Rank

A few different ideas have been percolating in my head lately, but this stems from a quick discussion after a karate class the other night. Our school is highly populated with children, some of whom have achieved their black belt. This is not a trivial thing to do, but it really represents the beginning of training, not the end of it, and that lesson is difficult to teach. It's especially difficult because the wait between tests is longer and the amount of material to learn is smaller.

But by the time you've achieved black belt, it's time to start thinking about giving back. It's hard to comprehend unless you spent a few hours in the thrall of Ralph Macchio, but this isn't exactly what you signed up for when you started paying for lessons. Most of us had visions of beating up the school bully and winning the hearts of women everywhere, not teaching others.

One of the principal lessons, though, to be learned in the martial arts is that rank is to be served, not to serve. Most of the rank-conscious intend to use rank for their own ends, whether legitimate or not, so we have a lot of kids lording rank over others (and more than a few adults, of course). They forget that one of the reasons to aspire to black belt is because of the people who made it worth it. It wouldn't mean anything good if black belts were traditionally criminals.

The application of this lesson is tremendous when we look at it from a wider angle. The Realist in me agrees that it should be the goal of leadership to make their office honorable.

In other words, there is a Moral attachment to authority that is inescapable. If we hamstring the ideal—on purpose or otherwise—we find leaders reduced to power-hungry, money-grubbing men and women whose desire is for rank to serve, rather than to serve rank. And we all know where this leads—we read about it every day in the news.