ChadMaestro

Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

Something my sensei said in passing the other day really hit home with me. Generally this tends to happen because I love to analyse the simplest of ideas.

He said something along the lines of “there’s gotta be something more to it than just the self-defence. If you’re worried about self-defence, you could just buy a 9mm and be set.”

I found this fascinating, probably because I’ve never heard this idea put this way before. Why practice any martial art if self-defence is what you’re truly concerned with. Buy a knife, buy a gun – these are far more practical than studying an in-depth system for 3 to 30 years. It brings up a lot of points, really. My sensei, himself, wrote a small article on why he trains Aikido. You can read it here.

What this also makes me think of is an old Aikido proverb.

2 elderly masters are sitting on a park bench when the one asks the other, “have you ever used aikido in a fight?” The other responds with “No.” And the first man says, “you’re aikido is better than mine. I have.”

This small story leads the reader to believe that Aikido is not about fighting, in fact that it’s about not fighting. To master aikido means to never fight, why is that? It is because the nature of aikido is not to learn how to fight with one another, but how to avoid fighting with one another. As I’ve said before, aikido is a physically metaphoric system for how individuals should live their lives.

It has also been discussed how people take up a martial art for goals and contradict those goals by changing direction later on. In this article by Stanley Pranin, he explains how people often join a martial art to avoid injury and harm, only to compete when they’re competent to injure and harm others. Quite deceptive, really.

So what should the goals of aikido be? Are there a set number? If not self-defence, what could a martial art possibly provide?

For me, the first application of Aikido is mind and body wellness. In this short article by Bruce S. McEwen, as cited by Dr Neil Bossenger, many regular activities alter brain and body function due to elevated stress levels. He states that “the social environment has enormous impact on the individual through the brain.” So in order to repair this negative alteration, a form of therapeutic activity can be done, my choice of this activity is Aikido. Aikido provides the trainee with the understanding of a deeper life lessons, but you do have to either think or stumble on it. Example: In Aikido we are uke about half the training time. Uke translated actually means “the one who suffers”. In life we are not always doing the awesome stuff, about 50% of the time things will be good, and 50% of the time things will be bad – the difference is in that 50% of badness, the energy is absorbed portrayed in a different light, kind of like a conversion into good energy.

Before I go all hippified on you, let me just explain. Uke means the one who suffers, but how does aikido solve the pain of suffering? Simple, ukemi. Ukemi is the teachings of how to take blows and punches and techniques (suffering) and still being able to stand up later on, it teaches us to redirect and channel energy. Kind of fascinating, really; hence its therapeutic nature.

The second reason is that Aikido gives a bit of discipline. Have you ever done something you love for a few years? You know there are those nights or days where, even though you love doing it, you don’t feel like it right there and then? Those are the type of nights that training is especially important – those are the nights where you build your mind and spirit into the training. And, for the record, ever notice how when once you’re at the training right until you’re finished, you feel so much better. The lack of enthusiasm was for 5 minutes before you left the house, and you feel good because 1, you didn’t spend the night watching The Kardashians, 2, you did something stimulating to your mind and body and 3, you did something that you didn’t want to but knew that it was beneficial in the long run. That’s discipline! And a true Aikido master can only manifest when you put in the hours, even if it’s not always the most convenient; there are lessons inside the lessons.

The third and maybe final reason for me is the social aspect of the training. I personally don’t think I would have really gotten into Aikido if my teacher wasn’t who he was. Really, all martial arts have their pros and cons and I think all are enjoyable, but it’s the teacher that really makes it special. I’m speaking from a socialistic point of view (even though my Sensei is technically sound) but to have someone who is down to earth and real is a very good thing. The people you train with are also there to occasionally talk to, as well. It’s a community, where people talk and laugh and train. I don’t feel this way about everything, example: the gym, but aikido is a study that has to involve other people, why not make it something you can do to meet new people and enjoy. It’s all about networking.

Through aikido we’ve met and befriended people who is a chiropractor, someone who can give advice on your body and wellbeing; an insurance dealer, someone who has given us deals when looking for travel insurance; a design publisher, who gives deals when it comes to design and printing; nutritionist, who’s always willing to give advice. The world is full of people, believe it or not, and stepping just that small inch out of your comfort zone will allow you to meet those people.

So that sums it up for me in a very short, concise understanding. There are 2 or 3 more minor points that I could talk about, but I try to keep my blogs under 1000 words (which I’ve already surpassed). Remember, do something you love. Aikido (or even martial arts) is not something everyone enjoys, but some of these ideas can be applied everywhere in your life. Anything you do should have a goal or a focus, even if it is to better yourself in any respect. Do it as best you can, don’t do it half arsed or you’re just wasting your time, and possibly others. Give 100% and you will succeed, whatever that word means to you.

Yesterday my daughter asked, “Where does gravity come from?” She is two and a half years old. I could say many things on this subject—most of which she could not possibly understand—but the deep and honest answer is “I don’t know.”

What if I had said, “Gravity comes from God”? That would be merely to stifle her intelligence—and to teach her to stifle it. What if I told her, “Gravity is God’s way of dragging people to hell, where they burn in fire. And you will burn there forever if you doubt that God exists”? No Christian or Muslim can offer a compelling reason why I shouldn’t say such a thing—or something morally equivalent—and yet this would be nothing less than the emotional and intellectual abuse of a child. In fact, I have heard from thousands of people who were oppressed this way, from the moment they could speak, by the terrifying ignorance and fanaticism of their parents.

Ten years have now passed since many of us first felt the jolt of history—when the second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. We knew from that moment that things can go terribly wrong in our world—not because life is unfair, or moral progress impossible, but because we have failed, generation after generation, to abolish the delusions of our ignorant ancestors. The worst of these ideas continue to thrive—and are still imparted, in their purest form, to children.

What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose on earth? These are some of the great, false questions of religion. We need not answer them—for they are badly posed—but we can live our answers all the same. At a minimum, we must create the conditions for human flourishing in this life—the only life of which we can be certain. That means we should not terrify our children with thoughts of hell, or poison them with hatred for infidels. We should not teach our sons to consider women their future property, or convince our daughters that they are property even now. And we must decline to tell our children that human history began with magic and will end with bloody magic—perhaps soon, in a glorious war between the righteous and the rest. One must be religious to fail the young so abysmally—to derange them with fear, bigotry, and superstition even as their minds are forming—and one cannot be a serious Christian, Muslim, or Jew without doing so in some measure.

Such sins against reason and compassion do not represent the totality of religion, of course—but they lie at its core. As for the rest—charity, community, ritual, and the contemplative life—we need not take anything on faith to embrace these goods. And it is one of the most damaging canards of religion to insist that we must.

People of faith recoil from observations like these. They reflexively point to all the good that has been done in the name of God and to the millions of devout men and women, even within conservative Muslim societies, who do no harm to anyone. And they insist that people at every point on the spectrum of belief and unbelief commit atrocities from time to time. This is all true, of course, and truly irrelevant. The groves of faith are now ringed by a forest of non sequiturs.

Whatever else may be wrong with our world, it remains a fact that some of the most terrifying instances of human conflict and stupidity would be unthinkable without religion. And the other ideologies that inspire people to behave like monsters—Stalinism, fascism, etc.—are dangerous precisely because they so resemble religions. Sacrifice for the Dear Leader, however secular, is an act of cultic conformity and worship. Whenever human obsession is channeled in these ways, we can see the ancient framework upon which every religion was built. In our ignorance, fear, and craving for order, we created the gods. And ignorance, fear, and craving keep them with us.

What defenders of religion cannot say is that anyone has ever gone berserk, or that a society ever failed, because people became too reasonable, intellectually honest, or unwilling to be duped by the dogmatism of their neighbors. This skeptical attitude, born of equal parts care and curiosity, is all that “atheists” recommend—and it is typical of nearly every intellectual pursuit apart from theology. Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under.

Ten years have passed since a group of mostly educated and middle-class men decided to obliterate themselves, along with three thousand innocents, to gain entrance to an imaginary Paradise. This problem was always deeper than the threat of terrorism—and our waging an interminable “war on terror” is no answer to it. Yes, we must destroy al Qaeda. But humanity has a larger project—to become sane. If September 11, 2001, should have taught us anything, it is that we must find honest consolation in our capacity for love, creativity, and understanding. This remains possible. It is also necessary. And the alternatives are bleak.

Einstein once showed, through his theories of relativity, that time and space have no bearing on what a person thinks he or she sees. He also did a number of other things, such as clarified how gravity works, and is not merely a force which pulls things toward each other; he also showed that energy can be converted into matter with one of the most famous equations of all time, being e=mc² – now the basis for the idea of nuclear fusion.

One of the interesting concepts beside space and time, however how the human mind perceives something that is not mathematical. Bear in mind that relativity was not a new concept when Einstein was around, classical relativity had been around for centuries, and is merely the idea that what you see is relative to the position you’re in at that given moment in time. A practical example of this would be seeing a car driving past at a constant speed of 100km/h. To a person outside of the car, the car is moving at 100km/h, but to the person inside the car, the car is practically stationary because he or she is moving at 100km/h as well. If the person inside the car threw a ball in a forward direction at 50km/h, the respectful speed of the ball is 150km/h, however only the person outside of the car would see this. The person inside the car would see the ball travelling at 50km/h because, as we said, he is perceivably stationary as he’s moving at 100km/h with the car.

That’s a basic explanation of classical relativity. Einstein took this further and showed that time is relative, as well. That is to say, if the speed of light is constant and therefore all observers must agree that light travels at a constant speed, then the time measured for the distance travelled is arguable. Slightly confusing? Basically, using the previous example, if a stationary spaceship and a moving spaceship shot a laser, the speed of the laser would not change for the moving person, because light travels at a constant speed. But if the laser of the moving ship and the stationary ship is in the same position, and the ships are at different positions, doesn’t that mean the distance of the laser travelled away from the moving spaceship is less than that of the stationary one? Yes and no. Yes in the classical sense, but no in Einstein’s sense, as the measure of time taken for the distance travelled will be different. That is to say that the time taken for the movement will differ because time is relative to the person observing it.

Physics aside, this is not what the blog is about. What I’m actually interested and curious about is how the human mind interprets data if their given circumstances are different.

Understanding the idea that something is relative to something else is a real world idea that almost falls under common sense for most people. It’s quite obvious to most people that the reaction of a person is relative to the action imposed on him or her. But is it really? Imagine a person who is abusive toward their partner because he or she spent money that they do not have. In this case, is the reaction completely relative to the action? That is to say, is the abuse justified because of the woman’s initial actions?

Most people will say “no”. But if this is the case, then reactions of people are not merely relative to the actions igniting the emotional response. To understand the way a person behaves (and reacts) there must be something that another person can quanitify and relate to. Perhaps we are looking at the wrong idea, then. Perhaps we should not be looking for the relativistic action to the reaction, but rather looking for the relativistic emotional response; what is the emotional response relative to?

Human beings are indeed all different, and this is why the reaction of one person to the same action is different to another person, therefore reaction is most certainly not relative to action, but rather, relative to emotional intelligence. This doesn’t get us very far though, to say that emotional intelligence is the basis for how a person reacts. To fully understand this we must find what emotional intelligence is relative to.

And it’s very clear, actually. Emotional intelligence and responses are relative to understanding of the environment and world around us. This understanding is, however, based on upbringing and environment of the particular person. Right from the moment the person is born, the environment plays its toll. This is not merely the idea that abusive parents will bring up children who are worse off than other children, but rather analysing why the person’s parents are abusive. To understand this, we come to the conclusion that a person’s life does not start when he or she is born, but rather at the beginning, to when the environment started (the beginning of time).

This could almost absolve any human being of morally and ethically unjust actions, because those actions are not only a reaction of the present moment surrounding them, but the reaction of their parents upbringing, and their parents’ upbringing, and their parents. There is no end to the idea because everybody’s actions has a reaction, and those reactions are almost never directed at the initial person, therefore it’s past on.

Apologies for this blog entry, it’s a quick one and a lot of ideas coming out in one go.