How I view Isshinryu after 50 years Part I

 

 

To make this simpler the idea for these papers came from a recent discussion I had with Charles Murray. I believe it is not something others are talking about.

I am not an expert, I am just what I am, an older man with many memories of what I have seen. I cast no aspersions on anyone in Isshinryu, yet I am not aligned with any of them, just my instructors.

There are many parts to what I have seen, some of them having nothing to do with karate. I will try to show how all of them influenced my life and my understanding of what Isshinryu is to me.

When I began to attend Temple University, I discovered many new things. Among them during my first Speech class, Public Speaking 101, I learned how to construct a speech, which also gave me the template to write every paper later. One semester I had 27 papers, but using what I was taught that provided no difficulty. This will be important later and explains in part how I can write about my experiences and thoughts in my blog.

Furthermore, I began to see things no one else saw. In that era many times many classes used Samuel Becketts "Waiting for Godot", of course that made things easy to write about as I really got to know that play. Later I was able to see Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" at a theater downtown. That was a very popular play in NYC too. I noticed something so I did some research and observed I saw something the professional reviewers did not see. That the structure of Stoppard's work on Hamlet was just copying Beckett' work down to a T and applying it to Hamlet. The same structure, even some of the same approaches to the play. I wrote it up for myself. Never submitted it anywhere just for me.

My choice of being a Speech Major (Rhetoric and Public Address) turned into a focus of the uses of Linguistic Philosophy. Mainly between the General Semantics of Korzybski and the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I realize you do not care; I continued my personal study long after I left school. But the tools I learned in that study formed the toolkit that would explain how I came to see "Isshinryu".

Quite a few years later, I began to write short stories for friends, on the satire series of the Destroyer Novels of Sapir and Murray. More to prove to myself I could do that. Much later I wrote more and more, going longer each time. Stories became longer stories, Novellas, then to those that became books and later more complex books. I only wrote them for myself but learning so much at the same time.

I realized how to begin with an outlining, how research was necessary to write those books in total I wrote about 27 books, just for me. However, they used those skills I developed researching for my efforts for the Temple U. Debate Team and having learned how to write so many papers. Skills I homed in time.

It also is behind how I write for my blog.

I am going to close this by stating something I learned by my study of Linguistic Philosophy. particularly these rules come from General Semantics.

By using a study, I discovered in my study of Linguistic philosophy, that of General Semantics 3 premises.

1.    The word is not the thing. Or the use of the word karate itself does not really describe the reality which is referred to as karate.

2.    The word does not describe the whole thing.  Trying to describe what karate represents never really encompasses everything that is there.

3.    Words, by their nature are self-reflexive. The use of the word then itself becomes another reality a step beyond reality.

In simpler terms a discussion becomes a thing on its own.

Keeping them in mind Will frame what is going to follow.

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2021/01/what-karate-came-to-mean-to-me.html

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2023/07/wittgenstein-and-blue-and-brown-books.html

To make this more understandable you should realize that many times we do not understand what each other are sayings thus causing problems. Far to often individuals do not realize what others' words are saying. This is one of the underlying principles of linguistic philosophy.

Let me begin with an example. 

All language is an abstract way to express reality. That means reality has greater depth than the words.

What is called Isshinryu was always whatever Shimabuku Tatsuo wanted it to be. This is the event level (reality).

Calling those actions, Isshinryu, is but a name, the act of labeling.

Use of the term Isshinryu  was a convenience, it never expressed everything that Shimabuku Tatsuo did. Whatever use of the term meant never encompasses of Tatsuo's actions.

And the use of the word Isshinryu would also refer to many others' uses of Isshinryu, not just those of Shimabuku Tatsuo's actions.

There are ways to get around such issues, such as making sure that one understands the context in which the word is being used. It is always helpful to engage in a communication cycle with those who originally spoke the term.