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Submitting to who? I really don't know what you mean here. You said: This isn't really the place to parse this out, but since you started it and have continued it, I will reply. Basically every meaningful metric, wealth, health, wealth inequality, life expectancy, education, incarceration, political power, structure of workplaces, job precarity, housing, unhoused people, race, LGBTQ+ rights, womens rights, and more, US society it's not egalitarian, and very much so hasn't ever been, nor was it ever intended to be. If you'd like to continue this, we should probably do so elsewhere. Putting all of that aside, it's more than a stretch to go from me criticizing titles to "a mob" trying to take anyone "down a peg." Again, it's all just very unnecessary, and I've trained with some highly skilled and quite famous karateka, none of them felt the need be addressed by any title, nor are they. Other than stroking ones ego, what is the point? As I pointed out previously, they're also very commonly incorrectly used, which just makes people look more silly to boot.

It's easy to be pessimistic a day or so after a big loss. I don't imagine they will back slide as much as you think.

I'd rather the Lions have another three-win season than get the top seed, win more games than ever in franchise history, have a home field path to the Super Bowl, and then get shredded like that in the first game against, of all people, a rookie QB. Gross. They won't get better next year either, Ben Johnson is now coaching the Bears. They are going to take a step back.

Fires in LA, a snowstorm in Houston, New Orleans, and parts of Florida. Strange things going on.

Congratulations @aurik!

Congratulation @KarateKen!

1/15/2025 TKD Class: Traditional Class: 5:30 - 6:30 pm. I joined in this class; 3rd dan did the teaching. He does a good job. Basics was all the regular basics. Forms; supervised Won Hyo hyung, gave some more technical advice for power on some hand techniques, keeping the hand and hip back in order to land with power into the strikes. For one-steps, I worked through with low orange, green, blue and brown belt. I helped the students work on lots of technique work and foot placement. After class was over, I did about 10 minutes of floor stretching and went through Choi Yong 3 times.

1/13/2025 TKD Class: Traditional Class: 5:30 - 6:30 pm. This class went ok. Felt good to get out and do some moving. Basics: for our jump front snap kick section, we added a jump round kick and a hop side kick to it. I like this variation. I supervised students doing Won Hyo and Choong Moo hyungs. For one-steps, I went through low orange belt, and did continuous attacks for white/orange belt for a high brown belt. I supervised some sparring after that. Black Belt Class: 6:30 - 7:30 pm. Helped a second dan with some stance and movement work. He's recently recovered from a knee injury. I went through my 5th dan form, Choi Yong, 4 times, once at speed.

I agree with you here, but it wouldn't be strange for a CI to feel a sense of guilt for providing such student the skills used to commit untoward actions on others.

1/8/2025 TKD Class: Traditional Class: 5:30 - 6:30 pm. I taught this class. Got through basics, and for forms went through Dan Goon, Won Hyo, Choong Moo, and Yoo Sin. Got through one-steps and then worked a sparring drill with the students. Offensive student would do a switch-foot round kick a few times and made contact with the chest protector. After each student getting reps on that, I had the defending student throw a spin side kick counter. Next time I'll parse the drill out a bit more to make it more progressive.

Some fighters that have bases in those styles have performed well, but they probably altered their training to mimic MMA training more in order to accomplish those goals. They excel in their style first, then move up to MMA style training, and that helps to give credence to the base training they had in their original style, if they had success. I don't think there are many dojo-to-cage stories that omit the MMA training aspect.

Congrats on reaching 1,000 posts! Thank you for all of the contributions that you have made over the years, KarateKen.

Congrats!

Thanks KarateKen, Zaine, and Bob! That means a lot. Things are progressing, but the fires still aren't at 100% containment. The Eaton Fire is at 89% and the Palisades Fire is at 63%. Right now, we are forecasted to have some rain this weekend and that would be amazing both for the fires and for air quality.

If someone refers to you as a primary care physician, there's no implication that the person using that term is submitting to you. That's the difference. If I say "big yellow square," does that mean that all big squares are yellow? No, I simply mean that the square is big and yellow. But our society is egalitarian, even if it's only true on paper. That's why we freak out when we find out that it's not in practice (such as gunning to take the "grand pubas" down a peg). This isn't the case in many other parts of the world.

Relevant to this discussion: https://kodokanboston.org/2024/01/02/another-martial-arts-post-on-titles/

That's not at all what's happening here, and there are plenty of distinguished titles ie doctor, professor, various job titles. I don't see any mobs trying to take my primary care physician's title away, nor do I see any going after Americans calling themselves grandmaster, hanshi etc. I disagree with your premise too, "western" (a very loaded term that's kinda incoherent and was greated for jingoistic reasons mostly) society is nowhere near egalitarian.

In my interactions with those of high dan rank from styles with shogo titles, those titles are only used when referring to such individuals in the third person. But I don't think that matters. Ezomatsu simply called out the (mis)use of those titles, not those who hold those titles requiring their students to address them as such. We don't have shogo titles in Shotokan*, so I don't have a dog in the debate over the use of those titles. But I don't think that the motive for criticizing the use of these titles is nobler than the usage. *Yes, I'm aware of some, such as the late Vincent Cruz. But you'll typically only find these in Shotokan dojos that are either independent or affiliated to smaller organizations founded by a Westerner. I believe that those of us in larger reputable organizations like ISKF, JKA, SKIF, JKS, etc have a legitimate right to play the "no true Scotsman" card on that.

How so what? The misuse? They're not used in a way to address sensei in Japan, and you'd never refer to yourself as such. That's just an incorrect usage. But also, just why?

Most of the instructors I have interacted with, especially the ones who have been awarded shogo titles, prefer to be called "Sensei". We always refer to our CI as just "Sensei". Any other (full) instructor is "<name> sensei". The exception is our CI's father, who we refer to as just "hanshi" - he doesn't insist on it, but we just do it out of respect. When the head of our organization visits, he simply asks to be called "Sensei". I have yet to run across an instructor in our style who insists on being referred to by his/her shogo title.

These are accounts heard personally, the most recent from about 5 years ago.

The worst thing you can do in a Western egalitarian society such as ours is to have a title that implies command of respect from other people. That will easily attract a mob that can't wait to take you down a peg.

If I may respectfully ask, just how so??

One of the nice things is that Japanese pronunciations are very consistent across the board. For the vast majority of words, they are pronounced exactly as they are printed. There are a few common words that a vowel sound will get dropped (the trailing "u" in desu being one of the common ones). However it's definitely not like English where you can go through something even though you have a cough. Yeah, English pronunciation & spelling sucks.

Last Saturday was my second test in Matayoshi Kobudo (for hachikyu). I was originally scheduled to test in December, but due to the cardiac surgery in November, I had to miss too many classes to qualify to test. No biggie, I'm still training and moving forward. We had four candidates at the test: I was testing for hachikyu, Daniel and his son Ian were testing for rokkyu, and Michael was testing for nikyu. The way our CI runs kobudo tests is that each rank has a new set of required material, but the tests are cumulative. So my new material was sai no hojo undo, but I also had to perform bo no hojo undo dai ichi as well. This means that the higher rank the students, the more material that needs to be covered, and the longer the tests need to run. Daniel and Ian had to run bo hojo undo dai ichi and dai ni, and technically I only had to run dai ichi. However, I volunteered to also do dai ni, since I am feeling reasonably comfortable with it. (Our CI will teach you whatever he feels you're ready for, so we'll often work on things that we don't have to test on for quite awhile). Over the past 6 months or so, I've also been training with the 6.5' untapered purpleheart bo that I made. That bo is probably twice as heavy as the untapered oak bo I have, so when I brought in that 6' oak bo to test with, it felt light as a feather. I felt the test went really well. I was able to get good speed and power in all of my techniques, both with the bo and the sai. In addition to the formal test material, he also ran us through the first bo kata (shushi no kun); even though that is not required until shodan. All in all, I felt that I put forth a really good effort, and I got some good feedback on how to improve things for future tests. And yes, we all passed. I'm attaching the obligatory photo in front of the nafudakake: