According to the dictionary, loyalty is also synonymous of fidelity, which is considered a virtue born from respect for the trust that one person places in another. Therefore, fidelity is related to an unconditional trust towards a person, while loyalty is the unrestricted support to a cause. In other words, you are loyal to a cause, while you are faithful to someone.
In the case of our activity, it would be to be loyal to Taekwon-Do and faithful to who teaches us this art.
The two concepts are so closely related that it is difficult to think about them separately.
However, current circumstances compel us to seriously reconsider such concepts.
Starting with this discipline, which it is not a cause, loyalty is only possible to the art itself and not to the entity that claims to teach it. There is so much corporative and biomechanical diversity under the same institutional name, that it is impossible to be loyal to the name of the entity.
This fact brings the tacit permissiveness of an institutional change without a feeling of transgression.
Although it is not established with this connotation, the actions in this direction of a large quantity of people, confirm this fact.
The interesting thing about this transgressor action is that this institutional change has a direct identification with the black belts and not with Gups or color belts. Apparently the latter keeps intact their belief in the definition of loyalty and fidelity. Then, is the black belt the passport to transgression?
Although fidelity is closely related to an unconditional trust to a person, in this case the Instructor (to whom we have granted the place of knowledge), he also hopes to be recognized, among other things, with the unconditional follow-up of his teachings.
When this doesn’t happen, the feeling of displeasure is so big and irreversible that it becomes inexcusable.
The concepts of loyalty and fidelity run together but the present procedures have separated them.
Being loyal to an institution requires that it be unique. Unfortunately this is absent these days, especially for those of us who have had the privilege of belonging to that concept of unity from the beginning of the international development of the art.
The current circumstances and events between entities that carelessly use the same name bring the detachment and lack of institutional belonging.
This behavior suggests that loyalty is only towards a cardboard that recognizes the person at one level or another, regardless of if the next will be obtained in the same place or in a different one in hands of another person. This attitude intrinsically bears the feeling that knowledge can be easily purchased, as if this barbarism were true, in a course or a seminar.
Something is remarkable: many people who changed several teachers and entities, the only thing they have modified is their degree, but their shortcomings are the same as that was at the beginning of their institutional changes.
The curious thing is the new god called «training to fight», doesn’t matter if it matches with what was learned in countless courses or not, because it is totally fashionable to add other combative activities as a homemade MMA style.
Therefore, loyalty is either obsolete or a thing from the past.
Unfortunately fidelity has followed the same path and it apparently is an old and unusual feeling.
Could be possible to disseminate responsibilities everywhere for the inadequate and transgressor handling of these essential and foundational concepts; however introspection or looking inside of our own self, is the only possible way to proceed, of course if you have the capability to feel guilty, otherwise don’t lose your time, it would be a vain exercise.
Have competition and triumphalism taken the martial art over?
Although both concepts (loyalty and fidelity) are tacitly included in the Tenets of the art, it is important to keep them in mind when these are enumerated, since their inadequate handling has produced a large part of the problems that affect to all and every one of the entities that sponsor Taekwon-Do
SGM Ricardo Desimone
To be awarded read again the previous notes