Honestly, the excitement never ends over at Action Skeptics.
If it's not one of Akusai's rivetting stories, it's something else.
Here is an absolute ripper of a yarn about Warriorschool - a cult within the Bunjinkan Budo Taijutsu school of martial arts. Magus even makes one of his rare appearances to regale us with the unsavoury part of the story - the bit where he was nearly indoctrinated.
The funny thing is that all of us know a story of people who've gotten a little "too into" their martial art of choice. Whether it's the meat heads at school who wanted new and more efficient ways of beating up the nerds, or the nerds themselves who end up forsaking their old buddies and spending too much time swotting up on the Tzus, Lao and Sun.
Anyway, Warriorschool appears to be as wacko as you get - a bunch of survivalists out to ensure that there is still a segment of society paranoid that we'll all turn to the person next to us, eventually, and crack their heads open like eggs.
In the middle of the story, a couple of bloggers purporting to be family lawyers representing the head of Warriorschool's wife make an appearance in the comments section asking for more information from Akusai and Magus. The timing is impeccable, although I worry that these guys are looking to serve some sort of defo suit on the Action Skeptics boys.
I found it a bit like how corporate cults like Landmark ingratiate themselves upon organisations in order to squeeze bucks out of the employees.
Anyway, this is their index page.
Part 5 promises to be incredible.
13 comments:
Sorry, that was me posting under the wrong account.
What I said was that the lawyer said she's pretty sure we're okay so far as libel goes; what we said isn't open to suit under Arizona law. Not that Prather wouldn't try, just that he'd lose, but he most likely won't try because it would just make him look worse.
I think we have it all pretty well under control for now.
Well, the lawyer has asked me to remove her personal info, so the saga you link to is mostly gone now.
When we do Part 5, we'll reproduce at least part of it, though.
I wouldn't have lasted two classes at this place. All the bowing and forced "respect" bugs the crap out of me.
This is why I enjoy the Gracies and their Jiu-Jitsu school (and most of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners who sprung from them). They don't give a crap about "spirituality" and "tradition" and ritual... It's all about making sure you don't lose a fight. You respect your instructors because they can quite clearly beat the shit out of you.
After the dojo split detailed in Part 4, that pretty well when the way of the dinosaurs for us. There's a token "bow in" at the beginning of class and a "bow out" at the end where everyone just gathers in a circle and bows to each other. There follows a couple of hours of instruction on how to win a fight, liberally mixed with profanity and off-color jokes and insults.
Damn, it's good to be away from those Warriorschool assholes.
Good to see you've got it all under control, Akusai.
And I'm waiting for Part 5 with baited breath.
And, Einzige and Akusai - that's one thing that always annoyed me - the concept of forced respect. People have to earn your respect. One should not be respected merely because they can kick the living snot out of you.
I like to think that there's a difference between respecting someone and fearing someone. When I was at school, which was a country boarding school for me, some of the guys in my year would beat up the juniors for not "showing respect".
In reality, what they really wanted the juniors to do was show fear or submission.
Respect should never be about power. And it should be mutual, or reciprocated.
I did Karate for a while and the dojo I attended completely ignored the spiritual.
Dikkii: One should not be respected merely because they can kick the living snot out of you.
Not so much the person but their ability. I think it's called "art" for a reason and to be good at it requires much dedication and devotion to the task of learning.
Dikkii: which was a country boarding school
Me too. Was yours in Ballarat by any chance?
Country boarding school was in Albury, actually.
I daresay you must have gone to either Ballarat Grammar or St Pats. How close am I?
Grammar. Well done...:)
"whether you need traditional horseback shooting techniques"
Sorry, but:
1. What the f*ck are traditional horseback shooting techniques?
2. Who the f*ck needs to use them? In what scenario would you need to shoot someone from the back of a horse? In the 21st century? Um, whilst fighting off a terrorist in a 747 at 30000 feet? Hi Ho Silver!
Or are this mob just a bunch of cowboys...
Kathryn, in the 1990's, TISM asked the question:
"You're a yob,
Or you're a wanker.
Take your fucking choice."
I would suggest that in the noughties, you're asking for trouble identifying as a cowboy, seeing that the rest of us are either pirates or ninjas.
Who the f*ck needs to use them? In what scenario would you need to shoot someone from the back of a horse? In the 21st century? Um, whilst fighting off a terrorist in a 747 at 30000 feet? Hi Ho Silver!
For goodness sake, don't suggest this to Hollywood. We all know what happened in Snakes on a Plane. Even if we didn't see it.
A lot of people complain about how crazy or stupid Warriorschool is, but most of the really insane stuff didn't become obvious until they started publishing the bulk of their Bracelet Newsletters. I just read most of the old Bracelets and at one point Robert Geyer talks about fighting Demons, doing exorcisms and then encountering Demons in human form. Jeff Prather's supposed resuscitation/resurrection was never mentioned verbally and I only found out about that by reading about it. Looking back on it all, it was so stupid. But being part of the organization was intense and there was some profound stuff going on, so I personally decided to stay, check it all out and didn't end up leaving until it got totally insane. I recently counted out that I had met 23 amazing people while I was apart of Warriorschool (and a few real retards). A lot of them were great people who were intelligent, had great personalities etc, too bad most of them were delusional.
As for Einzige and your comments about the 'forced respect' etc. I guess it could come off that way, but my impression always was that Jeff Prather was trying to train and prepare people to be good mannered when they go to Japan. I've never been to Japan to train with Hatsumi, but I just always imagined that they did all that bowing and respect stuff there as well.
http://warriorschool.blogspot.com/
Somebody, it's good that you met some great people there. Unfortnuately, from what I can tell of what I've read so far, Prather wasn't one of them.
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