Accountability

Accountability is a difficult thing. It is something that is both external and internal. Something that we struggle with as people but something that is essential to a high trust functional society. As a country has failed as a society to hold people accountable. America, for better or worse, sees itself collectively as a shining beacon on a hill, however it is hard to remain illustriously shining if no one is accountable for polishing.

Many people come into martial arts, myself included, to deal with bullying of some form or another. That is what makes the current situation difficult to deal with. We see bullies not being held accountable, but instead, being rewarded for their behavior. It can be discouraging and frustrating to see things like this happen, but at the same time not surprising.

The current administration is full of petty bullies who just want to get their way, and many of them have never had to face true accountability in their lives. This is common for bullies to not be held accountable. Often times those who are bullies are told by authority figures that they needed to “toughen up” and “not be so sensitive.” However, the bullies are often not held accountable. This creates a situation that doesn’t stop the bullying, but just makes them continue on, and sets up the person being bullied to be less likely to report the issue to authority figures. Very often you hear a variation of the quote “Bullies will back down when you stand up to them.” This puts the onus for accountability for bullying on the person being bullied and not the authority figure. Often times bullies will not back down when stood up to but instead increase their behaviors or escalate their behaviors. When bullies are held accountable by those in positions of authority, they often see the error of their ways. This is of course not universally accurate, but instead a trend.

As a country we failed to hold those who need it accountable. We instead made celebrities of them. People like Elon Musk and Donald Trump who have never had a true accomplishment in their lives but instead were rich and utilized that money as a bludgeon to smash their way through societal and social norms leaving a path of destruction in their wake that trickled down to general society. Our social norms for how we treat each other have been completely destroyed. People see these powerful people taking these actions and being rewarded for it and automatically assume that they will be rewarded for similar behavior. This is of course not true as fundamentally those outside of the ultra-wealthy play by a significantly different set of rules. So instead, they capriciously harm their neighbors in a vain hope to gain a small scrap of something for themselves.

Our government has been taken over by White Supremacist and Nazis, because we failed to hold them accountable when we had an opportunity. This is of course to our detriment, had we done the bare minimum to hold those involved accountable we would not be in this mess. However, those below wanted to try and scrabble and scrape their way a little bit higher at the expense of their neighbors and in some cases their friends and family.

How does this relate to Jiu-jitsu, because ultimately Jiu-jitsu is a community of practitioners. It is mostly impossible to do Jiu-jitsu alone outside of limited drills and it is even harder to gain proficiency alone. So, we must come together in communities to better ourselves. There is a blueprint baked into Jiu-jitsu of communities of those helping people get better. The founders of Jiu-jitsu of course did not believe this, thus trying to exclude only but their chosen people, but fortunately, Jiu-jitsu has grown far beyond its fascist roots. However, we are currently teetering on the edge of tumbling back down the dark holes left by those roots. We as a community have a duty to stand up to those bad actors in our spaces and hold them accountable for their speech, their actions, their behavior, and ultimately work to make our community a better place.

We as instructors or even students must work hard to make the Jiu-jitsu community better, by working to make it a safe and accepting place for all to belong. This of course starts with accountability. We must hold ourselves to a high standard for how we treat all students and how we conduct ourselves both in the gym and outside of it. The second thing we have to do is ensure those around us are also creating an excellent space for all types of students. This is a much harder endeavor as interpersonal relationships are often fraught with various issues and biases that we all carry. But as instructors and members of the community we must work towards a more positive outcome. Finally, we must build bridges to the community you want to have. I am immensely thankful for the people I have found over the last month both inside and outside of the gym that have been beacons of these positive communities and they continue to blaze the way to make Jiu-jitsu a better place for all people. However, there is more work to do, as Jiu-jitsu practitioners we have to continue to build the community we want to see fostered and grown.