Hero Worship

[Sauzin]

I have a two pronged opinion on that. First of all I don’t think it is the least bit necessary for a teacher to demand or encourage any kind of hero worship. Requiring that students have an open mind and are accepting of instruction without questioning is not the same thing as requiring hero worship. It is simply a method of training. Demanding to be treated like a superhuman god or professing this status to your students is an entirely different matter. This is not only unnecessary but it gets in the way of students learning. It is much better to project a humble yet authorative persona then to deify yourself. Martial arts students need to learn by example.

Now the second point is that hero worship can occur regardless of the teacher’s attitude or teaching method. It is imbued in our culture to mystify and express awe when faced with what we don’t understand. This is what I call the “it’s magic” phenomena. And yes it starts when the students get their first demonstration after walking in the door. I think the answer to this is the propagation of knowledge and a good relationship with the instructor. It’s still going to show up, but over time I think this mystification can be broken. And once you completely realize what the instructor is doing isn’t magic he starts to become less of a god and more of a human that has some very admirable skills.

[Conqueror]

Skeptic2004 - Yes, we met last year. Sensei mentioned you both coming back, but I guess we're down to one - sorry to hear that, hope you can make it back soon. I'm the only Jason in the dojo other than Perry's son, and he wasn't around, so I'm probably the one you're thinking of.

I know you didn't mean to besmirch Perry sensei, and I didn't take it as such. I meant for my posts to be more of a "this is how I think it works in our dojo, maybe it can be generalized" than a defense of Perry. I'll be the first to admit we put him on a pedestal. Once he and I were doing some ne-waza and I got a decent hold on him, but I instantly let him go for no reason - it was like my subconscious thought it was wrong to get the upper hand on him and I let go without even having time to consider it.

To get back to your larger question...

I think it's not *necessary* to have this phenomenon, but I think it is a nearly-inevitable byproduct of the manner in which the martial arts are transmitted. Think of it... EVERY dojo I can think of is organized the same way - "master" founds the dojo, starts with small cadre of students, gradually adds more students as the originals progress in rank. To found a dojo one must be very skilled, but as a teacher this skiled person will be starting from scratch. So every dojo's "business model" (if you will) is one in which the totally unexperienced are trained by the extremely advanced. It seems inevitable that a degree of idolatry will emerge given that the uninitiated will always be amazed by skilled martial arts. Since we are "raised" this way, the habit becomes ingrained and so we forever put our original "master" on a pedestal.