Redbelt (2008)

Why Clinton Fights

I think that at the core of it, the reason that makes the most sense is (pretty much a superset of all the theories bouncing around) is that she fights because she is a fighter. I mean this in a very positive way. A champion boxer doesn't quit--he fights until the judges or cornermen throw in the towel. A marathoner doesn't quit because someone else is closer to the finish line. And the annals of sport are filled with last-minute victories, come-from-behind kids and unlikely heroes. The "a quitter never wins, and a winner never quits" thing. Yeah, it upsets the party. Yes, there is legitimate debate over whether what she is doing is for herself, her legacy, her supporters, women in general, or whatever.

My tendency is to give people the benefit of the doubt, right down to the last second. Yes, I've been wrong, but I notice that I seem to be wrong a lot less often than people who assume others have worse intentions than themselves.

On the less complementary side, I would have more respect for her if she took a look at the 20% of voters in Kentucky who said they would never vote for a black man, and said that racism has no place in her America, and she doesn't want their vote. Much more respect. Ah well--if she gets elected, Bill's presidency is a mere footnote to hers, which settles a lot of ugly debts, I suppose.

In my book she's 2/3 balanced, so I keep a careful eye there. The fact that so many women say that they understand her marriage is sad. Consider that her staying in that marriage has NOTHING to do with survival. When do you think she missed her last meal, or worried about a roof over her head? So if so many women empathize, clearly the real motivations for staying in bad marriages don't have as much to do with raw finances, survival, etc. as some would like us to think. There are other issues: power, for instance. And while hers may be a valid choice, it is certainly not one I would want for my daughter. And while Obama has been extremely genteel in not bringing up the pale side of the Clinton years, we can be damned sure that McCain would mention that her spouse was disbarred for lying...and drag all of that nastiness back into the public light. I don't want that. And I REALLY don't want thirty-two years of either a Bush or Clinton in the White House. That feels like a democracy reduced to a dual Monarchy. We need a change...


But yesterday, Tananarive said she got a twinge as she realized that the first viable female candidate was about to lose. Dammit, I really wish that it hadn't happened like this. Clearly, racial and gender rights are tightly intertwined. It is too damned easy to see how emotions can run away with supporters on either side. Especially women who see, in Hillary Clinton, a reflection of their own lives and choices.


As, of course, I see myself in Obama. This is hard stuff.

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I did my Bruiser Century yesterday in eight sets of twelve. Dear God. Starting one set every two minutes means that as the number of reps climbs, the amount of recovery time diminishes. You can actually FEEL your body dealing with a different energy system. Strength and power are the 1-5 range. Hypertrophy at the 6-15 range. I'm in the middle of that now, and my body is saying evil things.

One of the advantages of this approach is that the workout is actually rather brief. Another is that you are stressing the energy systems rather than maxing out the tendons and ligaments. Using the Gama Cast, it becomes a matter of trying to get more and more perfect with every rep, maintaining breath, motion, and structure...

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Saw Mamet's "Red Belt" last night, and thought it was a good, but not great, film. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Mike Terry, a jiu-jitsu instructor who lives his life by a code so strict he can barely make a living. His in-laws would like him to fight in a MMA event that promises to make a ton of money for the family. He refuses, on ethical grounds. Then one day he accidentally saves an action star (Tim Allen) from a beat-down in a local bar, and Terry's star begins to rise...

Of course, this being Mamet, you can expect that no road will run straight. And you'd be right. I kept hoping it might soar all the way to greatness. Instead, I got a solid, emotional movie with its heart on its sleeve, superbly performed (especially by Ejiofor, who seems to be as close to a perfect actor as he can be), with a sprinkling of tightly-edited grappling fight scenes, and lotsa interesting philosophy. Not an "A", but a solid "B", especially for those of us who care about martial arts as a life path.

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Staying on the downshift

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Oh. O.K., I get it. Watching Sean Hannity yesterday saying Obama offered "negotiations without preconditions" made a little light go on. Fox is engaged in a game of "Telephone"-change the message just a little bit, and put the meme out there. And Obama saying "talks" turns to "negotiations" turns to "appeasement" in the public consciousness. Very clever. But MAN they have contempt for their viewers.

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The same thing with Michelle Obama. So far as I've been able to see, her "more proud than I've been in my adult life" has been flattened to "first time I've ever been proud" for public consumption. Clearly, this kind of lying works just great. I'm sure that this is the way the game has been played since the beginning of time. Loathsome.

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It does make me wonder about the psychology of people who feel that talking is the same as yielding. Wow. Do they live their relationships like that? Their business negotiations? I suggest that this ONLY makes sense if you believe your "enemies" to be sub-human. Less than. And while ultra-protective (and controlling) this is also the exact same thought process that leads to racism, sexism and so forth. On the other hand, it is certainly possible to go too far in the other direction, believing that "we're all just the same" or "we can't judge the cultural customs of other peoples" and so forth. To be frank, I consider either end of the spectrum to be operating on emotion without real engagement with their intellect.

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Question of the day: who's excited about "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"? I know I am. Will it be "Raiders"? Heck, no. But I think it's going to be great fun. And I dig the idea of a 65-year old Harrison Ford going for it. I completely understand Connery not wanting to do it...I suspect that he no longer likes the way he looks onscreen. Like Cary Grant, I suspect that he wants to preserve his cinematic legacy by not appearing at less than his best. This age-related judgment definitely hits women harder than men...on the other hand, I think women get a bit of advantage on the other end: young women are praised in about the same intensity that older women are criticized, so advantage still remains within the set called "women" even though the power gradient shifts. Was it Greta Garbo who retired similarly, just not wanting to spoil her legacy?

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I think that there is a bit of double-talk regarding Michelle Obama. If you put your wife out as a surrogate, it is reasonable to criticize her public pronouncements. But it's fun watching Barack use "chivalry" to justify "anger" at "attacks" on his wife. Sigh. I do wish that a political contest had more room for nuance. I would read her comments as, simply, "I am prouder than I've ever been of America--politically and socially we are moving in exactly the right direction, and people are more involved than I've ever seen them."

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If you meditate in the morning, note where your breathing is by the end of your session: probably deep and slow. Take that same breath into your Tibetans, yoga, Tai Chi or whatever you use to wake your body up in the morning. If you run, lift weights, or whatever, remain conscious of your breathing even as you place yourself under escalating pressure. The physiological pressure of exercise stress has many similarities to pure emotional life stress. If five times a day you will stop, whatever you are doing, and breathe with grace and power, you are creating an important link between exercise and meditation and life itself. A very strange thing happens when you learn to control your breathing in a stressful situation: you actually observe your own fight/flight response trying to upshift to anger, fear, frustration...but you remain separate from it. It's similar to my experience in a sweat lodge: if you remain calm, you can feel the heat without being broiled by it. I remember touching my own shoulder and burning my fingers. Stranger than hell. There are numerous disciplines that aim to shift you out of your ordinary relationship with your body, and they all start here, with control of breathing, then linking breath and life.

What Books Have Changed Your Life?

John McCain was quite funny on SNL Saturday. And the Clinton-Obama piece was great: Obama played as an empty cipher, Clinton as quasi-demonic. Ah, SNL is starting to feel familiar again. Welcome back!

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In your daily Tibetans exercises (those of you trying them) remember that if you can't do three reps, there is nothing wrong with changing the leverage. Have stairs in your home? Experiment with putting either your hands or feet on the first or second stair. Takes weight off, and can make them much easier.

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Then, of course, there's the matter that strength is not, primarily a matter of the body. It is more a matter the mind: how many muscle fibers fire, in what relation, how the skeletal structure is aligned, etc. There is a phenomenon called "Sensory Motor Amnesia" in which we literally forget how to communicate with our own bodies. From this perspective, most exercise is a matter of LEARNING HOW TO DO IT more than your body becoming "stronger." Every day, you should be concentrating on HOW to do it--make the assumption, if you cannot perform three of each, that there is a lack of understanding, rather than a lack of strength.

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We are working on the CONNECTION between mind and body, not either mind or body alone.

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"Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian." Went to see that on Saturday, and it felt like a kiddie version of "Lord of the Rings." Fun, but nothing mind-blowing. I never got that far into C.S. Lewis, except for "That Hideous Strength" and "Peralandra." Actually, I never read "Lord of the Rings" either. High fantasy just never appealed to me too much. I wonder how much of that is because it's all about white people, and the only dark-skinned folk are evil. Yeah, I bet there's some of that.

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Jo Anne was right to remind me that it doesn't matter how little Tananarive and I interact during the day. It matters where we go to sleep at night, and awaken in the morning. I complain because I want what I want, darn it. We are working our hearts out right now, and it's bearing fruit. I just don't want to hurt our relationship in the process. No, there's not really any strain there, but having blown one marriage, I really really don' t want to risk this one as well.

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I now have my Kindle righteously loaded. I couple of contemporary novels, but that's not the point. I have the complete Shakespeare, Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mark Twain. Complete. Every word. Total cost of the works? Thirty bucks. Now THAT is entertainment: a lifetime of reading in my backpack. This is incredible fun.

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Thinking back over the books that have made a difference in my life, one that stands out clearly is a minor novel by Martin Caidan, who wrote the novel that birthed "The Six Million Dollar Man." It was called "The God Machine" and dealt with that hokey old device, the super-computer that takes over the world. But the computer made one mistake: it based its defense system on the assumption that no human being would deliberately sacrifice his life to stop the machine. I remember a great scene where the hero is playing poker and an old-timer explains the real rules of life: that a man who is willing to die can do anything. That sentiment, even though it is ultimately waffled-upon by the unreasonably upbeat ending of the book, changed my life.

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The question of the day is: have any of you ever read a book that changed your life? What, how, and why?

Thoughts for a new week

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So if I look into the campaigns right now (or the news cycle allowing surrogates to speak for the different campaigns) the things that leap out at me are:

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1) Obama claiming never to have heard the Reverend Wright rhetoric. Yeah, right. And simultaneously, he was ready to leave the church if Wright didn't retire. Arrrgh. My take: he wanted to serve the people of the community, and had heard sentiments like Wright's for years. They are sentiments for those who lack Barack's intellectual skills and philosophical perspective. To separate himself from all those who say such things would have left him without a constituancy...let alone a community. I get it. I've dealt with this my whole life. Doesn't mean I believe his answer, though...

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2) Hillary saying that she and McCain are ready for office, and Obama isn't. That line was over the line politically. It was honorable if she truly believed it. But it probably cost her the Vice Presidential slot. Can't see how she comes back from that one, or spins it.

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3) My favorite recent news item: in the same 24 hour news cycle, Bush makes a comment about "appeasers" which was widely considered to be a slam at Obama (I can see why, since he's said he will speak to our enemies. A large percentage of human beings see this as weakness. Personally, I see it as wisdom.) Now here's where it gets interesting. When Huckabee made the "duck and cover" joke, he was revealing his own unconscious tensions. Humor is a release of tension. Was he calling Obama a coward? Was he expressing a bit of wish fulfillment? Here's a fun game: if we consider that comments from members of a group express, in the aggregate, the unconscious wishes of that group, combining these two comments gives us something fairly disturbing: a message to "shoot him...he's an appeaser." You can count on the fact that this meme will be entering the public discourse A LOT over the next months. Always plausibly denied, and probably rarely by someone who has a specific conscious thought about doing him harm.

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But any organization will fight for its survival, and its members are human, with a messy combination of conscious and unconscious wishes. Racists, for instance, DO have reason to be concerned about integration, multi-culturalism, and so forth. It DOES mean the death of the white race. And the black race. And the Asian race. It is dead to the concept of "race" across the board, and to those who are strongly coupled to race as a concept (what? Ten percent of the population?) the ascendancy of a Obama is a nightmare, a view of a future in which some of their most precious assumptions and definitions are blown totally out of the water.

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I would call these two comments cultural Freudian slips. They will be discussed. Huckabee will make the talk show circuit apologizing. And every time, the meme re-enters the public arena. No matter how he disowns his "joke" remember: you can't not think of a purple cow. And from the perspective of the part of the human consciousness that clings to racial tribe, it was a plea for someone to do violence. This is pretty ugly stuff...and I've heard at least ten comments like it for every whisper of violence to be done to Hillary on the basis of her gender.

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If you don't factor little things like death into the equation then sure, Obama could seem to have an advantage based on race. Personally, I find it unfortunate that Hillary supporters can't deal with the fact that as smart and tenacious as she has been, it is possible for her to be out-thought and out-fought. The fact that they leap for gender and race as answers is unfortunate. As I've said, I'm sure plenty of black Americans would have used a Clinton victory to claim that race relations are poisonous. And I would have considered them just as blind and self-serving. As some men would have grumbled that Hillary was swept into the White House on a wave of reverse discrimination or political correctness. As you'll hear some propaganda that Obama is being bouyed by secret Saudi money: he's a secret Muslim, after all. As you'll hear whites complain that "a white man doesn't stand a chance in this country..." and other brain-damaged comments. Pretty sad stuff.

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But that's the heat of the battle. The blogs are filled with Hillary supporters swearing they'll support McCain. I think that that's on the level of "I hate you daddy!" when you ground your teenager (and Obama supporters would have been about as bad, I'm sure.) Be interesting to see how many of them actually vote their values, and not their hurt feelings. Unless of course, they ARE voting their values...which is another, interesting conversation.

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The Moonview presentation last Saturday has led to an invitation to work with a high-powered company this week. The company seems to use Aikido as a teaching, team/building tool. I like that idea very much, and will be speaking with the CEO tomorrow to clarify things. I've spent hours this weekend trying to figure out how to relate the short version of how my teaching pedagogy evolved. It's been a long, long, odd road...

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If I assume that Bush's comment was sincere, it suggests a typical Yang view that communication equals appeasement. Pardon me, but it seems to me that vast and complex systems of diplomatic etiquette have evolved over the centuries precisely because countless rulers and generals found that communication with their enemies was VITAL. The other end of the spectrum is someone who thinks that conversations and communication can solve everything. Both ends are rigid and naive.

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Especially when dealing with a diffuse network (as world terrorism seems to be) such that the multi-billion dollar war machine cannot capture or even directly engage with the leader of the opposition, the idea that brute force could conceivably handle this just isn't a winner. But clearly, if one forgets for an instant that you are dealing with people willing to kill and die to accomplish their aims, that would be an equal error. The number of times I've heard Right-wingers talking about terrorists having no logical aims, not having human emotions, being cowards, or worshiping a demonic god tells me something: add up all the people who feel that way. What percentage of the Right do they compose? All right, cut off that percentage, then cut an equal percentage from the edge of the Far Left.

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The attitudes of the people in the middle will be the ones I consider to be rational enough to actually solve the problem. Everyone else is frozen. There are people who are total predators, or completely insane, and cannot be reasoned with at all. The tendency for people to think that members of Group X are fanatical, insane, stupid, animalistic, etc. is normal and a survival trait in certain instances. But what is hard for them to grasp is that it is no more efficient than talking and communicating. Violence and communication have to operate in a cycle. I suspect that, deep inside, almost everyone agrees with this: the only real question is the percentage of each.

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Of course, that's my perspective, based on fifty-six years of life and dealing with stress and challenge. Your experience may be different, and that experience would shape your attitudes. I honestly believe that we've been in a period of history where the more Male, hierarchical structure of worldwide power is going to yield to a more Feminine, non-hierarchical web-form. These are not "better or worse" approaches. They are different, and adherents of each approach tend to be afraid or dismissive of the other.

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The future belongs to those who can hold both possibilities.

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I think it comes down to what Sting said long ago: that there is nothing to fear from the Soviet Union, if the Russians love their children too. The same is true here. If the Arabs, the Muslims, and those among them who are radicalized love their own people, and their own children, then we can communicate with those among them who are sane. And I see no reason to believe that a higher percentage of US are sane than of "THEM."

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Trust me: if I can understand what white people, or men, or women, or black people have done over the years, I can understand every action of the Middle Eastern conflict with the same beliefs and observations of basic human nature. And I've kept myself and my family safe in some very hairy, potentially violent situations by assuming that most human beings are motivated not by "good" or "evil" but by fear and love. And noticed that those who think they are better, or that their enemies are worse, just seem to collect more enemies over time. Slowly, the world seems a more and more dangerous place.

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Of course, those who think the world is all lambs and butterflies are in for a serious awakening as well. No one becomes more cynical than the formerly open-hearted.

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Again, balance.

Stress and Strain

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One of the things I hate about politics is the way opponents excoriate each other, then join hands and sing Kum-bah-Yah afterwards. The followers of the candidates seem to take it all much worse than the candidates themselves: note the blog comments by furious, heart-broken women pledging to work against Obama. I have no idea if equal percentages of Obama supporters would have been screaming if the percentages were reversed.

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But take a good look at this, if you want to understand something about human nature. And that is that when you look at a group that claims itself to be disadvantaged (and everybody belongs to one or another of such groups) as soon as they can identify their shared grievances, they begin to display the same self-destructive, name-calling, childish, self-centered, tunnel-visioned behavior that they often criticize in others. Blacks, gays, women, the obese, the poor, the rich (!), fringe political or religious groups, parties out of office...whatever the group, they say remarkably similar things. And I suspect that in one form or another, they often end up "burning down their own neighborhood." It's an interesting phenomenon, and as far as I can see, is wide-spread enough to feel universal.

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Jodie Foster just broke up with her girlfriend (supposedly). I kind of think that she came out of the closet, found out that it hurt her career, and ducked back in. I sense a similar pattern with Phillip Seymour Hoffman (about whom rumors were swirling, then he started making very public appearances with models on his arm) or Ann Heche. I think that we're very close to the place where people can simply be themselves in this sense...but not quite there. It's like Will Smith not having sex in movies--he is certainly big enough to say "I want it" but realizes it will hurt his box-office down the line. Gays in Hollywood are definitely disproportionate to the general population--they're actually making many of the decisions about what images will make it to the screen. The reason you don't see more gay stuff in movies is because it would hurt business, plain and simple. They're not crazy: they have to pay the bills. But the public isn't ready for that yet. Soon, though...

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But if gay men have sex in movies more often than blacks, I'm gonna be seriously pissed, I kid you not. Hell, they already have "Brokeback Mountain"...(although note the moral lesson embedded in the story line: have gay sex, and die. I've seen the same embedded lessons concerning interracial sex for forty years. Can't clearly remember a single movie with a black man having sex with a white woman, where one or the other didn't sustain tissue damage or SERIOUS emotional trauma during the film. Often, death.)

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Remember: stress isn't the problem. STRAIN is the problem: stress which has a negative effect on the organism. Before stress becomes strain, there are predictable physiological changes which occur. By learning to relax under stress (disciplines like martial arts, yoga, meditation, etc. do this) you are programming your nervous system with important, generative lessons. By selecting goals in the three major areas, you will run into whatever obstructions your unconscious mind uses to slow you down. Push forward, and you get stress. Keep the stress from becoming strain, and you get stronger. Eventually, you will find yourself on the other side of the barrier. The trick is consistent, flexible action: keeping the mountain in sight but trying this path, and then that one, asking native guides, consulting maps, forging rivers...trying again and again and again...until you reach your goal.

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Now, truth be told I know people who really don't need goals. They are already happy with where they are in all major life areas. These people have mastered an aspect of life: to simply do what you do, and still accomplish everything that needs to be done with a sense of grace, purpose, and joy. They are incredibly fortunate, and it is in modeling them that I'm reverse engineering the I.D.E.A. concept.

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The question of the day is: Have any of you known people who never really had specific goals, but just Zenned their way into a wonderful, satisfying, healthy life? What qualities did said people possess that seemed uncommon?

Victory for love...

The California Supreme court just overturned the ban on gay marriage. Works for me.
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Thanks for the Mommies commenting on Libertarianism. The majority of people I've heard speak about it genuinely seemed to believe that if you can't afford to pay the fire department, it doesn't matter if your house burns down. I want the smallest possible government, the same as anyone else. I've never met a single human being who told me he wanted "the largest possible government." The only question seems to be what services should be part of the Commons. Not an argument I have expertise in, although I've opinions, just like anyone else...
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Notice with the Tibetans, people commenting about their resistance? Excellent. THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT. When you have a physical pattern that provides genuine benefits (especially for the sedentary) and you can't find five minutes for them, something is very, very wrong. And frankly, I have never seen a human being who was genuinely that busy, unless they were emotionally disturbed. So you get a damned fine chance to examine your thoughts, feelings, and ask yourself what the hell is really going on.
Now note: I'm not saying that the Tibetans are better than yoga--but I do think that the specific benefits have a better payoff per minute for the first 15 minutes. Mighty fine. Concentrate on breathing, and you have a meditation that works body, mind, and emotions just dandy. And DON'T advance faster than adding two reps a week--that's another way your ego tries to keep you from changing, by pushing yourself too fast, so that you can get hurt and say "gee, I tried..."
If you want faster results, start walking up hills, or taking an aerobics class, or weight training, or something. But as for the Tibetans...slow and steady.

Libertarian Mommies?

Congratulations to Hillary on her victory yesterday. Anyone think it made a difference?

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I think we can all agree that intelligence isn't just what's tested on a piece of paper. Still, SOMETHING is being tested there, and I think it's valid to seek to quantify mental qualities. Still, without the emotional balance or leverage to actually power our life actions, intellect isn't close to enough. I've known too many people who created great complex models of the world, but didn't actually test their assumptions. Then they complain if the world doesn't behave as they predicted, and actually blame God for "errors." Cracks me up when I hear people who don't exercise intelligently suggest that design flaws are responsible for their bad backs. If they never changed their car's oil, and the engine died, they can hardly blame the design. This is one reason why I am so insistent on the Body-Mind-Emotions framework: it is simply too easy to bullshit yourself if you're not careful.

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And speaking of denial, I have a question for you guys. The vast majority of Libertarians I've ever heard discuss their philosophy have been men. Most of them single. Are there any Libertarian gals out there, especially with children? Love to hear your perspective: right now, I strongly suspect that the Libertarian position is the essence of "I've got mine, get yours if you can" and that childlessness tends to feed the sense that an individual human being is separate from the society around them. If equal percentages of mothers can be found here as among Democrats and Republicans, I sit corrected.

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Over on the discussion board, I mentioned some ways of making the Tibetans tougher. This is totally unnecessary for most people, just an option. Truth is, the Tibetans are a breathing meditation, with sufficient intensity to force you to focus. For the out-of-shape, by the time you can do 21 reps you will have made a serious impact on your health. But they are primarily concerned with longevity: stress reduction, joint integrity, balanced muscle tone and so forth. Those who want to play with the effects would probably find that if they want a higher level of fitness they can use the Tibetans just to warm-up, then do their workout.

The other thing to consider is that even if you are only doing three a day, most people will find it MURDER to do them daily. The strength of their body-mind connection just isn't strong enough.

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Working on "In the Night of the Heat" right now--to turn it in Friday. Keep your fingers crossed.