Watching yet another episode of Cobra Kai, the Netflix spinoff of the Karate Kid franchise, I started to feel uneasy. It didn't take me long to get at the root of what was bothering me. I was looking at a bunch of young people whose method of problem-solving involves puffing up their chests and looking hatefully at one another shortly before they start kicking and chopping at one another. It's part of the world in which they live. A fictional place.
I live in a world where this kind of thing happens all too often. In real life. Boys and girls whose lives and upbringings have brought them to a place where negotiating and making peace are skills that have thus far eluded them find themselves having the same kind of confrontations that their elder TV counterparts have. Only not as nearly well choreographed. And the injuries are more along the bumped heads and bloody nose variety, rather than the trickle of blood from the corner of the mouth. Captain Kirk style.
In Cobra Kai-land, these continued escalations tend to show up once an episode, without any adult intervention. This is probably because the adults involved are having their own challenges negotiating their relationships without violence. The same could be said of the conflicts that take place on the playground and in the hallways of my school. Except the adults here at school are expected to intervene and make sense of the uproar. The parents who send their kids to school ready to "defend themselves" rarely consider that this kind of support is what contributes to the problem. When you are nine years old, you can't always discern the finer points of "defending yourself." On an all too frequent basis, I have asked a student why they hit, kicked, pinched, shoved a classmate. Their response: "He was looking at me." There is no record of anyone being harmed by heat vision at our school.
All it would really take is one parent to step up and say that they didn't want their child to fight. At all.
Sadly, there are not very many good examples in our culture and our media of this kind of wisdom. Lots of folks tend to fast forward past that Jesus suggestion of turning the other cheek. It's not a sign of weakness, but rather it is inner strength that we all need to have in order to love if not at least tolerate our neighbor.
Rather than a roundhouse kick and a punch to the throat.
This, thankfully has not been my experience. A studio teaching martial arts typically holds up examples of restraint and good judgement with a spotlight. I witnessed first hand, normal operations halt for the telling of these moments in the real world. In this culture, where accolades were doled out generously for accomplishing incremental tests of memory and physical skill, this kind of inaction and self control received exceptional praise. Is my Son privileged to have had access to this? Yes. Thankfully he has all the lessons inside and uses them consistently, with integrity. Has it been tested in the real world, away from our privileged little community? Yes. And yes there were fights in his school. The parents weren't consistently honorable in their pursuit to defend their kid. He noticed and learned from that as well.
ReplyDeleteBut you're on the front lines of little human building. Your example of culture and media missing the point is mostly true. It does seem to win out in entertainment but plenty of role-playing and entertainment get the complicated inner nuance right. It's harder to find. But I guess that's your point.