Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Generation of The Lost


Normally I’m of a mind to say when a person becomes an adult after a certain point in time they are no longer able to lay blame at the feet of the parents.  There is a tendency to hold onto these excuses and clutch to the safety of finding fault elsewhere.  I think one of the true tests of being a fully realized adult is accepting your own failures.  Mine are myriad and I only have myself to blame.  Yes, there were often external forces and, yes, I was often surrounded by assholes intent on ruining things but it doesn’t excuse me from not succeeding.  Everyone has their own unique difficulties.  I’ve stopped trying to weigh out such intangibles.  There a many people who think they suffer the sling and arrows of misfortune when compared to most they suffer no more than stiff breeze and an inconvenience.  It’s not like we are Chinese prisoners who are cruelly forced to play online games to farm gold and so the prison system can profit by selling them to spoiled kids in the States.  (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/06/02/cinhese-prisoners-forced-to-famr-world-of-warcraft-gold).  Meta humor points: Insert obligatory racist Chinese Gold Farmer joke that only gamers can understand.

I continue to mess up but as much as I want to say it’s another person’s fault, and my god is that an attractive excuse, it does me nothing but harm to embrace this false platitude.  So I’ll stick with fully realized self loathing over ignorant narcissistic rage.

However, to an extent my generation is screwed for many reasons.  There actually are forces aligned against us that are wholly unfair and completely out of our control.  Not that we can’t succeed despite this but the deck is stacked against this generation far more than our parents.  I could lead off and simply say, “fuck you baby boomers; you inconsiderate leeches, you arrogant shitheads, you egomaniacal bastards” but that gets me nowhere.  And baby boomers simply have not cornered the market in arrogance.

So what are these forces that are bending us over and violating us, you ask?  The simple answer is economic oppression and the war of the classes.  I’ll let a quote from Bill Hicks’ set this up.

"If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses.  And what can this tell you about American culture?  Well, look at the drugs we use.  Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates:  Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Fridat to to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in."

As a cube rat who swills coffee every day this could be a ugly pill to swallow.  I somewhat like my job.  There are things I’d rather do but I’m not unhappy and I’m living comfortable.  But I don’t have kids and my wife also has a good job.  Now imagine like most everyone else I have high student loan debts.  My spending becomes a wee bit tighter.  Or I get sick.  Even with decent healthcare (without it I’d most likely lose my house trying to pay) I could be in debt for years.  The worst problem is if I really get hurt and can’t work them I might as well hope my friend’s couch is comfortable.  At a time when I need more money I’m making less.  How about the fact that bankruptcy doesn’t work the same anymore.
I like details and specific’s so read this if you’re ready to get riled up.

The short version is a school teacher, who is a parent, broke her back and had financial difficulties.  She applied for bankruptcy to alleviate her debt and forgive her student loans.  She won.  Which is great.  Then the people who owned her student debt filed and got that part overturned.  This kind of defeats the point of the whole tabula rasa bit of Chapter 11.  Why you might ask?  Because the law is often ugly and cold.  It is slanted because we allow it to be slanted.  There are plenty of bleeding hearts who rally for our rights and live their life for the betterment of the rest of us.  But the counterbalance is heavily funded by companies who don’t give a shit.  Your plight means nothing.  They simply want to keep the board happy and make a profit.  It’s legal and it works.  Companies will rarely take a stance that doesn’t give them funding.  Morality simply doesn’t pay.  Which leads to my other point.

Companies have more power now that ever.  Corporate politics are amazing.  They are slick smart well funded sharks.  I admire them from afar and with just about every inch of me hate them passionately.  These are people who think nothing of trampling my rights.  They give less and charge more.

My generation pays more for less.  Look at the worth of a college degree.  The cost of an education has risen dramatically but the reward has dwindled.  A college degree is only good for entry level position at best.  A masters might weigh you down more than help you.  There are over qualified member os the workforce  everywhere.  I tell anyone who can listen it is worthless to go into law school.  This isn’t true of course but the market is oversaturated.  Old firms have imploded and you see senior level partners competing.  Who luck does a person who graduated from a garbage law school have against those with ten, twenty years of real work have.  None essentially.  And guess what, you have some nice student loans coming due real quick.

Remember when only person from a family of our had to work and the other parents could stay home.  There were two cars and a house.  No?  Neither can I.  Where the fuck did that go?  I’d trade a smart phone for some of that.  I mean we do have the whole living longer thing and cooler technology and my TV has awesome fucking resolution.

I mean it is nothing new the wealthy have their thumbs pressing down hard on the rest.  We couldn’t be allowed to have a fair share.  Wealthy elite are there for a reason.  I can’t blame them.  Why give freely when you don’t have to?  When there is no punishment other than a moral stance.  It’s not like ending corporate tax loopholes and doges could improve our economy that much.  Or maybe not:

According this article we could actually raise somewhere around $114 Billion this way.  That about $1,000.00 per person living in the United States.  Obviously you should trust everything on the internet implicitly… but there is undoubtedly some truth there whether or not the math proves out.

Our society is built to keep the poor to stay poor.  Education in this country is going to shit.  Guess where the shittiest schools are?  The cities.  Guess where the bulk of poverty is?  The city.  Sweet, so we under-educate those who most need a leg up.  Oh, and guess who gets to control the context of our textbooks?  Texas.  This isn’t necessarily a problem.  Until that is the religious right figured it out and now things like creationism gets shoved into books and treated as fact.

Read more here:

Yeah, so our education system is in the hands of people who think science is myth and faith is fact.  This should disturb rational human beings.  I know plenty of people who are religious.  They are not ignorant or hateful and they do not push their beliefs.  They wouldn’t push this nonsense.  But these alarmist fringe assholes are pushing the envelope and are hurting the educational system.  Science is under attack by these people.  Science is part of what made this country a leader.

Don’t think the US is alone in this.  Look at the issues Spain is having:

So we are screwed by the legal system with less ways to get out of debt, we are held back by educational costs and worsening standards, as well as being oppressed by the mighty corporations (this is only slight exaggeration).

But now I come back to the first point.  If we know the issues we have inherited why has there been no change.  Because it’s hard and it feels like pushing a boulder uphill that threatens to roll back any instant.  Our apathy, our bitter bleak outlook stop us before we start our action.  So yeah, we are a generation of failures.  We are a generation of the lost.  But staying that way we only have ourselves to blame.  So the question is what does it take to create change?

Ben

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Martial Awesome


If two English professors argued over the meaning of Xanadu in Kubla Khan by Coleridge they might throw a disparaging remark or they might debate with frenetic energy while they flail their leather patched arms in large, garish  gesticulations.  They would not however throw a spin hook kick at each other’s face.  That would be both preposterous and awesome.  However with martial artists it is quite possible that an argument, even a simple one, could lead to testosterone fueled rage punching or spinning hook kicks.  The martial arts is inherently violent and practicing any of them brings a certain familiarity to violence.  I’m not saying practicing makes you want to punch people all the time (but it might solve an issue or two) but that getting hit or hitting others doesn’t seem as alien once you’ve been in the environment.

A problem with martial arts that leads to the possibility on dangerous entanglements and ego flaring is the often convoluted and obfuscated backgrounds of differing styles.  Just with Kempo alone there are multiple splits and schisms.  This history is muddy and confusing.  Unsurprising for an art that migrated from China to Okinawa to Japan to Hawaii to the West Coast then finally to the East Coast.  Differing version of the art stayed in each of those spots.  You’ll see the Shaolin monks practicing something completely alien techniques with a few very familiar move sets.  Even in the same regions you’ll see differences; even dojo to dojo or instructor to instructor.  Kempo is just one of many arts where there are splits and arguments.  Then there is the whole my style is better arguments.  Or my style is more accurate or this the best way to throw or this the best way to hit.  Everything is up for debate.  And it isn’t something so easily discovered.  You can’t simply say that way’s bullshit mine is better.  You have to know both techniques or movements of principles or what have you.  And not simple know it on the surface but truly grasp it.  There are things I’ve been studying for five years with the art that I’m only now getting a real appreciation for.  Imagine twenty more years.  Then imagine some brat telling me he knows a better way.  It’s a fine line to walk.  Humility should reside within the soul of every martial artist but it isn’t always there as strong as it should be.  Humility is integral.  Growth is stunted  without it, you can’t listen and learn if you think you know everything, and having an understanding of how to inflict copious amounts damage is not something to be taken lightly.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject as I’ve been exposed to quite a few different dojos and several different martial styles thanks to some wonderful friends and martial teachers I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.  My understanding and appreciation for the arts has grown considerably.  I’ve been thrown around by people who do things that seem like witchcraft and appear to the untrained eye preposterous.  Not that there aren’t frauds out but I can guarantee the pain I felt was not fake.  Quick aside, the worst pain in my martial career involve a lock applied that actually made me think my whole arm might simple unravel, give up and never quite work right again – it was fine afterwards, mostly.  One of the things that strike me as interesting is the view set for martial artists varies much more than I’d think.  There really are places like the Cobra Kai from The Karate Kid.  Some dojos take fighting way too seriously and injury at these places isn’t an if it’s a when.  This seems unnecessary to me.  But the reason these people are studying is different from mine.  I’m quite content to hit softer or to intentionally miss my partner during application of technique.  Both are in wrong in a sense for training how to deal with a situation in the street but both let me remain working with my partner.  This is part of the root of the problem or at least one of them.

The dojo is a constructed environment.  You have a person attack in a prescribed way you both agree on some technique can be done.  This is of course totally unrealistic.  The guy in street can’t be predicted.  They might punch in a big ugly haymaker, which is likely and preferable (preferable in that I takes a long time to swing those and it gives me a whole bunch of time to react, of course that’s if I see it) or they might be high school athletes and try to wrestle or tackle me to the ground (much less preferable, their buddy might be around who could kick me for one, two ground is dangerous period).  But this prescribed way lets you understand the technique and it’s principles.  Once you get it you can deconstruct it.  Figure out why it works.  Then apply it to other situations.  That is often missing from some of the classical martial training.  Its often twenty different move set to be remembered per type of attack.  The bloating of material can be a bad thing as your plan only works before you get hit or if the arm bar is slightly more to the left.

But each dojo is its own little culture.  I’m reminded of this every time I enter someone else’s place of study.  I often remind myself as I tend to have mouth that spurts out thought before it passes through a filter.  This is bad when you are a guest and worse when you are surrounded by people who train to fight.  Fortunately I’ve been polite and humble even when I’ve been weirded out or uncomfortable at places.  It might be normal at one places to train hard and focus on fitness.  Another place is obsessed with realistic street training but not the spiritual or historical significance.  Another still might be a McDojo.  Those are universally reviled within the community.  Quite a few sprang up after The Karate Kid as every parent decided maybe their little guy might need some wizened sensei to straighten out their kid.  Meanwhile the kids haze dreams of tournaments and jumping side kicks.  The teachers simple have a desire to cash checks.  They pass on just enough knowledge to be slightly credible and produce belt factories.  The kids keep getting to next level and they show some progress but mostly its ego stroking.  They don’t produce legitimate black belts.  The legitimacy of black belts is a big point of controversy.  Some styles mandate set amounts of years beside having material before achieving rank, regardless of talent.  I don’t disagree with the practice I simply don’t prescribe.

There are whole articles on what constitutes a McDojo and what constitutes real martial arts.  I find some of it laughable.  Simply because these people often come from a very specific mindset.  They need a set of knowledge for grappling, striking and ground work.  But they slop varying style together haphazardly.  There is a reason boxers fight the way they do.  Boxers are great gifted fighters.  I wouldn’t want to fight one.  But if I did I would kick the shit out of their shins and knees.  Why?  Because they don’t train to the handle that.  Plus getting punch from a boxer sound very unappetizing.  You keep throwing up these what if and the style has to morph and change and be muddied.  You don’t just take a kick from one style and punch from another.  Picking and choosing doesn’t work.  There is a foundation of knowledge and understanding the leads somewhere.  That style moves a certain way and that’s why they kick like that.  You take the kick but not the movement you lose the reasoning behind it.

There tends to be this idea that the best fighting style is the best style.  I don’t believe that.  I’m not learning simply to be able to defend myself.  I’m learning to kick ass in tournaments.  I’m not learning to show off or make money.  I’m learning because I enjoy it and it has made me be a better person.  My martial journey has been about improvement.  In part it’s about crafting technique but it’s a also about bettering me.  That is the reason why martial arguments seem petty to me.  That’s why I simply listen when people argue about legitimacy.  Yes, I’ll sometimes get swept away and say people are not where they need to be for rank or that I think certain techniques are useless.  But I try not to do that.  I’ve only been studying for five years and every day I learn that I really have only scratched the surface of understanding.  The better I get the more I see that I can’t do.  Every time I think I perfect a stance or a punch or a movement something new pops up.

So I’ll try to stay out of argument about which style is better and what attitude is correct because the reason I chose to study might not the right one for others.  All I know is that I know only a fraction and that I’ll never be done learning.  So who am I to say one style is better or that one kind of punch is best?

Ben