Mizner vs Benitez: should martial arts masters be political?

[wayne hansen]

It’s not weather someone can show you a few tricks or not
It is if they add to every aspect of your total training
It is not the good things they teach you that matter it is the false paths they set you on
Anyone saying he has good tai chi still is stuck in the mire of delusion
I had certain teachers who’s ex students I wouldn’t accept
Not due to the physical things they were taught but where their mind had been led
I realised it was not worth my time and the contamination of my other students
It is like showing facts to Trumpers they have been lead to a point where they can’t see
There are people on here I never respond to because it is of no use
I may talk about what they have said but that is for others
Mizzy Mizner showed all he had to show when he and his mate put on their littl Xmas show
Those that had faith after that are lost in the woods
Those who say he is of high skill and train with someone else reflects badly on their new guru
One class with a true teacher would show that
The only question to ask is can you empty your tea cup

[origami_itto]

Why is everything such black and white burning flame from the heavens lighting the sword of truth with you, man.

Lighten up, dude, you're the one painting gurus on the wall.

It costs nothing to just say something nice and move on. Some of us don't live in a cave but actually interact with and and push hands with students of the people that you trash online. It does nothing for the art or community to stir up negativity and feuds for the sake of nothing but defending your supposed ideal of tai chi purity.

We might disagree about things but the spirit of brotherhood and wu de allows us to put those differences aside, emphasize the good and common ground, learn together and move forward, progressing in our own art and the representation of the art as a whole.

I've never met someone who touched hands with Mizner who said there was nothing there.

It's not a zero sum game. Somebody else can do well and that doesn't mean you're doing bad. You're exhibiting what they call crab mentality.

Criticize for the right reasons.

[wayne hansen]

My loyalty belongs to the Art not the community
Because most in the community!? don’t care about the Art

[Dmitri]

What do think should martial arts masters (who definitely have a strong influence on their students) should use their position to influence their students?

"Should" is a funny word... From the legal/"societal" standpoint, it doesn't seem to matter. From a personal standpoint, you'll get almost as many opinions as there are people responding. (And then your cognitive bias will probably guide you towards picking the "best" ones )

[origami_itto]

My loyalty belongs to the Art not the community
Because most in the community!? don’t care about the Art

Yeah and my art needs practice partners who are actually trying to challenge me using methods I'm less familiar with.

It's not rocket appliances.

They say the art takes four hands to learn but that's just the start, in truth you need 400... 4000.

T. T. Liang said that his art was "making 10,000 friends and not one enemy".

If our loyalty is TO the art, then should our actions serve the spread of useful information about the arts to help guide others towards progress in their practice?

So what is really being served by your declarations?

Do they provide useful information, no.
Do they provide constructive suggestion, no.
Do they put down the alleged skills and knowledge of others with no direct experience to base them on.... yes.
Do they glorify the speaker's own alleged skills and knowledge with no direct evidence to base them on... yes.

The only information your posts like this are spreading is "they suck and I'm better".

Does that serve the art or does it serve the ego?

"Oh but I'm warning them away from bad taiji"

Okay, fair... where is the good stuff? How can a man in the USA in 2024 start a quality kung fu journey in Taijiquan?

Adam Mizner, for better or worse, provides an answer to that question and a path to follow. He has curriculum, delivery, and community. He's like Yang Cheng Fu in that he has built a brand that is arguably what others are measured against, good or bad.

You're more like Yang Shaohou, just being unpleasant and discouraging people from training with you, so your vision of the art is less likely to survive.

But if you refer to your history, you'll find some of the most productive and constructive periods in the development of these and other martial arts, IMA, EMA, chinese, western, American, medieval and modern, is when people with different ideas come together in the spirit of experimentation and learning and sharing information.

The Martial Man model is what works. It's not about ivory silos and development of theoretical situations in isolation, it's about mixing it up, listening to ideas, testing ideas, exposure to different perspectives.

So yeah, serve the art however you feel is best. I'm just saying from here just looks like an old dog barkin from the porch most days when it comes to anybody doing anything contemporary.

[GrahamB]

Rum Soaked Fist (thank god we didn't call it Rim Soaked Fist) today is basically:

[GrahamB]

With a lot of this:

[everything]

just a bunch of grumpy old "get off my lawn" boomers and old-at-heart but "special" "everybody gets a trophy for playing" millennials.

and we generation x are forgotten as usual

[GrahamB]

[everything]

[origami_itto]

I was born in 76, I think I'm technically a Xennial, the cusp of X and the millennials. My wives have all been solidly millenial.

[everything]

hmm you're slightly forgotten / latchkey ... slightly "special" and received lots of attention

[origami_itto]

hmm you're slightly forgotten / latchkey ... slightly "special" and received lots of attention

oh no, latchkey kid, come home when the streetlights are on. Spanked... okay I got a couple participant awards. D.A.R.E.

I went from no computers to using one of the most basic ones (TI-99 4a) at 9 hand typing pages and pages of BASIC instructions line by line to make a block of 6 ascii characters appear to dance and evolved all through the Amiga, Tandy, IBM Clone, Windows, Linux, OMG MULTIPROCESSORS, wireless internet WTF????, OMG TOUCHSCREENS, OMG EVERYTHING IS IN THE CLOUD, and now I can launch an entire corporate enterprise computing environment with a couple dozen lines of YML and have a working web app up in minutes using containers.

I was there when the deep magic was written, but I recognize we've made progress, and we can do better, not just in computing.

[everything]

hmm more gen x i would say. let's go latchkey kid generation. figure everything out yourself. millenials and Z got it too easy. tandy? web app? just make your wordpress blog or wix site in one click. need some code? ask chatGPT. (admittedly i've used all that too, and it's good)

[wayne hansen]

It just get more bizzar by the post
Grahame with his sly bitches that say nothing
Others claiming that boomers got it too easy
Some think that what I say is negative
It is not
I’m just saying what all those in the past have said
Do better
I know I help people here because the contact me on the back channel and say so
There is a reason they don’t say it here
They don’t want the drivel and bitching aimed at them
Mizner as YCF and me as YSH
It’s funny mentioning YSH when you would all love his stuff
MARTIAL man the name says it all
Ito you ask me not to mention you but address me all the time
This is why you are where you are and fail to go further no matter whose name you ride
From year to year you show pushing in Florida hey the standard never improves
I am a generous teacher as I am here with my comments
My teacher told me I give away too much here
I do but the art requires it