I don't know why some people treat black belts like they are sages. These aren't Shaolin Monks. Sure, it takes a particular set of attributes to get to the black belt level--persistence, endurance, love, toughness, grit, luck, temperance...the list goes on. But that doesn't automatically mean that the things a black or upper belt think have any real carry over into day to day life.
I'm relatively certain that a priest or a best selling author of a highly philosophical book could walk onto the mat with a white belt on and some people would still think the black belt is a more spiritual person simply because he's wearing what they want to wear. That kind of attitude causes cultism. Black belts are important people, but keep their identities in perspective. They are teachers of an art. No more, no less. The traditional overly-mystified Hollywood and fake "eastern" ideal of a martial arts master being a master of everything is bullshit at best, and unsubstantiated at worst.
It's highly likely that someone who has mastered an art has a propensity for mastery in other areas of their lives, because focused people tend to succeed repeatedly, but this is not always true. For every black belt who is a special thinker, there is another who is just an average Joe who fixated on a martial art, or worse, an extremely obsessive person who used martial arts to avoid traumatic external realities in their lives, to recover from them, or even to avoid doing inner work. Grappling is a discipline but it also functions quite nicely as a form of escapism, and escapists aren't sages.
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