The Traditional Value of "Me First"

Little kids need to be spanked. I think that would sound inspiring if written in Japanese on a scroll for Japanophile dorks to hang up. It's certainly not a Zen quote, but it illustrates my point. It's that wonderful time of year where many kids get promoted and a) get distracted by the 100 other events in their social calendar b) rub their new belt into our faces, even if we don't care. One former greenie, now a purple people eater, can't go 5 minutes without mentioning one needs this for purple belt, or telling the others below him (one of them his older brother) you're not as good as me. I resist the urge to give him an advanced rank initiation bitch slap and hope he sticks his own size 5 foot into his mouth. We already have done 200 penalty push-ups, but what good are those if kids cheat push-up anyway? But I digress. I want to talk about the "me first" group of kids for a moment.

It used to be a long time ago there were no colored belts. There were no ranks (at least, not ones conferred on by the military or by birthright). It used to be that you would meet your enemy on the battlefield, not knowing if that person was a natural killer or bumbling farmer, and you'd take your chances. You wouldn't dare make assumptions on the person's worth (you'd have no time to, anyway), and if you did you were dead. Safer to assume you could be killed by this person, so you do your best to live. Say what you will about the traditions of battle having no place in today's world, but here's one I think we should keep- mutual respect.

Fast forward to now. If you're an orange belt, you're a doo-doo head. If you're only a purple belt, you are eh, maybe okay. If you're a black belt, hey, you know everything. Sound ridiculous, doesn't it? Let's set blackbelts aside a moment. To even comment that rank determines how you should talk to a person is arrogance at best, at worst a direct result of how this generation of karate students have become a "me first" and "other people's feelings whenever" generation. I blame, not TV, video games, or even celebrities (although all three do a good job of throwing water on the grease fire), but parents, who only associate a kid's worth in karate by how fast he/she gets blackbelt. "What's an orange belt?" they say, "I can't brag to my friends about that." And it becomes all about them and "when is my kid getting the next belt up. Hurry, hurry, so he/she makes it to blackbelt before he/she gets bored!". And, naturally, kids pick up on this behavior.

So what we end up with is a purple people eater telling his still-greenie older brother that "I know that, duh! I'm a purple belt now!" Disgusting, isn't it?