Journeyman Philosopher

I have come to a conclusion. Fundamentally my martial arts philosophy is based on the self defense principle, while it is framed in my ideals as a buddhist regarding strength.

I believe everyone has a right to defend their right to life if someone encroaches on that, and this is something I believe is taken as fact in today’s age. If someone attacks you for whatever reason you should be able to take the reasonable steps to protect your right to life. Of course what these reasonable steps are is a question all in itself, that which I believe many martial artists strive to eventually answer.

Take the idea of self defense idea and place it within the framework of what I view as the root of strength, that being compassion, and I believe you have a healthy discipline.

In such a manner the belief is fostered that strength is of value in light of its defensive attributes. But because strength stems indirectly from compassion you must learn and apply your martial arts style in accordance.

What does this foster? To me it fosters compassion for others in the hope of further self development. An act of violence would be incompatible with this belief, just as I believe, or rather hope, that I am incapable of a truly violent action.

On the topic of sparring, I don’t think, is an act of violence because it lacks the intent to hurt, kill, or maim. Rather it is the application of compassion through a method of wisdom with the intent to strengthen.

This is I think what I think, heh. I have never really sat down and tried to piece together my beliefs about martial arts before.

What do you think?

I am inspired to write about my personal philosophy of martial arts. I am actually surprised that I didn’t think to write about it before.

First some background: I’ve been doing various Martial Arts for the past 8 years, and my experience sits in Hapkido, Jeet Kune Do, Kyokushin Karate, and Muay Thai. Currently I train in Muay Thai as its the most enjoyable martial art I’ve experienced so far.

As well, as you most likely know, I’m a practicing buddhist. Many see contradictions in practicing martial arts such as Muay Thai and being a buddhist that believes hurting others isn’t a good thing.

So why do I train if I don’t value hurting others? Well, as I’m sure many would disagree with, I learn martial arts in order to defend myself and others and I believe this is justifiable.

When I first started Martial Arts I remember signing a contract at my Hapkido martial arts dojo. It said in a lot of words “If you are ever caught street fighting with this skill you will be banned from the studio, and may even be prosecuted for defamation of character.”

“Through compassion comes wisdom, through wisdom comes strength.” is an expression I believe in and has helped guide my martial arts practice.

For example; most look at sparring and competitive fighting like a kind of violence. What I think is important to realize, as I believe most don’t, is many martial artists hold the opinion that this process is done out of self improvement. As such you don’t fight someone with the objective to beat them up, rather you fight them in the hopes to improve yourself and them.

So what’s my philosophy? Motivated by my saying “Through compassion find wisdom, through wisdom find strength.” I always train with the intention to help others in mind.

Hmmmm, yet this leads me elsewhere. I hope to avoid a zealous rant about defending the weak, as it seems like this is quickly becoming, yet I don’t know how to pursue this article otherwise.

Hmmm, give me a day or two to think about this.

Recently I was reading an argument online in which an individual raised the question “Is it worth debating with the truly faithful?”

This is a wonderful question and I would love to discuss it.

I should mention the context of ‘truly faithful’ in this quote is meant to apply to blindly ignorant religious practitioners; the type that you find it impossible to reason with (IE “There is no truth but the bible, so why talk about anything else?). For the record, I feel, that truly faithful people realize that they make certain religious assumptions, and as so can partake in genuine intelligent dialogue.

However for the sake of argument let’s talk about close minded religious practitioners ones that take the stance “There is no truth but the bible, so why talk about anything else?”.

When you argue with these people, you’re more than likely going to get reason, logic, and argumentive prose shoved back in your face. They will spit at your words, while preaching their own. They argue on their terms with their rules (similar to the card game ‘I Win’ in Big Daddy). This stresses people out, which is understandable.

Personally I love arguing with these people, but not for the reason I love to argue with others. When I argue generally I do it in an attempt to find the truth, but when I argue with people whose goal is to simply convince me I attempt to find holes in their argument.

Think of it like practice for serious conversations. And if you’re lucky you may even convince them to examine their own reasoning later. Its very important to be flexible enough with yourself that you can be confident when arguing with these people and not to be overwhelmed with frustration.

Its all psychological, with chip after chip you can eventually breakdown that wall and learn something about yourself while doing it. I have had many of these experiences in my life, some with success and some without. However all were meaningful in terms of me understanding more and more about good argument and contradiction.

What do you think, or as well what experiences have you had that relate to these situations?

For the blog post that inspired me indirectly to write this click on this link .

Continued from yesterday…

I personally feel, as I have previously indicated, that water is a basic human right. This is simply as water is necessary for life, or rather for our life at the very least.

However I was against diverting Canadian water to America and supported our premier when he refused to do it. In such a manner I agree with Eragon in that helping people doesn’t always mean giving your resources (or recourses for Paul :D) blindly away.

If water is needed and it becomes a life or death situation I think its necessary that we share our resources. For one reason because I believe it is considerate, and for the other I believe resource ownership is problematic enough.

The first reason is obvious enough, if we support others in their time of need we encourage future cooperation. And thus if we ever need water, there will be a higher chance of us recieving help.

The second point, that I believe is a more important point, is that owning resources is a strange and finite thing. From my own logic it would seem that resources are owned by all on the earth. If you make something and use a resource you have applied effort toward that thing, and thus a sense of ownership may be wisely placed. But owning something that naturally flows from another’s territory to your own seems silly.

Of course this is against everything our society is based on. Taking away the concept of owning land and terrotories would lead to a complete re-working of our economic model. This isn’t something that is soon to come, first our values need to change and from this a new economic model could be devised.

Really though, how can I say that we should share water because its considerate and because we do not own resources, and still maintain the stance that we shouldn’t share our water with the states.

Our world is filled with short term solutions, and I think it is problematic to support such ideas without guarantees of long term progress. Politicians really need to start planning beyond their office span, this is a fundamental problem of our democratic system.

Feeding addictions is not a solution, but leading to a curb of the addiction is.

 How do you feel about this?

I recently watched an interesting newscast on BBC discussing Spain’s current problems caused by a drought. This raises many issues that were covered in my previous topic ‘Privatization of Water’ , however it as well raises many various different issues. The newscast can be found here.

Do the people of the different regions of Spain have an ethical prerogative to assist their neighbors, or is Eragon’s approach acceptable?

It seems to me that Eragon has taken the right approach ‘Water for everyone but not for everything’ seems like a good motto. But a huge problem with their controversial approach is that the government of Spain could just as easily divert the river without Eragon’s permission. Resource sharing and resource ownership are very complicated issues. As well without any distinct definitions of ‘not for everything’ it seems that Eragon’s approach is quite vague.

Where I live in Alberta, Canada it is common that landowners are moved by oil developers who discover oil under the landowner’s houses. Now it is not enough to own the land, you as well need to prospect it and get the rights of what exists underneath it. Unfortunately this is a very expensive process that is nearly impossible for the average individual.

I will continue with this tomorrow.

Until then what do you think?

Recently I was made aware of a quote by the Dalai Lama which I thought was quite interesting. It follows:

“We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are “news”; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.”

Found in Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

This is a very insightful view and perhaps one of the reasons I value the Dalai Lama so much. He does make an interesting point, however at the same time we really wonder if its 100% true. There has always been a majority of hate, however it was aimed at other peoples be it American vs Russia, China vs Japan, Japan vs Korea, etc etc. Many of the reasons these peoples didn’t manage to kill each other was because of the impracticality of the travel due to the distance between the nations, or even the sheer impracticality of the whole enterprise.

In my own opinion I think there is much more love and compassion, its just the hates alot louder.

So which is it: is this the case, or do we breed in order to destroy others?

 What do you think?

A while ago I visited the Royal Tyrell Museum with a couple of friends. While there I stumbled upon something that made me think and I felt it would be appropriate to share it with you here.

In relevance to the lifeboat or spaceship analogy I have spoken of in the past I came across a display explaining the different shapes of the continents of the past present and future. I took some pictures and they follow:

The first image, all of which you can click on to download the file, represents the earth a very long time ago about when star wars was set! The second image represents the present earth and hopefully looks familiar to most of you. The third image is  the possible future earth quite a while in the future.

What I wanted to bring into question and bring to contemplation was our idea and concept of coutries and continents set in stone (pun intended).

When we go about our daily lives issues of the nature of the changing globe, due to its miniscule nature, may not be that important.  However I think it is simply an interesting concept to place in mind.

What happens when a Canadian store is moved over the border into the states through an earthquake? Who owns it? Does it change the owners rights?

A common observation made by astronauts is that seeing the earth externally makes them forget about borders. Relevance could be made of this point. A mediator is used to ensure fairness between two parties. They are valuable because they are impartial, because they are separate from the situation.

I don’t mean to advance any point although I have started already. I just wanted to put these questions out there to think about.

What do you think?

Recently I’ve been watching the Olympic games which are quite wonderful this year, excluding the smog, China’s doing a great job I feel. But one thing I’ve noticed is all the damn advertising by car companies claiming to be: “Official Vehicle of the Olympics” “Official Vehicle of the Canadian Olympic Team” and etc. I have seen at least three different car brands that all claim the same. I mean who are they tricking and what is their objective? I guess thats obvious… selling cars.

However this type of advertising irks me. Our society’s advertising tactics are getting progressively worse and worse. It’s all about branding loyalty through comprehensive marketing campaigns. Free market systems are great and all but the constant false bombardment of advertising makes it harder to be a member of society.

Constantly now when buying a product it is necessary to do your own research beyond the commercials. More often then not you find that the commercials have been intentionally misleading. We have come to the age where advertising is only used to generate interest rather then showcase a product.

I can summarize the main things that irk me with advertising in two points:

1) Misleading terminology (Cancel Anytime, Eco-Friendly Chevrolet Navahoe etc.. )

2) Pages of contracts flashed across the screen (I once noticed a joke a day text service which took me at least four commercials to read all the fine print at the end; there was about a page of it. If you signed up you were locked into a charge of 2 dollars a day with a minimum month cancellation fee; thats 60 dollars minimum with sign up)

We’re being taught to trust nothing. Which I guess is a good thing for a philosopher, but in general I feel the trend in advertising is moving onto taking advantage of peoples trust.

What do you think?

The other day my mind encountered a mental road bump that was of interest to me.

I have always believed that when you need to assume assume the positive, however I was in a situation in which there was no negative or positive to assume instead only neutral based assumptions.

The question that came to mind is: how in the hell am I supposed to decide what to assume? It’s like Shrodinger’s Cat; I feel if I don’t assume I ignore evidence, if I do assume I as well ignore evidence, and if I assume both I contradict myself.

Let me explain the ridiculous situation that brought this about (be prepared to laugh at me as it is madness that such a small thing would create such inner turbulence). My friend was sitting on a leather couch, and from his general direction came a farting noise….. oh god, what has philosophy done to me?

Anyhow… the farting noise came from his general direction. In the situation I felt it was safe to assume two things; one he farted, or two he slid across the couch causing a farting like noise instigated by the evil leather perhaps due from the spirits of the dead cow residing within it screaming for justice…. or friction (whichever is more believable).

Both of these I believe are not negative actions. After all in the case of one its just a fart (although I will readily acknowledge that a fart could be done out of evil intent… you know who you are!!!!), and in the case of number two its just an awkward noise caused by friction. However I found that if I assumed one over the other I was being crazy as I had simply no reason to, yet when I assumed nothing I was disregarding all information given to me, and if I assumed both I was blatantly contradicting myself.

My three thought processes were as follows:

This may be to much thought to put into this situation specifically, but if we are to look at the bigger issue of neutral based assumptions I think the issue is of importance. I mean sometimes we just don’t know, and we need a road map to help us get through the course. I apply a positive assumption policy to get me through certain situations but I find that inapplicable here.

Let’s do a simple mind experiment. There are two identical boxes excluding contents. One sits in a dark room, the other rests in a man’s hands. You see the man walk into the dark room with the box in tow. You then hear a miniscule noise that leads you to believe he either bumped into the other box or put down the box he holds. You then witness him leave the room with a box.

Did he switch boxes? Or did he walk into the room and bump into the box and then leave? Both are neutral, which is true? Is it even safe to assume? If we don’t assume are we not ignoring empirical information?

The best conclusion that I can come to is to simply ignore it. Don’t make a judgement call and wait. Ignore the evidence at hand until it is more evident. This is as far as I have come.

What do you think?

In light of your responses I think its important to take into consideration the psychological issues humans generally have; our need to “know”, and the need to feel secure with our ideas. Thereafter framing this within the concept of spheres of influence.

I don’t think we will ever achieve a true democracy, unless strict re-workings of how we participate in our democratic system is made, however I do not mean to say the Oligarchy as we have it now is a poor thing.

After all those that are free thinkers are put into the position in which they can generate their own spheres of influence. An important decision that each individual should make is ‘do they want to create their own sphere of influence or follow anothers’.

This is not a simple good or bad question, after all I am contained within other’s spheres of influences such as the current Dalai Lama’s but am external, I believe, from most others. I think they can be useful, inspirational even.

The question is do you believe these spheres are justifiable; is it not necessarily a bad thing to be within ones sphere? And as well what are the limitations that you would consider justifiable of these spheres (ie the reasonable limitations of their inspirations)?

What do you think?