Agree to disagree….with respect

 As a long-term martial artist I can tell you that the first thing we are taught as students is not just the kicky and punchy things, its to bow and show respect. Respect becomes a core principle of Karate and its training, not just because its polite but because it has to start to premiate every aspect of training. Without respect we would not listen to our Sensei or pay them the proper respect for their hard work, and more importantly we would not respect our partners, and it would turn into a fist fight every time Sensei calls for us to do Kumite. However this respect, for some reason, tends to start and end at the Dojo door for some.

 

        One of the lost skills I have noted over the last few decades is the art of Conversation. I am not talking about the demise of boys talking to girls, which also apparently is a thing, but the art of talking to your neighbor or fellow adult about almost anything. You can not even say “nice weather” with out an argument coming up, so its often best to just say nothing at all. Years ago, pre-Trump, I would purposefully hunt out people with opposite opinions than me and talk to them about their thoughts on politics ext. Now I have a plethora of people to talk to as I live in a strange province in Canada that is polarized to the tenth degree from other places. See we bounce from Canadian left to Canadian right politically and the centralists like myself (Liberals in Canada) tend to not run anything, in fact the logical center as I call us, tend to be ignored and have not held office in Manitoba yet. Period, I mean EVER!

        Before Trump I could sit with the lefties and the righties and chat about politics, their thoughts on how the government was doing, who was in power and how they were doing and most of the conversations were okay. We would talk about childcare, health care, Gun control, the education system and other hot topics up to and including religious topics and I found that I grew to understand others ideas and opinions and respectfully agreed or disagreed and we moved on. Our chats went from inquisitive chats to downright debates, but we always found common ground or just agreed we were both good people and we just did not agree on stuff.  My opinions tend to be slightly right sometimes and slightly left sometimes, I try and create a logical base for my thoughts and if I can not then I push to figure out if Im just wrong or if I have to find a harder base to my opinions. 

I have always say that in a respectful debate you have to present facts only , not emotional based opinions. Now you can be emotional about the facts, but you cant go all ad hominin on a person, in other words you can not go insulting or calling into question a personas character or other aspect of who they are to try and “win” a debate, the minute you start this you lost already. To this day if you call me old, fat or ugly or stupid I thank you for your chat and let them know that now I am done talking to you about this subject as you can’t substantiate anything without it being an insult war. If you can not debate clearly and honestly then you should not do it. Now, not everyone can debate, some of us are not made for that.  Recalling facts and details while you are trying to keep your emotions in check is not everyone’s strength, so at that point you just agree or not and move on. Debate and conversation are very similar and important in growing and making yourself a better person. Unfortunately, it’s a lost art and now, especially now, it is often a two camp situation and if you are not in my camp…you are the enemy. Debate time is over and it’s time to fight and not grow. Someone once called it “Trump derangement syndrome” and I am starting to agree that people who are trapped in one of the two camps, and this extends beyond Trump and his followers, are actually showing a form of mental illness.

 

Now, not everything is worth debating or arguing over.  Any married man knows that you can argue logic against your partner, and you can argue emotion or opinion about things but often its just best to not argue or debate. You figure it out after about two minutes that this is not a “fight” anyone is going to win and you just figure its not worth the argument.  Now somethings are worth the conversation, but others are simply not. For instance, if you are fighting over buying a couch, yah that one may be worth the chat and debate, but if your partner is pro guns and you are anti guns, to the point that its one of the key cornerstones of your belief system…you are probably not getting into a fight that is going to lead to any outcomes worth the fight. You often have to find accommodation to your belief and your parters belief, like you can keep a gun in the house, in a safe with the ammo elsewhere or you can have it, but only for home defense and the target range.

Religion, having children and politics are perhaps the biggest fights you will have as a married person, and they are huge! But, talking to friends and in some cases Karate students or peers can often be filled with a lot of pit falls that you need to avoid.  Not everything is worth debating as well.  And the way you debate is important as well.  Respect is the primary component of any good debate, but also go into it with a specific intent, how you proceed after that is also important but most importantly don’t go into a debate to argue alone, don’t become disrespectful if you see you are not “winning” and most importantly…stop thinking you need to change your partners mind, instead think you need to learn how to understand their stance better.

 

Now, in my dojo….post Donald Trump…Politics have no place in my Dojo. Pro or anti, for or against….nope Don’t really want to hear it. Now I will admit that I tend to break my own rule and get caught up in uncomfortable chats, but most of the time its when I totally agree with my partners not when we are sharing opposing views, but lately I back away right away and crack a joke, even if its about DJT. Politics have become the hot topic that religion and sexuality used to be. Now no one really cares if you are gay, catholic or protestant or straight, they want to know if you are right or left…and when you say NO or BOTH they get upset.

I once told a very right leaning student that I was a centralist, and they challenged me by saying that does not exist, you have to agree with the “logical right leaning people” or you were a communist. To which I laughed and said “given those choices…comrade…I pick left” you should never try and change the mind of a centralist by simply telling them if you are not with them you are against them…stupid argument to start with does not mean you will get a favorable outcome. Politics have become omni present as well. You cannot go anyplace or talk to anyone that is not highly political now a days.

My wife used to ask me who our prime minster was, who was the president, are they doing a good job and when I brought up the whole split Canadian government system and how its superior to the states she rolled her eyes and asked me who the hell I was talking to that brought up politics! Now, she literally comes into my office with “Did you hear what XYZ did today” or “Im so proud to be in a country that has Wab Kinew and Doug Ford” and when I try to tell her that she is comparing a right winger and a left winger together she knows…and she is so on top of the trade issues between Canada and the US as well as the issues with the war in Iran. When my wife is tuned in about this stuff you know its important, but a lot of the info that we are dealing with on a daily basis is not worth getting into fights over.

 

Now politics have soaked into everyday life and almost every corner of our mind is filled with the new American political voices and the separations that its causing down south and internationally, and a lot of the conversations people are having are directly related to Trump and his representatives or his political moves. But it has NO place in the Dojo. Most of the people I talk to about Trump and the states are all on the same side, like 80% of my Canadian friends loath him and everything he does, often just as a reflex with out real reason, but most of the time with reason.  The other 20% just do not give a hoot about him, they just want this roller coaster to end. Online however about 75% of my friends are anti Trump and about 25% are pro Trump. Sometimes I like to talk to my pro trump friends and ask “why” to them a lot….like a great deal of the time…but they often come back with talking points that make no sense and make them sound very controlled by the MAGA groups. I do this online or on the phone, but never in my Dojo…well never again.

Politics have NO place in the Dojo, and Karate suffers when you let it seep in. Politics are now one of those topics that are so hot button that if you bring them up and you are very passionately opposed to the ideas that your partners in the Dojo have it could lead to ill feelings for each other and a new issue has creeped up as well.  Before if you were a left leaning member of a Dojo (Think Deep NDP thoughts) and you were sparring with a far right ( PC) member, nothing was going to change, you know your partner has opposing political views, but it meant NOTHING. Now people will actually spar and bring up “oh, how do you like that….like the vote you guys lost” I swear to GOD I overheard a conversation during Kumite that was like this. Which is one more good reason to make students wear mouth guards during any and all kumite, can’t debate with a mouth guard in your mouth!

The most dangerous time for political discussions is before and after class, however. I would normally talk to my students while doing pre class warmups and depending on the time we may bring up what is going on in the world, and 99% of the time it went to the political side, which I had to put a end too as we had some very passionate students. To say that their were adversarial moments before class is an underexaggerating to say the least. We had one very, very right wing student who was actually Pro-Trump, could not stand the left…or center and tried to tell everyone why they were simply wrong. She had the most closed mind I have ever seen, but outside of her weird political views and her strange views on things like COVID and the vaccine she was a very nice lady, which is why it was so sad that I got weakly complaints about her. She would come out to class on Thursday and Saturday and by Sunday my inbox was going crazy with complaints.

I am not going to say that this was all her fault in the beginning. I do take some responsibility for opening stating my political thoughts as a centralist, and I openly explored my thoughts and stances on different political stances, but the worst were the people who complained early on about her. Those that were more left in the Dojo took offense at her stances and often complained to me via email to the point that I had to start to curtail political chat in the Dojo. It was at a time that most of this was new to society, before this era it was considered rather rude to bring up politics in the club, if you had an opposing view, you just did not talk about it, you were there after all for Karate, not a civics debate.

After some time I had to put my foot down and state that politics should not be a topic in the Dojo, it leads to otherwise nice people becoming caustic and aggressive and hurt feelings, I should have said on both sides because my right leaning student got stuck on that and said that it was because the other students were snowflakes, and to a degree she was right, but she failed to see that she too was overly reactionary and took everything to heart. I started to not bring up Politics, even in my private life and I found that before Trumps second run, I was much happier not talking about it. Turns out Politics should be left to the politicians for the most part and open debates lead to NOTHING but anger and stupid insults.

 

One of the key fundamentals in running a successful Dojo is to have all the students training in the same direction, on the same page or simply in Harmony.  Adding political pressure and emotion to the mix never works. When you step into the Dojo and put on your Keiko Gi and Obi you are single mindedly focused on development of skill, decompression for stress relief and creating a stronger, healthier body and mind….trust me when I say its better to learn to agree to disagree or leave it outside the Dojo when it comes to your beliefs and your opinions no things not Karate.

I have had to referee several conversations and several situations in the Dojo and when it got political, I had to actually separate people physically from each other. And the arguments lead to other silly situations that should have easily been avoided. One student got very upset when they got hit in the head (Forehead) by a punch from a partner and came to me to complain stating it was because the other person hated her thoughts as she is conservative and he is a lefty socialist. My reply to her was that “The mechanics of a poor block do not care if the person attacking you is a socialist, communist or right winger, learn to block no matter what doctrine your partner follows”….I started to loath Politics at this point. I also had a left leaning student refuse to spar with our right leaning student and I had to explain to them that there is a need in Karate to train with people of all kinds of back grounds and them showing intolerance made them worse than the other person simply because you don’t agree with them on political ideologies.

 

Not everyone thinks the same way! Duh!  I was told this by a person that was losing the argument we were having terribly, but I felt a lot of respect because the person did not go low and start calling me names, I would not be shocked if they thought I was some kind of idiot for my stance, but at least they were pleasant about it. That the key! Show respect and don’t get worked up.  Getting angry because someone does not agree with you is silly. Today we see way to munch in the way of reflexive direction changes, and people getting very angry with other people who don’t agree with them. Anger that is misdirected and not controlled does a lot of damage.  The student who was on the right used to be seen by the other students as a great person, someone who was warm and caring and they loved sparring with her as she had a never give up mentality, but her attitude and belief system caused a toxic rift between her and others.

There is a difference between hiding your beliefs and not sharing them. Or at least picking when to share them. Oh, and we are not talking fringy ideas that cause damage and concern amongst your friends and family, I mean things that are much less caustic but still very aggressive. There is a time and a place to talk about these, the Dojo is not one of them. Obviously not everyone thinks the same things, or has the same opinions on different topics. I often laugh because Maggie and I have different ideas on things all the time, mostly silly things that don’t affect our relationship, but more so like I love pork chops and she hates them….or she likes her coffee with cream and sweetener and I have only one sweetener. We do tend to align politically but we try not to harp on it to much.

Not everyone has the same priorities, think the same way or have strong feelings about everything, however in todays world people tend to manufacture opinions, emotions and strong feelings for EVERYTHING and we all feel that our thoughts and opinions NEED to be expressed, they don’t…and no one really cares about your feelings about the Ectogenesis or the plight of the Vaquita Porpoise…..I had to look both of those topics up by the way.

I think one of the strangest conversations I have ever had was one on line when one of my very left-learning friends brought up that DJT and the supreme court ended Roe v Wade in 2022. They were aghast that I did not care to much about it, I have to admit that it’s A) Because I am not American and B) our reproductive rights in Canada are fairly firm…and C) I am an old man with no uterus and no child to worry about their reproductive rights. Now, my left-leaning friend was quick to point out that it’s not that I don’t care but that I have not really thought about it, which was wrong. She assumed if I was being honest with her, I would side with her or I was an idiot that did not agree with her. I had to point out that I did think about it a bit and when I realized that it does not affect me personally or anyone I know…CUZ IM CANADIAN…and she was trying to force me to take a side..she got even more offended…because we all need to be on a side. No, we do not. Not everyone has the same thoughts, feelings and opinions, its one of our strengths as a society that we all have a different stance, different focus and different skills…its not a weakness.

 

Here is another ideology I tend to live by, not everyone is always right or wrong. Not everyone that you trust and respect is right all the time, and not everyone you hate and or disagree with is wrong all the time. One of my favorite people in history was Gandhi, he of course was a historical figure who was widely viewed as a good leader of his people, a moral compace that taught the world about peace and love. Yet, he also had some very questionable if not disagreeable stances and habits that modern critics consider harmful or even just wrong. Yes, he was into non-violent resistance, but he also was a racist. He wrote a lot of negative things about Black Africans that were extreme and racist, he also was a bit of a pedo, he experimented with chastity and to test himself he slept next to his grand niece to test himself. We also now that bad people do good things too.  Oskar Schindler was the subject of a famous movie, he was a Nazi profiteer who also managed to save 1200 Jews from the gas chamber. Al Capone was a mobster and murderer who sold illegal booze and killed people to profit, but he also fed the hungry and supported Chicago during an economic hard time. 

Based on these extremes you can not look at any one person and just hate them and “all they believe in” simply because of their stance you don’t agree with. I am NOT saying let the Nazi and the criminal off the hook or make anyone that does good things a untouchable in your mind. Those are extreme examples. Your friend who believes in gun rights is not evil because you are a gun control advocate or the fact that your friend feels that a woman’s body is their own to decide on is evil because you are pro-life. No, what it means is that just because you hold different stances on something does not change who they are other than that one subject.

 

One of the lost skills our grandparents had is the art of sitting outside your opinions when your input wont help or is not warranted/needed.  In the old days we used to view opinionated people as annoying and silly people who should themselves be ridiculed. It was rude to give your thoughts to someone randomly or to voice your thoughts without being asked. I remember a TV show called little house on the prairie and one of the characters was a store owner who was a busy body who supplied anyone who would listen with her thoughts on any subject, she gossiped about people inserting her own thoughts into the situation at will. She was the bad guy on that show, often being made fun of after she made someone’s life difficult. She was “put up with” but never really liked. She was in a position where people had to come to her and buy important goods, but everyone knew who she was and that she would give her thoughts to anyone that listened, and they were often negative about anything and anyone. One time she was picking apart the politicians of the time and people rolled their eyes, she was an outlier and her behavior was unusual.  Now her type of person is the norm not the exception.

The fine are of sitting outside your opinion is when you see something or hear something and KEEP YOUR OPINION TO YOUR SELF! Its easy, someone says they support Trump or Carney or Ford and you simply say “That’s nice” and change the subject. Or if they say “I am pro-life” say “That’s nice” and move along. I don’t get why everyone has to share their thoughts and opinions as well. I have had conversations in which I have greeted someone knew and in ten minutes of meeting them they have stated 3 political stances they have made. We used to make fun of Vegans as they tended to tell us their food/lifestyle preference upon greeting them, but now it seems this is the norm for everyone. I ran a meet and greet at the club once and a student came up to me and told me that they were a school teacher who supported children’s right to decide their own gender and they were a “new vision” teacher….still don’t know what that means as I went blank on the gender thing. She then asked me my thoughts on children’s gender and I said “Oh, nice talk to you in a bit” and left the situation. Which was Rought with booby traps.  I also had a situation in which a friend of mine was talking to another friend of mine who is indigenous and started to lecture the indigenous person on their rights and historical hardships. I had to drag my friend away as smoothly as possible before that got ugly.

Social media is filled with ideology, peddling and manufactured anger towards topics that don’t have anything to do with the person. We want to show that we are all on what we see is the right side of a topic and that we are morally superior to those that don’t hold the same ideas. Our moral compass is replaced with dog whistle topics and vertu signaling to prove we are better. We are also rolling over history to try and replace what actually happened and replace the true history with change, which does not work…what do I mean? Well locally we have changed names of streets and roads because the name of the person some how makes us uncomfortable, and we flip the opposite using names to replace the roads that will somehow make us better…but it does not, or they start moral grandstanding to try and boost their personal status or make others feel that they are doing something.

 

A lot of performative actions are also done to try and look like they hare on a moral high ground, when nothing they are doing is changing anything. Rallies are good for making people aware of situations, but some are just them to make the people involved in the rally feel better about themselves. We live in a culture of outrage, if you say the sky is blue you are in for a fight, water is wet…boy you better get ready for a fight….and everyone is 0-100 in seconds when it comes to be offended and if you are not 110% pure on their side then you are 100% against them. You can think that Gaza is a war crime, but that automatically makes you Anti Semetic. You can support the state of Israels right to defend themselves but now you are anti Muslim. No one is willing to keep a thought in their head without it falling out their mouth!

Part of the issue with sharing your thoughts and stances is that we do live in a reactive culture now, we get offended so quickly and we don’t just share our displeasure, we vent our outrage. This is now seen not only as acceptable but also as a right or a character trait that is accepted and viewed as a good thing. When I was first getting into talking about politics, we had a word for someone who got offended and vented their feelings all over the situation…snowflake.

 

So, what does this all mean to a Dojo. Well if you choose to be offended and voice your thoughts, to over share about politics and proselytize (look it up) in class or engage in not just conversation but arguments with your fellow students…well you may get fired as a student.

The student in question began talking just to me and debating the right vs the center/left, which was sort of safe because I knew what I was getting into, but then she started expanding her topics and begin talking about right wing conspiracy theories and trying to recruit others, or just talk about her thoughts with other students. When COVID came around she had already created a lot of ill will with some of the adult students who did not really like her stance on the vaccine and COVID in general, we had a break for a year or so when we were doing Karate online only, but then when we came back she did not want to wear a mask, was preaching herd immunity and pushing others to not wear a mask or get the vaccine. She was spewing toxic ideology to anyone who would listen, and now it was not just me getting complaints about her support of the right to the adults, but parents saying she was dangerous and they did not feel comfortable with her around their kids.

I sat down with her and talked to her but she came back with “its my right to voice my opinions” to I tried to tell her that she does have the right to her own opinion, but she is an adult and should show tact in when its voiced and to whom. She disagreed and told me that she can say her thoughts and spread her information to anyone she pleased. I had to put my food down and informed her that the Dojo is not a democracy despite her thoughts, it’s a dictatorship and a company or business, if she chooses to tell everyone her thoughts, well I would have to ask her to not and to just train. She was good for a week then a parent reached out and told me she was now cornering them in the parking lot to complain about them saying something, ironically, she missed her mark and complained to the wrong family.

I called her up on a Sunday and told her that her behavior is what was at question now, not her beliefs. And she was to find a new Dojo now. I had to fire my first student in my life time…

 

Well, after all that…what is the moral of the story. Learn to agree or learn to disagree with respect. Its not worth your frustration over people not sharing or caring about your position. Even today most people are not very political, but a lot are reactionary, if you go out of your way to share your thoughts, they will react…positive or not. As a martial artist we must seek peace, but more so we have to learn to avoid conflict.