardless of any of this, in my dojo everything is still tested against reality. If something doesn’t hold up, it doesn’t get a free pass because of who it came from.
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Experience matters. Teachers matter. Time matters. But none of them excuse us from thinking.
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If an idea collapses the moment it’s questioned, and needs rank or a recognizable teacher to hold it together, then it was never understanding. It was obedience.
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And obedience is not the same thing as skill.
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When someone asks whether your views are your own or “transmitted”, what they’re really revealing is discomfort with the idea that understanding can exist without permission.
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Written by Adam Carter – Shuri Dojo