Jane Austen and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

As I remarked once, for me the most worthwhile passage in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the satirical dialogue about the idea of the "accomplished young lady."

Such accomplishment--if one goes by Thorstein Veblen's theory of the leisure class--is merely the leisured showing off their greater resources, and the supposed greater prowess which affords them that leisure, by having their young ladies display in a supposedly masterful fashion costly and time-consuming training in skills of no practical value in their lives for the sake of unsubtly conveying the message that "This is why we are here and you are there, plebs!"

Just as much as ever we are today bombarded with claims of such upper-class "accomplishment" (not least, by way of pop culture). Still, the precise skills in which today's young lady, and gentleman, are expected to display "accomplishment" are different, with one example the martial arts.

Lest this need be said I do not at all deny the validity of training in those arts for purposes of exercise, sport, self-defense and much else. However, if we are to be honest the reason we are so often (falsely and stupidly) given the impression that "everyone" is a black belt holder of some kind (preferably something fashionable at the moment) is because in the United States such training has acquired an association with upper classness. This is because the sustained commitment of significant disposable time and money required to complete such a training is likely to be beyond the reach of working persons and their children, with the association reinforced by the way that unthinking conformists imitate what better-off people do--and of course, many, many, many more lie about doing so--the more in as the persons in each and every one of these categories boast about their "accomplishment" ad nauseam, such that one is often left wondering if anyone has ever worn a belt of any color other than black. One sees just how much fakery is going on when hack thriller writers get away with having their heroes fight off attackers with a "judo kick," such an easy mistake and its complete failure to elicit comment--just one of those little proofs that, just as in Ms. Austen's time, the image of "accomplishment" is, much, much, much more often than not a façade, one as ridiculous as it is tiresome.