27 May 2023, White Belt Diaries II
In 2024, we’ve become slightly uncomfortable with outward displays of hierarchy and largely we’ve lost deferential attitudes and reverence towards authority. On the whole – great – I don’t want to have to tip my hat to some posh boy. But a baby of some sort was thrown out at the same time as that bath water. I can’t put my finger on it exactly.
How is this exactly about jiu jitsu? Let me get there.
The cliché argument along this line always goes something like ‘Back in my day…’ and bemoaning how teenagers don’t treat police officers with respect. I’m not making that argument, but I’ve sensed a loss of something myself, in less cliché ways: in the managers who try to affect a ‘matey’ attitude; in the teachers I taught alongside who tried to befriend students 15 years younger than them; in the chummy toxic positivity that infects corporate workspaces as they overwork you but give you pizza in return. As we’ve receded from the world of respect and reverence, the new chummy, ‘we’re a family here’, way of operating has replaced it, and while it’s not as equally bad, I do find it somewhat nauseating.
At the same time, we’ve also become suspicious of hierarchies– I get it, they are seen as a part of a system of privilege and oppression. But again, another baby’s gone out with that bath water: ‘because some hierarchies were found to be bad, all hierarchy must be’. And we have simply replaced one form of hierarchy with a weirdly chummy one, neither based truly on merit.
The reality I’ve faced is many people not very good at what they do (or at anything for that matter), and many of those getting to senior positions and wielding lots of control. Look no further than those who run our country – Rishi looks like he’s a Head Boy more than a PM.
Look closer to home at those in your workplace – I’m sure there are plenty of bluffers, people you can’t quite figure out exactly what they do, but somehow they have some sort of ‘Director’ or ‘Head of’ title, somehow they’ve clawed their way up, and it certainly wasn’t based on merit. I’ve seen hardworking colleagues of almost 10 years’ experience getting passed over for those in the job less than two. Merit certainly wasn’t at play.
Merit. Rank. Reverence. I’ve definitely been craving all of them. I’ll admit my schooling plays a part. I went to a conservative (small c) grammar school that promoted merit and respect (sometimes ruthlessly). On top of that, I suppose I had a naturally deferential attitude as a child – it was a privilege afforded to me by the fact that lots of the adults in my childhood were good at the shit they did. My parents, teachers, coaches – all doing a job and doing it well.
One of the great heartbreaks of getting into my twenties was realising many of the people in charge of this whole circus aren’t actually that serious and good at what they do. Many of my workplaces have either a) been happy to allow mediocrity (if not outright uselessness) to breed and 2) focused on things outside of being good at what we’re actually there to do for advancement (in education the focus was on paperwork over actually teaching people, in recruitment on DEI rather than actually finding people who could be decent teachers, in politics on PR rather than actually helping people). One of the great frustrations with my working in the ‘nicey-nicey’ world of charity and education in particular is that mediocrity is rife, merit lacking.
BJJ strips all that back. None of the ‘chummy’ bs. The only thing that matters is how good you are on the mat, how good you are at jiu jitsu, how good you are at the thing we are here to do. Pure merit determined brutally – the other person is trying to physically force you to give up. There’s no argument when someone is better, it’s obvious – you tapped out to them. No one cares about anything else other than that.
It’s refreshing. After the first few weeks, I barely know other people’s names in the classes, let alone their job titles, and the same went for me. It isn’t important to know those details about others. But what I do know is ‘that guy has a killer guard’ or ‘that guy is wild in scrambles’.
We start each class by lining up in rank order. We bow to senior ranks. We respect and listen in silence to black belts as they teach. We have confidence in the ranking system because it is so closely associated with merit, because it consistently demonstrates itself to be so when you can beat other white belts of all sizes, but the small, diminutive blue belt chokes you out without breaking a sweat.
You can’t fake it – you respect the time and tenure people have given to the sport. Even the next closest promotion from white belt is probably a year away. To get a black belt, it’s on average 8 to 10 years. Don’t get me wrong, it’s friendly and relaxed, but some of that’s needed when you’re simulating strangling one another.
A world of merit and rank. Refreshing.
Gin Lane 