The dates I’ll be away from are
27 January 2006 – 19 February 2006 ……….
I’ll be leaving tonight for Vanuatu on Ye Big Aeroplane.
Remember… Imagination is everywhere;
Hell is only in one place!
Monthly Archives: January 2006
2001-2006
PROVISIONAL MAP OF THE PSYCHE
Objects in our environment also become part of our self-identity. When the environment one moves into is very different from that which one has come from, the right half of the diagram is gone! One may still have memories of objects which formed one’s emotional environment, but there is nothing present to recall these feelings and ideas which would otherwise feed into one’s sense of who one is in the world.
After a long time, one will form new emotional relationships or reactions with new objects in a new environment. When this happens, one’s active sense of self will also change. Yet, underlying how one normatively experiences one’s self in the new environment, dormant memories will still remain: Vague and emotionally distant sense of things telling us about a different sense of normality enshrouding a different self. Such memories can be easily triggered by a re-emergence of past objects, with which one had formed previous emotional relationships.
moving offline for sparring
….and how that works!
another old shot
My knees are not so strong in this picture — at all. I was doing about half the amount of training that I now do. Yet, I could run like the wind!
another old shot
martial arts pictures
TRAINING FOR SHUTTLE RUNS
packing begins
….for the Vanuatu trip, commencing Friday
How to weed friends and influence people
My response to a request for advice on Michèle’s blog
Unsane said…
The slash and burn method is usually quite effective and clears the way for a new batch of cabbages. Always remember to apply the edge of the machete to the most delicate part of the vertebrae and approach the intended victim with a certain rhythmical prowess — after all, this will be the last image of you they have.
From Premodern to Modern?
Image nixed from [birdcat]
Currently I am reading a sociology-genre book about the ways in which human development is culturally influenced. The book suggests that biology and culture are not two separate determinants but that human beings are biologically programmed to develop according to the particular cultures surrounding them from birth. That fits with my idea that it is as if humans begin life, crawling as it were, with certain biological hardware, but then they actually require some specifically cultural software to get them running.
Which poses a question… “So, when they’re running, where do they run to?”
Well, back to their point of origin.
Certain illustrations within the book indicated that humans are a kind of homing pigeon, perhaps with stealthy cat’s feet, a funny animal with a strong need to reverberate with familiar cultural experiences. What I found in the book were anecdotal illustrations, and no hybrid animal was actually visually portrayed.
Perhaps, though, this pigeon can also fly depending on its mood. It’ may be that it’s often grounded by its cat’s feet, out of pure financial or material necessity, yet sometimes abstract ideas and theories lift it so that feet no longer touch the ground: higher and higher. Then the pigeon-cat is no longer so sociological in perspective or orientation, but looks at the world metaphysically.
Jack Johnson and Joe Louis
The first photo is Jack Johnson, the second is Joe Louis. These are some of the original American boxers who really made it big.
Johnson was hungry for a fight with one of the white heavyweights. He pursued Burns around the world for two years. “I virtually had to mow my way to Burns,” he said. Finally, he caught up with him in Australia, where although Burns was taunted by the natives, he refused to fight. Johnson, his money gone, was worrying how to get back to America when Lady Luck came his way in an extraordinary manner. He was at the races, and while greeting some friends, his bookie, taking a wave of his hand as a signal to place a bet on a horse on which Johnson had won the day before, did so. Result: Johnson won $15,000. Back in America, he defeated Bob Fitzsimmons, former heavyweight champion, following it up with victories over the next three most prominent of his class. The two champions met at Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910, for a bout of forty-five rounds and a purse of $101,000, the largest then in the history of the ring. Spectators came from all parts of the world–China, Japan, Australia, India, South Africa, and South America.
The racial angle of the bout had been played up until it seemed that racial supremacy in the world was at stake. When the boxers entered the ring the reception given each was vastly different. Jeffries was given a tremendous ovation; Johnson, a roar of catcalls and boos. The crowd had come to see “the nigger get licked,” and believing and hoping that Johnson was trembling at the sight of his formidable white opponent, yelled such epithets as “Cold Feet Johnson… Yellow… Now you’ll get it, you big black coward!” Jack Johnson fought the Great White Hope a man named Jeffries and slammed him down in Reno. http://www.marcusgarvey.com/wmview.php?ArtID=517&page=2
Joe Louis fought Max Schmeling half a generation (20 years or so) later, and lost his first fight but won his second fight after learning to keep his guards up. It was Johnson who had tipped off Schmeling that something was awry with Louis’s guard position, enabling the German to somehow win the first fight. The second fight with Schmeling was an opportunity rendered after he beat Jim Braddock. He knocked out Schmeling in the first minute of the first round.
There were racial politics involved in all of this, and to appropriate Malcolm X’s terms, Johnson was a field nigger and Louis was more of the house nigger type. This is a complex way of saying that Johnson was not beloved of the white establishment and seemed to take delight in breaking all the rules, including smashing white fighters in the ring, whereas Louis somehow appealed to a greater majority of people because he was quieter. But when Schmeling was beating Louis in their first fight, the crowd turned on Joe and yelled to Schmeling, “Kill Him!”.
This difference in rebelliousness of character also reflects that of American social sensibility moving away from harsh racial divisions, towards something more akin to a generically based social opportunism — with the need to find some boxer guy who could represent “democracy” in opposition to the evils of fascism.
It was not the fault of Johnson that he ended up effectively on the opposition’s side, advising Schmeling of Louis’s technical mistakes — Louis’s camp simply hadn’t let him play with them, and so he was looking for some kind of gamut, which was his prerogative.
The cops got Johnson himself on some legal technicality of the “Man Act”– although he did, more than technically, keep a house of prostitution. So, he fled the country and set sail for Europe. When he came back to the U.S., he was given ten years in Leavenworth.
Louis was done for tax evasion — cnce again, an action by the same sort of people who didn’t like uppity niggas. He’d been giving away too much of his money to the war effort, making the authorities suspicious.
By all of this determination to succeed, I was impressed
Thankyou to Mike for his additions to this piece: “It was worth the wait.”
you are gold
| you are gold |
Your dominant hues are red and green, so you’re definitely not afraid to get in and stir things up. You have no time for most people’s concerns, you’d rather analyze with your head than be held back by some random “gut feeling”. Your saturation level is very high – you are all about getting things done. The world may think you work too hard but you have a lot to show for it, and it keeps you going. You shouldn’t be afraid to lead people, because if you’re doing it, it’ll be done right. Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation. |
| the spacefem.com html color quiz |
Stepping diagonally and using your thighs
Today’s martial arts lesson was all about stepping offline and using your thigh muscles to punch with power.
This is information which we all know — and forget. Here’s an example of how to use your power.
THE UPPERCUT: In precise terms, a left uppercut comes from the left thigh, stepped off-centre in relation to the position of your opponent. The body crouches, a little. The fist extends from the position of one’s jaw, loops upwards again, 45 degrees to the right, and extends all the way up the opponent’s chest to meet the undercarriage of their jawbone.
populism
The attitude of populism has left wing, right wing as well as politically Centrist expressions and ramifications.
Populist consciousness is entertaining and even heart-warming, not least because it joyously celebrates human emotions which tend to radiate most strongly so as to invoke a sense of shared community.
Yet populist community bases can also be quite limiting.
A populist consciousness tends to deny the meaningful reality of any experiences which are not already emotionally understandable because of being common to all.
A populist mindset does not struggle to understand uncommon experiences, as this struggle does not produce a common warmth and familiar ideological reverberation upon the common consciousness.
A woman or man with a populist mindset fears admitting that there’s a great deal going on in the world at large and in the community surrounding them, which does not resonate with the limited emotional set of feelings and ideas which are promulgated by owners of a populist mindset.
What does it mean to be identified as a “Colonial Oppressor”?
I discovered that the culture here — or many in it — had the idea that I was some kind of racist nazi-type; also that I knew that this was my type, perhaps even that I didn’t show enough effort in making reparations for my “evil” nature, in order to be really invited in. One or two influential people obviously had a very westernised, narrow ego-based view of my identity. Even had they been without the inherent prejudice of such a view, most people here simply assumed that I was operating with the same narrow, ego-based conception of self which with they operated, as cultural “individuals” themselves.
I simply didn’t have that going on. I tried to be polite and wait for an explanation,- at times, I even asked quite plaintively for one — but nobody gave me any.I had no idea of what this individualistic game was, or that it was to be worked in this way, with each individual asserting their own narrowly defined ego-identities.
But after a long while, I became really stressed. Chronic fatigue. Extreme immune weakness and general debility. I couldn’t think clearly at times, probably because of an systemic candida infection. So, I didn’t have a chance to assimilate then either.
When I managed to recover from this to a large degree — I entered a workplace where I was bullied because of my origins and because I thought differently. That was when I began to read Nietzsche and get a clue about what the western ego identity was supposed to be all about. Unfortunately, perhaps, the salient idea of being an evil nazi-type also attracted me around this time. I was so pissed off by now. The anger I had been directing inwards, to the great cost of my health, now sought a more healthy outwards discharge.
Then I began to adopt the evil nazi persona to some degree. I thought I’d uncovered this society’s Achilles heel — moreover that this otherwise culturally apathetic, emotionally flattened society had shown me nothing but its Achilles heel, and furthermore had supplied me with the poison-arrow. This was really just a defensive screen for me, whilst I sought to find the underlying truth to my cultural and subjective pains.
Now I am semi-assimilated because I at least understand the western ego-ideal. I understand it, but I think that the most common version of it is very petty, and touches very little on the various experiences I have had so far, which are far-reaching and at times extreme experiences. Â I can’t forget them.
The proof of the good actor is in the audience.
What does it mean to try to relate to another on the basis of an absence of a normative western ego? My immigratory experiences indicate much about this….
You have a general, simple-minded notion: If I’m in the right, the other person will listen to me. Otherwise, I won’t be heard, which is my fault.
You think that nearly all the make up, hair-dos and tight clothes the girls and women of the west wear, actually makes them ugly, harsh and strange. “Why is a more natural look so maligned by their appearances?” you wonder.
You are extraordinarily polite — and tend to think that conversations start and end with any dignity only on the basis of such rituals of politeness. You hope that each will get the sense of appreciation and reciprocation they deserve, via this method of interaction.
You are very much into the natural sphere — the odours, tension and mood of the environment. You interpret these either as auspicious or slighty deleterious, according to your prior experiences.
You can’t understand why people obsess about the social subtelties of their interactions, making little things symbolic — especially when such people don’t seem to have made much of an adventure out of their lives. This is all too subtle for you — smells of stagnation!
You want to do things, have experiences, as well as have adventures. You long for a sense of reality imparted through a rite of passage. You can’t understand why people want to posture, acting up for different roles, gaining an audience. It’s all annoying.
You don’t have anything coherent to say about the present situation, except that it seems a contradiction and a shambles. You’re unable to relate. You have a sense that nobody else has any confidence in what they’re saying, either.
The proof of the good actor is in the audience.
The actor himself matters not one iota.
You think that nearly all the make up, hair-dos and tight clothes the girls and women wear
You don’t approach someone in a flashy way, advertising by your word and gesture that you are a cut above the rest. You have no notion of this method of approach — nor of its meaning or potential.
You have a general, simple-minded notion: If I’m in the right, the other person will listen to me, otherwise, I won’t be heard, which is my fault.
You think that nearly all the make up, hair-dos and tight clothes the girls and women wear, actually makes them ugly, harsh and strange. “Why is a more natural look so maligned by their appearances?” you wonder.
You think that conversations start and end with any dignity only on the basis of such rituals of politeness. You hope that each will get the sense of appreciation and reciprocation they deserve, via this method of interaction.
You are very much into the natural sphere: the odours, tension and mood of the environment. You interpret these either as auspicious or slighty deleterious, according to your prior experiences.
You can’t understand why people obsess about the social subtelties of their interactions making little things symbolic, especially when such people don’t seem to have made much of an adventure out of their lives. It’s all too subtle.
mynewhorse: wrong presumptions about cultural assimilation!
This is what I learn from reading blogs
One of the aspects of cultural conditioning within a particular environment is the unconscious nature of choreographed events. It is as if we all carry around with us a number of prepared responses to certain types of situations which we are likely to encounter quite often.
On a basic level, it is quite obvious what I mean: there are certain rituals for greeting one another, for example, which are entrenched within different cultures.On another level, it is less obvious what I mean, because I see that many of our interactions with our physical and social environments happen by rote, and quite unconsciously.
I have noticed this, for example, on many chatty American blogs, mostly written by females. I perceive that there is a certain way of relating which is designed to solicit attention of a sympathetic sort. All is orchestrated by little micro-programs. It’s not so important what you say, but how you say it.
So, there are different kinds of culture, and we need to learn how to respond in each. But most of the time, most of our efforts are easy and unconscious. If we had to make our interactions conscious all the time, we’d have no energy to spare, and we would also probably mess up.
What happens when you move from one long-term cultural environment to stay permanently in another?
my martial arts hands
My martial arts hands.
Herein, I present my callouses from training.
You can notice them on my first two knuckles.
Once again, the pictures I took were poor, as my hand shook — so I had to use a lot of sharpening.
Also, I flipped my left and right hands, so you couldn’t notice that my wedding ring was on my right hand due to my left wedding finger getting ring-barked and the pity that I felt for it.
Delegitimation
A social system logically deconstructs itself when it consciously or unconsciously adopts such coping and self-perpetuating methods as:
Not rewarding hard work, because it doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning to the system and its self-perpetuation
Adopting superstitious religious credes as odes to power, because that is the path of least resistance.
Rewarding mediocrity and middle of the road conformist behaviour (good dog syndrome) because it is not threatening to the status quo.
Promoting an ideology or policy of “tolerance” so as to hide corruption, incompetence and various spates of criminal negligence in the social sphere.
