14/08/2026
Important stuff from Sifu Stapleton. Sometimes you need foundational skills to build further skills but all too often ‘secrets’ are used as a method of control…
Esoteric Elitism and the Creation of Specialness
Some traditional systems can unintentionally or deliberately create value by restricting access to information. When knowledge is presented as secret, exclusive, or available only to those who have reached a particular level, it can create a powerful psychological effect: rarity begins to feel like proof of effectiveness.
“Secret techniques,” “closed-door teachings,” and “advanced knowledge” can make students feel that they have been given access to something special. But it is worth asking:
Does exclusivity actually make a skill more effective or does it simply make the student feel more invested in the system?
There is an important distinction between developing genuine ability and developing a sense of identity around belonging to an exclusive group.
A healthy training environment should ultimately be able to demonstrate progress through things that can be observed: better timing, movement, understanding, decision-making (fight IQ), adaptability, pressure-testing and practical competence.
When progress instead becomes heavily dependent on gaining access to increasingly expensive courses, seminars, secret levels or private teachings, we should perhaps pause and ask:
Are we paying for genuine development, or are we paying for the feeling of being given something special?
This is where an environment can potentially become more focused on milking a person's money than developing their skill. The student may continue investing because each new piece of information is presented as the next missing key rather than being encouraged to develop, test and refine what they already know.
None of this means that traditional knowledge has no value, or that teachers who preserve and pass down specialised knowledge are necessarily acting in bad faith. Nor does exclusivity automatically mean something is ineffective.
But perhaps we should question the underlying assumption:
If a skill is genuinely effective, shouldn't its value ultimately be demonstrated by what the practitioner can actually do and not by how secret, expensive, ancient, or exclusive the teaching is?
The goal of training should surely be to become more capable, not merely more "special."
And perhaps that is a useful question for anyone involved in martial arts or any tradition built around specialised knowledge:
Am I developing a genuine skill, or am I developing an identity around possessing knowledge that other people don't have?
That is not an accusation.
It's simply a question worth asking.
