Via the Maku mozo mailing list this morning:
We become what we think about.
— Nightingale
I guess that explains why so many men are boobs. 😉
But seriously…
There is truth in the statement. It’s about mindset, and what a difference it makes.
I never heard of Earl Nightingale before. Went looking for him. Found this.
Good stuff.
It is often said that power corrupts. But, it is equally important to realize that weakness corrupts too! Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are faults of the weak. Resentment on the part of the weak springs not from injustice done to them, but from their own sense of inadequacy and impotence.
— Eric Hoffer, 1980
Governing a large country
is like frying a small fish.
You spoil it with too much poking.Center your country in the Tao
and evil will have no power.
Not that it isn’t there,
but you’ll be able to step out of its way.Give evil nothing to oppose
and it will disappear by itself.Tao Te Ching #60 – Translation by Stephen Mitchell
The important part is the first block. Think about it. What happens when you fry a small fish and you keep poking it? It falls apart. Or remember how your Mom told you to stop picking at that scab? And you didn’t, and what happened? It got worse, it got infected, it left a scar.
This country was founded upon “leave things alone.” Don’t tread on me. Stop interfering in people’s business. As Brian Enos said, “Freedom is letting things be.”
Why have we forgotten that?
When you remind people of that, why do so many resist it so much? Why is the response “Yeah but…”?
Life isn’t fair and no amount of effort, legislation, begging, praying, pleading, is going to make it fair. But the more you keep screwing around with things, the less you leave things alone and letting them work themselves out in a natural way (yes, that means being patient, even if it means it doesn’t happen in your lifetime), the more you’re going to risk screwing things up even more than they already might be.
Stop poking the fish.
I admit it. I’m human.
That means in my core I seek pleasure and avoid pain. It’s just how living things behave. However, as humans we have this ability to think and reframe things. We may undertake “small pain” if we know it will help us avoid “large pain” and there is some pleasure-seeking in such behavior. For example, giving a small child a spanking because they ran out into the street, that’s a small pain to help them learn to avoid the bigger pain of getting hit by a car. Letting your child turn in a term paper late and getting a failing grade is a small pain compared to the bigger pain of perhaps losing their job because they never learned how to work under deadlines. One advantage of studying a martial art that spars is you learn what it’s like to get hit and how to deal with it, a small pain compared to the first time getting hit being when someone is attacking you bent on taking your life. We can learn how to take small pain if we know it leads us towards a better end.
That said, the small pain is still pain, and at least speaking for myself, I still don’t like it. 🙂
I was reading this quip from John Farnam about training. It helped me reframe my mindset.
Good training is ever scary, demanding, and makes you feel inadequate and stupid. When you finish and ‘feel good about it,’ you probably weren’t pushing yourself hard enough. Learning takes place when you fail, not when you succeed!
I disagree that learning can’t take place when you succeed, but the overall point remains valid.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt inadequate and stupid during training. I didn’t shoot well enough, I got my butt handed to me, I got choked out, I totally botched this, I feel embarrassed about that. People learn who I am and due to my résumé/credentials think that I should be some badass, but then I get out there and while afterwards others may tell me I did great I still feel like I suck.
Next month I’ll be participating in a weekend-long seminar. It promises to be very intensive both in terms of shooting skills and hand-to-hand skills. I admit, I’ve been a bit anxious about the class because I know the teachers are demanding yet some of the best in the business. I know my skills will be pushed to the limit. I want to do well in the class, but I think my measure of doing well was “succeeding” at things: that I would shoot in the top 10% of the class, that my empty-hand skills would always lead me to victory in all the drills. After reading the quip, I have reassessed my measure of success: how much I learn. Even if I wind up at the bottom of the heap, that tells me what I need to do to improve. Deep down I know this, but being human, I guess there’s some need to satisfy ego, some need to save face and not look like a total doofus out there. I just have to make a bigger effort to be, as Bruce Lee said, “be a doll made of wood.”
Thus, any training worthy of the name is going to be both frustrating and ‘dangerous,’ no matter what safety procedures are in place. But, failing to train is even more dangerous, and the consequences ever appalling and irrevocable. Ask any commander who has lost a battle!
That’s the more important thing. To get out and train. To push myself beyond my limits. Allow myself to be humbled and embarrassed, so long as it means I’m learning something about myself. The only external opinions I should care about are those of the instructor, but then only so far as it takes to allow me to continue to learn. As a human, it’s tough to allow yourself to go through these small pains. I just have to keep reminding myself that the small pain will help me alleviate the bigger pain. 🙂
When you have kids, sooner or later you have to teach them about winning and losing. What a winner is, and what a loser is. This isn’t just in the scope of say games/sports and sportsmanship, but just about anything in life and having a truly winner attitude so they can succeed in life in anything they do.
Some people grow up and never learn what it is to be a winner; they’re content being losers. John Farnam just wrote a piece discussing how as an instructor he encounters winners and losers in his classes.
Winners are unafraid! They spend their time finding a way to win, rather than looking for an excuse to lose. Winners fear neither victory nor failure.
Losers are deathly afraid of both!
Yes, losers are afraid! Fear ever haunts the base of their being and prevents them from ever walking upright, confidently, proudly.
Losers mumble! They don’t speak clearly, nor with conviction. They can’ t even seem to speak in complete sentences, because their thought processes are confused and perverse. They are afraid of truth, afraid of reality in all forms. They doubt their ability to handle life, so they hide their faces from the light of day.
Losers are bitter and resentful! They are angry with everyone. They can’t handle correction. They savagely defend their every mistake, every blunder, every crime like a lioness her young! Their elaborate rationalizations are sadly comical.
Losers are afraid of growing up! They prefer to be “taken care of.” Accepting full, personal responsibility for anything is unthinkable.
Losers snivel, whine, and make excuses! They take personal responsibility for nothing, always blaming others and “bad luck” for every gloomy hand they’re dealt.
Losers surround themselves with enablers and coddlers who never challenge them! Losers associate only with other losers!
Losers are chronically unproductive! They run their mouths continuously, but habitually shun productive work.
Losers know right from wrong, but conduct their lives as if they didn’t! They’re into “situation ethics,” offering up endless excuses for lying and other misdeeds.
Most of all, losers are ashamed, and should be! They cheerlessly watch themselves missing out on all the best life has to offer, but personal vanity and cowardice ever prevent them from sincerely repenting, and then boldly claiming their own magnificence.
This isn’t the new-agey “everyone’s a winner” sort of b.s.. This is truly having a positive attitude, one geared towards succeeding. As a father, it’s my duty to ensure my children grow up being winners. As a member of my community, it’s my responsibility to help the children I work with (Scouts, 4-H, etc.) be winners.
Take a moment and share the above with your children. Help them learn to be winners. If it can improve our own attitudes as well, all the better.
Linoge has a posting about, as he terms it, the Whiner-in-Chief.
Let me make this perfectly clear to you, Mr. President – this whole situation is not about you, and it sure as hell is not about your precious Presidency.
Actually Linoge, that’s where you are wrong. It’s sorely evident by his words and his actions that this is all about him. It’s all about his ego-satisfaction and being more concerned about trying to leave some monumental legacy.
The way to be remembered is to first live a life worth remembering. Mr. President, I’d say if you really want to be remembered and leave a great legacy, stop trying to be remembered and leave a great legacy. Just do what is Truly Right™ and the rest will take care of itself. It may be useful to recall the Classical Greek maxim: hubris brings nemesis.
I just finished reading this letter over at Tony Blauer’s website. To be fair, the letter reads like a mix of a testimonial and an ad/promotion for Blauer’s approach. That said, the article still brings up an important point.
The letter recounts Tom Arcuri’s journey in studying and ultimately teaching martial arts. As Mr. Arcuri developed his own style, he recognized why students come to him: not necessarily to learn some style of art, but to learn how to fight or defend themselves. Recognizing a need to satisfy this goal, he set out to meet it. Unfortunately and admittedly he chose the wrong measuring stick for progress: variety. In class situations he could see all sorts of variety and teach it, but once the students got into pressure situations, the variety went out the door. Why?
The answer came to Mr. Arcuri one summer. He came to learn that when one gets into pressure situations, one reverts to gross concepts and skills. Thus variety for the sake of variety goes out the door. Consequently, he changed how he evaluates from “variety” to “results”. I think that’s a good change. Does it necessarily matter how you defend yourself so long as you defend yourself successfully?
Mr. Arcuri writes:
As a group we tend to be control freaks, ego centric, and a bit insecure regarding our skills. This is ironic since we emphasize self-confidence and constant devotion to self-improvement to our students. We spend an inordinate amount of time arguing to be right even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Knowing forty or four hundred techniques gives us control and feeds our egos, but does it enhance our student’s survivability in a “real street fight”? Remember, it’s women and children that are more likely to have to defend themselves in our society.
I touched on this recently. Some arts make a big deal out of how much they have in their curriculum and how much they can teach you. The reality? Not so much. Kuk Sool may tout 3608 techniques, but I’ve long wondered just how they arrive at that total. If you look at what Kuk Sool terms “techniques” (the joint locks, throws, sweeps, etc… Ki Bohn Soo, Sohn Mohk Soo, etc.), then to earn 1st degree black belt you must learn 226 techniques; to earn 2nd degree, 143 techniques (369 total); to earn 3rd degree, 40 techniques (409 total); to earn 4th, 25 techniques (434 total); to earn 5th, 30 techniques (464 total). Now this isn’t to say the official Kuk Sool curriculum doesn’t have other things involved, but the point is that by the time you become a “Master rank” in Kuk Sool, you’ve been taught 464 techniques: only about 13% of the claimed knowledge in the system. Wow. So where are all those other techniques? Super-secret for only the blessed and privileged to know, I guess. Or maybe creative counting; I’ve wondered if by 3608 techniques they mean just the strictly defined techniques or if they also count kicks (front kick, 1; low front kick, 2; middle front kick, 3; high front kick, 4; etc.), punches, and every other little thing, since I know in other arts they will label that sort of stuff “techniques”. But however things are labeled and counted, the point still remains the same: aiming to collect a big number of stuff.
Aside: after a while you’ll find the techniques you’re learning are the same or almost the same. The body only bends so many ways, so if you claim thousands of ways to bend the body, eventually you’re going to repeat yourself in some fashion. Certainly I saw a lot of such repetition in the Kuk Sool curriculum. That’s not all bad because it helps to demonstrate different entries and approaches. But make sure you take those numbers for what they are.
So what’s the point of all of this? IMHO, ego satisfaction. You can strut around qualitatively stating “look at all that I know.” Then it’s easy to get into dick-measuring contests (e.g. Hwa Rang Do, a Kuk Sool contemporary, one-ups with their 4000+ techniques; see my previous article). But will a big ego keep you from getting your ass kicked? Maybe, but I doubt it.
As I’ve often said, what ultimately matters are the personal goals that you have for yourself. If your personal goal is to just acquire a large library of knowledge, then that’s fine. If your personal goal is to inflate your ego, that’s fine too. I know it sounds like I’m down on that, and I personally am because it’s not my goal and I don’t see much true point in that goal. But truly if that’s what you want and you feel it makes your life better, who am I to tell you no? I do hope you have perspective on that goal, but otherwise go for it. Me, my goal these days is combat effectiveness. I’d rather have one technique that I could execute solidly and well and that could truly save my life, than a thousand techniques that I half-assed know and don’t practically do much for me. This is why Filipino martial arts hold so much appeal for me.
As an engineer (with an engineer’s mindset) and given how much Taoism resonates with me, that’s likely why Bruce Lee’s philosophies resonate with me. He speaks of emptying your cup so it can be filled, of keeping what is useful and discarding the rest, of achieving a true simplicity in combat. Note that for these things to happen, first you must acquire. While learning nothing vs. learning something then discarding it, might appear in the end to achieve the same results, they really don’t. Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote:
Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher.
(It would seem that perfection is attained not when no more can be added, but when no more can be removed.)
To strive for perfection, strive for simplicity. If it is not useful, discard it; but that does imply you must first have acquired it so you could determine if it was useful or not. How to determine if it’s useful? Does it help you satisfy your goals? If your goal is to satisfy your ego, then fine. If your goal is to get satisfying results, well… to me, satisfying results satisfies ego. 🙂
The big thing in martial arts these days (and many other places, but I’m talking martial arts) is to cross-train. I would say this has become prominent due to the rise of mixed-martial arts (MMA) which is all about cross-training.
The intent it this: you study one art, you may be limited in what you can do, thus you ought to train in another art to ensure you don’t have any weak areas or holes in your game. For instance, these days the classic MMA formula is: muay thai for striking, wrestling for takedowns (or maybe judo), and Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) for groundwork. The intent is that say, muay thai only covers striking (limited view I know, but go with me) but it’s really good at striking, so if you want to get your striking game you study that. But if that’s all you studied, what would happen if the fight ended up on the ground? Thus, you need to study BJJ to cover that aspect. The end result is you end up being a well-rounded fighter.
Then you get some arts, such as Kuk Sool, that claim to not need cross-training because they are a complete art. Speaking on Kuk Sool, I can say it is fairly complete but does lack in some areas. I know some Kuk Sool folk that have thrown down with BJJ guys and get p0wned; while concepts and principles are there, Kuk Sool’s curriculum just doesn’t emphasize the depth of what BJJ does on the ground. A Kuk Sool person may have enough ground skill to deal with a street fight or self-defense situation, but full-on ground fighting competition? Won’t happen.
But whatever the approach, be it a single art that claims comprehensiveness or you take multiple arts to gain the same broad spectrum of study, the end result and goal is the same of covering all the bases.
While this sounds great, is it always the best and right thing to do? I’d argue it depends upon your training goals.
Let’s say you have a pile of bricks with which to build your house. You can build in one of two directions: you can build up or out. You can stack all your bricks on top of each other. That would be like studying a single-focused art. You would get very good in that one aspect very quickly, but your house isn’t very wide and you would lack in those other areas. You could stack your bricks side by side. That would be like cross-training or studying a broad-focus/comprehensive art. You’d gain a lot of breadth of knowledge, but it’s not going to be very deep. Over time, you end up stacking your bricks in the other direction: if you stacked up, eventually you’ll stack out and build those stacks upwards as well; if you stacked out, you’ll add height to those stacks as time goes on. In the long run, the theory is that you’ll wind up at the same place, with a wide and tall stack of bricks. So the question then becomes: what do you want now? And are you willing to invest the time and effort to get to that same place way down the line? Again, it all depends upon your goals.
Furthermore, what is your learning style like? Do you need focus? Or can you deal with a lot of different concepts and techniques coming at you at once? Do you feel you can practice all of those well-enough, or might you be better just working on a few things at a time? Everyone varies on this. Know yourself and your learning style.
For me, Kuk Sool was a comprehensive approach. I like the art for that reason, because I do see the merits in being well-rounded. However, you have to mind that your training will allow you to build those wide stacks into tall stacks. Often the training at my dojang didn’t go that way: you’d have a 60 minute class with 15 minutes of warm-up, 15 minutes on forms, 15 minutes on breakfalls, then 15 minutes on techniques (or some breakdown like that). Sometimes you might have 45 minutes focused on something. But it would vary, especially depending upon the composition of the class in terms of students and their grade level. I often felt that I didn’t quite get the depth of study that I desired.
I left Kuk Sool and am now studying Kali, Silat, Jun Fan arts, Muay Thai, and western boxing. That still seems like a lot, but in many respects it’s all “stand-up” work. At my current school I could also study BJJ, but I opted against that because I want to focus a bit more on my stand-up. For you see, my cross-training isn’t just in empty-hand arts, but defensive firearms (especially handgunning) is a martial art for me as well. My cross-training blends firearms and empty-hand arts, and for me wanting to focus on my hand work is currently where my goals lie. Eventually I’ll dive into BJJ, but for now digesting the “stand-up” curriculum at my new school is certainly enough. I want to get up to speed with the stand-up stuff quickly. I’d like to build my new stack a little higher before I start building out.
To cross-train or not? That’s a personal matter. Don’t just cross-train because it’s trendy, but choose what approach you take based upon the goals that you have for yourself. Remember that martial arts are a personal journey, so make sure you’re on the journey that you want to take.
Basically, petty crime occurring (someone grabs someone else’s duffel bag and runs off, victim shouts for help). A citizen with a concealed carry permit pulls over to help out, draws his gun on the criminal and says “Stop, Police.” and works to detail the thief. However, a second armed citizen sees what’s happening and thinks that is a crime going down so he too stops to intervene. Eventually the police show up and things get sorted out.
The intentions of both citizens are good. Frankly, having more people that are willing to be helpful and not stand for criminal behavior? That’s a good thing. But the first guy to identify himself as police? That’s not good. My hope there is the guy either gets let off or only lightly punished because he did not have criminal intent in what he was doing; it’s certainly not worthy of a felony charge.
It does demonstrate a real issue however: that things may not always be what they seem. There’s stories of a bad guy coming out of the store he just robbed and complaining to the by-standers in a manner to make those by-standers think he was the victim and thus they help the bad guy get away. Things aren’t always what they seem, and we have to be careful. I do have thoughts about what would happen if I was in a self-defense situation with many others around, and there were other “sheepdogs” in the mix as well. What could happen? Could signals get crossed? Could the chaos of the situation lead to unintended things happening? It’s a situation that I don’t have an answer to, but have wondered if there is something that could be done and thus taught in schools as a part of “training and tactics” to aid in such situations. I don’t know.
But me personally? I don’t think I would have gotten involved in such a situation. To me the question to answer is “is this worth dying for?”. Petty theft? I don’t think it’s worth dying for. Actually I should check that. I may have gotten involved (all depends upon the specifics of the situation), but to pull one’s gun… that has to answer affirmatively the “worth dying for” question.
I think about what happened to me just this past Saturday evening. The family and I had gone out to dinner, then over to the bookstore. We left the bookstore, heading across the parking lot to our car. I noticed a man and a woman walking through the parking lot on a path that would eventually intersect with us. They appeared to be having some sort of a fight, a little physical, a little heated verbal exchange, and they kept walking in our direction. They appeared intoxicated, and by their appearance possibly homeless. Wife saw them too and became concerned, I just looked at her and said to get herself and the kids to the car. I was certainly in code orange, but didn’t think this would be a problem… they appeared to just be a drunk couple having their own spat, but with that level of irrationality going on who knows. Better safe than sorry. I kept my eye on things while Wife got the kids and herself into the car. As I was going to get into the car, the woman crossed behind our car and shouted to me “Want to buy some DVD’s? Brand new!” I just gave a firm “no thank you”. She kept walking; in fact, she never stopped. My guess is the fight was over the DVD’s, or at least her saying that to us was no true offer of sale… just something to piss off her male companion. As we pulled out, we saw the man had sat himself down on the curb and looked sad and upset whereas the woman had kept on walking.
I don’t know what the story was, and frankly I don’t care. My concern was for the safety and well-being of my family. There was a brief moment where both Wife and I were concerned of a physical altercation as it looked like the man might have opted to hit or otherwise rough up the woman. If that had happened, I may have intervened but initially from a distance (e.g. verbal commands, getting Wife to dial 911). I couldn’t stand by to let someone get hurt like that, but on the same token I had to ensure I didn’t put myself or my wife and children in danger either. Exactly what I would have done, again, impossible to say… all depends upon the exact situation and how things would unfold. But my guiding principle is keeping my wife and children safe; all else is secondary. In the end the question remains: is it worth dying for?
The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.
— Benjamin Franklin
Unfortunately today too many people think that the job of the government is to provide them with the happiness (and security) they deserve.
Stuff From Hsoi 