Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I

An interesting update to a woo woo video I saw a couple months back. The first half is a video of some energy bending kungfu master defeating all his students without laying a hand on them. The second half of the video he decides to demonstrate his amazing energy kungfu for non believers. And he gets his ass kicked. Badly. He goes down like a sack of dirty laundry and doesn't get up. The first good hit he takes he's a bit like Clark Kent in that superman movie where he gave up his powers. "Lois... I'm bleeding!" You have to have swallowed a lot of your own koolaid to not take that first hit as a powerful sign you don't have the kungfu super powers you thought you had.

When I saw the previous video, I assumed he just had his students put on a show. They were both in on it. But now I'm thinking the kungfu master probably believed he had some powers and his students were all too happy to let him keep thinking that. More badly you got beaten up by his mind kungfu, higher your status within the school. And anyone who dared tell the emperor he had no clothes, he'd be out of his school ASAP.

It's the kungfu version of speaking in tongues or stage hypnotism shows where people cluck like chickens. People are just doing what they think they're supposed to be doing to stay within the group.

[swetepete]

Qi-gong, shmi-gong. (no offence smee.)
Sounds a bit like the Boxers in China around a hundred years ago who thought they were bulletproof.
Turns out they weren't...

[seoulsucker]

Same thing...this dude claims to be ringing a gong with his voice.

http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/111850/Powerful_Yell.html

[RACETRAITOR]

[cangel]

It's been a while since I saw a pile of excrement that high!!

[Guri Guy]

I saw that video before. Super funny. Old arrogant idiot gets a dirty sweaty beating.

[crusher_of_heads]

Only DAvid Carradine has that thyp of mystical kung-fu energy-he can open door locks just by putting his hand in front of them...

[mindmetoo]

The psychology of this old coot fascinates me. How did he come to think he had these powers enough so he was willing to get into the ring or whatever with an ape who hadn't drunk the koolaid... and lay a cash money bet on it.

It's like those people who really think they have some mystical power to turn off streetlights when they walk by one. I figure it went like this:

1) One day he was putting his chopsuki on a student and the student flinched, before he was even hit. The old coot figured it wasn't because the student was a candy ass. He maybe was projecting some powers.

2) Students were ordered to start sensing his kungfu energy.

3) Students who were bad at sensing it (because it didn't exist), he deemed bad students and drummed out of the corp.

4) Students got better and better at sensing it.

5) If you couldn't sense it (because it didn't exist), you worked hard to convince yourself you really did sense it and played along.

6) The master concluded his powers were growing and growing.

Stage hypnotism shows work in a similar manner. First, there's a big group "suggestibility" filter. Lock your hands together, if you can't unlock them, come up on stage and the hypnotist will unlock them. Next, the hypnotist puts everyone under his super deep trance. Then, he begins to weed out the least suggestible in that group by ordering them off stage in a rude manner. The remaining students on stage don't want to be embarrassed so they play along.

Same deal with "speaking in tongues". Want to be part of the group? Well, start babbling like a fool.

[ED209]

Here's Derren Brown doing something similar a few years back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBXXA5xhcQ0

[mindmetoo]

A bit more research: someone mentioned the kungfu school was in a school with acting students. The students were under the impression they were acting. The old coot didn't quite grok they were acting. It's possible all the students simple just put a collective goof on the old guy.

[ED209]

[mindmetoo]