An often mentioned benefit of training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu is the experience of being connected to a much larger community beyond one’s own gym. This feeling is present in other forms where we identify with a particular group (gamers, etc.). However, because jiu-jitsu is a participatory community, one in which you must physically and conversationally interact with others outside of your local community circle, when you experience the larger connection by traveling to other gyms in one’s travels (I myself have trained in Brazil and in Nicaragua) a particular distinct of knowledge is imparted on the practitioner. The name for this knowledge or position of experience is known as cosmopolitanism.

Stanford University’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy does the best concise job of defining this term and its tie to a specific experience reserved for particular types of travelers.

The word ‘cosmopolitan’, which derives from the Greek word kosmopolitês (‘citizen of the world’), has been used to describe a wide variety of important views in moral and socio-political philosophy. The nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community.

Cosmopolitanism’s main anti-thesis is, as you may guess, nationalism. What cosmopolitanism disrupts is the sense that, as a member of a particular nation, you experience things that are essentially of that nation, such as a sense of great pride or terrible suffering, and also that your nation is the owner of particular ideas such as “revolution” or “democracy.” Cosmopolitanism is different than humanism but extends its hands towards it.

Humanism has the tendency to disguise what it puports, that is a common human condition, in a shell that sounds like it belongs to a member of a particular segment of society (such as men or white). Thus, white men writing great literature is humanist. Cosmopolitanism denies this guise because as opposed to beginning with a particular (the white man, etc.) that stands for the whole (the human), cosmopolitanism starts with the experience of the traveler in the presence of the diverse multiplicity of humanity (men, women, black, white, American, Australian, Indigenous, Ethnic, poor, rich, hetero and homosexual, et al) and it is that multiplicity that is the human. The real epistemic and political effect is the inability for any one particular group to take ownership of any part of the human experience: sexuality, democracy, suffering, art, good living, and others.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu’s role in developing a sense of cosmopolitanism on its practitioners occurs in a number of ways, two of which I will point to. The first is the sense that one travels with one’s gi. It’s no small thing that many of us jiu-jiteiros pack our gi’s when we travel, whether we go to another city within the country or travel to other countries with our gis. In doing so, we become visitors in someone else’s school, train with people with different backgrounds whose lives have been shaped by the place they live and train. Jiu-jitsu provides an initial common contact experience leading to communication and experience of that new place and people through the equalizing experiencing of training with others who tap you and whom you tap. The second occurance is when others from other countries visit our area and schools and we attend their seminars and we see the experience of their visit as a way to gage their very own estrangement which puts to relief our very own surroundings as part of one setting among a million others in the world. The experience of participating in forums on the web, such as jiu-jitsu forums whose members span the world (as well as reddit’s jiu-jitsu’s sub-reddit) bring to light that we are all concerned with a common passion and a common goal and that this multiplicity reveals jiu-jitsu belongs to no one…and, by extension, no other ideals or human practices.