Hi. If you don't already know, this is Sam. I run a radical online martial arts program called Liberation Martial Arts. And since I've been organizing it, there are different things I observe and learn or different takeaways I have that aren't appropriate for the main curriculum because it's more of an aside or my perspective in putting the curriculum together rather than part of the curriculum.
So it's more behind-the-scenes thoughts about the curriculum and around teaching it than it being the actual curriculum. And these thoughts are too long or too inside baseball to be a social media post. 100% it'll just cause confusion or turn into a conversation about something else.
And since these are just my takeaways in real time, I'm sure they'll eventually change. LMA is a dynamical system that builds upon itself so my future thoughts build on my current thoughts and therefore will be different than they are now.
But I thought my thoughts and observations might make for interesting short, probably very short, episodes for the podcast stream where you follow my stream of consciousness in real-time. And in following them, you can even see how things scaffold and how I end up where I end up.
So that's the impetus for LMA Talk. LMA being Liberation Martial Arts. Liberation doesn't just describe who it's for, meaning those with liberatory politics, it also describes our pedagogy. For instance, people can say they have a leftist gym or collective, which describes who it's for, but that doesn't necessarily mean their pedagogy is leftist, or they've even considered what a leftist pedagogy would be.
Whereas LMA started from scratch and was like, well, if we build the pedagogy from the ground up, what would a liberatory pedagogy look like? So here we are.
It's not a version of the traditional learning model but nicer and care-informed; it's just a different model altogether because the oppressor's model itself can't be reformed and needs to be abandoned, and we need a new one to replace it. And this has confounded many new practitioners in our program but what's been great is they're excited for something radically different.
You would think radical would also mean radically different, but from doing this longer and longer, that's more often not the case, and people start from a place of tradition and what they're used to.
Prescription is one of the most basic forms of top-down authoritarianism, but that's often the starting place for 99% of anti-authoritarians, anarchists, socialists. Because it's something they haven't thought about. They start from tradition and what they're used to.
So, from running LMA, there is no left political camp I really identify with other than Marxism in a broad sense. Which I'm cool with. We can do our own thing.
Now, something I've been thinking about a lot lately is jargon. Jargon is specific terms used in specific contexts that aren't used in everyday conversation. So either the word is new for most people, or the way it's being used is new. And in organizing Liberation Martial Arts, I've changed my mind about jargon.
Even right there, organizing. If you're not on the Left, that term is already jargon because most people think about that word differently. And how I'm using it is also different from how socialists use it because I'm applying it to teaching, specifically for martial arts. Because I'm saying the martial art teacher's role should be the same as a political organizer's. Organize and facilitate the activity, provide resources, answer questions, and give people autonomy to figure out the details. And you intervene only when you need to and give prompts or reminders as you go along and you adapt in real time based on needs. You should also be care-informed and human-centered because you're dealing with people, not ideas. You should never forget that.
And so what I've come to realize is, you can only get so far without using jargon. Yes, jargon is off-putting and should be avoided initially, especially if you want to invite people in, but eventually, if you're going to keep progressing in ideas, you need new words for new ideas. As radicals, new words should be our thing, should they not? Look what it's done for inclusion.
This may be where political organizing and martial arts organizing are different in practical terms. In political organizing, realistically, how far do you need people to progress in new ideas? I don't know. Right now, the challenge is to just get people to participate.
But with martial arts, you have people already motivated to participate. They don't need convincing. They're also committed. So martial arts can progress much further than just participation because that's the starting point, whereas, in political organizing, participation is where you're trying to get people to. So we don't even say participant because they're beyond that. We say practitioner because participation isn't the end goal but the starting point. Practitioners are people committed to a practice. How far people can develop beyond participation is infinite.
So maybe jargon isn't always practical in political landscapes because you're mostly getting people in the door. It might just be useful for those people wanting to progress in thought because they've already been participating.
But once they're in the door and staying, jargon is practical. This is the case in martial arts. Jargon is necessary and practical.
In fact, jargon is already commonplace. You listen to someone talk about Brazilian jiu-jitsu or muay Thai or boxing, and a regular person will have no idea what they're talking about.
But going back to tradition, the jargon is all technique-focused because learning is technique-focused or instructor-focused rather than exploration and concept-focused. See why we needed a new pedagogy? This sort of jargon, making it about the technique rather than the practitioner, is what's actually gatekeeping. It doesn't matter how nice or welcoming you make this; it's still going to be exclusive because it's going to be all about memorizing a library of names and moves rather than being about you and your potential.
So it's not good jargon. It's bad jargon. But where jargon or even new ideas or even thought is lacking is in pedagogy. Martial arts jargon at large is in what you do, not how you do it or why you do it. Get the fuck out of here with weeb Japanese terms for techniques.
In fact, techniques don't matter. Then you might ask, well, what's the point of instruction? Why do you need instructors, then?
Exactly! You don't.
You just need a training model or organizer to help practitioners organize themselves.
So that's what I'm trying to do. Getting people to think about their capacity and how they do things differently. And by creatively using language people are already used to, I've gotten practitioners very far, but eventually, we hit a wall. I'm just refurbishing and reframing ideas people are used to, but we eventually need jargon to push new ideas people have never thought about.
For people to learn completely new things, they need new words to categorize them. They need words to build off of like scaffold. In fact, avoiding jargon just made things harder because people got so married to and comfortable with old ideas that are holding them back.
Similar doesn't mean the same, and just because an old idea is similar doesn't mean it's the same as a new idea. Playing table tennis is not tennis. Drinking water out of a cup is not drinking coffee out of a cup.
Especially when I'm introducing a radically different approach, old ideas can only get you so far. But being still bound within old ideas isn't very radical, is it?
I need jargon to introduce new pedagogy, and to progress, practitioners need to learn new ideas rather than hold onto old ones. And once I began doing this, the progress was even better. Practitioners were like, "Oh, this makes so much sense," "This explains so much." Because it made it even less about techniques and more about concepts and the practitioner's autonomy to apply concepts.
If you're so used to being told what to do, you have no language for how to do things on your own. That language is going to be jargon until you get used to it. Then, it's just normal and appropriate.
Having the terms to make it about the practitioner makes me less of an instructor and more of an organizer and concept facilitator.
And so jargon is great when it is necessary and has a context for it or vice versa. When there is context for it, it is necessary. I think jargon is gatekeeping and intimidating when it's unnecessary, doesn't have context, but most of all, when no one explains the underlying concept.
That's all I have for now. If you want to find the Liberation Martial Arts curriculum, it's on the Southpawpod Patreon and also on Substack. You can find links to both at the main website, southpawpod.com. Hope you all enjoyed the first installment of LMA Talk. See ya.
To access the Liberation Martial Arts curriculum and contribute to the sustainability of this project as my family and I navigate some recent health and financial challenges, consider upgrading your membership. If you've been putting it off, now would be a great time to sign up. Find other ways to support us here. – Sam
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(I write daily about martial arts and other topics from a liberatory perspective. If you like my work, upgrade your subscription. You can also support me on Patreon or make a one-time donation on Ko-fi. Find Southpaw at its website. Get the swag on Spring. Also check out Liberation Martial Arts Online.)
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