Sports has been used to as a way to improve the character or morality of students, and this is part of why the Olympics was founded. The first Japanese member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) joined in 1909, and was the founder of Judo. From the time Judo was first formalized, its established goals were "physical education, contest proficiency, and mental training." Historically the IOC viewed Judo as containing "methods of physical, mental and moral education." Clearly the IOC still holds this sports-as-education view today:
The IOC President, Thomas Bach, regularly emphasizes that "sport is not just physical activity; it promotes health and helps prevent, or even cure, the diseases of modern civilization. It also is an educational tool which fosters cognitive development; teaches social behaviour; and helps to integrate communities".
One such movement that considered physical development of the body to contribute to the moral and mental development of the mind was Muscular Christianity of the latter 1800's, clearly influencing the movement that led to the Olympics as we know them today. The YMCA was originally founded to meet the social needs of people living in urban areas who faced moral dangers that could harm them. They invented basket ball to help such people "keep fit." Basketball was first played as a demonstration sport in the Olypics just a few years before Professor Kano joined the IOC. I hypothesize sports improves morality by:
The Olympics authority believes that people coming together socially helps promote world peace.
Others believe it improves social skills as athletes learn teamwork and how to follow rules and regulations.
Others see sports events as a metaphoric simulation of life, and that each time we participate in a round of sports it can help us reflect on who we are as a human being.
Others see sports as the ultimate state of "mindfulness," a powerful meditation where we stay focused on the here-and-now instead of fretting over the past or future, thus helping us to reflect on our lives more effectively.
None of these explanations necessarily exclude each other. I believe that full contact continuous martial arts (such as boxing and judo) build morality in athletes faster than other sports, but that most other sports also accomplish this. For example in basket ball a ball-hog is likely too self-centered off of the court. A lazy player who runs out of steam on the court could likely be putting in more hard work into the rest of his life as well. A player who pushes himself too hard on the court resorting in injury may need to relax more in the rest of his life as well. A player who lacks confidence to take a shot when he has a good opportunity may need to learn more confidence off of the court as well. These realizations could come as a result of any the bullet points above. Moral gains may also be a result of Neurogenesis:
CNN is a sensationalist tabloid. FOX News is the most notoriously misleading news organization out there. CNN is worse. If you like CNN because Fox is too right wing and MSNBC is too left wing, the alternative I suggest for you is NPR. NPR gets their funding primarily by soliciting their readers and listeners for donations. NPR has a left leaning bias because of their college educated listener base. But NPR also panders to a significant minority of their listeners who are conservative, forcing NPR to make a sincere attempt at accuracy.
The same can not be said for CNN. If you've read my blog before you know my #1 political issue is health care policy. For our example here, let's focus on Trump's rash decision to cut subsidies to private insurers.. Let's compare Fox's main story vs. CNN's main story on that:
Fox reports that "Trump says Obamacare stinks, and he's not going to pay 'massive' amounts of money to bail out the private health care insurance companies any more. This will rattle health care markets and start a huge legal battle." Is this politically biased? Yes. Does it make hasty projections about the future? Sure. BUT IT IS BASICALLY ACCURATE, COVERING WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
CNN reports that "Trump supporters hate multiculturalism, so they hate anything with the Obama label on it, so Trump will destroy Obamacare because of its name." Is Trump racist? Maybe. Are some fraction of his supporters? Obviously. BUT IT IS CATEGORICALLY UNTRUE THAT THE PROBLEM THEY HAVE WITH OBAMACARE IS THAT IT WAS SIGNED BY A BLACK PRESIDENT.
The reason why Trump supporters don't like Obamacare because it has ALREADY failed to provide fly-over states with affordable coverage. For example:
As hard of a sell Medicare For All is to fly-over state voters, it is far easier to sell to them than Obamacare is, because Obamacare was already wrecking them financially in 2016. NPR listeners realized from NPR interviews that many a Trump supporter's 2nd favorite pick was Bernie Sanders. These fly-over state voters would have voted for Sanders when the sexual allegations against Trump were revealed. But even if Hillary suddenly released a video of her in camo shooting an AR-15 while hunting deer with the president of the NRA, fly over state voters STILL COULD NOT VOTE FOR HILLARY BECAUSE SHE SUPPORTED OBAMACARE OVER MEDICARE FOR ALL. The "opposition to Obamacare is about racism, not economics" CNN is peddling here is a postmodern platitude. CNN either doesn't care about accuracy, or it is actively sabotaging its viewers.
Let's take CNN's big story when the Vegas shooting happened. Supposedly "Whether a state has a large capacity ammunition magazine ban is the single best predictor of the mass shooting rate in that state." But then nobody picked this up and did their own story? If this is such a big deal worthy of attention, how come the only other news organization to pick it up was actually Fox? CNN is so bad that even Fox shouldn't trust them!
On any of these tabloid stories CNN runs (and they release ridiculous pomo garbage masked as news every day,) go to the bottom of the web page. There you will see paid content that is yet more not-really-news. What do you call a news website with poor news accuracy, low factual content, that ultimately just takes you to more clickbait? CNN IS CLICKBAIT.
If you are a right winger, you are reading this and chuckling "I told you so." But if you are a left winger, you need to realize that words matter - the truth matters - eschew post modernism if you want to influence reality. You can't win elections if you constantly mistake fantasy for reality. CNN's bombastic bulls**** is precisely the type of cultural evil that is tearing our society apart and leading us the wrong direction:
The word "God" means something. There is a dictionary definition: creator, ruler, supreme moral authority. When people - using the English language as it is used after the year 2000 - start to say "Muslims, Christians and Jews worship different Gods" - or in fact when they say ANY religion is worshiping a different God, they are playing a rancid game of pomo. Unless a religion is worshiping some form of anti-God - like perhaps the (openly not-necessarily-theist and highly-critical-of-typical-belief-in-God) Church of Satan - it is not fair to say they worship a different God, regardless of how pagan or polytheistic they are.
Playing the "my Asherah statue is better than your Baal statue" game of "your God is not my God" abuses the English language, it is screwing around with the definition of the word God. God always refers to the highest being in your supernatural cosmology. If my word for that is Asherah and your word for that is Baal, then we are talking about the same entity, even if our beliefs about that entity differ.
Accusations of polytheism are used to justify this game of "your God is not my God." The problem here is all versions of God have pantheons. Allah of Islam has both angels and gins. The Father of Christianity has arch angels and lesser angels and fallen angels. As proudly polytheistic as worshipers of the Norse Gods may be, a worshiper of Thor still admits Thor is subordinate to Odin. Athena is subordinate to Zues. The key here to understand that arguing over weather or not this or that entity in a pantheon is a "lesser God" or an "Angel" is a matter of semantics. Michael the Arch Angel in Christianity would be considered a lesser God when viewed from the lens of Polytheism, and Thor would be considered an Arch Angel through the lens of Monotheism.
The real difference between Polythesim and Monotheism in practice is can different deities be called upon for different purposes. Do I only pray to God the Father in the name of Jesus for any blessings I may need, or do I should I pursue Athena specifically when I need technological insight, instead of always praying to Zeus for everything? Now the biggest organization on Earth promoting Monotheism is the Catholic Church, and they more so than anyone else with their pantheon of Saints advocate praying to lesser beings than God the Father. All of this Monotheism vs. Polytheism in practice is pure semantics.
Instead of playing the "your God is not my God" pomo game, we should instead say "we have major differences in our beliefs about God." Because words matter. Because words have definitions. The most important English speaking country in the world, culturally and historically from a global perspective, is the United States of America. Our founding fathers used Free Masonry to have a neutral definition of God that everyone could agree on, and this is indeed the overt definition used on our money: "In God We Trust" with an all seeing eye and an Egyptian Pyramid but no sign of a cross to be seen.
Pretending like the word God means something more exclusive is postmodern deconstructionism, and is dangerously nihilistic and irresponsible. It's a great example of what I call pomo unibomber bulls***, and attempts to undo centuries of dialogue and understanding between different faiths, seeking to take us back to a time when we would kill each other over semantics:
Word is out, sitting is the new smoking when it comes to health, though standing in place of sitting doesn't help much. However, the researchers who did the latest study on this don't strike me as physical rehabilitation experts. My favorite fitness guru on Youtube however has something to say about exactly what sitting does to decrease your mobility (and thus kill you):
"Anterior pelvic tilt" explains a lot. His remedy is building the glutes (butt) and abs (stomach.) How should we do that? I choose my exercises based on the following principles:
Ergonomics: low risk of injury. I especially like exercises that give good results with less reps, as I am concerned about repetitive stress injury on a number of my major joints.
Fool proof: the exercise should give good results even when not executed at the full range the fitness instructor on the video demonstrates.
Self-defense application: if it doesn't help me in sparring, I don't have time for it.
Efficiency: I want to work the maximum number of muscle groups with the least number of exercises, because exercises take away from sparring time.
Let's start from the ground up, with the glutes. I like squats for these because it is pretty easy to follow the instructions and not hurt yourself (1,) and squats give good results even when your squat depth is not great (2.) It's always helpful in a fight to be able to suddenly get lower than your opponent (in knife fighting it helps you target the back and inside of the legs, 3,) and squats also work most of the other muscle mass in your legs (4):
Abs are the other part of the solution to the Anterior Pelvic Tilt problem. I have a problem with most of the ab exercises out there (sit-up variations) because they violate all 4 of my exercise principles. But then comes the plank. A good basic front plank is simple to get right (1,) and is time based so adapts to the challenge level of where your abs are at (2.) It is a great exercise for practicing keeping your hands up while your body is under stress (3,) and unlike most ab exercises it works your entire abdominal wall (plus a bunch of other important muscles, 4):
The other problem caused by a sedentary lifestyle is a general weakness of the upper body, which limits our mobility as we get older. Good old-fashioned (Word War 2 era, probably done by Yoga Gurus for millennia, staple of traditional martial arts) Dive Bombers meet my criteria. Dive Bombers are pretty hard to hurt yourself doing (1) and give results even when done with less than ideal range of motion (2.) They have direct applications to grappling (sprawling and side control, 3,) and work most of the big muscle groups in your upper body (4):
To be clear I am no expert on fitness or medicine. It is my uneducated hypothesis that these are the exercises that will most efficiently save you from sitting on your ass 12+ hours a day. (I recently added these to my daily Tai Chi workouts and few visits a week to the MMA gym.)
The ultimate conclusion of Post Modernism (pomo) is that because all rational argument can be deconstructed, the only meaningful source of information is personal experience. This is far more destructive than being rebelliously narcissistic. Pomo is inherently and irredeemably racist.
One pomo platitude is "patriarchy for me may mean something different than patriarchy does for her." In other words "dictionary definitions don't matter, only our personal perspectives." This means that the ONLY value of any idea is the IDENTITY of the person who originated the idea. All ideas from white people are then white ideas, all ideas originating from gay people are gay ideas, and so on.
This means that every idea coming out of the brain of a person who happens to be black is a black idea. No matter how ingenious or earth shattering the concept, we must first consider and evaluate the idea's author's identity. That is just about as racist as you can possibly be.
As I described in A Diversity of Whiteness, I ran into grad school students who wanted to work on projects that were not associated with their ethnic identity. They expressed this concern with me on many occasions: "I am Mexican, so does that mean every time I come up with a new idea, we have to talk about how Mexican I am? When do I get to just be a student, and have my ideas evaluated on their own merits?" Pomo idealism was the most racist threat to their well being in grad school.
If you have ever argued with a conservative in social media, backing up your facts with links to credible sources, you very probably have heard the following comment: "Why don't you think for yourself and do your own research?" Stunned that they weren't going to take any links to Snopes, Wikipedia, University websites or even peer reviewed articles seriously, you begin to realize that what they are literally saying is "I was on food stamps once. I saw some ethnic people in the office who I think were acting very lazy and looked like they used drugs. So in my personal experience, I myself as a concrete witness know for sure that most ethnic people on food stamps are lazy drug users." Notice how extraordinarily pomo this racism is: your facts don't matter in the face of their personal experience.
And again, as I mentioned in A Diversity of Whiteness, this pomo discrimination alienates the oppressors in society from enlightening conversations that could help the oppressors not oppress. When the rich have to be excluded from conversations on poverty because all their ideas are rich people ideas, then the main power holders in that situation have been invited to never give poverty serious thought. In this way pomo perpetuates racism by excluding whites from conversations on ethnic diversity.
Racism in our world today may be completely dependent on pomo. Pomo is racist.
Many a famous martial arts master took on criminals as students - especially Triad gangsters in China being trained by Kung Fu masters, and Yakusa gangsters in Japan being trained by Karate masters. The most famous of these masters, Oyama, founder of the most influential of these traditional Japanese & Chinese boxing systems in today's sports world (Kyokushin Karate,) was known to believe that training in martial arts improved the character and morality of the trainee. These martial arts masters were essentially ministering to those who needed character and morality development the most - the criminal element. Professor Kano, the founder of Judo, was a leader in physical education and had similar beliefs about martial arts training, that it led to not only increased health, but increased morality:
Why would training to become better at hurting other people make you a better person? Why risk teaching delinquent elements in our society how to become more effective fighters? My hypothesis is that they witnessed first hand this moral development, and that this is a natural side effect of full contact martial arts training (as well as other certain types of athletic activities.)
In the documentary "A Mind to Crime: A Dangerous Few" explains that chronic criminal behavior is largely associated with an under stimulated prefrontal cortex, so that a recidivist has problems empathizing and forming long term strategies based on obvious consequences. Treatments that stimulate the prefrontal cortex - basically turning the life of a child into one big game of good behavior, or getting an adult to use a computer game to intensely focus their ability to concentrate their prefrontal cortex for extended periods of time - have shown to be effective treatments, stimulating the prefrontal cortex and leading to drastically less criminality.
In the classic Frontline documentary "Inside the Teenage Brain" explains that another part of the brain, the cerebellum, builds both coordination of ideas and coordination of the physical body. (I can't emphasize this enough: learning to coordinate your thought helps you coordinate your body, and learning to coordinate your body helps you coordinate your thoughts!) Teenagers mature not only as their cerebellum and prefrontal cortex grow and mature, but as the connections between those two parts of the brain solidify and strengthen.
Full contact martial arts demands your concentration. A brief laps in concentration while sparring leads to almost guaranteed physical pain, stimulating your prefrontal cortex. It also forces you to develop your physical coordination as it is an athletically demanding activity. No wonder boxing in the inner city of the USA and Mexico has been used to lead many wayward youth into a law abiding lifestyles as adults. No doubt wrestling has helped numerous middle class youth abate their own narcissistic tendencies, not only as the wrestlers learn to develop sympathy so that their sparring partners can avoid injury and continue to train with them, but also simply because of the stimulation of their prefrontal cortex and cerebellum!
We have assumed the YMCA created basketball primarily for fitness, but this achieved their over all goal of improved moral behavior, and basketball continues to be used throughout education systems today, partially because it is known to improve behavior of athletes long term. Fail to concentrate for even a moment in basket ball, and the consequences will be obvious - "keep your eye on the ball!" - prefrontal cortex stimulated, and all the while physical coordination is being developed.
I believe that full contact martial arts develops the brain's ability to coordinate and concentrate much more intensely than other athletics like basketball, because of the psychological and physical intensity of martial arts training. This is part of why martial arts masters have found martial arts to be an effective way of growing people into better human beings.
This summer I have been up and down the I-5 corridor, visiting friends from as far north as Bellingham WA to as far south as Oceanside CA. All of the people I have met in these travels, especially the people in SoCal, have been very pleasant and competent people who's company I have enjoyed, and this post has nothing to do with them.
If you fly into LA, visit Disney Land, and fly out, you have no idea how densely populated and geologically vast southern California is. You would think that say San Diego is a geographically unique place from Los Angeles, but you would be wrong - it is one massive interconnected urban sprawl, incomprehensibly large. You can get on a 6 lane highway (12 counting both directions) and drive for 45 minutes, and get off only to find yourself in almost exactly the same neighborhood. People frequently drive two hours one way to attend common social events without really going to a different new place. Traffic (not as bad as Las Vegas, about like Seattle's) does increase travel time, but the absolute vastness of this place escapes our collective understanding.
Now imagine you are from a middle class family in the North East USA, raised on some moderate form of protestant religion, and have 1.5 siblings, each of you proving your uniqueness by playing different sports and musical instruments and getting into different liberal arts colleges. After amassing impressive debt, you manage to graduate from college with a bachelor's in English, and your main ideology is a post structuralist critique of the moderate Christianity you were raised on. Still basically a child, you must pay off this debt, and soon find yourself in LA working in a marketing firm or in Hollywood in movies or TV.
Now you see the world for what it is: incredibly diverse, people from all over the world, all kinds of families, all kinds of politics, all kinds of religion, all kinds of suburbs and inner city ghettos. Whenever you need to study a group you are portraying in the media you are writing scripts for, to get real life experience with that group (Jews, first generation immigrants from any location in the world, millionaires, homeless, Italians, red necks, or whomever,) you only have to call an Uber and you will be seeing this group inside of a few hours. In LA (or some other indistinguishably not-LA part of SoCal.)
Now you portray to the rest of the USA what that group is like based on two things: 1) your post-modern critique of Christianity, and 2) your limited life experience in SoCal. This naive superficial representation is now published all around the world as the most recognized version of that group. This is the mechanism by which post modernism has become ubiquitous in media and politics.
But you can't help it any more than the gang members in Crips and Bloods: Made in America, LA (SoCal) is so vast, that you have never, ever seen the way out. No one you live near or work near know of any way out besides LAX. You live in the economic and cultural center of the universe, all gravitates towards you, and what you would face to get out would be more like an impossible climb than simply a several hour drive as fast as you can go down the freeway. But even when you get north of the Bay Area, outside of San Fransico's orbit you are still essentially on SoCal culture, surrounded by In-and-Out Burger and Del Taco, until you are multiple days drive from downtown LA proper. It would be faster to drive south through Tijuana into Baja California to escape the endless SoCal sprawl. Go east? You hit the Las Vegas vortex, which in the context of SoCal just feels like a SoCal suburb with legalized gambling and prostitution.
But in the end, because of Hollywood's ubiquity, we are all in LA's orbit, with it's incestuous postmodernist tendrils contaminating our perception. Before I left for LA I watched indy vampire film The Transfiguration. We struggled to figure out what city it had been filmed in, and concluded it must have been made in Toronto in spite of the land marks seeming to be from NYC. Because it didn't look like NYC. It didn't look like the NYC we had been served through the post modernist media, through the lens of LA. It turns out that NYC filmed in NYC presenting characters that would live in the real NYC would look almost nothing like what most of us think of as NYC, because our world perception has been warped through the post modernist LA lens.
It isn't a conspiracy of naive and opinionated well-intentioned feminists. No one is trying to poison our minds with eco-primitive nonsense. It is a simple problem of geography: the absolute vastness of LA/SoCal isolates English majors which for generations have used post modernism as their moral compass.
