In which I rant about fighting.

I don’t know what it is exactly that draws me to fighting. Even Taekwondo doesn’t fill that category, it’s got to be Krav or mma…there’s something about that release that is different from any other workout. i don’t know if it’s released frustrations, I think that’s a lot of it. There’s definitely something therapeutic about hitting something. It’s almost ironic, because I love fighting, and I absolutely hate hurting people. It’s the main reason I don’t know if I could ever do an actual mma match, because I don’t know if I want to end up injuring another person…But I want to fight. I want to win, I want to be good at this. Fighting, to me, is a lot like dancing – fun to watch, but more fun to do. There’s a beauty in the dance of a good match. Duck this, block that, react and hit… It’s a chess match at high speed. My instructor is fond of reminding us that the best fighters might only use three moves, you might know exactly how they fight, and they’ll still beat you. Because they’re better at the game, the reaction, the dance.

I wish that I could explain that to a lot of mma fans. There are so many people who only look for blood, the knockout or the submission. I love all that as much as the next fan, but so much more if they come in a good fight. I hate mismached fights, I hate brawls. I really hate Brock Lesner, while we’re at it, for exactly that reason. He doesn’t play the game. He’s just in to get the win, not to fight. I couldn’t enjoy a win against a mismached opponent. There’s no joy to me in winning an easy fight. But Lesner is apparently happy to just lay on the mat and ‘win’ because he has a massive weight advantage. And add on to that his gloating, as though he had done anything worth celebrating….it just makes me sick. It’s a disgrace to everything that I love about fighting, and drags the sport backwards, if you ask me. Put Lesner and Kimbo in a ring, and let them duke it out – they’re in the same class of dressed-up frauds, if you ask me.

Unexpected side effects.

The reason why I started martial arts was the complete usual – it sounded cool and I wanted to get in shape. The reason why I stayed in martial arts, was that I found a level of sanity there that I never thought possible. There’s a lot of painfully cheesy talk about how martial arts ‘centers your mind’ and that kind of thing, but that’s not where I’m going with this. To me, it was an escape. My mind, especially then, replays everything, stresses everything, and was running a constant paranoid dialogue about what everyone else was thinking about me at all times. And I don’t mean the everyday level, because everyone worries about what everyone else is thinking. This was a crippling, bordering on complete paranioa, problem for me. What I found in Taekwondo that I didn’t expect was an escape from that. It required so much of my mind to focus on what I was doing, and to do it well, that I would get relief from the insanity in my head for a while. And as time went on, I found ways to hold on to that relief in the rest of my life. The degree to which martial arts fundamentally changed my life and my personality is incredible. I love it for a lot of reasons, but the pure mental relief was one that I never expected, and probably saved my life.

I think my brain just exploded.

**NOTE** I wrote this quite a while back, but didn’t publish it because I was pretty mad at the time and was not sure I could judge whether or not it was coherent and not just a rant. Since then, the ruling that sparked this post has been overturned, but (although it’s still a bit of a rant) I think the basic principle of my post still holds, and I feel like I need to get it off my chest. I mean no offense by this, I just have a lot of old frustrations and feel like people will gladly remain closed-minded about this subject, and I’m tired of fighting old, outdated stereotypes. **END NOTE**

This is bullshit. I would really love to know how on earth they twisted the constitution to justify requiring state teaching credentials that didn’t exist when it was written.

Listen, kids. I know, I know, I know, I KNOW. You all knew those crazy homeschool kids who weren’t that bright, or the fundamentalist religious crazies who couldn’t so much as consider the possiblity of debate and take every hard-core biblical view they can as their own personal vendetta. Well I’m sorry. I know those kids too. But I know a lot of non-homeschooled kids who are exactly the same. And believe me, it’s always the crazy ones who stand out, but that doesn’t mean they’re the norm. The normal, incredibly bright, articulate, open-minded kids who got world-class educations don’t go around screaming that they’re homeschooled.

You know why I don’t? Because I know, if I tell you that I’m homeschooled, that all of a sudden I have gone from just some person you know to having to overcome a thousand stereotypes of the batshit-crazy fundamentalist six-day creationist seventeen siblings never been out in public standing on the front porch with a shotgun unsocialized weirdo. And you know what? I don’t love that. I don’t love having to spend my time trying to change prejudices that strong. I don’t love people who treat me like a sheltered, naive, ignorant religious freak. It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t have anything in common with the stereotype, I shouldn’t have to spend my life justifying my education and rebuilding my reputation as who I actually AM instead of who you assume I am. People find out I’m homeschooled and somehow all of a sudden everything they know about me doesn’t matter anymore. This isn’t hypothetical–I’ve seen it happen. I’ve had to deal with this crap from strangers, from casual aquaintances, and from some of my best friends after they’ve known me for YEARS, and it sucks.

Let the girls fight.

So EliteXC is officially going under, can’t say that I’m sad…They were a disgrace to the sport that made all of MMA look bad. I hated that they got to be the “face” of mma, on network tv, and they put on an incredibly sub-par show that just cemented what many people already felt about mma. It was a show, not a sport, and not a skilled show at that. Kimbo Slice is a bad joke, and everyone who follows mma knows it, but the general public doesn’t. What we need is for UFC to go a little more mainstream, and for people to realize that these guys are athletes, and these aren’t just unregulated brawls…this isn’t the UFC of ten years ago.

The one thing that does make me sad about EliteXC going under is that now Gina Carano is out of a job, and Dana White doesn’t want to let girls into the UFC. To some degree that’s fair-there aren’t many high-quality female mma fighters, and if he let them in at a sub-par level it denegrates the sport and comes off looking like a publicity stunt. But for the few females who can fight mma, or who want to fight mma, it’s quite a blow. The sport can’t progress, there will never be a large number of good quality female fighters, if there’s no arena for them. Look at UFC a few years ago-bar brawlers, alley fighters, if you knew anything at all about fighting you could dominate the cage. But as the sport gained popularity, more people joined, smarter and more talented people were fighting, and you actually have to train in multiple disciplines and be a smart fighter to do well. The same thing can happen for female fighters if they are given an arena to fight in, something that’s high profile enough to give the sport some traction. It won’t be a huge sport, not for a long time, but it can be a successful sport, if given a chance. I don’t think Elite was the best place for that, but at least it was somewhere visible.

dissonance

Just to juxtapose my doubt of a Deity of any kind, I have to discuss His opinions on violence. Or other people’s opinions on His opinion. Why not muddy the waters some more?

My pastor has been hinting lately, with less and less subtlety, that violence of any kind–including self-defense and military action, is inherently bad. For right now I’ll just tackle the first for the most part. My main opinion is that the average person, especially the average pastor, can afford to not think about violence in any real analytical manner, and simply look at it, recoil, and categorically condemn it quite easily. If you spend any amount of time actually looking at what is involved with violence and crime, and situations that people actually find themselves in, then it becomes much more complicated. The lines stop being black and white and turn into a thousand shades of grey. Which is usually the case when any subject is examined with more than a passing glance.

As I see theology (and obviously this is all just my own opinion, I claim no monopoly on Truth – this is just my rambling, not The Answer), if you look at the New Testament the first and foremost rule is Love God, and the second is Love other people. All of them. So basically I’m going to make a big leap here and figure if you’re doing the most loving thing you can for people, then you’re probably doing the right thing. The tricky thing is figuring out what the most loving response to a situation is.

So let’s apply this. The standard scripture that gets thrown around is ‘turn the other cheek’, right? So, if someone slaps you in the face, you don’t beat them up. Fair enough. Seems to me (again, just my interpretation), that even taken in context this scripture has a lot stronger association with insult than actual violent attack. Even just looking at it logically – people who are looking to hurt someone don’t usually slap them. Slapping is an insult, a provocation, it implies scorn and dares a response. So if someone is trying to insult me, to pick a fight, and they slap me trying to provoke me into losing my temper, then I completely appreciate the value of letting it go. Don’t get into fights just because the other person is a jerk. If you’re trying to love them, then exercise the freedom you have to not worry about what others think, and not respond in anger. The most loving thing is to stay calm and let it go. This can be transferred into any number of situations where the attack is really more of an attack on machismo and pride than on the physical self.

But consider a different scenario, a different point of view. There are a lot of Christians who claim that, if you are attacked, you shouldn’t fight back. You should ‘turn the other cheek’. There are probably situations in which that would be an appropriate response. But I think it’s a very, very dangerous rule to start applying to every situation. Here’s how I see it. I don’t plan on ever being so intoxicated/drugged/I don’t know what that I would ever attack another person, but let’s say for the sake of argument that I get really trashed at a party. And at this party, I get very angry with someone – maybe even one of my friends. If I attack that person, and they don’t defend themselves because they don’t believe in violence, I have to be honest that I don’t think that was the most loving response they could have given. And that should be the goal – not to make the biggest point about pacifism and our ‘commitment’, but to love the other person as much as possible. If I, having been very dumb and attacked my friend, have lost track of that, then the most loving thing they could do (I think), the thing that I need them to do the most, is stop me. When I come to the next morning, I would rather have a lot of bruises and have a friend who is ok than to find out that I beat them up and they let me do it. There is no benefit to me if they stand there and allow themselves to be attacked. There is nothing that is bringing me closer to God. All that would say to me is ‘I care more about maintaining my ‘commitment’ and my ‘moral code’ than I do about your welfare. And then ‘turning the other cheek’ is not about God anymore, it’s about proving a point.

Not so simple anymore, eh? Let’s complicate it even more. Let’s say, on a late night walk, that you come upon a rape in progress. I know, you don’t want to think about that. You don’t want to think it could ever happen. It probably won’t, but it’s not impossible, and if morality has any value, then it has to apply in difficult situations as well as basic ones. Self-defense and violence are not always about giving all your money to the mugger and then letting them kill you. Anyway. You come across a rape – explain to me, please, how non-violence is the Biblical, loving, right response to this situation. It is beyond cruel, I think it is almost inhuman, to simply stand by and let it happen. If you can yell and argue and preach and save this girl, then hooray for you. But it may not be that simple. And then you have a choice. You can stand there and watch, or you can do something about it. And calling someone else doesn’t solve the dilemma – you can’t have someone else be violent on your behalf and pretend your hands are clean. I say, the most loving thing you can do is be violent. Obviously, it’s not necessary to be any more violent than necessary to end the situation, but if you have the power, stop the situation.

I guess my basic point is that whatever you call it, biblical, ethical, decent, moral behavior entails a lot more than ‘don’t ever do anything violent’.

downfall

Is there ever a good reason to doubt the existence of God? I mean, an actual motivation that seems less than selfish, or something that cannot be countered by the endless God arguments. Who can understand the mind of the almighty, and all that. Are you allowed to doubt the existence of a higher power because said higher power did not bend down to find you a parking spot? Or on the other extreme, is it justified to blame God for all the world’s evil, if we claim to value free will? Chaos seems a logical consequence of man being given free reign over his own destiny. There’s just not much you can really argue that will gain much traction over the truly devout.

And yet. And yet. I doubt. Even when I believe, I doubt. There isn’t much out there that can really disprove a Deity, neither is there much to prove one. Both ideas which lend credence to both parties. If there is no God, then obviously there would be no evidence to prove one; and if there is in fact a higher power, and it grants us free will, then proof of its existence would negate the need. One can obviously choose to believe in God and then hate Him, but that is a slightly different flavor of disbelief. Belief in God’s unjustness does not equal disbelief in His existence.

And yes, I do let petty things get in the way, and yes, this is about me. Because petty things come into direct conflict with what I believe, and therefore they do matter. If I had believed in a distant and uninterested God, then his disinterest would not bother me. But I believe, believed, perhaps, in an interested God. In fact, my life has been a series of incidents which have brought me to this point: I am not an atheist. I have thought about and around God’s existence from every angle and I cannot convince myself that He does not exist. Or at least, that nothing of a God-like nature exists. But neither can I convince myself back into contentment. There was a day or two in which I turned my back on His existence, and they were, without a doubt, some of the darkest days of my existence. It felt like trying to deny my parent’s existence, or the existence of the people on the street. Whatever I may think of them, they are still there. The issue became not whether I believed He was there, but whether I believed that He was worthy of worship, respect, or any attention at all.

I don’t really even know what I think now-it seems to change from day to day. Oddly enough I think it’s easier for me to believe on bad days, not good ones. On good days I don’t need the hope as much. On bad days, I need something to believe in, something to look to for help, something to get me to look beyond myself. And I yell at God, for not being believable. I feel let down, somehow. And I still go to church and stand there and feel more and more like a hypocrite every week. I want to believe, I want to leave all this behind, but I can’t do it. I want desperately to just turn off my mind and find something otherworldly, but I can’t.

I have had a life that makes me feel like, whether or not I believe, or respect, God, I owe Him my life. There are things that I cannot explain. I just don’t know where that leaves me. To believe in God and doubt his benevolence seems a hopeless place to be. If only I could go back to where things were black and white.

Lack of Purpose

I don’t usually take much time to write randomly like this. But I’m sick of it. Of life. Of the endless repitition. Of sitting around waiting for it all to start making sense. All this work to make it to the ‘real world’ and what does it get me? Not a whole heck of a lot. Life rolls on, and I don’t want to stop it, but I wouldn’t mind bringing back the brighter moments. I mean, why does it feel like I’ve had to start my life over again and again and again? There’s got to be a balance somewhere. A balance between honesty and privacy, between acquaintance and friendship, between work and play and all that jazz. But even when I feel like I’ve made steps towards a better life it doesn’t seem to mean much. There’s nothing at all wrong with my life, to be honest. Nothing much missing, just a sense of isolation. I don’t know what I’m working towards anymore. After living through school and being always driven on by goals, I now seem rather bereft of any driving purpose, and it’s driving me crazy.

The possibilities…

Moving individual atoms, with precision….so much potential. Awesome.

Red Bull Flight Lab

This is awesome. Well designed, intuitive, creative, and funny….and an actually playable game at the end. Very nice flash work.

Indiana Jones rides again!

There’s a trailer up, check it out…gotta love Indy.