As a young child growing up and particularly as a teenager, I was taught to be thoughtful, analytical and critical. My parents did not subscribe to the notion of being compliant, docile or blindly obedient to any religious, political or educational authority, although, I had to be courteous and respectful toward my elders.
As a sociology and philosophy student in college I was encouraged to be intellectually curious, resourceful, analytically critical and to conduct scientifically based research. My parents and college professors clearly worked from the premise that I should not follow the lead of others simply because they held titles, ranks or social positions of authority.
Over the years I have heard that I was too critical of others or that I expect too much from others. Yet, I have always maintained that if one expects less than one gets even less than was expected. Yes, my standards are high and I hold myself to those very same standards. A good number of my peers inside and outside of martial arts are old line systematic followers. They do not and will not accept any significant responsibility for their own behaviors, while seeking comfort and adulation from others who are lower on the status ladder of life.
For my own part, I am seeking new information, ideas, knowledge and understandings about how and why things work the way they do. I want to know how and why some things work better than others. As I look back over a number of years at comments and ideas that I posted on the internet, I came a somewhat logical but disturbing realizations... most of my martial arts peers are not very objective with regard to what they are doing, studying, teaching or actually believe in. They are high dogmatic in their beliefs and tend to be quite dictatorial toward their own students. At every turn and on every issue, these people tend to believe they have ALL of the correct answers, even to questions that have not even been asked. These folks are always right and there is not a single aspect of their art that they need to question, nor are they willing to entertain anyone else asking questions. If someone is unwilling to take their word on everything within the system, that person identified as being malcontent and an enemy to be abused and dismissed as the enemy.
It is sometimes amusing to me that as an independent minded, thinking for myself person, that a good number of my Modern Arnis peers - some of whom do not actually know me, but they have heard about me - are so quick to rally around the flag of Modern Arnis orthodoxy. They become quite angry with me and other so-called independents because we do some things differently and these orthodox people can not answer our questions about how and why they do things within the art. It is a classic case of kill the messenger, simply because myself and a few others have gone down a slightly different road within the system as designed by the late Professor Remy Presas. I am not saying that what the majority of these people are doing/teaching is flawed or wrong. I do not know that to be absolutely true. However, these orthodox-traditionalist are very quick to say that the independents such as myself are wrong. We are not doing Modern Arnis correctly. We do not do the art exactly as Professor Presas taught it.
Personally, I do not reject the methods used by the orthodox-traditionalists, I simply have a different way of applying and teaching what I learned from Professor, after researching the roots and alternatives within the system. I have gone off in a different direction by choosing to investigate all of the smaller subsets such as redonda, sinawali, rompida and abanico that are part of the totality that Professor included in his system that he designated as Modern Arnis. I am a researcher, not a follower. I ask questions and seek out answers. I am not a blind conformist. I want to explore, discover and innovate, not follow traditional authority. Objectivity and sound reasoning are very important to me, rank, title and years in system are not as valuable. That makes me a very difficult person for the orthodox-traditionalists to deal with when their goal is to use ranks, titles and seniority as the basis for the their leadership justification. A good number of orthodox-traditionalists also want people to blindly accept their claims of leadership simply because they claim that Professor told them this or that, without witnesses and they can not provide any written documentation to support their claims. Yet these very same people will often reject any similar unverifiable claims made by others who might be viewed as being in a position to challenge them for a leadership role in the Post-Professor era of Modern Arnis.
I have seen claims by a number of people who stated that their belt ranks earned under Professor Presas in earlier years were considered invalid by the new would-be leaders of the Post-Professor era. These people were told that they would have to re-test in the new organizations to have their current rank recognized. How in the world can anyone reject the belt ranks awarded by the system founder, Professor Presas, when in some cases that rank was earned before the current leaders ever became associated with Modern Arnis? Talk about hubris; those so-called leaders are at the top of the examples list.
I was part of an academic tradition long before I began training in the martial arts, met Professor Presas or joined the International Modern Arnis Federation. For me, discussion, debate and factual proof were integral parts of my way of life and the martial arts were merely another area of intellectual interest. I simply applied my sociological and educational training to the study of self-defense in the real world of street confrontations. I agreed with the late Sigung Bruce Lee's notion of taking what was useful and adapting it to fit yourself. Professor Presas version of that idea, that he often stated at camps and seminars was "You must make it for yourself." State either way, it makes a lot of sense to me. From my perspective, martial arts training is not about who or what is right, it is about what works in the real world of confrontation and conflict for you and/or me!
It is my belief that too many of my Modern Arnis peers are totally wedded to dogmatic certainty slavish mimicry of the late Professor Presas. Whereas I can see and understand the virtues of a sport orientation, forms competitions and the like, these will not necessarily transfer over to become an effective street self-defense system, where rules and referees are totally absent. The hard-core cloning of Professor Presas leads inevitably to the skeletalization of the system that was brought from the Philippines to the western world as a true fighting art.
Personally, I am very content to watch and enjoy others as they go their own way within Modern Arnis and as they present the art as they see fit. If their particular approach is comfortable for them, then by all means they should pursue it in the manner that best fits them. My intention is to continue to teach Modern Arnis as it was first presented to me by my instructor, Sifu Don Zanghi, at the Fighting Back Institute, in Buffalo, NY, as fighting system for self-defense, blended with Kenpo, Jiu-jitsu and Buno.
Jerome Barber, Ed. D.
Grand Master & Mataw Guro,
Independent Escrima-Kenpo-Arnis Associates
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