Always respects others and their decisions
“What is this guy doing?”
The words are said in the privacy of my car, and do not really reach the driver of the vehicle they are aimed at. I am on my way to my regular training session when I say these words. I am by myself in my car and yet I say the words out loud. The moment the words come out I chide myself. Objectively speaking, what exactly is that vehicle doing wrong? Going slower than me? Not accommodating to *my* particular needs today? Can I not think of a hundred cases in which I found myself on that side of the fence? Yes, I can. In fact, on many occasions, I remember being in an unfamiliar area. I was uncertain of the direction I was following. Or I was looking for a store I had never visited before, or even looking for a parking spot (in New York City)! In other words, there’s nothing that vehicle is doing that I have not done before. Yet, here I am, spouting judgement! What is happening here? Why is it so difficult to always respects others and their decisions?
I ask myself this because one of my goals is to help others in the Martial Arts world reach a more open minded point of view. Less criticism, more inclusion. I must always respects others and their decisions . But I want do so in a way that shows science behind it. If we do this, we all win. If we do this, we all learn and enrich our lives more.
Enter my friend, psychology and philosophy extraordinaire, Will Carpenter. He’s got just the message for me. This is a podcast that he pointed me to. Now this is one of my favorite things to do, actually. To take material that is not initially connected to the Martial Arts world and to find the connections. I mean the deep and true connections. Bingo! In this case, and after listening to this episode on this psychological phenomenon called Naïve realism, I am convinced this is the reason why so many people feel like they can judge others.
How does this manifest itself? In a study in social psychology students from Dartmouth and Princeton watched a video of a football game between the two schools. They watched the exact same footage, yet fans from both schools perceived the game very differently. The Princeton students “saw” the Dartmouth team make twice as many infractions as their own team. Dartmouth students viewed the game as being evenly-matched in violence, in which both sides were to blame.
However, when asked, everyone believed their perception of the event was objective, and that the other side’s perception was blinded by bias.
This happens all the time. It’s time for us to accept it’s simply the nature of being human. We believe that what we are doing is normal, given our circumstances, and mostly objective, given what we know. But other people with similar circumstances that make the opposite decision feel the same way.
It’s not just a question of the circumstances, it’s a question of distance from objective perception of reality. We tell ourselves there is an objective reality that we can perceive. And given a set of circumstances we think we react in a ‘normal’ way. In a study conducted in Stanford in 2002, students completed a questionnaire about various biases in social judgment. They indicated how susceptible they thought they were to these biases compared to the average student. The researchers found that the participants consistently believed that they were less likely to be biased than their peers. Some call this the Bias blind spot.
Why is this important to me? Because knowing this, I feel more inspired than ever to always respects others and their decisions. It’s not even that given their circumstances they made a different choice than me. It’s way bigger than that. What’s really happening is that we are fundamentally subjective beings, but we convince ourselves that’s not the case. It’s fear and insecurity. However, I find it extremely liberating to look at this in the face and embrace it. I do not have to be right. Moreover, there’s no basis to even try to be objectively right in choosing a Martial Art. I just have to be happy with my choices and understand that others can make other choices and feel equally right and validated as I do with mine.
Martial Arts are a wonderful phenomenon that involves everything that is being human, and engages the person at a very deep emotional level. In that sense Martial Arts are truly ‘art.’ There’s a level of maturity in the Arts in which someone can believe their Martial Art ‘is the best.’ Period. No conditions added, nothing. This is obviously something we are trying to overcome. It creates division, it creates infighting. It’s the exact opposite of what the Martial Arts can do for us, which is to help us grow to be peaceful, protector of our brothers and sisters, defenders of their right to be themselves, and happy in our own self expression.
But there is more than that. Even if we add the goal factor which has been, thankfully, more and more present in Martial Arts conversations recently, in the media or otherwise, it’s still a subjective choice. Oftentimes Martial Artists will compare Martial Arts to tools in a toolbox. The right tool for the right job. You can’t say a hammer is better than a screwdriver because they both solve a different problem. This is excellent and I encourage everyone to think along these lines when thinking about their goals. Not all Martial Arts are good at considering self-defense in its legal aspect, but they may be excellent for sport combat or competition, for example. And so it goes on.
There are several Martial Arts for any sort of goal you may have, and it’s excellent to consider your goals (and let them evolve)! Bruce Lee started Martial Arts because he was worried the opposing gang will find him in the street without his gang to defend him. 20 plus years later Bruce Lee was on an interview defending Martial Arts was honest self expression for him. This is a clear evolution in the consideration of goals. Yes, consider goals and find Martial Arts instructors and schools that can cater to these. But also, always allow your goals to grow and evolve. I think for most people, the original goals are just a trick of life to get us into an endeavor too big for us to understand at that point, but it has a lot in stock for us that we can only see as we mature.
But even beyond goals. With the same goals, under the same context, I can still not judge you if you practice a Martial Art totally different than mine. The above explanation on the nature of our psychology explains why. The level of objectivity of the decisions we make, as we see from the experiments in Naïve Realism, is way lower than we believe about ourselves. So, it’s not just that we should not judge. This is not about allowing others to follow their decisions even if they may not be as appropriate as ours. This is about understanding there is no way for me, objectively, to determine that my choice is actually better.
There is no ‘best’ Martial Art, even under the assumption of similar goals and context, outside of my own subjective decision and interpretation. And thus I am free to stop agonizing and spending energy defending this. I can, effectively, only do one thing: embrace it, enjoy it, and always respects others and their decisions to pursue their own Martial Arts Journeys.
To know more about this and other Martial Arts and Life topics, you can view my Vlog and Podcast as well as these Martial Journal related articles: 3 Ways Martial Arts Can Improve The World by Andrea Harkins and The Crab-Mentality In The Martial Arts by Scott Bolon!
Francis can be contacted at francis.cordon@gmail.com, he is also an active Martial Arts YouTube Vlogger as well as the co-host of the Martial Arts Podcast ‘A Thousand Exits.’
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