Philosophically I am really into the golden rule and being nice to people. So when I say "hey, don't punch people in the face" I do mean it on a figurative level. For example, I probably should not have written a blog post about how lousy Texas is, it could have easily hurt some feelings. However, from a self defense perspective, I also mean "don't punch people in the face" on a literal level.
Let's say I told you an attacker could do the following things to you in a fight:
Break your small hand bones in a so-called "boxer's fracture."
Give you a nasty laceration on your hand basically guaranteed to become infected without immediate and professional medical treatment.
Make you liable to pay for plastic surgery for injuries sustained in the fight.
Make a public display of your confrontation, to help your assailant gain public support and hostile support against you.
Make your attacker more likely to attack you again in the future.
Make you more likely to get their blood born pathogens.
That is what you are doing to yourself when in a self-defense situation you punch someone in the face. You risk a boxer's fracture from pounding your knuckles on their skull, hand lacerations from their germ ridden teeth, give them good reason to sue you for plastic surgery bills, wear their trophies around on their face so everyone can see what a jerk you are so that their friends and your enemies can be rallied for battle against you, make your attacker explain why you hit him in the face so that he'll more so want a rematch in the future, and of course the human head lacerates easily and then bleeds generously helping to insure you will be infected with whatever blood born pathogens your attacker has to offer you.
The two most problematic face punches are the jab and cross (left and right straight punches with closed fist.) The farther a strike is from being one of these two punches, the safer it is to use. Straight punches to the body instead of the head for example are very practical in a self defense situation. An uppercut to the jaw for instance is risky as it can easily hit the teeth or cause them to bite their tongue, but is relatively safe compared to the jab and cross. Likewise hooks risk connecting with the skull, but are far less likely to result in a boxer's fracture.
Is this to say Boxing is a bad martial art? No, because people will try to punch you in the face, and boxing is the best way for you to practice against someone trying to punch you in the face:
That boxing defense is ideal because it sets up opportunities to counter attack:
If you can punch someone in the face, you can almost as easily grab them or hit them somewhere else on their body. But where should your jab and cross go if not to the face? I recommend you take a page out of Asian boxing styles and use your knuckles to drive into the large muscle groups in the arms, tolling their ability to attack you. As their arms tire, you can then more easily create openings for devastating body blows:
As I have studied traditional martial arts, I have noticed nearly total absence of straight punches to the head in the "kata" or "forms." Choy Lay Fut has almost all the kung fu strikes in existence in the style, yet all the straight strikes to the head are modified, typically using the fore knuckles instead of a regular closed fist, or an open thrusting palm, or some kind of wide hook is used instead:
However in the most extreme of all closed fist striking martial arts, Karate, it is still very unusual to see straight punches to the face in their drills:
So on one hand, in the gym practicing face punches can be very beneficial to building self defense skills. On the other hand, on the street I would recommend the wisdom of the ancient masters and avoid straight punches to the head.
In his campaign for the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump continually makes more and more outrageous claims, which he himself cannot possibly really believe such as:
"Send back all the field workers back to Latin America." Obviously someone in Trump's position understands that our economy would come to a screeching halt, and people with lots money like him would lose out.
"No Muslim immigration to the USA." Trump knows this is logistically impossible, since Muslim isn't an ethnicity but a religious preference. Trump offers a clue about his real motivations when he claims "I have lots of Muslim friends and I am helping them."
"I want to turn off the internet to stop ISIS, I will talk to Bill Gates about getting it done." The average grade school kid in the USA could correct him on the problems with this statement, and obviously someone like Trump could not possibly believe that statement. Notice this is yet another logistic impossibility.
Let me say this slowly, listen carefully: CORPORATE LEADERS IN THE USA WANT UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE BECAUSE THEY DO NOT WANT TO SHOULDER THE COSTS OF HEALTH CARE FOR THEIR EMPLOYEES. This is a position that organized labor has over time put them in, but it is still their position none the less. Obamacare makes the situation WORSE for these companies, forcing them to pay up more than ever before.
First, let's take what Trump himself has said on health care in a 1998 NBC interview:
"...I am a liberal on health care, we have to take care of people that are sick... I like Universal health care, we have to take care, there is nothing else. What is the country all about if we are not going to take care of our sick?"
However if he wins, it will be because of a groundswell of conservative voters showing up to the polls, which will get other conservative politicians elected, making the establishment of "socialist" universal health care far more difficult. IT IS MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE FOR HIM TO DISCOURAGE CONSERVATIVE VOTERS FROM VOTING IN THE FIRST PLACE. His comments mock conservative sentiments, exaggerating them to the point absurdity; HIS OUTLANDISH COMMENTS ARE DESIGNED TO MAKE CONSERVATIVE VOTERS TOO ASHAMED OF BEING CONSERVATIVE TO VOTE.
This is not the first time you have seen a millionaire do this. Consider Mitt Romney. In 2008 - an election where at the time it was painfully obviously that the number one issue was going to be the economy - where Romney would have easily trounced Obama in the general election because of his business experience - Romney dropped out only when he was sure that his last GOP rival, McCain, was too old-looking to be credible on solving a new financial crisis compared to the Democrat candidates. It is no coincidence that this act of sabotage led to Mitt Romney's health care system in Massachusetts - aka "Romneycare" - becoming spread from sea to shining sea as our nations new "Obamacare." Romey's lackluster performance as the 2012 GOP candidate - and his flaunting of his unpopular LDS faith in front of largely conservative Christian GOP voters - clearly intended to keep conservative voters home from the poles, just as Trump's outrageous comments are being used today.
As a radical left-wing progressive, I am a huge fan of Trump, like Romney before him. As a conservative voter, this should alarm you:
Warning: this is an overtly political blog post. If you are sensitive about these things, this is the end of this post for you, see you next time.
When I see my friend suffering from congestive heart failure in GA denied health care because his state successfully rejected some portion of Obamacare, it makes me mortified to be an American. I take some small comfort in knowing I don't actually have to migrate to Scandinavia to live in a civilized world, I can simply defect to Canada, only a few hundred miles north of where I live.
But there is hope for the USA, with Bernie Sanders being taken seriously as a political candidate, and Hilary Clinton showing much more political spine than her spouse. Even GOP Marco Rubio seems to be looking seriously at issues around poverty and taxation.
However if we really want to civilize the USA, we need to get rid of Texas. Keep in mind they never have valued their status as USA citizens above their status as Texans anyhow, and that the idea of them leaving the USA is actually very popular in Texas. Why make them stay? There are a lot of really important reasons why we would be better off without them:
They elect dangerous anarchists like Ted Cruz who do things like shut down the federal government at every available opportunity.
They have 38 electoral college votes which always swing to the far right, so that it is impossible for the GOP to win the white house without Texas.
I am not sympathetic to cry babies in the USA, who fearing their favorite toys could be no longer available for sale, moan that "the 2nd Amendment guarantees our right threaten the government with firearms, which is the only reason why we still live in a democracy today." The original intent of the 2nd Amendment was guaranteeing the right to control slaves and not about freedom of speech, which is clearly an entirely different amendment.
We shouldn't be restricting what types of guns we can own, we should be restricting who is allowed to own guns. We need a standard training credential for gun ownership, something like a driver's license for guns. I do not think the average citizen should be allowed to own firearms without significant training, qualification, and accountability for what happens to weapons in their collection.
I think gun experts - people who care enough about guns to know how to maintain them and be well trained in how use them - including weekend warriors with constitutional concerns in actual militias, but also most other serious hobbyists ranging from collectors to marksman to hunters - should be able to own any firearm they want, as long as they are going to take real responsibility for what happens to and with those weapons - just like with me and my car.
A final afterthought is that if we are going to regulate hardware, the ONLY consideration should be clip size. Time and again when mass shootings are interrupted, it is usually by a bystander grappling with the shooter as they attempt to reload or switch weapons. Furthermore, there are various hacks that can convert common semiautomatic handguns into viscous fully automatic assault weapons. I see no point in controlling so-called 'assault riffles', forbidding our veterans who have been trained in their proper and expedient uses (speaking of something that could potentially interrupt a mass shooting,) while allowing paranoid untrained soccer moms to purchase hand guns, making those hand guns more likely to end up in the hands of children or criminals:
Normally we think of low kicks as leg kicks, or in other words round kicks to the usually-upper leg. This is swinging your shin like a base ball bat into your opponent's thigh, and it is probably the single most productive kick in the history of the martial arts:
However, this kick has a gory weakness, which is that a proper block of the kick does not completely protect the blocker, but is even more devastating to the kicker. In other words, its preferable to take a leg kick yourself than it is to have one of your leg kicks blocked properly. In extreme cases, a proper leg kick block has been known to break the leg of the kicker in two:
In traditional martial arts low side kicks and "oblique kicks" (stomps with the heel of the foot, with the toe of the foot pointing slightly to the direction of the side of the body from which it is thrown) are more common. The strange looking oblique kick is seen in all kinds of kung fu (every major type I can think of), Hapkido (which supposedly got them from Taekkyon, the ultimate "push kick" style,) some traditional Japeanese striking styles, very old Thai martial arts (even Lynn Thompson covers them in his instructional videos,) and many other martial arts. Starting at around 7 minutes, 45 seconds this Choy Li Fut instructor shows the very common kung fu technique of practicing oblique kicks on a wooden dummy:
However, until very recently, oblique kicks were pretty much unheard of in sport fighting. Low side kicks and oblique kicks are normally illegal in kickboxing and other full contact martial arts. The the closest thing to an exception to this I have heard of is in Taekkyon (real traditional Korean martial arts) battles where Judo-like sweeps sometimes double as low kicks (almost like shin-kicking from the UK):
Then controversially Jon Jones brought these traditional low thrust kicks kicking and screaming back into MMA. Here he is with his coach, Greg Jackson, explaining their use:
But Jon Jones is a notoriously dirty fighter, so I wrote this street fighting off as an anomaly. But then I saw Holly Holm defeat the invincible Rhonda Rousey, using those oblique kicks to help keep Rousey in striking range:
Now Holm is one of the most qualified strikers to ever compete in MMA, and she is using those oblique kicks more than regular leg kicks? I could understand if it was just a short cut so that she didn't have to learn round kicks, but she has a kickboxing background in addition to a boxing background, and she KOed Rousey with a round kick to the head. So where did these oblique kicks come from?
What Jones and Holm have in common in is coach Greg Jackson. It turns out he got these kicks from studying traditional martial arts for self defense as a youth. They come from Kenpo. This is another example of why MMA is the best thing that ever happened to traditional martial arts; now we know how these moves are used, even though they probably weren't sparred with for generations.
Of course this isn't the first time Kenpo has been seen in MMA:
This is a religious post. It may or may not have implications for those who are not LDS, but it is addressed primarily to an LDS audience.
The latest controversy in Salt Lake with the policy regarding the children of LGBT couples has highlighted something for me that has long been my opinion, but which I wonder why isn't well understood by LDS members. This concept is "Church Policy is not the same thing as Eternal Truth."
An example of Church Policy is "what night of the week should Family Home Evening be on." An example of Eternal Truth is "I am a child of God." Church Policy is a necessarily pragmatic operational decision, similar to most other policy by most other organization. Eternal Truth is deep spiritual learning God intends for you to get through participation in The Church.
If The Church changes what night of the week Family Home Evening is on, should this become a crisis of faith for you, since "God is Eternal and does not turn from left or right?" Of course not. Church Policy is not supposed to convey deep spiritual meaning.
However with the mass exodus from The Church planned for today in protest of the children of LGBT policy, it is pretty clear that many people are willing to give up deep spiritual meaning they get in The Church in protest of Church Policy, equating the two as one in the same. This is also true of many of the members who are not leaving, LGBTs being spiritual villains they are being protected against via Church Policy. However this Church Policy is NOT supposed to say ANYTHING about the long-term spiritual well being of the children of LGBT, and the policy itself says so explicitly.
It requires you to do very little research to realize that Brigham Young was fond of what black priesthood holders the LDS had, then was put in a situation where he needed to enact a temporary Church Policy to deny the priesthood to blacks, and then proceeded to mistake this Church Policy as being related to Eternal Truth. ("Whites should never marry blacks" for example.) A number of following LDS prophets made a similar mistake with the same policy.
It is my humble opinion, not to say here official church doctrine, that the same thing goes for Polygamy. Jacob chapter 2 is very explicit about how foul polygamy is considered to be by God, and exactly what circumstances God MAY call for polygamy, and suggests those circumstances are rare. In spite of Jacob chapter 2, many LDS and various prophets have suggested polygamy is a very important part of the afterlife.
However I think this inability to separate policy and spirituality is connected to Fundamentalism in LDS culture. "Fundamentalist" in LDS culture means "apostate polygamist." But "Fundamentalist" in religion generally refers to people who take scripture to be taken completely literally. In LDS culture, the most extreme Fundamentalists are indeed our apostate polygamists, but I think Fundamentalism runs otherwise rampant in the LDS community, the common belief that polygamy is an important part of the afterlife derived from a few chapters in the Doctrine and Covenants being just one example.
LDS believe like many other Christians that Jesus was the mortal form of God, who resurrected himself after his death. When Jesus was here, he did not lecture us on deep history, or try to explain to us detailed scientific principles. Instead he taught through parables THAT WERE NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE LITERALLY TRUE. He sought to educate us on matters of personal character, how we can be better people. LDS believe that God's purpose is to "bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." The LDS also believe that the main barrier standing between any given mortal and their eternal life is their own moral character - the kind of person they are and what kind of person they are becoming.
God's teachings are then to inform you how to be a better person, not to lecture you on science and history. We have some debate in The Church about how literal various stories in the Old Testament should be taken. Should they be taken as "literal" - as a history or science lesson, versus should they be taken "symbolically", meant to convey some secret meaning of great supernatural power. Both are misguided - the "moral of the story" is the point of the story, not the symbols, and certainly not the literal text.
Let's take the Book of Mormon for example. The book itself says that the appropriate way to embrace scripture is to "liken it unto yourself," even if you are unfamiliar the exact geography and politics the original story is based on. The book goes on to say that "only matters of spiritual importance" are recorded in the book - so that regardless of what the most important political and social events of their times are, only the events considered to convey spiritual meaning to us are recorded in the book! "Liken the scriptures unto us" plus "only spiritually important events" means "moral of the story is the point of this book." Therefore it hardly matters at all if the events in the Book of Mormon literally took place - the whole thing could be a work of fiction created by an angel to convey important meaning for us for our own salvation as children of God trying to become more like Him. When I hear people fretting over "DNA evidence and the Book of Mormon," I have to shake my head and think that this person has missed the point of the Book of Mormon entirely.
Mormons like many other Christians essentially believe that the Burning Bush that Moses encountered - the being that gave us the Old Testament up to Moses's point in history - was Jesus in camouflage. It was Jesus's personality to teach real life morals through fictional storytelling. Therefore I have to ask you, how much of the Old Testament before Moses was intended to be parable and not deep history or lectures on the scientific origins of the universe? Answer: it doesn't matter in the slightest, because the point of scripture is to make us better people, not to teach science or history.
Taking Church Policy as Eternal Truth was an understandable mistake for earlier generations of LDS who did not enjoy the hindsight we have now. But we - after all the crow we have eaten on so many controversial issues from the past - have no excuse - we should know better. Doing so is an exercise in Fundamentalism - taking whatever words we can get our hands on and assuming that they are God's own explanation of science and history, instead of asking ourselves what the big picture morality questions are of our current circumstances. It is an Eternal Truth that we need to back up our leaders and be supportive in spite of controversy, it is an act of Fundamentalism to get so deeply offended by a Church Policy that you sacrifice your own spiritual practices in protest.
Wrestling has been used to build character, body, and self defense skills throughout the ages. The most influential type of wrestling, Mongolian wrestling, has its earliest documentation dating NINE THOUSAND years ago. Since then it has appeared in every major civilization I know of. (See also my post the ubiquity of wrestling: http://bfgalbraith.blogspot.com/2015/01/ubiquity-of-mongolian-wrestling.html )
At the dawn of Judeo-Christianity, it is said that Jacob wrestled an angel. At the dawn of Islam it is said that Muhammad was a wrestler. Even at the dawn of America's own home-brewed form of Judeo-Christiantiy, Mormonism, it is said that Joseph Smith Jr. was a wrestler. Wrestling has been promoted by many religious and educational institutions because it teaches many moral lessons: sportsmanship, mental focus, will power, reflection/repentance/intentional-personal-improvement, humility, hard work and dedication.
Wrestling is essentially this: the core fighting skills you can spar without striking or submission holds. Wrestling skills are also the most absolutely fundamental self defense skills - explosive physical power, awareness of your body, awareness of your opponents bodies, moving left/right/forward, taking opponents off their feet, sprawling when opponents try to take you down, staying out-from-under/on-top of your opponents, physically manipulating your opponents, and rigorous training:
Wrestling is clearly of massive importance to martial arts in terms of both tradition and technique. In early MMA, wrestling was often overshadowed by more submission oriented grappling styles, though over time it has become considered one of the most important martial arts in MMA. Some of the most sophisticated grappling in the world today is BJJ, but even in that sport it is unwise to neglect wrestling skills:
Full Analysis and Discussion: http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=124723A good example on why takedowns or setting up a solid guard pull is necessary. Notice the Wrestler only disengages after the BJJ player butt flops, the rest of the match he is the one moving forward to engage.
Posted by Bullshido on Saturday, August 1, 2015
(Before reading this post, if you haven't already, read my original Capitalism vs. Socialism post, where I asserted that in a liberal democracy capitalism and socialism are strongly dependent on each other, and that decreasing one also decreases the other.)
The great recession that started around 2008 has been declared a failure of regulation. Deregulation in the decade before led to a massive failure of the economic system. A compromise of socialism (deregulation) led to a compromise of capitalism (market failure.)
My views on this are strongly influenced by one specific book by Jane Jacobs, called "The Nature of Economies." In that book she shows how small communities start off by importing and exporting, but as they grow and their economies diversify, the less and less dependent they become on export and import. A small town might only be able to get microwave Chinese food mailed to them. However as that town grows, its economy will become strong enough to support their own Chinese restaurant.
Let's consider the Chinese Restaurant Owner and Operator, who we will call "Chang," verses the local food inspector, who we will call "James." Chang doesn't like it when James stops by, sticks his nose in Chang's freezer, runs around talking temperatures of random food items, and slaps a bunch of warnings on the wall in Chang's prep kitchen, and finally sends him a minor fine in the mail. Chang, capitalist extraordinaire, would just assume James stop wasting his tax money and go find another job.
But let's look at the CAPITALIST consequences of not having food inspectors. First word would get out that there were no food inspectors. Now people are going to be far more hesitant to go out, and the more exotic and daring the food, the less likely they will be to try it. Chang's restaurant definitely takes a significant hit on customers. Second all the food inspectors are out of work, and their salary is no longer contributing to the economy. This only results in less customers for Chang.
But what is especially concerning to me is how many progressives I talk to think that Chang's business isn't important. If his business folds, there are two catastrophic consequences: 1) his small town is now back to ordering microwave Chinese food and 2) his business no longer contributes to the tax base of his community. Both outcomes are terrible, even for socialists.
The implication of all this going forward, is that more government involvement to build more business is what you want to do. For example:
Instead of doing too-big-to-fail business bailouts, you should establish a small-business welfare system that bales out small businesses in hard times, especially considering that they are the USA's foremost source of employment.
You should be asking for more small business grants and loans - massively more. We do not have enough to go around until the top students in each DECA club in high schools across the country are able to try out entrepreneurship once they graduate. Microloans should not be the exclusive realm of private NPOs!
You should be asking for more regulations, not less. Every part-time cog in a government bureaucracy is another potential customer for these businesses. Also, a magnifying glass taken to the new industries popping up will make customers have more confidence in trying out the new things these new businesses come up with.
But here's the punchline: I am not pro-capitalism or a socialist. I am a Technocracy Inc./21-hour work week type of guy. I don't think capitalism, socialist dogma, unions, careers, etc. are even a good idea. However IF you want our current system to work, you should be asking for MORE of it, not less. Capitalism vs. Socialism is a false dichotomy in liberal democracies, they are in fact the only things that prop each other up.
With the likes of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders running for president in 2016, we are going to hear tons about why socialism is better than capitalism and vice versa. What I will explain here is that they are two sides of the same coin, or in other words, that they act as a yin/yang balance where one supports the other; successful capitalism depends on successful socialism, and successful socialism depends on successful capitalism. Together they form the ideal economic bedrock on which to build liberal democracy.
First let's look at how society has evolved:
In a primal state of hunter gatherers, we are not at the top of the food chain. With no significant government, issues around starvation and being eaten by apex predators trump all other concerns regarding right and wrong, family relationships, or anything else we might regard as morality.
Once we establish permanent villages - even if those villages are mobile - with strong central leadership that can make decisions for large groups in emergencies - right and wrong can now be considered. No longer at the mercy of apex predators and with a variety of adaptions for dealing with food shortages, meaningful family structures can now form. The problem for the primal village is other primal villages - mankind becomes it's own worst enemy.
Once we can establish nations with national leadership - traditionally most commonly monarchies, villages now stop warring with each other, and violence over all is massively reduced, death from natural causes now for the first time in this story becoming more common than being murdered. Most feel strong loyalty to the King and Queen, because they provide the stability everyone needs. Sure there are entrepreneurs in a Monarchy, but they are not able to transcend the peace keeping authority of the royal family. The problem now is that the Royal Family has to more or less decide what is right for everyone, and no matter how intelligent and virtuous they are, it is impossible to make the best decisions for other people.
Capitalism emerges as the entrepreneurs get enough power and influence that as a community, they can challenge the power of the monarchy. Now we have many more people involved in the decision making process of how everyone lives, with a wider range of products and services to help people live their lives. The problem is that if the people with money are the ones best positioned to make more money - and in capitalism they always are - the rich always get richer, and as a community the rich end up getting more and more control over all of the wealth. This can eventually end in a currency crisis where money only matters to those who have it, while everyone else resorts to bartering. This can massively degrade society throwing it back into Monarchy or even something more primitive.
Socialism arises to cure the ills of capitalism. They fix the problem of wealth concentration by seizing the means of production from the rich and making it all government property. The problem is that innovation slows down when all decisions are being made by the same great bureaucracy, and internal politics dictates what products and services are provided more so than what the people actually want or need to have.
Liberal Democracy puts the will of the people first. It is focused on balancing Capitalism and Socialism. The people want the goods and services Capitalism provides but they also want the stability Socialism provides. Liberal Democracies thrive far beyond the more primitive Capitalism of the Old West or industrial revolution because they use taxation and regulation to prevent concentration of wealth collapses. Liberal Democracies thrive beyond the old Socialism of the Cold War because the tolerance of Capitalism provides far more goods and services than a single bureaucracy can manage.
The more Capitalism a Liberal Democracy has, the more Socialism it can have, as there is more money to tax to provide universal stability for the people through social safety nets. The more Socialism a Liberal Democracy has, the more Capitalism it can have as taxes and regulations prevent oligarchies and wealth concentration collapses. My warning here is that in a Liberal Democracy, less of either Capitalism or Socialism leads to less Socialism AND less Capitalism, weakening the Liberal Democracy. If an Liberal Democracy is to grow, it should strive for MORE Capitalism AND MORE Socialism.
Contrary to popular belief, high taxes and robust regulations are exactly how we build Capitalism, while allowing people to embrace investment and consumerism is exactly how we build Socialism. Those who advocate for only one side or the other are ignoring how dependent the two rival systems are on each other when practiced within an Liberal Democracy:
One of my favorite Tai Chi moves is an elbow to the body. It can be done very discretely with a minimum of telegraphing or announcing "hey everyone look at me I am beating on this guy" in a self defense situation. First let's look at basic elbow strike technique:
Now here is what that basic elbow strike technique looks like in a fight:
Elbows to the body can happen in MMA with ground and pound strategies:
But if standing-up elbows to the body specifically were effective, wouldn't they teach them in Muay Thai? Behold:
But that's Muay Thai, not Tai Chi, how similar could the two arts elbows be to each other? Very:
This I finally read The Righteous Mind concerning morality and politics. At the core of this book is Moral Foundations Theory, and it explains more about national politics and political strategy than any other book I have seen. There at 6 moral foundations that everyone's political values seem to be based on:
Care (for others)
Fairness (using the same rules as everyone else)
Liberty (to make your own decisions)
Loyalty (to the groups you belong to)
Authority (respecting tradition and legitimate institutions)
Sanctity (cleanness and purity both physically and conceptually)
In the USA there are then three political personality types that emerge based what moral foundations speak loudest to that individual person:
Progressive: primary focus is on Care, believing for example that the government's responsibility is to take care of people.
Libertarian: primary focus is on Liberty, believing that for example the government's responsibility to protect people from taxes and regulation that could impair people's free will.
Conservative: compared to progressives and libertarians, conservatives value all six foundations equally. So for example caring about the poor but voting for a politician who does not, because that politician is trying to preserve a traditional definition of marriage, is a very conservative behavior.
(Note: Outside of the USA "liberal" means "Libertarian" and inside the USA it means "Progressive." It serves the agenda of Conservatives well to marginalize both into the same general category meaning "godless heathen." Progressives and Libertarians alike need to wage war on the pejorative "liberal" until it is no longer in political use.)
I noticed a direct correlation between The Scout Law and the Six Moral Foundations. I noticed in the past the virtues of the Scout Law were listed in related pairs. The Six Moral Foundations demonstrate how the pairs are related:
Trustworthy: loyalty - confidentiality
Loyal: loyalty - definition of loyalty
Helpful: fairness - equal access to information
Friendly: fairness - sharing values
Courteous: care - dignity of downtrodden
Kind: care - physical contribution to poor
Obedient: authority - obedience is obvious submission to authority
Cheerful: authority - attitude that sustains authority
Thrifty: liberty - self reliance is a critical assumption liberty depends on
Brave: liberty - attitude necessary to sustain liberty
Clean: sanctity - definition of sanctity
Reverent: sanctity - definition of sanctity
I see the Scout Law not so much as a moral code, but as a list of virtues ideal for good leadership, which youth can strive for. However I can also see that if the Scout Law is embraced as a moral code, it can lead to a distinctly Conservative perspective, valuing "Loyalty" as much as "Kindness" and "Cheerfulness" as much as "Courteousness" (flying in the face of progressives,) and "Obedience" as much as "Thriftiness" and "Reverence" as much as "Bravery" (flying in the face of Libertarians.) Anyhow, it is interesting that the Six Moral Foundations are comprehensive enough to cover all the virtues in the Scout Law.
I have an opinion about a specific generation older than me. This is not an ageist rant against the elderly, I do not have this same opinion of those even older than the generation I am referring to.
World War 2 was a time of great peril for the world, when mad men with dreams of world domination took over some of the most powerful countries in the world, waging wars for that world domination they dreamed of. Our poor understanding of genetics at the time justified genocide in the eyes of some of these mad men. Through great sacrifice and a willingness to do literally anything to stop these mad men, a whole generation of Americans and Europeans made massive sacrifices to save the world.
No reasonable people I know of challenge the above narrative. However, if you save the world, there's a certain sense of entitlement that comes with having made that sacrifice. The aftermath of that entitlement - though preferable to what would have happened if they had not made that sacrifice - is still the foundation of many of the problems in our world today.
Our WW2 vets came home ready to fight fascism here in the USA next, and to prevent that revolution they were given "GI Bills" generous enough to not only pay for an ivy league education, but were also sufficient to buy a house with cash outright in addition to pay for that college education. In today's money, depending on how calculated the vet was in using it, the WW2 GI bill was worth about a million dollars.
The WW2 vets also inherited an industrialized economy that was already unionized. The last few generations before them had made great sacrifices to create those unions, but the WW2 generation only had to mutter the a few words including "fascist" and any politician in his right mind would start lecturing on the virtues of organized labor.
They then had the luxury of telling future generations that they were not as hardworking, and that war was good for us economically. This was the generation that categorically threw their unsustainably large number of children ("baby boomers") out on the street on their 18th birthday, convinced that anyone "could make in on their own in this land of great opportunity (where me and half my friends got a million dollar GI bill)."
Their kids, the baby boomers, had to survive in THAT world. They did everything they could to save the world in the face of entitlement that justified wide environmental destruction and massive loss of human life through war. The baby boomers had to take on home-grown racism the greatest generation ignored in the face of the foreign WW2 genocides. Any sense of entitlement the baby boomers had in taking organized labor or other societal advantages for granted was inevitable cultural baggage from the Greatest Generation.
Generation X saw the end of the cold war. We went from living in constant fear of nuclear annihilation to suddenly accepting the reality that "oh wait, no one really wanted to blow us up after all." As we came of age and the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers gave us "the world is your oyster" line they believed so strongly in, we ran into far more hurdles when it came to cost of education, and lack of employment opportunity. Education and organized labor had been severely neglected by these last two generations, and in their deteriorated state we did not encounter the opportunity the two previous generations had.
This instilled a powerful sense of criticism of society's assumptions, and we intentionally looked at the world differently. We started a technology revolution that transformed the way world politics happened. After the internet, no politician could hide what he was doing for long. Just how well you fared financially during this great technological revolution depended primarily on how financially prepared your family was to support you in getting an education or employment under those challenging circumstances, HOWEVER the vast majority of us Generation Xers realize that, unlike the last two previous generations.
The cultural baggage Generation X inherited was the "30 year mortgage" and the "40 hour work week." When the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers speak of 40 hours, they speak of a labor market dominated by unionized jobs, where if your workplace wasn't unionized, it had to compete to retain employees with workplaces that were unionized. Unions at that time were incredibly powerful, and their members reaped incredible benefits including every holiday known to the culture off with pay, weeks of other payed vacation time, weeks of "sick leave," and protection from being fired even when you took time off from work beyond all that time paid off. In general what they called a "40" hour work week was more like what Generation X, working in the grave yard of unions, would have called a "32" or even perhaps "24" hour work week. By contrast, when Generation Xers were able to take advantage of the technology boom, positions were not protected by unions and 60+ hour work weeks - unheard of in generations - were common place.
The Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers had the luxury of affordable real estate, education, and a labor market driven by high wage unionized jobs. In that world of stable employment, even if you didn't get a million dollar GI bill, going into personal debt for much less expensive education and housing made very good sense. However the jobs and inexpensive housing and education were largely not there for Generation X, and now we largely shoulder the burden of the expectation of previous generations by way of outrageous student loans and mortgages. We have learned the hard way that under normal circumstances, the wealth enjoyed by the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers can not be taken for granted.
If Generation Y or Millennials feel entitled to anything at all, it's simply that they don't expect to be thrown out of the house on their 18th birthday, kicked from the nest before it is even possible to fly. Thanks to the information access created by Generation X, they comprehend that the world isn't what previous generations told themselves it was, and they understand concepts like "three generational house holds" and "it's possible for an opportunity to be too expensive to be rational." They have transformed the technology infrastructure created by Generation X to be socially valuable, and now it's possible to contact long lost friends and family or be connected with far more people simultaneously than anyone could before.
Generation Y and the Millennials have uncovered a long lost secret once held dear by Americans: frugality. Generations before the Greatest Generation held frugality in high regard, and did not see going into debt for several times your annual salary for ANYTHING to be a wise investment. What you may be seeing as entitlement with these new up and coming generations is most likely the opposite: some things are NOT worth sacrificing for, and the world does NOT owe you anything, financial decisions MUST be made carefully, and debt almost always SHOULD be avoided. You only have so many years on this Earth, and if there is no imminent nuclear annihilation that we must all fend off by boosting our nation's GDP, it is possible that there could be more worthwhile ways to spend our days:
The fight tonight between Floyd Jr. and Manny was the fight of the century. It was won by Jr. by having a referee who refused to penalize him for holding and stalling his brutally superior opponent, and by counting weak jabs that would not have likely influenced the outcome of an MMA match. Thousands of the USA's most influential people were there live, booing the fight, booing Jr., and most importantly of all, booing Boxing. In an MMA match, Floyd Jr.'s supposedly good defense would have have been generously punished for the garbage that it obviously is.
Boxing is a self-defense sport, and as it loses relevance to the general public's understanding of what effective self-defense is, it is rapidly outdated, approaching the ranks of other outdated self-defense sports such as Olympic Fencing and Archery. The fight between Manny and Floyd Jr. was a contest between two rival styles of boxing, a long-stance fencing type of boxing were the opponent stands sideways and jabs for points, versus a serious self defense style where the opponents is faced squarely and serious punches are thrown with both hands. The epitome of the fencing type of boxing is Muhammad Ali, and the epitome of the self-defense type of boxing is Mike Tyson.
In MMA, only the self-defense style of boxing works. Standing sideways doesn't work in MMA for the same reason why it doesn't work in self defense on the street, as the stance makes your lead leg vulnerable to kicks and all kinds of take downs. Jr. was representing the "best way to win a boxing match" style of fighting. Manny was representing the self-defense style of boxing. Jr. was able to further exploit loopholes in how boxing matches are arranged to get a referee who refused to penalize him for his constant stalling and holding. Thousands of pissed off and highly influential fans are losing interest in boxing and flocking to MMA.
Tonight was a big win for Jr.'s biggest fan, referee Kenny Bayless. It however was pure poison for the sport of boxing, and the sport is doomed to antiquity because we just saw a match that proved Manny was a far better boxer than Jr., but which Jr. won through technicalities and an a sympathetic ref. MMA fans by and large do not have to put up with this kind of disappointment, which is exactly why MMA is growing in popularity while boxing is more and more seen as the dusty antique it has become.
Mike Tyson has been saying in interviews that he tells fighters these days to do MMA instead of Boxing. I don't think the sport of boxing can overcome the lethal poison it was served up tonight. Rest in Peace Boxing, and long live MMA:
When it comes to BJJ, I have a strong preference for "no-gi" (as most commonly practiced by MMA gyms) over standard uniformed or "gi"style practice. Here's why:
Ergonomics: from death grips on the uniform to taking twice as long to escape from positions, gi practice seems to be harder on the body than no-gi.
Synthesis: with my background in a wide variety of martial arts, no-gi's techniques seem generally much more compatible with what I already know than with gi practice. Just for example if I want to stick to an opponent with my palm but without a strong grip for a few seconds like I might in Tai Chi, that's much more viable in no-gi than with gi, where instead everyone is yanking each other around by their clothes for the duration of sparring.
Concise: there will always be new interesting ways to tie up people in knots using their clothes. However no-gi keeps grappling as succinct as possible, focusing purely on the body's shape and not elaborating on the many variations of things that happen with clothing.
Application: in many circumstances, in a real self defense situation gi-specific techniques will come in handy. However, in many other circumstances gi-specific techniques will not work. If you are in a grey area with heavy clothing shaped very unlike a gi, or very light clothing not nearly as sturdy as a gi, it is the no-gi techniques you will wish you had focused on.
Pretense: if I have to choose between doing martial arts of any kind in a uniform or not in a uniform, I will ditch the uniform every time. Belt ranks may be nice for your ego and help you understand who has the most technical expertise in the room, but outside of class they are basically only a legal liability. And heaven forbid you should ever have to walk home in a martial arts uniform because of an unexpected transportation issue... you will look like someone who doesn't realize it is not Halloween.
Bootstrapping: if you want to get a new grappling practice group together, the gi is another significant barrier to getting started. With no-gi basically all you need is mats, willing and able sparring partners, mouthpieces and disinfectant.
Universal: the gi forces inherited technique from judo. Without the gi any grappling technique that can be executed safely from any grappling system can be explored.
In 2011 and 2012 I was at Olympic College when they had their 2nd Amendment drama about weather or not faculty could carry firearms to defend themselves on campus. I was in security meetings with the colleges security experts, and know exactly what the technical concern was. If the teachers were armed, why wouldn't this make the campus safer?
Let us say we have an active shooter situation, in the food court in the center of a shopping mall. This active shooter is killing people at random. Now the 1st Good Samaritan pulls his firearm. Hopefully he'll shoot the active shooter without hitting any innocent bystanders, and it won't be a gruesome prolonged gun battle that kills more people than the active shooter originally intended. Hopefully. In theory, all good so far.
Now, imagine two people have guns are drawn shooting at each other in the same food court, bodies and blood on the floor, people screaming, pissing themselves, running, hiding, paralyzed with fear. Now a 2nd good samaritan pulls a gun. How does he know who is the 1st good samaritan and who is the active shooter? What about a 3rd good samaritan, or a 4th?
The following situation, which I call the Good Samaritans Massacre, is nearly inevitable now: there will be an active shooter in a public place, and the good samaritans will create a situation that is highly resistant to the survival of victims and bystanders, and the total body count will be far higher than what the active shooter could have accomplished on his own in the same amount of time. This almost happened in the Gloria Giffords shooting. Multiple people had guns drawn, and couldn't figure out who to shoot first. The active shooter was taken out - as they usually are taken out - with a tackle when he was reloading or switching weapons. (The exception to this rule only happens when the people in charge of emergency response are wielding the defending firearm, be they the business owner, security guard, assistant principle or police... they are not random good Samaritans with concealed permits or open carry agendas.)
Think about how much training it takes to train a solider of police officer to properly use a firearm. Civilian gun owners rarely have a fraction of the training it takes to react effectively against an active shooter in a public place with other civilians. Are potential good samaritans training on simulators to train their reactions to not shoot innocent people, playing paintball against others really shooting back a them, practicing fast loading and quick drawing their weapons, or even getting out to the firing range once a month? If you are in a situation like this, you are better off without an armed yet unprepared good samaritan.
I am not particularly for or against various gun control policies in the USA. I am very concerned about the very specific point I have illustrated above. The only gun restriction that impacts massacres is clip size, because usually the active shooter is stopped when they reload by a charge from a grappler. But one of these days someone is going to be enjoying a leisurely stroll at the mall or university when there's going to be a run and gun battle between 2nd Amendment Cowboys so severe and so bloody that it will take hours for the police to finally finish sniping all the good samaritans so that the other civilian lives can be spared.
The future of transportation is almost here. A lot of people are aiming at the self-driving taxi, Google, Uber, Nissan and others. If you have already used Uber you know how much cheaper it can be than your average cab ride. Two things are going to change in the near future: 1) we will no longer have to pay for drivers, and 2) we will no longer have to pay for fuel. 1 + 2 = 3) we will no longer pay for cars.
My $20 with tip cab ride to work is only $10 with Uber (no tips allowed.) Take away the cost of paying the driver and the gas, and I am betting that goes down to $5. The bus is $3. Taxis will be price competing with buses.
Solar is getting exponentially cheaper and better. Batteries, especially in cars, thanks largely to Tesla, are also getting much better all the time. It's easy to see a future with a solar powered Taxi company in the near future.
If your average cab ride is only slightly more expensive than the bus, then why buy a car at all, even if it's only a $10,000 car? That is the big economic impact of all this, is average person will have no need to own a car, and therefore won't. Inside of the next 20 years, the drivers license will no longer serve as the universal ID, because most people won't have one anymore. Because self-driving taxis will be drastically less accident prone than human drivers, not driving yourself will be considered the socially responsible thing to do.
This also means we ALREADY have enough roads and parking, maybe even too much parking. The parking we have will most likely be reformed for self-driving taxis to pick people up and drop people off. Because self-driving cars are better than humans at driving, traffic is going to be drastically improved as well.
This also means that universal internet access for ordering rides without using a human telephone operator is going to be seen as essential. A device smart enough to web browse and internet access for that device is about to become a right rather than a privilege.
My farthest out prediction is that the taxis will eventually provide a mesh network using nodes on the vehicles themselves, to guarantee this universal access. A combination of cellphone towers and vehicle nodes will guarantee that where there are roads, there is internet. Even when the power is out:
This is intended for everyone. I will reference some religious material, but this post is not only for the religious.
It has been said that Brigham Young and Confucius taught something to the effect of "he who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool. He who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool." Think this through: if someone insults you unintentionally, you aren't accomplishing much and possibly risking a great deal if you allow yourself to become offended. On the other hand, if they DO intentionally insult you and you allow yourself to become offended, then you are allowing an aggressor to manipulate your feelings - and since feelings lead to thoughts and actions - you are allowing them to manipulate what you think and do.
Now think back on all that stuff Jesus had to say about being nice to people ("turning the other cheek" etc.,) or all the things Buddha had to say about being detached and forgiving of other people. On one hand that is sound advice for folks who want to live a happy life, but on the other hand it is critical self defense for any person with an agenda. If you have things to do, letting people derail your agenda unintentionally OR intentionally is not efficient.
In Moral Reconation Therapy they explain that when criminals complain, they are manipulating. A normal person might complain to blow off steam, create structural change, or start a conversation, but with criminals they are relying on manipulative behavior they used on their caregivers when they were infants and toddlers, mostly before when they learned to speak. When dangerous people say things that are intended to affront your ego or hurt your feelings, allowing yourself to be offended could be a fatal mistake. If someone calls you out personally from a dark alley, engaging in an on the spot argument (least bit turning around and going in fist first) could be walking right into an ambush... all to satisfy your ego.
I should not go into details here, but I know about this from my experience on the street. This is words for the wise in all self defense situations, be it on the street, online, in a cubicle, or on the mat, never let trash talking get to you - simply beware the person talking trash. Do not get distracted from your goals by conflicts instigated by other's carelessness or intentional opposition:
Aikido varies in quality drastically from school to school. In the North West there's one school of such questionable quality that the instructor's qualifications are 1) an unrelated black belt in some lame karate-for-kids style, and 2) supposedly the founder of Aikido many years after his death appeared to him in a dream and taught him Aikido one night. In general you want to avoid Aikido schools that are that overtly spiritual if you want to learn Aikido.
Aikido in general suffers from a lack of sparring. There are important exceptions to this. Before we get into those exceptions (the styles of Aikido I would endorse if you had the rare opportunity to practice them,) understand that this is a problem that could be easily remedied:
The exercise "Randori" (defending against multiple attackers at once, the main type sparring practice in Aikido) can be practiced with varying levels of intensity. Aikido practitioners could strap on face-protecting head gear (for the defender) and use sparring weapons or MMA gloves (for the attackers) when doing Randori for a far more realistic practice that could be considered real sparring (if done continously without stopping for minutes at a time, as Randori normally is done.)
Most legitimate traditional Jujitsu schools (and Aikido has roots in and is considered to be a form of traditional jujitsu) compete against each other in Sport Jujitsu tournaments (not to be confused with Judo or Brazilian Jujitsu,) which allow significant amounts of stand up striking, stand up throwing, and ground submissions - all three things Aikido black belts should be proficient in enough to compete in. Ideology is no excuse for legitimate martial artists practicing Aikido to isolate themselves from the greater traditional jujitsu community, and participating in these competitions is important for building the jujitsu community and guaranteeing quality in your own dojo:
The two types of Aikido known to normally embrace sparring are Tomiki Aikido (also known as Shodokan), and an even far more rare form of Aikido known as Hatenkai. First let's observe a round of Tomiki Aikido sparring, a stylized variation of push hands sparring:
Tomiki Aikido is also known for their knife-vs-unarmed sparring which while not as impressive as their sparring in the video above, is pretty much the most serious anyone is practicing knife disarms in today's world.
The founder of Aikido was quoted numerous times suggesting that in a fight, strikes would be employed generously along side more common Aikido techniques. Of course the "atemi" of his time wouldn't have been doing sword-hand strikes to the top of someone's skull, it would have been the knock-down karate being promoted by the famous bull killing karate master. Hatenkai Aikido strongly reflects the striking spirit of Aikido's founder:
And with all that said, besides other internal martial arts, a lot of martial arts practice the theories and concepts of Aikido. Enshin, the softest common form of knock down karate, has a lot in common with Aikido and in some ways Enshin sparring has some of the best Aikido around:
Probably the single most important alternative to Aikido for learning the kind of self defense Aikido is supposed to teach is Filipino Martial Arts. Here's an FMA expert (grandmaster of the first martial art I ever studied) from a sparring intensive school showing off some of his more Aikido like techniques:
One final note is that in MMA competitions the style that incorporates the theory behind Aikido (using your opponent's force against them, not using force against force, and so on,) most often is Brazilian Jujitsu. Most Aikido enthusiasts would profit greatly from a good dose of BJJ training.
Should you do Aikido? If you can find one of those rare Tomiki or Hatenkai schools, sure. Otherwise you need to be prepared to make adaptations in order to make Aikido work for you. Fortunately there are many alternatives.
Rest In Peace Center for Creative Change (C3,) Graduate Management Program (GMP) For The Win! I am very excited about two major events at Antioch University Seattle, where I graduated with a Master of Science in Management in 2006:
First, after suspending the GMP in favor of focusing on "better attended" programs, they have brought the GMP back. I knew that the C3 (now simply the GMP program, formerly a host of other degree programs besides the GMP,) was not financially sustainable without the GMP because I had been to colleges recruiting for the C3, and I knew that many of the students who joined the C3 only noticed the program because they were looking for MBA alternatives, and the other degree titles such as "whole systems design," "organizational psychology" and "environment and community" did not sound like MBA alternatives. After the GMP attracted students to the C3, the students would often change their degree title to one of the fancier-sounding ones after deciding to attend the C3, deflating the GMP official attendance numbers. There was about 75% course overlap between the various programs, so all of this degree tittle and program attendance drama was mostly semantics!
Second, all of the formerly-known-as-C3 programs have been combined under one degree title, "Management and Leadership." Since all the programs were so similar anyways, it makes sense they all simply share the same degree title. The degree title that was the most marketable, was the most transparent in what was studied in the program, described the practical application those studies, and was the easiest language to understand for perspective students and employers was indeed "Management and Leadership." (As a student I campaigned to have that "and Leadership" added to the end of the degree title because simply "Management" was too abstract, and everything in the C3 had strong "Leadership" implications.)
In general there were two categories of C3 graduates, those who liked their experience at the C3 and those who despised it. Those who liked it described an experience much like my own in the GMP with vast deep, constant, and practical learning. Those who didn't like it described something much more painful and abstract. It is a fortunate development indeed that "organizational development" graduates will describe their degree programs as "merged into Management & Leadership" rather than what I had to do, which was describe my management degree as "merged into organizational development... here let me explain what 'organizational development' means instead of explaining why you should hire me..." You may not like the taste of this medicine, but it's exactly what you C3 (now GMP) graduates need!
I have been very sad lately, because Jon Welton committed suicide. I was a pal bearer, and I thought I was alone outside with the other pal bearers. When the hearse door closed on the coffin I lost my shit on a level I never have since I was a young child, and turning around to see dozens of people I didn't realize were there, that awkwardness, did not slow down my involuntary emotional reaction to realizing I would never see this 14 year old saint ever again.
Now since the funeral it has come out that Jon had stood up against various bullies on behalf of other kids, making him a target for some unknown number of other bullies. I was in that situation in the 80's, and when I told my father I was going to use my paper route money to get a flair gun and arm it with a 12 gauge rock salt cartridge, he immediately got me enrolled in martial arts classes, and martial arts has been a huge part of my life ever since.
Sure there was violence, but no one died. Sure I was suspended, sure bullies had to go see the school nurse, but there was no long faces at youth suicide funerals because of bullying. Sure my friends packed improvised weapons like whips made of TV cable, knives, crossbows, maces made from skull shaped stick shifts, and pepper spray, but we rarely had to use them, and never had to do anything but threaten with the weapons to get bullies to physically back down against us. Certainly no one felt it necessary to bring a gun to school and open fire on the general student body.
Now one of my sons who trains in Brazilian Jujitsu has to see a therapist because of depression, and not surprisingly bullying at school is a factor, and he wisely hesitates to use physical violence to defend himself against the physical and non-physical bullying at school. Arming himself at school is completely outside of his thinking on this, which is is a very good thing. So what I have come up with is an appropriate escalation-of-force model for dealing with bullies:
EVERY TIME a bullying incident happens, immediately go to the teacher and demand to see the school counselor saying some thing like "I need to see the school counselor because I AM GOING TO HIT (name of bully here.)"
If the bulling continues, then EVERY TIME a bullying incident happens, use extremely strong language yell at the teacher "Get me out of this class now or I WILL KILL (name of bully here.)"
If the bullying continues, then EVERY TIME a bullying incident happens, take the bully to the ground and hold them there until an adult shows up to break up the confrontation.
If the bullying continues, defend yourself with appropriate physical force as if you were not at school.
If the school is doing their job in the slightest, 1 above will do the trick. Even if the school is very negligent towards student safety and 1 above doesn't work, 2 should scare any professionally trained teacher into taking serious action to intervene in the situation. Should the school be a generally inept and dangerous place for children and 2 not work, then phase 3 should draw their attention to the fact that their bullying situation has become a safety hazard for their students. Should 3 fail, I would rather my child be expelled from school than be dead from extreme physical abuse by other students or suicide. In the USA we are allowed to defend ourselves when someone is physically attacking us, though this fact has been very inconvenient for many a school district in the past:
In my management studies it was explained to me on multiple occasions that there are varying levels of certainty. Here we can translate certainty theory into the four-star scale:
One star: not knowing what you don't know. For example you live in a forest with a with a man eating tiger, and you don't realize that there is a man eating tiger living in your forest. In this case you would have made no preparations at all to deal with the tiger when it comes for you.
Two stars: being mistaken, or knowing something that is wrong. Having an incorrect opinion about a subject is better than not knowing a subject exists. For example, if you know that a man eating tiger is loose in your forest, but you are dead wrong about the location of the tiger, at least you will have made some spears and developed some effective escape roots, even though the tiger can still surprise you.
Three starts: knowing what you don't know. Knowing the questions to the answers you don't have is a good position to be in. For example, if you know that the man eating tiger is hunting in your forest, and you know you don't know the location of the tiger, you can be on the ready for the tiger to attack at any time.
Four stars: knowing what you know. The best situation is absolute certainty. For example if you know for a fact that the man eating tiger in your forest is sleeping in his cave, then you can have time and space to take care of other important things besides being on the look out for the tiger.
Notice here the loop in all 4 stars scale things. 4 is close to 1: if you become complacent in the knowledge you have and stop asking questions, you will develop categorical gaps in our knowledge. For example if you become complacent in the knowledge that the tiger sleeps in his cave during mid day, and no longer be on the lookout for predators at that time of day, you might not discover the hungry panther who hunts when the tiger sleeps until it is too late.
Don't feel overwhelmed when you start to have many questions in life, it probably means you are seeing that you now need to know things that before you were wrong about, or didn't even know those things existed. You can't get absolute certainty without sometimes being wrong and asking good questions.
It's fairly safe to say "Mongolian Wrestling" (also known as "Bokh,") influenced Shoulin Kung Fu far more than the other way around. For example, it seems likely that the ubiquitous "horse stance" found in almost all East Asian martial arts originated with the Mongols, since the average Mongolian warrior rode a horse all the time, unlike the average Shoulin monk.
In Bokh the goal is to get opponents to touch the ground with any part of the body besides the hands or feet. Coming from a herding and hunting culture, they aren't concerned about territory control or fighting indoors and thus have an unlimited ring size (unlike the Chinese Lei Tai elevated fighting platform/stage) :
In "Choosing a Martial Art" I use a story of a hypothetical village where Mongolian Wrestling starts an evolution of martial arts that explains the various categories of martial arts we encounter. However another way of using Bokh to look at martial arts, is as all other martial arts being a reaction to Bokh. Considering how wide spread exposure to Bokh must have been in the past, this is historically true to varying degrees. Chinese Wrestling is clearly Mongolian Wrestling for those not tough enough to be real Mongolians:
In the internal martial arts push hands sparring (not to be confused with stationary push hands drills,) is very similar to Bokh in it's rules. In some regions Mongolian Wrestling does not allow an opponents hand to touch the ground. Add to that the Lei Tai concept and we have push hands sparring (one obvious connection was the founder of the largest sect of Taoism today was a friend of Genghis Khan):
In the west, the ancient art of Glima bears a strong resemblance to Mongolian Wrestling as well:
The Mongolian Wrestling approach to self-defense works well for warriors because putting an attacker down on the battle field gives you time to draw your own weapon and finish your enemy off before he returns to his feet. Also compared to the injury risk of trading blows and wrestling for submission holds, there is a very high return on skill and physical conditioning for warriors using Mongolian Wrestling as a way to stay combat ready. As the Vikings played a similar role in Europe as the Mongolians did in Asia, it makes sense that the Vikings had a similar martial art very much like Mongolian Wrestling.
Besides imitating Mongolian Wrestling, other martial arts go for more expansive or simply completely different techniques, in hopes they can out strategize what essentially amounts to a Mongolian Wrestler. So many self defense techniques are focused on what to do if someone grabs you like a competent stand up grappler... and in the context of these martial arts origins, it seems like someone was worried about self defense against a Mongolian Wrestler. Weapon martial arts are again trying to give the advantage against the historical bully and dominant fighter on the battlefield:
And as you can see from that video, even when techniques vary, the objective of martial arts is often the same: to put the opponent on the ground. The ultimate goal of any type of boxing or kick boxing is to put the opponent on the ground, and in traditional full contact "knock down" Karate, it is the only way to score. Even as far off as the UK, "shin kicking" players have identical goals to Bokh players:
Now even Japanese Judo (and to some degree Sumo) with all their starchy traditions, self-righteous espoused values and convenient culturally biased changes to their rules, can't avoid the inevitable influence of Bokh (as if Bokh's influence on these sports wasn't already obvious enough):
Like the universal influence of the ancient Mongolian Hordes, the influence of Bokh on martial arts is felt today all over the world.
I am making a distinction between "fighting," "sparring" and "fencing." Most people understand what figthing is, but they don't understand that sparring is the best thing that ever happened to martial arts:
A fight is for keeps. Two people go at it to see who's best. There's a permanent record of who won, and who lost. Fights help to keep martial arts schools in check, to make sure their teaching methods are effective compared to other schools. For example in a submission grappling tournament, how well the participants do against each other gives us some feedback on how effective their schools are at teaching submission grappling.
In sparring, you set a time limit for the round, and practice against each other for the duration of that round. You do not stop and talk about every little move that works in the round, you keep going continuously. Sparring isn't super competitive, you might work on advanced techniques you are not good at yet, even if it means your opponent does better against you. Sparring is the most important activity when it comes to learning moves you can use in a fight. For example in a submission grappling school students will typically spend half the class time wrestling against each other trying to land submission wrestling moves. A beginning student might land some moves on a more experienced student who is practicing moves they aren't good at yet.
Fencing is a perversion of fighting and sparring, where every time someone lands a successful technique, judges or the fencers themselves pause to discuss what happened and credit whoever "successfully" executed the technique. In martial arts there are many kinds of forms and two person drills, and fencing is a type of two person drill. Fencing is very problematic because people so often and easily mistake it for sparring. Sparring is the the single most important martial art exercise. For example if a submission grappling class only worked on position escapes and never had full sparring rounds, their students would never become competent grapplers.
This great evil of fencing instead of sparring or fighting in the martial arts takes many forms, be it light-contact karate point fighting, "calling kill shots" or judges separating fighters after each successful blow in Renaissance weapons tournaments, or honestly even in Olympic-style fencing. In fact I think Olympic style fencing is where this whole problem begins:
I think that the evils of fencing spills out into all other forms of "fencing" as well, be it Kendo or people trying to learn to fight with real swords:
The worst part is that many of the people who should know better, the folks proclaiming to teach the "martial arts" side of weapons, are some of the worst offenders. The justification for stopping as soon as the successful technique lands is that supposedly it would kill the opponent so quickly and instantaneously that it is unrealistic to assume the opponent might keep fighting back. This is a very naive view:
Consider how much of this ARMA tournament is actually spent trying to land blows, and how much of it is instead spent walking around and getting commentary from spectators... very problematic considering how much pretense there is in their stylized technique:
Where in the ancient training manuals does it say to stop every time you think you might have landed a good blow? When fencing replaces fighting or sparring it promotes the following bad habits:
Posturing and Ego.
Wasting sparring time by walking back to corners and getting to breath and have bad cardio generally.
Stopping when you think you got a good hit in.
Stopping when you think they got a good hit in.
Look at how pathetic this becomes when it is applied to unarmed martial arts:
In today's world with full contact tournaments of many different kinds, there simply is no excuse for adults acting like that in the name of martial arts.
Contrast that to people who are actually taking sparring and fighting in weapon martial arts seriously:
Very legitimate competition going on there, very unlike those "fencing" videos above. Consider how superior the technique is at Dog Brothers Gathering compared to any of the fencing above:
Now Dog Brothers is pretty much a fight. People who spar (not fight) in the same martial arts outside of competition use safety weapons or armor instead of wood vs. flesh:
At Tres Espadas we use a wide variety of safety weapons to do a wide variety of real sparring with, so we can test out martial arts techniques from numerous cultural origins, and to develop new techniques:
Fencing is expressly forbidden at Tres Espadas. That is because fencing is the worst thing that ever happened to martial arts.
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