What We Talk About When We Talk About Bruce Lee | decodingvibes.com

I recently spent an entire afternoon watching YouTube reels of Bruce Lee performing martial arts. All of those videos seemed to follow the same format, showing vintage-styled footage of him with a voiceover saying something spiritual, such as “be like water.” It was fascinating in the moment.

Only once the time had fully passed, and I’d watched what felt like endless short videos, did I realize most of them were completely AI-generated.

When I asked Google Gemini about this, it gave me the typical “You’re not crazy” response, assuring me that it was becoming a pretty common tactic on YouTube these days to create such videos and waste the time of otherwise totally employed and productive people like me, for views and dollars.

But a simple question kept looping in my brain.

Why? Why Bruce Lee?

AI can generate anything, but whoever created those videos deliberately chose Bruce Lee as the subject. And it worked!

There was definitely something in those videos that resonated with me on a base level, even though I had never really seen a Bruce Lee movie before writing this article. In fact, I really don’t know anything about Bruce Lee other than what those videos seemed to be encapsulating; this is someone who knows how to kick really fast and talk really well, and it’s motivational and inspiring.

So, one has to wonder, how did the whole “Bruce Lee as warrior-monk” image/meme originate, and how much of it was true?

Who was Bruce Lee (the actual man), and who was the meme? And why does the idea of him still exist in the cultural zeitgeist today, and why does it still land so hard?

So I started researching and figuring this out for myself, and I did not expect the rabbit hole to be this deep.

Bruce Lee as a philosopher in the strict sense of the word

From a strictly academic perspective, Bruce Lee is not considered a philosopher. He never wrote an academic paper and was never recognized in that field beyond serving as a subject or reference.

According to his biography “The Bruce Lee Story,” he was sent to live with his sister in San Francisco because he beat up the kid of a feared triad family in a rooftop fight, and his family was scared for him. He would then move to Seattle, work as a live-in waiter, and later start teaching martial arts on the side while completing high school. Bruce Lee attended the University of Washington, and it is often cited that he “studied philosophy” there. While he did take philosophy classes, his actual major was in drama. [1]

Eventually, he would drop out of college to pursue a career in acting and filmmaking.

Given this background, it is fair not to consider him as a philosopher in the technical sense of the word. However, the world would be a pretty boring place if only academics could have thoughts about life.

If we stretch the definition of philosophy to include people who are masters of a particular field and have really sharp, original insights, then it is plausible to consider Bruce Lee a philosopher (in the same way one would consider Eminem a philosopher).

In many cases, it is better to see such things as art rather than actual philosophy in the strict sense of the word. Sometimes, that line is blurred when we talk about Bruce Lee.

Art and philosophy

A simple, largely all-encompassing definition of art is something that can be performed or experienced, and that triggers a certain emotion, thought, or feeling in the audience. For example, a horror movie seeks to trigger fear in you; a love song seeks to evoke an emotional, loving feeling in you; a public awareness campaign seeks to prompt thoughts about a particular issue; and so on.

Additionally, art usually involves some method and practice. For example, a filmmaker needs to understand cinematography, scriptwriting, and editing, while a painter needs to learn about color, composition, and the painting process.

I also believe that literally almost anything can be art. For example, see Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain [2]. But philosophy cannot be about just anything.

To me, the objective of philosophy is usually not to evoke emotions or feelings (though it can) but to generate ideas and concepts with a purpose. Every serious idea should stand the scrutiny and be capable of being logically wrestled with, if not fully resolved. One might consider this a purely “Western” point of view, but even Eastern philosophical concepts follow logic and stand up to scrutiny, even if they take a different approach from simply writing papers.

What I’m trying to say is that there is a difference between actual Daoist teachings and bumper stickers, even though they might look the same on the surface.

Yes, Bruce Lee does fit the aesthetics of a warrior-monk philosopher (largely made up by vested corporate interests), but we must judge the validity of him being that based on the ideas, not the man. One of his most popular ideas was Jeet Kune Do.

Jeet Kune Do,...