Chris may have outdone himself. At the very least this may be his finest post to date. I’m almost speechless and mostly unable to think. Given that I consider myself to be mostly “full of shit” this says much.
A black belt is someone who never quit: not for the wrong reasons, or for the right reasons.
Since I really have very few original thoughts I thought I’d turn to one of my intellectual mentors, the late Bertrand Russell. For better–or for worse!–his writings have influenced me greatly. I figured if anyone could challenge Martial Development it might just be Lord Russell.
I was grasping for a bit of Russell wit that thought I vaguely remembered and then I found it!
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. — Bertrand Russell
Drat! Chris may have found a way to neutralize approximation. Well met! I’ll be digesting his post for some time to come. In the meantime I’ll leave you with an excerpt that comes from one of my favorite Russell essays, On The Value of Scepticism:
Is it possible to preserve the lover and the poet without preserving the lunatic? In each of us, all three exist in varying degrees. Are they so bound up together that when the one is brought under control the others perish? I do not believe it. I believe there is in each of us a certain energy which must find vent in art, in passionate love, or in passionate hate, according to circumstances. Respectability, regularity, and routine — the whole cast-iron discipline of a modern industrial society – have atrophied the artistic impulse, and imprisoned love so that it can no longer be generous and free and creative, but must be either stuffy or furtive. — Bertrand Russell
Now replace “modern industrial society” with modern martial arts or traditional martial arts.
Perhaps this is what Chris is getting at?
~BCP
Pingback: Still struggling with side-kicks – going to have to dig deeper « learn4kicks