Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
As the title suggests, the choices we do not make are as important as those which we do. We want to take both options (‘sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler’), but we must eventually choose only one. On a technical level, note how the first half of the poem is one long, meandering sentence, mimicking the indecisive meandering of the of the traveler.
At first, we think that we can retrace our steps and take the other option (‘Oh, I kept the first for another day!’). But we have branched off the original path too many times (‘how way leads on to way’) and we cannot find our way back (‘I doubted if I should ever come back‘).
Frost is saying that our decisions are often not based on any real logic or reason (‘Because it was grassy and wanted wear’), and that it is only upon looking back that we create the story to justify our decisions (‘I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence’).
The poem was inspired by Frost’s friend, the British poet Edward Thomas. The two would often go walking together, and Thomas was not only indecisive about choosing which path they should take but would lament afterwards that they should’ve taken the other path. In writing the poem, Frost was having a playful dig at his friend and meant it as a joke.
Thomas, however, took it more seriously, seeing it as a personal attack on his character. Soon after – and despite being a 37-year-old husband and father - he enlisted in the British army. He was shot through the chest during the Battle of Arras in 1917 and is buried in France.
Joel Ingles
]]>
Starship Troopers is militaristic science fiction form the prolific and influential – and as we shall see, often controversial - science fiction writer Robert Heinlein.
The opening chapter jumps – literally – into the action. Fans of the 1986 movie Aliens will recognise it immediately, as that movie owes a great deal to this book. Opening with a bang is great for engaging the reader’s attention, however, references to initially unexplained technologies (a common issue with science fiction) can be confusing for some readers. You just have to go with it until things are explained or, perhaps more satisfyingly, you deduce it through context (see A Clockwork Orange, this blog).
Starship Troopers contains familiar war story tropes: a young man with ambitions of glory, and against his family’s wishes, joins the military to fight an aggressive alien attacker, only to be placed into a lowly and dangerous infantry unit, where he learns through hardship the true meaning of service (see also the movie Platoon). It’s this notion of ‘service’ – two years of military service will earn the recruit ‘veteran’ status and subsequent voting rights -
which comprises one of the controversial themes of this book, as critics accused Heinlein of advocating for a form of fascism.
Scenes of public lashings are further evidence for Heinlein’s critics. The main character, Johnny Rico, is himself flogged: ‘Now here’s a very odd thing: a flogging isn’t as hard to take as it is to watch’, and once over, all is forgiven. ‘In a way, an administrative flogging is the mildest sort of compliment…’ Intended or not, it has an air of normalising corporal punishment.
Being published only fifteen years after the defeat of the Nazis, accusations of promoting fascism may be a stretch. What Heinlein did intend however, was a condemnation of what he viewed as an amoral youth culture. Like Orwell’s 1984 (see review, this blog), Starship Troopers outlines an alternative history – ‘The Terror’ – where roaming ‘wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons’ robbed and killed, until there was a war between China and the U.S, British and Russian alliance. When Heinlein quotes Thomas Jefferson’s ‘The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of the patriots’ speech, the tone is clear: Starship Troopers was to provide a rallying cry for a return to martial values – a 1950s version of Top Gun.
The book details the training of new recruits – both physical (the worm to the unsuspecting and naive reader) and the philosophical and moral (the hook of the transgressive author). An enduring image, and an idea stolen by many science fiction movies (James Cameron, I’m looking at you), is the ‘power armour’:
‘Suited up, you look like a big steel gorilla…two-thousand pounds of it, maybe, in full kit, yet you can walk, run, jump, lie down, pick up an egg without breaking it and jump right over the house next door and come down to a feather landing’ . There are three more pages of this description. This is the stuff that fans of ‘hard’ (i.e. technologically dense, sometimes scientifically accurate) science fiction love: the machinery, spaceships and weapons., and there’s plenty of that here.
It’s not until halfway through the book that we get our first description of the enemy, the ‘Bugs’
‘The Bugs aren’t like us. The Pseudo-Arachnids aren’t even spiders. They are arthropods who happen to look like a madman’s conception of a giant, intelligent spider, but their organization, psychological and economic, is more like ants or termites; they are communal entities, the ultimate dictatorship of the hive.’
Though this may be science fiction, it’s clearly a metaphor for Communism, with ‘communal entities’ ruled by a ‘dictatorship’.
Johnny Rico continues:
‘Every time we killed a thousand bugs at a cost of one M.I, it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution…’
The young soldier’s moral education continues in officer training school under Major Reid (Heinlein?). It includes an overview of political systems through history, from Ancient Greece (‘…some weird and extreme as in the antlike communism urged by Plato in the misleading title The Republic.’) to modern times. All are summarily dismissed by Major Reid in favour of the present system of voting veterans, because:
‘Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage…He may fail in wisdom. He may lack in civic virtue. But his average performance is enormously better than that of any other class of rulers in history.’
And,
‘…we require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life…The maximum responsibility a human can accept is thus acquainted to the ultimate authority a human can exert. Yin and yang. Perfect and equal.’
Now ‘Major Reid’ begins to get a bit murky:
‘All wars arise from population pressure…any breed which stops its own increase gets crowded out by breeds which expand.’
Perhaps in an effort to justify his position, Major Reid concludes:
‘Man is what he is – a wild animal with the will to survive…Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics – you name it – is nonsense. Correct morals arise from what knowing Man is – not what do-gooders and well-meaning Aunt Nellies would like him to be.’
Yet this is a science fiction novel after all, and there is still a final battle to be fought It’s a fun though sober ending to the book, and a welcome relief from the preceding exposition on the ethics of militarism. Starship Troopers is a not-so-subtle reminder that science fiction can (and often does – should, even) refer to contemporary issues. In disguising it, the lines between the ideas of the author and merely those of their characters, can be blurred.
Further
If you’re a sci-fi fan then you’ve no doubt heard of Heinlein and his great contemporaries, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Also, nowadays there is a whole sub-genre of militaristic sci-fi, if that’s all you’re after. There is also the 1997 film by Robocop director Paul Verhoven, which tones down the ethical content and turns up the fun (and gore).
Joel Ingles
]]>“It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.” – Jorge Luis Borges
Labyrinths is a collection of short stories by the prolific Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986). Short stories are the cryptic crossword to the novel’s regular crossword: you have to deduce a great deal from the few clues you’re given. But, like a trailer for an upcoming movie which turns out to be more exciting than the actual full-length movie, their brevity and compactness can be exhilarating.
“Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.” - Borges
All of Borges’ stories take place in imaginary worlds: not science fiction, not fantasy, but rather parallel and alternative realities with their own laws of mathematics and physics; many circle back around to their beginning or spiral into fractal copies. Mirrors, stairs, secret rooms and passageways – connections between alternate realities - are common features in his alternate or fictional histories. Borges creates so many alternate worlds, with their own unique laws of time and space that we question the legitimacy and uniqueness of our own. They’re worlds almost unique to Borges, and he has essentially created his own genre.
“We accept reality so readily - perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.” - Borges
Short stories can be difficult to summarise without giving away too much of the plot. For example, in The Sacred Ruin, a man travels deep into the jungle to a long-forgotten and overgrown temple in order to dream a man into existence – only to discover in the end that he himself has been similarly dreamed into existence. Such twists illustrate the looping, fractal nature of Borges stories.
In The Secret Miracle, a man facing a dawn firing squad is able to stop time, but only so long as it takes him to finally figure out in his head the plot of his great unwritten play; in Funes the Memorious, a man receives a knock to the head and can remember the minutest detail of everything he experiences, at the expense of being able to think, for ‘to think is to make differences, generalize, making abstractions. In the teeming world of Funes, there were only details.’
In one of the more famous stories (Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote) a man attempts to rewrite two specific chapters of the classic novel Don Quixote word-for-word, but via his own experiences, resulting in two identical texts having different meaning (it’s taken me months to get my head around that, and I’m still not sure I’ve got it right). So it is with each of these stories that their meaning changes each time you read them.
“I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.” - Borges
It's for this reason that if I could only take one book to a desert island it would probably be this one. These stories, despite each being only a dozen pages or less, are not quick reads – each sentence is dense in individual and relative meaning. You finish each story meditating on society’s present understanding of reality, and this new understanding informs your reading of the next story, and so on in Borges’ fractal way.
“Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.” - Borges
Borges’ worlds also contain many literary allusions, reflecting his encyclopaedic knowledge of literature; Borges was appointed director of the Argentine national library, despite being almost blind (a cruel fate not only for a writer but also for the voracious reader that he was, much like Beethoven going deaf). Many of his stories are centred around books - obscure, rare, lost, esoteric, forged – or bookshops and libraries.
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” - Borges
His stories are liberally infused with references to philosophers and their views; as with Orwell (and similarly outspokenly anti-Communist and anti-Fascist), the reader is never talked down to but always included as an intellectual equal. His stories are essentially alternate philosophies expressed through a fantasy format (which, incidentally, is what all great science fiction works do). In fact, there is a philosophical term named after him: the ‘Borgesian conundrum’ debates whether ‘the writer writes the story, or it writes him’.
"I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors." - Borges
The stories are also littered with words from many languages; aside from his native Spanish, Borges could communicate in English, French, German and Latin. It’s as if his ideas were too nuanced to be expressed by only one language. And where he cannot express it in a known language, he invents his own.
“The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.” - Borges
As with reading many great writers for the first time (for me Conrad, Faulkner, Nabokov), there’s a before period, where you think you already know what ‘great’ writing is, and an after period against which all other writers are forever compared. I can now proudly add Borges to that list.
I’ll leave the last word to Borges; if you sympathise with this, then you know he’s your man:
“Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies, I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.” - Borges
Joel Ingles
]]>With that in mind, it is important to at least acknowledge some core concepts as a starting point, this will help you to accelerate your learning and give you the foundations to progress to more optimal positions depending on your objectives. Here we list 5 concepts as a starting point (yes, we know there are always caveats ).
1. Keep your arms in.
This will obviously help to avoid submissions, however the main objective is to ensure you are not having your limbs isolated, which can lead to all sorts of mischief.
2. Don't end up flat on your back.
When you are put flat on your back you are limited in regard to moving and activating your hips and therefore initiating escapes, generally it is a good idea to orientate to a hip in the beginning of your journey.
3. Don't stick your neck out.
This one is pretty obvious, if you stick your neck out with no concern for connection it will be taken home. The next time you sit up from half guard take notice of your connection or lack of in relation to your head position. This is a quick fix.
4. Establish a connection.
This can take on many forms, a gi grip, wrist control, a frame etc. The important consideration is distance, establish where you want to attack or defend from. Normally the one who controls the connections controls the match. This leads in nicely to our final point below.
5. You are either in or you are out.
As mentioned above managing distance is the key to controlling any bout (this is true of all fighting arts). Next time you are passing guard or 'controlling a position', consider is you are in our out. If you are playing in the middle things will get messy!
]]>
These reviews have never been about convincing you to read a particular book. They are intended to explain why they are considered ‘classics’. And I think I can show why Paradise Lost is held in such high regard. But be warned: I will be discussing the finer points of poetry, so bail out now if you’re not ready to begin to appreciate what I consider to be the highest of all arts.
Paradise Lost is a reworking of the biblical Book of Genesis. For those not scarred by a catholic education, the Book of Genesis tells the story of the creation of the universe; the war between the angels; the expulsion of Satan from Heaven; the Garden of Eden; the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan; and the subsequent ‘fall of man’. Just your run-of-the-mill indoctrination, then.
Milton’s take on that story is unique in that he also incorporates ancient myths and literary allusions in order to clarify and elaborate on events outlined in the Bible. Milton’s purpose was to “justify the ways of God to men”. Instead – inadvertently or not – he makes almost an anti-hero out of Satan.
I won’t go over the story in detail. If you’re religious, you will be familiar with it already; if you’re not religious, you won’t take it seriously anyway. As an atheist, I skimmed over the bits on God’s creation of the universe and Earth and the plants and animals. However, I enjoyed immensely all of the bits with Satan, many of which I wish to highlight in this review, if only because they’re so much fun.
We begin the story with the former angel Lucifer – now known as Satan – having been cast out of heaven for daring to challenge the authority of God. Satan broods in Pandemonium. Today ‘pandemonium’ means ‘wild and noisy; disorder and confusion; uproar’. It’s actually the name of Satan’s palace. Then there are Satan’s fellow demons: Beelzabub, Moloch, Azazel, Belial, Mammon. I only knew about these from bad 1980s metal bands. Each has its own unique personality, as evident when they are debating their next move against God: to have another crack, or accept their punishment and get used to it, or go crawling back to ask for forgiveness. Though they realise that they are essentially immortal, they know that they cannot defeat God. However, if they can’t defeat God directly, they can corrupt his most precious creation: Man.
‘Seduce them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works. This would surpass
Common revenge.’
It is revenge by proxy. But who will do it? Satan acknowledges that if one wishes to rule, one should also be prepared to represent. Only once he has volunteered do the other demons half-heartedly volunteer, knowing that they will be safely refused yet still be seen to have volunteered:
‘Others among the chief might offer now
(Certain to be refused) what erst they feared,
And so refused might in opinion stand
His rivals, winning cheap the high repute
Which he through hazard huge must earn…’
It paints Satan as a stand-up, take charge kind of guy, and dare I say someone you wouldn’t mind having in your corner.
Before I continue with the story, let’s get into the technical aspects of the poem. A poem which does not rhyme is called ‘free verse’. Is that still considered poetry? Yes indeed, because poetry is all about the ‘meter’: the number of ‘feet’ (grouped syllables) to a line. For simplicity’s sake, a ‘foot’ consists of two syllables.
Let’s use the first line quoted above as an example. ‘Seduce’ – two syllables - is one ‘foot’. The meter is the number of feet to a line: ‘Seduce them to our party, that their God’ consists of five ‘feet’ (equalling ten syllables). This is referred to in poetry as a ‘pentameter’: a meter of five (penta) feet. Remember, it’s not the number of words in the line, but the number of syllables, ‘seduce’ and ‘party’ each having two syllables. The pentameter is the most common meter found in English poetry.
Now the fun starts. Try saying out loud the example sentence above with an equal emphasis (or ‘stress’) on each syllable. It sounds ridiculous and robotic because that’s not how spoken language works; when speaking – and always remember that poetry is specifically designed to be spoken aloud – we place varying emphasis on different syllables, lengthening or shortening them according to the message we’re trying to convey. A line of poetry consisting of equally stressed syllables would be unrealistic, not to mention boring and predictable, as I hope you’ve just demonstrated to yourself.
Try this instead: place a greater emphasis on the second syllable of each foot. I’ll highlight the syllables to be emphasised: ‘Seduce them to our party, that their God’. This emphasis on the second syllable of a foot is called an ‘iamb’. It turns an equally stressed “ti-ti” sound into an asymmetrically stressed “ti-tum” (if that makes it easier to comprehend). Five of these “ti-tum” sounds to a line is called an ‘iambic pentameter’. Of course, there are many different stress combinations in poetry, and as many meters (numbers of feet per line). What’s important in a poem is the consistency of the chosen meter throughout the poem.
It just so happens that Paradise Lost (and much of Shakespeare) is written in iambic pentameter. Here are more examples:
‘I know thee not, nor even saw till now
Sight more detestable than him and thee.’
…
‘Incensed with indignation Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burned…
…
The great 20th century American poet Robert Frost commented that writing poetry that doesn’t rhyme is “like playing tennis without a net”, i.e. easy. It’s a witty remark from a man to whom rhyming poetry seemed so natural and effortless (for this reason I would recommend Frost as the poet that the novice begin with). Yet free verse does have rules and its own logic. Take this description of Satan’s army:
‘A forest huge of spears: and thronging helms
Appeared, and serried shields in thick array
Of depth immeasurable: anon they move.’
It’s a powerful image (by the way ‘serried’ means ‘packed close together’ – more on strict definitions later). It also illustrates some unique features of poetry. Note the grammatical pause halfway through the first and third line (after ‘spears’ and ‘immeasurable’ respectively), reflecting the patterns of natural speech. Adding to this, note also how the first line naturally moves to the second line, so that when spoken it could sound “and thronging helms appeared”: a poetic thought does not have to stop at the end of each line. Once you understand this, you see how seemingly separate lines actually make up an integrated, inseperable whole, and that’s how you should read it.
Finally, note that the third line contains eleven syllables; though for the sake of variety and interest some variation to the meter is acceptable in poetry, it is more likely that the ‘u’ in ‘immeasurable’ would be ‘scudded’ or not stressed, so that it would be pronounced as the (four syllabic) ‘immes’rable’.
Technically, it could be written:
‘A forest huge of spears:
and thronging helms appeared,
and serried shields in thick array of depth immeasurable:
anon they move.’
But there’s no order in this. And that’s the aesthetic and technical challenge of poetry: to fit the content into a coherent and logical structure. All great art is created withing constraints: the physical limitations of a painter’s canvas; the natural light of the landscape photographer; the verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure of a pop song. For poetry, that constraint is the meter.
Paradise Lost of course also employs other typical poetic devices, such as alliteration (underlined below) in the section where it is describing the gates of Hell:
‘Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid roof
And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass.’
Note that ‘horrid’ originally meant ‘bristling’. Paradise Lost is also a lesson – or a reminder - in the specificity of language, and highlights how definitions change over time. My copy has 160 pages of notes (the poem itself runs for 288 pages), explaining the meanings of antiquated words and phrases as well as obscure or forgotten mythological and literary allusions:
Amazed: led through a maze
Fluctuates: moves like a wave (e.g. a snake)
Reluctant: struggling; writhing
Complicated: tangled
Drugged: nauseated
Rare: spread out at wide intervals
Terrific: terrifying
Involved: coiled
Despised: looked down upon
Interview: mutual view
Remember these definitions next time you are reluctant to become involved in a complicated interview.
But back to the story. Satan must escape Hell so he can search for Man. The gates of Hell are guarded by Sin (a woman’s torso on a snake’s body) and Death (a dark, shapeless mass of evil). Satan is completely perplexed by Sin yet, like two alpha males, recognises the threat that Death poses. Nevertheless, Satan is prepared to square off with Death, even though he probably can’t win. Again, you can’t help but admire Satan’s commitment. Satan’s strategy is to convince Sin and Death to join him in his mission to corrupt man. Sin agrees and opens the gates of Hell for Satan to exit. But it’s not that simple: Hell is not merely directly below Earth, and there follows a long section on the physical layout of the universe. If anything, it’s an intriguing (and amusing) insight into the popular 17th century understanding of space.
Of course, God, being omniscient, is aware of Satan’s plans. And Satan knows that even if he were to ask God for forgiveness and be welcomed back into Heaven that he (Satan) would probably try it on again – and God knows it, too:
‘This knows my punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging peace.’
In other words, Satan is not going to give God the satisfaction of refusing him. Again, you can’t help but admire Satan’s honesty (and I hope that some of you have noted the perfect iambic pentameter of those lines).
Satan makes it to the Garden of Eden, and there is an extended description of the Garden and of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge and all that stuff. God sends down some of his angels to warn man. There’s Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel (‘the warlike angel’), but also Uzziel, Ithurial and Zephon; it’s strange that the former names are still popular today, whilst the latter are not.
Satan tells Gabriel that even if he (Satan) were taken back to God in chains, Gabriel himself is burdened by far heavier chains, for it is better to better to be ‘Free, and to none accountable; preferring / Hard liberty before the easy yoke’. It echoes what is perhaps Satan’s most famous line, and probably of the whole poem: ‘Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven’. It bristles with defiance and utter disdain. You can’t help but admire it.
There are fantastic descriptions of the battle between the angels and Satan’s legions:
‘…for wide was spread
That war and various; sometimes on firm ground
A standing fight, then soaring on main wing
Tormented all the air; all air seemed then
Conflicting fire…’
Satan, as you’d expect, is front and centre in the action, telling the Archangel Michael:
‘Not think thou with wind
Of airy threats to awe whom yet with deeds
Thou canst not.’
In other words, you talk a big game, but you can’t back it up with action.
But Michael does injure Satan, though he does not kill him, and it is then that Satan realises he (and all other angels and demons) are immortal. And yet they may still feel pain, so why not continue the fight against the angels? The solution is better weapons, and the demons invent cannons and gunpowder. Not to be outdone, the angels come up with an even bigger weapon:
‘From their foundations loos’ning to and fro
They plucked the seated hills with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting bore them in their hands amaze,’
The angels are literally lifting the tops from mountains and hurling them at the Satan’s legions: ‘With mountains as with weapons armed.’
After the battle, Satan retreats to Hell to await any potential initiates from the world of man, and the story peters out with a few more biblical tales – how God created the universe and Earth and man and all the plants and animals and all that stuff - which I skimmed over.
Farewell happy fields
Where joy forever dwells: hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
There’s an admirable stoicism in those last three lines: it’s not where you are, but how you view it.
Is Paradise Lost a triumph of style over substance? After all, it’s essentially a remake of an older story. Ah, but like the recent trend for remaking old movies, it’s how the story is told; I didn’t care at all for the descriptions of how God supposedly created the universe and everything in it, but I did admire how Milton conveyed it. It’s a triumph of both artistic intent and endeavour.
Further
Understanding iambic pentameter is the key to (finally) appreciating Shakespeare. For a general introduction into poetry and its myriad forms I cannot recommend highly enough Stephen Fry’s (he of Blackadder and Q.I. fame) The Ode Less Travelled.
Joel Ingles
]]>- Heraclitus (Greek philosopher, 535 -475 BC)
Part 1: The Man
We’re constantly being told in jiujitsu that we should revisit the basics. But why? Because we change: after even a few months of jiujitsu you should be stronger, fitter, perhaps leaner, likely more coordinated. You’re also becoming aware of strategy and tactics. More importantly perhaps than any of those, you should find that your proprioception – the awareness of your body in space – has improved significantly. Improvements in any of these areas will improve the way you both understand and execute a technique. Such improved skills should not be exclusively reserved for increasingly complex techniques; they will enhance any technique, including the basics. If you’re struggling to adapt to a new, more complex technique, revisit a basic ‘white belt’ technique and feel how much smoother and conscious you are in its execution. It’s the equivalent of sparring the new guy fresh off the street.
Part 2: The River
We could say that the ‘game’ of jiujitsu is analogous to Heraclitus’ river: it too, changes. Obviously basic techniques adapt to address and overcome common counters; more than once I’ve heard high level black belts say they changed their mind on some basics, despite years of doing it a certain way. But what if our concept of what constitutes a ‘basic’ also changes? When I started my jiujitsu journey over ten years ago, leg attacks were still shrouded in mystery, let alone being a beginner technique. Now we consider a straight ankle lock to be one of the safer (less permanently damaging, if you will) techniques. A case could also be made for the self-defence efficacy of ashi garami (at least as a sweep option). Should these now be considered ‘basics’? The river has carved a new course.
Jiujitsu is not about building a bridge over a problem – it’s about immersing yourself, letting it swirl around you, feeling the flow – and emerging on the other side a new, better human being.
Joel Ingles
]]>
‘The state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it…we feel in control of our own actions, masters of our own fate…we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be.’
It’s never easy to summarise works of philosophy or psychology. They’re dense for a reason, their hypothesis being built up brick by logical brick into a sturdy conceptual fortress. They aren’t conducive to easily digestible one-sentence takeaway messages (and you should view anything that is with suspicion, if not of the source material, then of your understanding of it). Initially with these works there is a lot of groundwork to cover, especially in clarifying definitions, and in Flow Csikszentmihalyi refines his definition of ‘optimal experience’:
‘The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.’
We’ve all experienced this. It could be while we’re immersed in a hobby, or at dinner with friends, or playing sport. All distractions are blocked out as we focus on the task. We lose all sense of time. We go deep, and when we finally surface back into the ‘real world’ we feel cleansed, lighter, invigorated, satisfied.
It sounds very much like the modern trend (resurrected from ancient philosophical practices) for mindfulness. The difference with flow states is in the notion of ‘deliberate practice’, the setting and pursuit of just-achievable goals which, although it has its roots firmly planted in psychology, has been recently popularised through the so-called ‘ten thousand-hour’ rule.
‘The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy – or attention – is invested in realistic goals. And where skills match the opportunities for action. The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand.’
Csikszentmihalyi begins by outlining the ways in which modern society and culture has left us feeling unfulfilled and dissatisfied, even in a time of great material wealth.
‘To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in response to its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards for herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.’
In other words, we have to determine our own rules for the game, and therefore what constitutes ‘success’. However, Csikszentmihalyi cautions that this fulfilment of personal enjoyment is not a free pass to decadence; we must balance any personal motivation with the demands and obligations of being a contributing member of a society.
The Stoic (and Buddhist) notion of ‘control of consciousness’ – choosing the response to our situation – is nothing new. So why have we not embraced and perfected it by now, thousands of years later? Firstly, ‘it cannot be condensed into a formula, it cannot be memorized and then routinely applied’: it requires direct experience derived from individual application ‘in the same way athletes or musicians must keep practicing what they know in theory’. Secondly, the control of consciousness is altered by changes in culture; ancient Greece can’t be compared equally to modern London. ‘Control over consciousness cannot be institutionalized. As soon as it becomes part of a set of social rules and norms, it ceases to be effective in the way it was originally intended to be’. Control over consciousness is critical for controlling the quality of an experience.
The term ‘consciousness’ can be problematic, having been adopted by New Age spirituality. Csikszentmihalyi acknowledges this early on:
‘Some people have a tendency to become very mystical when talking about consciousness and expect it to accomplish miracles that at present it is not designed to perform. They would like to believe that anything is possible in what they think of as the spiritual realm.’ This is an example of the practical and logical approach which Csikszentmihalyi uses which makes Flow so readable.
So, what then is this misunderstood term ‘consciousness’?
‘The function of consciousness is to represent information about what is happening outside and inside the organism in such a way that it can be evaluated and acted upon by the body.’
Or,
‘It simply means that certain specific conscious events (sensations, feelings, thoughts, intentions) are occurring and that we are able to direct their course…Thus we might think of consciousness as intentionally ordered information.’
However, we are not computers, and not every bit of information is evaluated and processed equally; we are selective in what bits enter our consciousness based upon our ‘intentions’ – ‘bits of information shaped either by biological needs or internalized social goals’ that ‘act as magnetic fields, moving attention towards some objects and away from others, keeping our mind focused on some stimuli in preference to others.’
The key to directing our focus is to find – or create - enjoyment in an activity. Csikszentmihalyi distinguishes between ‘pleasure’ and ‘enjoyment’: ‘We can experience pleasure without any investment of psychic energy, whereas enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investment of attention. It’s the difference between passive and active engagement.
Csikszentmihalyi lists eight factors in finding ‘flow’ in any experience. These include choosing a challenging activity that requires skill (#1), the opportunity to set clear goals and receive immediate feedback (#3) and the loss of self-consciousness (#6). Particularly intriguing is rule #5, the ‘paradox of control’, in which an activity offers ‘the possibility, rather than the actuality of control.’ In other words, it’s when you reach that balance between an activity being just within the reach of your abilities: not too easy to be boring, and not too difficult to be disheartening That’s the magical ‘flow channel’.
Flow is not a book listing optimal experience activities, but rather how to find optimal experience in any activity. As the title suggests, ‘flow’ is suited to many physical activities, and Csikszentmihalyi discusses the flow potential of yoga and martial arts (and sex). However, he also details how optimal experience can be found in mental and intellectual activities: reading, doing word and number puzzles, looking at art, listening to music, even eating. And surprisingly, flow states can also be experienced through the organisation of knowledge, such as memorizing historical dates or scientific knowledge. For the introverts or less physically competent among us this can be empowering; you don’t need to skydive or drive a race car to achieve a flow state. The same rules which apply to physical flow states also apply to mental flow states.
The key is that you choose the parameters: you ‘make a game’ of any activity, where you decide the rules and what constitutes a ‘win’. But there’s a caveat in that, whilst many activities are capable of enabling an optimal experience, not all people are capable of instigating it: there may be psychological or societal barriers (Csikszentmihalyi shows that many of these are artificial constructs)
A key concept in Flow and the achievement of optimal experience is that of the ‘autotelic’ experience: that ‘an optimal experience is an end in itself’, or intrinsically motivated (versus an ‘exotelic’ experience, which is externally motivated). By extension, the ‘autotelic self’ – ‘a self that has self-contained goals’ – is able to translate potential threats into enjoyable challenges. Obviously, this can be applied to specific areas – career, sport, hobbies, relationships – or to life in general. And because the components which enable the flow experience are essentially concerned with creating order from chaos, it is also an ideal strategy for dealing with stress, and Csikszentmihalyi covers this in detail, outlining a series of practical steps.
But how do we choose the parameters of our personal game of life? What are the goals worth pursuing?
‘It does not matter what the ultimate goal is – provided it is compelling enough to order a lifetime’s work of psychic energy…As long as it provides clear objectives, clear rules for action, and a way to concentrate and become involved, any goal can serve to give meaning to a person’s life.’
The key, however, is to take action!
‘There is a mutual relationship between goals and the effort they require. Goals justify the effort they demand at the outset, but later it is the effort that justifies the goal.’
However, Csikszentmihalyi cautions against too many choices and too broad goals – a condition peculiar to modern life - which causes uncertainty and zaps commitment. But how do we know which goals are worthy? (And is this not THE eternal question throughout life?). Csikszentmihalyi offers no easy path here: only through trial and error and reflection. This may seem like a cop out to some, but to me it only reinforces Csikszentmihalyi’s intentions and credentials. He does go into quite a lot of detail on how to we may choose our personal life goals, and though he always reiterates that these are personal choices, he does offer a shortcut of sorts: a return to the classic values of ages past.
‘Great music, art, architecture, poetry, drama, dance, philosophy and religion are there for anyone to see as examples of how harmony can be imposed on chaos.’
Don’t be misled by the title or subject matter: this is a work of legitimate academic scholarship which offers a practical guide to enriching the good times - and placating the not-so-good times.
Further
On the subject of ‘deliberate practice’ I can recommend The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, which busts the myth surrounding the ‘ten thousand-hour rule’.
Joel Ingles
]]>
We at Author are all about improvement: physical, mental and spiritual. We want to reclaim the craft of philosophy and show how it can be applied to jiujitsu, and also how you may apply the lessons of jiujitsu to the art of your life. With this in mind we present snippets of wisdom from some of the coral belts of philosophy.
“He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper, but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to his circumstance.”
― David Hume (Scottish philosopher, 1711-1776)
It’s easy to stay in our comfort zone, our “happy place”. This is especially true of jiujitsu, where stepping out of our comfort zone usually involves physical pain. Yet if we don’t step outside that zone, we won’t improve our craft. Better instead to adapt your attitude to the new situation. You – and only you – can control your response. It’s the classic mantra of Stoicism. But it’s also the same as the classic mantra of Brazilian jiujitsu: “Flow with the go”.
“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
- Francis Bacon (English philosopher, 1561-1626)
Funny name, intellectual giant. We’ve all seen that confident first-timer who thinks he’s going to smash everyone. He begins with certainties. And we’ve all seen (with great delight!) what happens next. Needless to say, his first session ends in doubt. Much better is the beginner who starts with doubts – too old/unfit/inflexible/weak/overweight – and over time on the mat begins to develop certainties. Especially against that over-confident first-timer.
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
― Epicurus (Greek philosopher, 341 – 270 BC)
It’s normal in our jiujitsu journey to want to get to the next level as quickly as possible. But that would be to deny the allowances afforded at each belt level. White belt? You’re expected to get subbed. Blue belt? Expected to attempt crazy stuff (if you actually stick around). Purple belt? Go down rabbit holes of techniques. But remember also your first few months on the mat, when you looked at even a two-stripe white belt with envy? And then you find yourself there, in confident possession of what you once only dreamed of. Never envious, confident of improvement: that’s the jiujitsu journey.
“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”
― John Locke (English philosopher, 1632-1704)
Learning a particular jiujitsu technique once is not the end of it. We must study it more deeply: what does it look like in various situations? We must seek the guidance and feedback of our club mates: when and how the technique does/doesn’t work. Finally, we must reflect upon our application: is my execution of it improving? Only then can we can say we understand a technique. Study, collaborate, reflect. Become a jiujitsu gentleman (or woman).
Joel Ingles
]]>INGREDIENTS
200g of your favourite dark chocolate (we used 85%)
1 handful of dates
1 handful of almonds
1 handful of cashews
1 handful of desiccated coconut
2-4 x crushed sugar free biscuits or shortbread
2 Tbs of vanilla essence
1 Large Tbs of peanut butter
2 Tbs of sesame seeds
2 tsp of raw honey
METHOD
1. Chop all of your dry ingredients and set aside in a large mixing bowl.
2. Melt the chocolate over a water bath or in the microwave until smooth and runny.
3. Add the wet ingredients and combine well.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and combine well.
5. In a silicone bread pan or lined pan, tightly pack the mixture in. Place in the fridge for a few hours and you are ready to slice and indulge!
We hope you enjoy making this as much as you will eating it! Please tag us in your pics so we can share with the world :)
Team Author.
]]>By default I landed on nuts as the 'perfect' snack, which also happens to play an integral role in my overall nutritional requirements, more specifically from a fats and protein perspective. However, as we do, I dove into the world of nuts without much consideration regarding overall nutritional value of the available varieties and I would be lying if I said I had a handle on the amount I should be consuming, seeing me consistently returning to the jar with reckless abandon.
To save you the ambiguity of your nut consumption we have provided you with the top 5 nut varieties by nutritional value below.
Please note that this information is based on 100g of raw nuts, a handful is approximately 25-30g.
Most of the fats in almonds are monounsaturated fats. Almonds are also rich in vitamins and minerals, such as:
While pistachios offer fewer minerals than some other nuts, they contain a substantial 1,025 mg of potassium per 100 g.
Other notable vitamins and minerals in pistachios include:
Most of the fats in cashews are monounsaturated fats.
The important vitamins and minerals in cashews include:
Walnuts have a slightly lower mineral content than other nuts:
The majority of fats in hazelnuts are monounsaturated fats, but they include some polyunsaturated and saturated fats in addition. Hazelnuts also contain the following:
Enjoy snacking on the healthy side!
Please note, we are not nutritionists, please consult a professional for more in-depth information and advice.
3. More fat, less sugar or don't eat.
"Sugar [is] probably the worst thing to happen to human health in the last two hundred years."
This chapter begins by discussing breakfast and the concept of ditching the sugar laden bullshit for quality fats, if you don't have quality food to start the day then skip it all together!
SUGAR
FATS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Deep Breath, Deep Freeze.
This chapter is all about cold exposure and breath work. Aubrey heavily references Wim Hof, a cold immersion and breathing guru to put it mildly and Dr Rhonda Patrick who has an intimate understanding of the effects of hot and cold on the mind and body.
Breathing (Wim Hof method) - Take 30-50 power breaths, in through the nose or mouth and in to the belly with deep, powerful breaths. Exhale without additional effort, just let the chest fall. Keep the pace steady and deep. You should do this until you start to feel slightly light headed or a tingling sensation in your extremities, the aim is not to get to the point of passing out, which certainly can happen! After your 30-50 breaths, fully exhale and hold the empty breath for as long as you can without it being uncomfortable, again passing out is a real risk, don't push this early or do it with a partner. By doing this you will not only insight mindfulness through deliberate breathing, you will also cause your body to produce adrenaline and norepinephrine, which is partly what your morning coffee does.
Cold - The cold is great for your mental fortitude, reduces the effects of inflammation (remember some inflammation is good) and activates your cold shock proteins.
The aim is not to set records immediately, Aubrey provides a prescriptive guide for working your way up. Start your shower in a normal fashion and clean your vehicle etc. (the etc. is up to you), complete your breathing exercises and then aim to drop the shower temperature all the way down and aim to tolerate this for 3 minutes, you may rinse and repeat. you can alternate between hot and cold water to break the session up.
*Note that this can take up to 10 minutes and is a little indulgent, we suggest you complete your breathing exercises pre or post shower to avoid water waste.
The level up from this for the savages out there is to fully immerse in cold by utilising an ice bath, although there are obvious benefits we will leave you to research this as it can become impractical unless you have an industrial ice machine. The aim here is to give you tips that you can easily action at home.
]]>
If you’ve been near a bookstore in the past year you’ve seen them: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck; Zero F*cks Given; F*ck Feelings; You Are a Badass; Get Your Sh*t Together. Large, bold, black font on bright orange or yellow backgrounds. They’re the punks of the book industry, all multi-coloured mohawks and big boots, making lots of noise. But, like punk (and with apologies to The Clash, of course), they’re all style and no substance. Cheated, indeed.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT, as he refers to himself) is a true punk. He calls himself a ‘sceptical-empiricist and a flaneur reader, someone committed to getting very deep into an idea’, but tells people at cocktail parties that he is a limo driver.
After growing up in Lebanon during its civil war, he began working in finance in the US during the heady days of the 1980s Economic nous, combined with luck (don’t discount it!), allowed NNT to make what he calls enough “f*ck-you money” to essentially be able to give up his day job.
‘I wanted to become a professional meditator, sit in cafes, lounge, sleep as long as I wanted, read voraciously, and not owe any explanation to anybody. I wanted to be left alone in order to build, small steps at a time, an entire system of thought based on my Black Swan idea.’
In other words, he doesn’t give a f*ck., And the result The Black Swan.
And what is the Black Swan? It’s the world-changing event that no one sees coming, the seismic events which seemingly come out of nowhere and have profound or lasting impacts. Think the September 11th terrorist attacks. We don’t see them coming because we are blinded by our own psychology. It’s these flaws in thinking that The Black Swan sets out to expose.
NNT gives the example of a Thanksgiving turkey (the book is unapologetically targeted at an American audience): for a thousand days it is cared for and fed, and on the one thousand and first day the axe falls, a complete shock to the turkey (for a humanely brief period) and in contravention of its experience of the past thousand days. In fact, just as it was feeling at its most secure (in the cumulative knowledge of one thousand days of being fed) it was actually at its most endangered – one day from death.
So why not call such unexpected events a ‘Black Turkey’? Why a ‘Black Swan’? Up until the European discovery of Australia, it was thought that all swans were white, because all European swans were white, and no one had ever seen a black swan (which are native to Australia). NNT’s point is this: absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. In other words, just because you’ve never seen a black swan (absence of evidence), it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist (evidence of absence).
Our predilection towards the absence of evidence model – our delusion that Black Swans do not exist - is at the crux of NNT’s message.
According to NNT, there are three attributes of a Black Swan event:
This last attribute is a key focus of the book. It’s not that we aren’t aware of Black Swan events, but that we try to rationalize them after the event. As humans, we’ve developed lots of clever ways of interpreting history, and subsequently using it as a means to try to predict future events. NNT presents a range of these principles, supported by examples. Some of these are (now) commonly appreciated, such as confirmation bias. Others are less well known: narrative fallacy; survivor bias; ludic fallacy, belief perseverance. But you will know them when they are explained to you, because we’ve all been guilty of them – and that’s the problem, the whole point of the book, really.
‘I know that history is going to be dominated by an improbable event, I just don’t know what that event will be.’
I’m not going to break down every section of the book; there’s a reason it’s almost 400 pages long. But I will briefly touch on how we interpret history. NNT equates our understanding of historical events as like seeing a movie: ‘You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history.’. Alternatively, our interpretation of historical events is like the difference between a finished dish and the ingredients that go into making it.
‘…our minds are wonderful explanation machines, capable of making sense out of almost anything, capable of mounting explanations for all manner of phenomena, and generally incapable of accepting the idea of unpredictability.’
Election results are a perfect example: very few predicted Trump would win in 2016, yet the next day the media was full of the reasons why he’d won.
By their nature, Black Swan events sneak up on us. Yet we attempt to understand Black Swan events in general by analysing a specific Black Swan. This is the famous philosophical Problem of Induction: going from specific instances to general conclusions.
‘How can we know the future, given knowledge of the past; or, more generally, how can we figure out properties of the (infinite) unknown based on the (finite) known?’
We can’t (shouldn’t), because we don’t account for the possibility – or implication – of a Black Swan (because it falls outside our observations). Again, the book does not set out to predict the next Black Swan, but rather to explain the cultural, institutional and psychological faults by which we fail to see them coming.
‘In the distant past, humans could make inferences far more accurately and quickly…the sources of Black Swans today have multiplied beyond measurability…This instinct to make inferences rather quickly and to “tunnel’’ (i.e. focus on a small number of sources of uncertainty, or causes of known Black Swans) remains rather ingrained in us. This instinct, in a word, is our predicament.’
Adding to our misinterpretation of history (and our subsequent inability to detect Black Swans) is the narrative fallacy. I’ll mention this one specifically, because it seems to be out of control in contemporary society in the form of exhaustive conspiracy theories. We like stories – they summarize and simplify – at the cost of overinterpretation and a tendency to fit the facts to the narrative. ‘Information wants to be reduced’, because information is ‘costly’ to obtain, to store and to retrieve. The act of summarizing and simplifying reduces the inclusion of randomness, and hence our ability to appreciate random events.
NNT has a neat antidote: ‘…not theorizing is an act – that theorizing can correspond to the absence of willed activity, the “default” option’.
To automatically begin theorizing is to not think, but to submit to lazy behaviour. Resist the natural tendency to make inferences and ‘storify’ things; instead look for the “antilogic”.
‘Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical.’
The early chapters dealing with such ‘psychological’ matters are perhaps the least technical, before NNT begins diving into the mathematics of probability. Thankfully he provides a handy guide for those more technical chapters we may like to skip, and where to again take up the tale. Hence, The Black Swan can be read in two ways: as a psychological overview of how humans think (or don’t), or as loose guide for financial investing (NNT was an options trader, after all, and economics is often his frame of reference).
But the book is not all negativity or hyper-vigilance:
‘Accept that being human involves some amount of epistemic arrogance in running your affairs. Do not be ashamed of that. Do not try to always withhold judgement – opinions are the stuff of life. Do not try to avoid predicting – yes, after the diatribe about prediction I am not urging you to stop being a fool. Just be a fool in the right places…be fooled in small matters, not in the large. Do not listen to economic forecasters (they are mere entertainers), but do make your own predictions about the picnic.’
Also, relieving what can at times be a very dry subject, NNT’s acerbic wit is liberally dispersed throughout:
‘Assume that you round up a thousand people randomly selected from the population…You can even include Frenchmen (but please, not too many out of consideration for the other members in the group).’
‘Assume that you’re able to find a large, assorted population of rats (you can easily get them from the kitchens of fancy New York restaurants).’
‘One day, looking at the gray beard that makes me look ten years older than I am and thinking about the pleasure I derive from exhibiting it…’
He comes across as a guy you’d really like to hang out with - though it’s unlikely he’d want to hang out with you.
In this time of the Great Corona Shutdown (and NNT has commented that it is not a Black Swan event, because we saw it coming), I’ll leave you with his advice:
‘We grossly overestimate the effect of misfortune on our lives…More likely, you will adapt to anything, as you probably did after past misfortunes.’
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - "The Black Swan" - The Impact of the Highly Improbable
]]>
Water - 350ml filtered water, 1/4 lemon juice (fresh) and 3g of sea salt. The aim is to take this concoction prior to consuming your morning coffee, this not only hydrates you, it also add back in essential minerals lost over night. I must say this has made a big difference to the start of my day, an easy hack.
Light - Ensure you are getting a dose of blue (sun) light after you wake up, even if it is after a nap. This will kick you back into gear and balance your circadian rhythms.
Movement - The aim here is not to blow out as such, just to get the blood flowing, which in turn improves cognitive function. Spend between 1-3 minutes on this, you could do some push-ups, burpees, yoga, skipping etc. This does not replace your daily workout.
]]>
Consider how many stories have come out of the history of World War II, which lasted for six years – the history of the Roman Empire lasted for 2000 years. There are almost unlimited stories to tell, and each new generation uncovers or rediscovers them. But the one big story that endures, is why the Roman Empire collapsed: overrun firstly by Germanic tribes from its northern borders, and extinguished for good in 1453 AD (on the 29th May, to be precise) by the Ottomans in Constantinople (modern Istanbul), 1300 kilometres and 1200 years away from the glory that was Rome.
This isn’t a detailed review – the full six volumes run to several thousand pages (there was obviously no Netflix in 1776) – so much as an overview of Gibbons thesis and why his work is considered such a benchmark in the genre of history. Still, I will attempt to summarise the 600-plus pages of my abridged version.
Gibbon sums up his theory himself:
‘The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first opposed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed and finally dissolved by the partial institutions of Constantine, and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of barbarians.’
In other words, the Roman empire became too big, generals went rogue, emperors became indulgent and soft, Christian doctrine devalued the purpose of the military, and the barbarians invaded. Okay, so that is what happened. But history as a discipline is concerned with why things happened (or at the very least, proposing a theory of why it happened).
‘Decline and Fall’, to give it a more manageable title, seeks to understand the reasons for the collapse of the Roman empire (hint: look away now if you’re a Christian). According to Gibbon, despite Rome’s conquests of native peoples from Egypt to Britain, the Romans – being polytheists (worshipping many gods) themselves - were tolerant of local ‘pagan’ religious practices. What mattered ultimately to the conquerors was obedience to Rome. This deference was reciprocated through lavish expenditure on public works, so that soon many of the conquered cities began to rival Rome herself (though never quite) in opulence and prestige. There was pride in being ‘Roman’.
There are battles and murders and political intrigues – business as usual in the Roman world – until along comes a zealous sect from the far-eastern shores of the Mediterranean which promises fabulous rewards in the afterlife, no matter your status in this life. All that was required was a faith in the one god, and an unbending willingness to adhere to it, and only it. And this fanatical – even, at times, suicidal - adherence to and promulgation of monotheism was going to cause problems for the polytheistic Romans.
The new religion was of course at first tolerated, even if it was mocked and openly sneered at. But it was growing. From the bottom up. That was a concern.
‘…the new sect of Christians was almost entirely of the dregs of the populace…These obscure teachers are as mute in public as they are loquacious and dogmatical as they are in private. Whilst they cautiously avoid the dangerous encounter of philosophers, they mingle with the rude and illiterate crowd, and insinuate themselves into those minds whom their age, their sex, or their education has the best disposed to receive the impression of superstitious terrors.’
There is something of the modus operandi of fundamentalists and revolutionaries past and present in this observation. More on these parallels to contemporary issues later.
So, Christianity was persecuted. And yet still it grew. Then, in 312, the emperor Constantine (having attained that office via supposed divine intervention) converted to Christianity, and it soon became the official state religion.
‘As the happiness of future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, has some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire.’
And that, according to Gibbon, was the tipping point in the empire’s decline. The emphasis of Christianity on rewards in the afterlife effectively zapped the Roman Empire of its unity and conquering zeal and, in something of a fait accompli, it could only go downhill from there:
It’s not so much how Christianity developed which intrigues Gibbon – Christianity was just one religion amongst many – but rather, how it came to infiltrate and dominate the greatest empire in history. Gibbon details several reasons, and in his conclusions almost delights in noting the hypocrisy of the early church and its promotion of miracles, the anointing of saints and the veneration of relics, and the overall irony of employing such ‘pagan’ practices to spread the new religion:
‘…it must ingenuously be confessed that the ministers of the Catholic Church thereby imitated the profane model which they were impatient to destroy…The religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a century, the final conquest of the Roman empire: but the victors themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals.’
The oppressed had become the oppressors:
But it’s not all the fault of the Christians. In hindsight, and even before the spread of Christianity, the empire was already becoming weakened by the gradual adoption of the opulent and servile ways of the Persians court, such as the emperor’s wearing of a diadem, silk robes and gem-studded slippers. Bear in mind that rumours of Julius Caesar wishing to assume kingship had precipitated his assassination (see review Julius Caesar, this blog); the Romans had previously detested the notion of a ‘king’.
And that’s pretty much it, really. The rest of the book is concerned with events leading up to the fall of the eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire: the division of Italy into gothic kingdoms and city states; the rise of Islam; the Crusades; the Mongol invasion; the eventual fall of Constantinople. It’s only a lazy thousand or so years of history which preceded the rise of European dominance (facilitated by the reintroduction of Greek philosophy which had, somewhat ironically, been preserved by the Arab world).
But it’s the fall of the Western empire – the European portion of the empire - which received all of the attention, as it effectively marks the end of the age of classical antiquity, and the beginning of the (European) ‘Middle Ages’. And though no one can seem to agree of exactly when that fall was, Gibbon puts it at September 4th 476, when the barbarian Odoacer deposed the emperor and declared himself King of Italy.
Still, why does all of this matter? Why not read a more modern, less overwrought – not to mention less biased – account of Roman history? Firstly, Gibbon uses the ‘lessons’ of the decline and fall to detail why the causes which doomed the Western Roman empire cannot occur to the European ‘empire’ of his time.
‘This awful revolution may be usefully applied to the instruction of the present age.’
It’s a fascinating snapshot of the world he knew in 1776, and the modern reader, knowledgeable of what is, for us, history, can reflect upon Gibbon’s assured proclamations of the future with a degree of bemusement. (And see, after reading too much of him, one begins to write like him!).
It’s an historical game which continues today, as modern ‘empires’ attempt to spot the signs of their own demise. Here is Gibbon on the way in which the very structure of the Roman empire enabled the spread of Christianity:
‘The public highways, which had been constructed for the use of the legions, opened an easy passage for the Christian missionaries…nor did those spiritual conquerors encounter any of the obstacles which usually retard or prevent the introduction of a foreign religion into a distant country.’
Considering our own times, there is perhaps in this something of the concerns of the rise of similar religious fundamentalism via our own ‘highways’, physical or virtual.
Secondly, although Gibbons conclusions may be debated today, his style cannot: that wonderfully florid style of the 18th Century that seems so roundabout to modern readers is, upon close and deliberate reading, perfectly succinct. Gibbon’s prose is an iron fist inside a velvet glove. Even though I already had a decent knowledge of Roman history, I found myself reading his history for the sheer joy of his style.
Here is Gibbon on the rise of the Roman empire:
‘The arms of the republic, sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the Ocean [Atlantic]; and the images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successfully broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.’
That about sums up the first 500 or so years of Rome. I love that phrase ‘iron monarchy’: precious metals count for little – it is from the iron of the legion’s swords that Rome derived its power.
Gibbon comparing two emperors of separate ages, and lamenting the demise of the office of emperor over 300 years:
‘Like the modesty affected by Augustus, the state maintained by Diocletian was a theatrical representation; but it must be confessed that, of the two comedies, the former was of a much more liberal and manly character than the latter. It was the aim of one to disguise, and the object of the other to display, the unbounded power which the emperors possessed over the Roman world.’
Gibbon on the overall causes of the decline of the empire:
‘But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.’
And that, again, is wonderfully succinct. (There is also something of Hegel’s dialectic in Gibbon’s inevitability.)
Further
I have previously reviewed for this blog SPQR, Oxford professor Mary Beard’s marvellous one-volume history of the Roman Empire. Yet the majority of Beard’s and Gibbons’ sources are the original Roman (and Greek) historians themselves. It is a wonderful privilege that we are also able to read them today, and a potent way of reinforcing the humbling and gratifying feeling of common humanity.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire | Understanding Edward Gibbons' Masterpiece
]]>
‘It wasn’t me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.’
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is told through the eyes of ‘Chief’ Bromden, a hulking half-Native American who’s been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for twenty years. He’s convinced everyone there that he’s deaf and mute. ‘I had to keep acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all’ - people spoke their true minds when around him, thinking he couldn’t hear them.
It’s a clever trick, the survival mechanism of a young Native American in a rapidly encroaching white man’s world. But it sets the Chief up as an unreliable narrator. ‘I remember all this part real clear.’ Does he? And is therefore everything else he says not entirely true? Quite possibly.
About to stir up trouble in Chief’s tranquilised world is the arrival of a new patient, the charismatic and combative McMurphy, ‘…all two hundred and ten red-headed psychopathic Irishman pounds of him…’. We all know a McMurphy, and hopefully most of us have figured out the motives and psychology which drives a person like him: sometimes good, sometimes not so good. McMurphy typically embodies both. Only the Chief sees through it.
The description of the various inmates of the asylum, classified as either ‘Acutes’ or ‘Chronics’ – essentially, curable or uncurable – offers the opportunity for some wonderful characterisations:
‘Harding is a flat, nervous man…he’s got wide, thin shoulders and he curves them in around his chest when he’s trying to hide inside himself. He’s got hands so long and white and dainty I think they carved each other out of soap and sometimes they get loose and glide around in front of him free as two white birds until he notices them and traps them between his knees; it bothers him that he has pretty hands.’
Subsequent mentions of Harding further allude to his restless hands using various metaphors. It’s a neat literary device.
There’s also something of the prose style of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (see review, this blog); it’s not surprising to discover that Neal Cassady – the inspiration for Kerouac’s travelling buddy, Dean Moriarty – was a close friend of Kesey. Which is not to imply that Kesey is derivative; Kesey wrote from personal experience, having participated in government-sponsored LSD experiments, and worked in a psychiatric hospital (where apparently, hallucinating on peyote, he envisaged the character of Chief). So, as per the first law of creative writing, he ‘writes what he knows’.
Much has been made of the character of Big Nurse Ratched (‘as in ‘ratchet’, machine-like), an ex-army nurse who runs the ward with iron discipline. She is an obvious foil for McMurphy, and their battle of wills is a constant theme throughout the book. Towards the book’s climax, Nurse Ratched finally figures out why McMurphy is really there, inciting a final confrontation which will decide the fate of all of them.
Only one of them will ‘win’.
But essentially, it’s the Chief’s story. This is somewhat of a problem, as I’ve already alluded to the Chief’s unreliability as a narrator. In one dream-like scene, the Chief ‘walks’ into a painting:
‘I push my broom up face to face with a great big picture…The picture is a guy fly-fishing somewhere in the mountains…There’s a path running down through the aspen and I push my broom down the path a ways and sit down on a rock and look back out through the frame.’
Though there’s a wonderful cinematic quality to that, it obviously undermines the Chief’s concept of reality. In other scenes – equally cinematic (I was reminded of the 1998 Kiefer Sutherland movie Dark City) – the Chief lies awake at night thinking he can hear, and sometimes see, a giant machine which operates in the bowels of the asylum, staffed by robot workers. It’s all part of ‘the Combine’, which runs the hospital and the outside world. The analogy to modern society is obvious. There is perhaps some prescience in Kesey’s concerns, with the ‘Combine’ about to kick into next gear with the looming war in Vietnam.
As part of this controlling apparatus, Chief also believes that the hospital is pumping fog into the wards using machines, which Chief has experience of from his war service: ‘You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things as they appear in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself.’ I take it that this is Chief’s way of rationalising (if he’s capable of that) his mental state within the hospital. But it could also be Kesey’s metaphor for society at large, a questioning of the foggy comfort of the consumerist culture of the times.
Elsewhere through the book there a conversations and interactions between characters where the Chief can’t possibly have been present, and you realise that in essence we have been gradually and unknowingly subsumed into the Chief’s role of silent, omnipresent observer. It’s very subtle, and very clever; perhaps we go mad only slowly, not realising until it’s too late.
In contrast to his paranoia and schizophrenia in the asylum, and perhaps as a commentary on his Native American heritage, the Chief is calm and lucid whenever he is observing nature. It also showcases Kesey’s writing at its best:
‘There was a cold moon in the window pouring light into the room like skim milk.’ (note the pairing of pouring and milk).
‘The sun wedges apart the clouds and lights up the frost till the grounds are covered in sparks.’
‘A thin breeze worked at sawing what leaves were left from the oak trees, stacking them neatly against the wire cyclone fence. There were little brown birds occasionally on the fence; when a puff of wind would hit the fence the birds would fly off with the wind. It looked at first like the leaves were hitting the fence and turning into birds and flying away.’
Kesey’s writing reaches it’s most sublime in the episode of an unlikely offshore fishing trip taken by McMurphy and a few of the patients, accompanied by one of the asylum’s doctors. The open spaces and the action of the trip are a relief for the reader from the claustrophobia of the asylum. Kesey also uses this to comment on the banality of suburban sprawl, as seen through the Chief’s eyes after twenty years in the asylum.
But there is also humour, such as when McMurphy sneaks a whore onto the ward:
‘She stopped when she got to the middle of the day-room floor and saw she was circled by forty staring men in green, and it was so quiet you could here bellies growling, and all along the Chronic row hear catheters popping off.’
‘…you could read the dates of the coins in her Levi pockets, they were so tight…’
Ultimately, the novel is Kesey’s commentary on the ‘madness’ of society: are the ‘lunatics’ of the asylum actually the sane ones for choosing to opt out of society? It’s a question which we must ask of our own modern world. We have a choice.
Further
Obviously, there is the movie version, starring a young Jack Nicholson as McMurphy (Kesey did not approve of his casting, and apparently never saw the film either). I haven’t seen the movie, and I thought that having Nicholson in my head might spoil the book, but it doesn’t; though the McMurphy of the book is more physically imposing, Nicholson is a perfect choice for McMurphy, who is equally boorish and gregarious. The Academy of Motion Pictures obviously agreed, as Nicholson won the Oscar for Best Actor. There’s also the infamous The Simpson’s episode featuring ‘Michael Jackson’ trapped in the body of a hulking white man in a psychiatric hospital.
Joel Ingles
]]>
When George Lucas sold the rights to his Star Wars franchise to Disney for $4 billion, it is to be hoped that he donated a significant portion of that to the estate of Dune author Frank Herbert. Dune is neither pure fantasy novel nor strictly sci-fi, but rather a clever mix of the two: courtly intrigues taking place on far-away planets. There are spaceships, lasers and nuclear weapons (‘atomics’), yet also mysticism, ancient prophecies and esoteric schools. It’s the formula that Star Wars would use to great success.
‘Plans within plans within plans within plans.’
The plot centres around the desert planet Arrakis, and its precious natural resource of ‘spice’, a cinnamon-like drug. Battling over Arrakis are two royal houses, the regal House Atreides (the good guys) and the monstrous and psychopathic House Harkonnen (the bad guys, surreptitiously backed by the all-powerful Emperor), as well as the indigenous nomadic peoples, the Fremen (motives and loyalties unclear).
The Emperor has gifted the Atreides control of Arrakis from the incumbent Harkonnens, but it’s a trap. Originating from a water-rich planet, the Atreides must rapidly adjust to their new alien environment, physically, mentally and politically.
‘Survival is the ability to swim in strange water…we must find the patterns in these strange currents and patterns in these strange waters.’
The planet of Arrakis itself is a major character. Huge sand storms (unlike other planets, it has no satellite weather control: a significant plot-point later on) with 700-kilometre winds that ‘eat the flesh off bones’ rage across endless dunes and pockets of rocky outcroppings. The depths of the desert contain the precious spice – but also the subterranean menace of gigantic sandworms, some hundreds of metres long, which are attracted from miles around not only by the spice sands, but also by the slightest footsteps. To mine the spice, large ‘harvester factories’ are dropped into the desert by helicopters, and retrieved at the last minute from an approaching worm. And the worms always come.
Accompanying the Duke Atreides is Lady Jessica, the Duke’s concubine, and member of the Bene Gesserit, a female-only sect with the ability to manipulate minds, equally feared and derided by others as ‘witches’. They use the ‘truthsayer’ drug to see into the past, but only into feminine pasts; it is prophesised that a male, with the ability to see into both male and female pasts – “the one who can be many places at once”, or ‘Kwisatz Hederach’ - will emerge. Enter fifteen-year old Paul, heir to the Atreides throne, sharing equally his father’s natural air of authority, and his mother’s Zen-like Bene Gesserit training.
‘Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’
In Greek mythology, the House of Atreides is descended from the god Tantalus (from whose mythology we derive our word ‘tantalise’). Tantalus was punished by Zeus by being made to stand in a pool of water underneath a tree with low hanging fruit: the fruit was just out of reach, and the water would recede whenever he bent down to drink it. In a Greek proverb, a ‘Tantalean punishment’ is when someone has good things available to them, but cannot enjoy them. So, what is the Tantalean punishment of the Atreides clan on Arrakis? What precious reward is just out of reach? Is it water, spice or power? Perhaps all three.
‘Polish comes from the cities, wisdom from the desert.’
Inevitably the Harkonnen trap is sprung, and young Paul must flee to the desert. It is here that he encounters the mysterious Fremen, who are able to survive in the desert through secret desert knowledge and the wearing of all-encompassing ‘stillsuits’, which filter and reclaim all precious bodily moisture. There are obvious ecological overtones in the conservation of precious water, and sympathies with the wisdom of indigenous cultures in their management of the land and custodianship of natural resources. The appeal of this to the hippy generation of the 1960s is clear.
On their first foray into the desert their Fremen guide explains the dangers of worms and how not to attract them; it is obvious that Paul will use this information later to attract (and even control) them. That’s not really a spoiler, because this worm-riding imagery is used on the cover of almost every edition of the novel. However, Herbert treats the whole process ingeniously.
The spiritual beliefs of the Fremen – the prophesised emergence of a saviour to lead their people out of the desert – drives the rest of plot. The religious analogy is none too subtle, and it’s obvious that Paul is to be that saviour:
‘And again he remembered the vision of fanatic legions following the green and black banner of the Atreides, pillaging and burning across the universe in the name of their prophet Maud’Dib.’
The emphasis on the inseparable religious and revolutionary beliefs of the Fremen – clearly based on Islam – must have seemed exotic in the 1960s. Unfortunately, it has different connotations in a post-9/11 (Western) world. But perhaps that makes us question our definitions of ‘terrorists’?
Herbert uses an omnipotent narrator, which is able to detail the thoughts of all characters. Almost every exchange between characters is accompanied by an internal dialogue from each. It’s not an uncommon literary device. However, what is unique is that much of this internal dialogue is in the form of questions. It’s in keeping with a major theme of the book, which is the uncertainty of one’s fate: though this is a novel built on prophecy, the future is nonetheless clouded and not precisely known. And though at times it can be tiring and seem unnecessary, it adds to the tension between characters, in a plot driven by intrigues and uncertain allegiances, But more than that, it reflects the training and methodology of the Bene Gesserit: Herbert is in essence ‘training’ the reader in the subtle questioning ways of the ‘B.G.’
Dune is an intriguing and original mixture of politics, ecology and religion that perhaps wasn’t attempted again until the cyberpunk genre of the mid-1980s. However, the plot is somewhat predictable to modern readers raised on decades of ‘space operas’, such as Star Wars, and to a more politically and environmentally aware audience. For this reason, it’s probably best appreciated by readers in their twenties (as I did myself). But there are still some great action scenes, particularly the hand-to-hand fighting and the use of personal force fields.
‘Paul snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled-skin tingling of the defensive field…heard external sounds take on characteristic shield-filtered flatness…In shield fighting one moves fast on defence, slow on attack…The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal.’
And in the end, it’s a story of revenge, and who doesn’t love them?
Further
You can’t really discuss the novel without referencing the 1984 movie adaptation by Twin Peaks director David Lynch. Critics hate this movie. No, they despise it. Even the director disowned it. Personally, I like it: the casting is great (including the musician Sting as a psychopathic assassin), and the production design is spot on, and influenced the aesthetics of many later sci-fi movies. And there’s a Dune movie reboot due at the end of 2020, so get on board that worm now.
HERE IS A LINK TO THE ABOVE IMAGES
Joel Ingles
]]>Australia has always known the Reece Lightning is a submission wizard, now the world is on notice!
Let’s take a look back at the top five fight-ending D’Arce chokes in ONE Championship history, including Reinier De Ridder’s epic ONE debut, Shinya Aoki’s shocking 54-second submission.
]]>
Frankenstein is not a monster! To clarify: “Frankenstein” is the name of the creator of the “monster”, not the name of the monster he created, which commonly goes by the epithet “creature” (appropriately, derived from the Latin for ‘create’). It’s a common misconception which needs to be cleared up early on.
Which is not to say that Doctor Frankenstein is not, in some ways, a monster himself, and the ‘creature’ is, in many ways, more human. This is the moral ambiguity at the heart of Frankenstein which makes it so enduring. Note also that it wasn’t titled ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’; the full title is actually ‘Frankenstein; or; The Modern Prometheus’.
That the second part of the title has been largely forgotten perhaps speaks to a modern proclivity for sensationalism over substance, or to an ignorance of Greek mythology; the Titan Prometheus created humans from clay and then stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, thus literally sparking human civilization. Clearly then, the intent of the novel was focused on the creator, not the creature.
And yet it is the (often inaccurate or oversimplified) image of the creature which continues to lurk in the shadows of the communal nightmare.
Regardless of the horror tropes Frankenstein has engendered, it deserves its status as a classic for several reasons
Frankenstein begins with a series of letters from the Arctic explorer Robert Walton to his sister in London. Robert begins his exploration with enthusiasm, until the ship becomes trapped in the deep Arctic by pack ice. It is then that he spots across the distant plains of ice a sled, containing ‘a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature’, before the sled continued out of sight.
The ice soon breaks up, but before they continue on their journey, they spot on an ice floe another sled, containing a different man, half-dead. He is brought aboard and explains why he is so far from civilization: “To seek the one who fled from me.” And so, this stranger begins his tale.
Victor Frankenstein of Geneva, Switzerland, was a curious and intelligent youth. Initially intrigued by the study of biology, he soon became fascinated with discovering the secrets of alchemy, but he eventually desists and instead focuses on mathematics. After the death of his mother, Victor goes off to university, where he buries himself in the study of every branch of science, especially chemistry and anatomy. Then one night, after much experimentation, ‘I became myself capable of bestowing animation on lifeless matter.’
For two years he continues his experiments with reanimation, working feverishly through the nights. He collects materials from morgues and abattoirs. The work is intricate, which necessitates he increase the scale of his creation:
‘As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved contrary to my first intention to make the being of a gigantic stature, that is to say about eight feet in height and proportionally large.’
He is at times appalled by his pursuit, neglecting his family, friends and his health, and yet he cannot stop. In this, Shelley invents the trope of the mad scientist. And then, one night:
‘I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open, it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.’
Unlike the movies, the creature is not sparked into life by a bolt of lightning. Nor is there the hunchbacked assistant Igor.
‘His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries underneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes…his shrivelled complexion, and his straight black lips.’
Frankenstein is horrified by his own creation, the creature flees, and Frankenstein has a nervous breakdown.
‘Alas I had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery.’
After several months Frankenstein is called home after a truly shocking crime takes place. Wandering grief-stricken through the mountains he
‘…perceived in the gloom a figure, which stole from behind a clump of tress near me…A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon to whom I had given life.’
So begins his pursuit of the creature. Frankenstein eventually catches up with the creature, who, aware of his hideousness, is forced by the revulsion of society to live in the remote mountains. The creature has a favour to ask of Frankenstein, ‘…but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.’ This is the terror of the creature: a seemingly invincible, unstoppable killing machine, more Terminator and less Hermann Munster.
‘Hear my tale, it is long and strange.’
In an extraordinary section, the creature tells his side of the story: what it is like to be expelled into a world of which he has no knowledge and, more painfully, come to the self-realization that he is considered a monster by a world he asked not to be part of.
‘Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth from whom all men fled and all men disowned?’
Journeying through the mountains the creature comes across the hut of a shepherd and his children and hides himself in an adjacent room where he is able to spy on them, and in turn learn from them. There is in this section a nod to the philosophy of the 17th century English empiricist John Locke, whose notion of tabula rasa (‘blank slate’) proposed that we are born with no innate ‘knowledge’ (data, and how to processes it), and therefore all knowledge – and consequent knowledge of the self – must be derived through direct experience. There’s a bit more to it than that, and anyway, this is not intended as lesson on the philosophy of Locke (though I would encourage you to familiarise yourself with one of the greats of Western philosophy).
‘Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock.’
The creature finds in the hut three books, by the Greek historian Plutarch, the English poet Milton, and the German writer Goethe, each a giant of the Enlightenment (and a clever way for the writer to include her personal philosophy), and takes from them knowledge particular to his circumstances. Yet the more he learns of the highest nature of man, the more he resents his treatment. His loneliness only increases.
‘Unfeeling, heartless creator! You had endowed me with perceptions and passions and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind.’
This is the true source of the creature’s frustration and anger. And think about it: it is human nature to want to express our thoughts. Even our cave-living ancestors expressed themselves through cave paintings and carvings. And how many of us have worked in lowly jobs, knowing that we were smarter and better than the social perception of that job, but nevertheless looked down upon or ignored?
Knowing that the old shepherd is blind, the creature decides to engage him in conversation. Unable to judge him by his appearance, the shepherd accepts him through his conversation and character (and how many moral lessons are in that right there?). But upon the return to the hut of the shepherd’s children the creature is apprehended by them with horror, and flees. His disappointment in mankind is complete.
‘From that moment I declared ever-lasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth into this unsupportable misery…I bent my mind towards injury and death.’
Such is the creature’s tale to Frankenstein. However, in return for quitting his murderous revenge upon society, the creature asks Frankenstein to create for him a female companion in his likeness.
‘If any creature felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundredfold; for that one creature’s sake, I would make peace with the whole kind,’
Frankenstein has no choice but to comply, and in a neat reversal he laments ‘I was the slave of my creature.’
In the final third of the book, Frankenstein and his creature journey to the remote Orkney islands off Scotland to complete the gruesome task.
Each thinks they have a strategy to overcome the other. There are some surprises left yet. But finally, we are reminded, as in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, that this is a tale being retold (technically re-retold), and we are snatched back into the present and reminded that this battle of wills continues, indeed has been ongoing the whole time. And there is one final act to play out, which I won’t spoil.
I’ve read Frankenstein three times now, and each time I was captivated by it, firstly by the multiple-narrator structure, secondly by the deeper themes, and most recently by the language (which admittedly is antiquated, but, if you enjoy that type of thing…).
Frankenstein has one of the most famous origin stories of any novel. Mary Shelley, her husband and famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the equally famous poet Lord Byron, were holidaying in Geneva when, during a storm, they challenged each other to devise a ghost story. Eighteen-year old (really!) Mary was declared the winner with her story, which she subsequently fleshed-out (see what I did there?) as Frankenstein
It’s perhaps extraordinary that so young a writer would insert such deep philosophical ideas into her first novel, but both her parents were well-known philosophers in their day, and though her mother died when Mary was young, her father’s anarchist philosophy remained influential. And speaking of fatherhood, and as a father myself, this for me was the resonating theme: the notion that with the creation of life comes responsibility.
Finally, there is the nagging sense you have during the whole book: why are the movie versions so bad? Why do they not follow the structure of the book, which is inherently cinematic in structure and visuals? But if direct movie adaptations fail to live up to the originality of the source material, we can take comfort from those movies focused on the ethics of technology, from the Alien and Terminator franchises, to Blade Runner, to the critically acclaimed Ex Machina. Mary Shelley taught us to be careful of what we wish for, and we must heed it today more than ever.
FRANKENSTEIN 1931 - FULL MOVIE
Joel Ingles
]]>
- Homer, The Iliad, Book XI
William Faulkner (1897 – 1962) was a celebrated American novelist who not only received the Nobel Prize for Literature, but also won two Pulitzer Prizes, as well as popularizing a new genre of literature (‘Southern Gothic’). Any of these accomplishments would mean that he deserves our attention.
"I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall. "
- Faulkner on writing As I Lay Dying
It’s a simple enough story: the death and subsequent burial of the matriarchal Addie Bundren. As she lays dying in her small home, she listens to the sawing and hammering from outside of her coffin being constructed by her eldest son.
She is determined to be buried in the country of her kinfolk, which lies forty miles from her home. Her husband Anse is determined that her wish be fulfilled, despite the threat of the annual heavy rains flooding the river which they must cross in their pilgrimage. But perhaps he has another agenda?
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”
- William Faulkner
It is in the telling which made As I Lay Dying a classic of modernism: 59 short chapters, each told from the point of view of one of the fifteen characters. The point of this is to present the same event – the death and burial of Addie – from different points of view. In this it is also a meditation on the various reactions to grief.
Upon Addie’s death the coffin is completed and carried into the house:
‘It is light, yet they move slowly; empty, yet they carry it carefully; lifeless, yet they move with hushed precautionary words to one another, speaking of it as though, complete, it now slumbered lightly alive, waiting to come awake. On the dark floor their feet clump awkwardly, as though for a long time they have not walked on floors.’
Here they are carrying Addie’s coffin down a hill to a waiting wagon:
‘Cash begins to fall behind, hobbling to keep up, breathing harshly; then he is distanced and Jewel carries the entire front end alone, so that, tilting as the path begins to slant, it begins to rush away from me and slip down the air like a sled upon invisible snow, smoothly evacuating atmosphere in which the sense of it is still shaped.’
‘…smoothly evacuating atmosphere in which the sense of it is still shaped’, like it’s happening in slow motion, or a series of still frames from a movie. Most writers spend their whole careers trying to come up with images like that.
But there are troubles brewing: the rains have arrived, complicating their journey:
‘Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it not yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either…’
‘…hear the rain shaping the wagon…’ – like a blind person creating pictures from sound.
They come to the river they must cross, only to find it in flood. And yet they decide to ford the river, with disastrous consequences as they and their wagon are swept away, and they are forced to hold on for their lives:
‘We could watch the rope cutting down into the water, and we could feel the weight of the wagon kind of blump [sic] and lunge lazy like, like it just as soon as not, and that rope cutting down into the water hard as a iron bar. We could hear the water hissing on it like it was red hot. Like it was a straight iron bar stuck into the bottom and us holding the end of it…There was a shoat [young pig] come by, blowed up like a balloon…It bumped against the rope like it was a iron bar and bumped off and went on, and us watching that rope slanting down into the water.’
See what Faulkner did there with the recurring image of the rope? Not once does that passage describe the water itself; the sense of the power of the river in flood comes from the transformation of the rope – normally a limp and passive object – into an iron bar, almost alive (and the brilliant double meaning of ‘hissing’).
“I took this family and subjected them to the two greatest catastrophes which man can suffer – flood and fire, that’s all”.
- Faulkner on As I Lay Dying
Nine days (!) into their journey, the barn they are storing the now putrid body burns down in suspicious circumstances. As an example of the multi-narrator format of the book – and how quickly the reader must adjust to and translate the idiosyncrasies of each character’s point of view - here is the youngest daughter (seven years old) Vardaman’s impression of the barn burning down:
‘The barn was still red, but it wasn’t a barn now. It was sunk down, and the red went swirling up. The barn went swirling up in little red pieces, against the sky and the stars so that the stars moved backwards.’
One of the aims of these reviews is to give you an insight into the what and the how of great works: what makes them great, and how they were created. As I Lay Dying takes a simple story and presents it in an innovative way. But together this is still not enough: the poetry must be there:
‘How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hands on no-strings; in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.’
Why ‘ravel out’ instead of the more common ‘unravel’? Why ‘no-wind’ and ‘no-sound’ instead of the ‘windless’ and ‘soundless’? The reinforcing of ‘weary’ and ‘wearily’. ‘No-hands’ and ‘no-strings’ echoing ‘no-wind’ and ‘no-sound’. I’ve read that sentence twenty times and I’m still not sure what it all means. But I know it means something.
In the end they bury Addie in her home county and life for her family goes on, though each of them is subject to unexpected changes.
I’ll leave the final word to Mr Faulkner:
“The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”
- William Faulkner, Nobel Prize in Literature Acceptance Speech, 1949
Further Reading
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
Though this quote is from Faulkner’s novel Requiem for a Nun (1951), it has come to symbolise Faulkner’s style, where poor rural families of the American south struggle to adapt to a modern world, and where the ghosts of the Civil War and racism still linger.
Faulkner is probably most revered for The Sound and the Fury (1929). Like many of his books it plays with notions of time and perception; I found it quite incomprehensible upon first reading, told as it is from three different viewpoints (one a mentally challenged adult). Much more conventional, though still employing Faulkner’s tropes, is Light in August, (1932) along with the multigenerational epic Absalom! Absalom! (1936).
Here is Faulkner himself reading a section of As I Lay Dying. Give it a listen for a minute to gain an appreciation of his Mississippi inflections:
Joel Ingles
]]>STAGE 1: 15 MAY 2020
Gatherings of up to 10 people:
> outdoor, non-contact activity
> personal training
> public spaces (e.g. South Bank Parklands, Cairns, Airlie Beach etc)
> parks, playground equipment, skate parks and outdoor gyms
STAGE 2: 12 JUNE 2020
Gatherings of up to 20 people:
> public spaces
> non-contact indoor and outdoor community sport
> personal training
> gyms*, health clubs* and yoga studios* (adhering to a COVID SAFE plan)
> parks, playground equipment and outdoor gyms
STAGE 3: 10 JULY 2020
Subject to further planning and review, intrastate and interstate travel will be permitted and a maximum of 100 people will be permitted for:
> gatherings in public spaces
> pools and community sports clubs
> community sport
> gyms, health clubs and yoga studios
> outdoor amusement
> saunas and bathhouses
We hope this brings some clarity to all of you who are desperate to get back to some normality. Now is the time to dust off the cobwebs and make sure you are ready to roll when the lights turn back on!
]]>
Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom has peaked too soon in life. A former high school basketball star of his small home town, he’s now in an unhappy marriage with a ‘dumb’ wife, a young son he hasn’t really connected with (‘the kid’), and a dreary job. You probably know a guy like him. Maybe it’s even you, or parts thereof.
Itching to break away, Rabbit runs. He has an affair. He leaves his pregnant wife. It’s a scandal, further deepened by a tragedy which precedes Rabbit’s ultimate actions. Updike has stated that he intended this to be almost an anti-On the Road (see review, this blog), to show the consequences to the lives of those left behind by spontaneous and irresponsible actions.
“My subject is the American Protestant small-town middle class. I like middles. It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules”. – John Updike
Overall, it’s a great story, sympathetically told. It’s typical of the popular literary themes of the time: middle-class people dealing with the banality of their lives. What elevates it above similar tales of suburban ennui is Updike’s magnificent yet subtle poetical observations. It’s these which I wish to highlight.
Getting into his car for an initial hasty escape into the night, ‘He pulls the hand choke out a fraction, just enough to touch his fingertips’ The first part of this sentence would have been enough to convey a message, but the additional detail gives it resonance: anyone who’s driven an old car with a choke knows exactly this feeling. Looking deeper into this action, there’s a quietness to this subtle pinching motion – he is after all trying to sneak away.
It also speaks to Rabbit’s tactility, a recurrent theme in the book, as at the very beginning of the book when he plays a game of pickup basketball against some high school kids: ‘That old stretched leather feeling makes his whole body go taut, gives the arms wings. It feels like he’s reaching down through years to touch this tautness’.
As Rabbit drives through the night, ‘in the top of the windshield the telephone wires continually whip the stars. The music on the radio slowly freezes; the rock and roll for kids cools into old standards and show tunes and comforting songs from the Forties…Then these melodies turn to ice as real night music takes over, pianos and vibes erecting clusters in the high brittle octaves and a clarinet wandering across like a crack on a pond. Saxes doing the same figure eight over and over again.’
That first line is fantastic: we’ve all seen this, yet probably never thought (were not gifted enough) to ascribe this metaphor. And then the whole analogy of the music ‘freezing’ and the instruments taking on the qualities of ice.
After stopping at a late-night diner, ‘outside in the sharp air, he flinches when footsteps pound behind him. But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark’.
‘…their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark’ – what an extraordinary image: because it’s cold (‘the sharp air’) so they’re probably both wearing coats, and all you would see is the paleness of their hands swinging (‘in a hurry’) through the darkness.
After returning to his hometown, Rabbit hides out in the shabby flat of his old, lecherous high school coach. As he wakes up and lays there ‘the slash of sun on the wall above him slowly knifes down, cuts across his chest, becomes a coin on the floor, and vanishes.’
The pairing of ‘knife’ and ‘cut’ is great, as is the transformation to ‘coin’, and we’ve all experienced this as we lay in bed after a big night, too lazy to get up, and knowing how long this passage of light across a room takes. Think about how many times you’ve been in a ‘serious’ situation, and how you’ve inadvertently fixated on some innocuous detail. That’s the poetic mind in action.
Some of Updike’s best observations are reserved for Ruth, the object of Rabbit’s philandering ways (the clue is in his nickname).
‘Ruth laughs, her laugh rings on the street like a handful of change thrown down.’
‘…her eyelids make a greasy blue curtain a she sips her daiquiri. Her chin takes some of the liquid’s green light.’ That last bit – great! (and highlights Updike’s seeming obsession with colours).
Here’s a great description of Ruth in a swimming pool:
‘Standing in the water she was cut off at the thighs like a broken statue…She climbs the little ladder, shedding water in great pale-green grape-bunches’. Say ‘great pale-green grape-bunches’ aloud and notice the slowed staccato effort of it – like hauling yourself out of the water?
In all of these examples is Updike’s utilisation of present-tense, which he described as being “liberating and rebellious in 1959” for its cinema-like immediacy:
“My novella was originally to bear the subtitle ‘A Movie’ and I envisioned the credits unrolling over the shuffling legs of the boys in the opening scuffle around the backboard, as the reader hurried down the darkened aisle with his box of popcorn”. – John Updike
There are other great observations which could be stand-alone maxims in themselves:
‘Everybody who tells you how to act has whisky on their breath.’
‘When you have the guts to be yourself, other people’ll pay your price.’
‘Funny, how what makes you move is so simple and the field you must move in is so crowded.’
Rabbit, Run will probably best appeal to those in a similar stage in life as the characters of the book. It’s a reminder that even in the seeming banality of middle-class life, poetic moments can be found.
Further
There are four sequels to Rabbit, Run, chronicling the life of Rabbit, two of which earned Updike Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction, and the last being published in 2001. Some may also remember the 1984 Jack Nicholson film ‘The Witches of Eastwick’, adapted from Updike’s novel of the same name.
Joel Ingles
]]>Ask yourself this question, What will my grappling obituary say about me? Will it be "Here lies John Doe, constant injurer of partners, selfish in class but never tapped" or "Here lies John Doe, a pleasure to train with, he always gave his best effort and helped others along the way". The choice is up to you.
This article is not another "be kind to your training partner" piece, rather an opportunity for you to think about your grappling past, present and future with greater meaning and hopefully ambition. Our aim is to layout some common goals and make some suggestions about how to navigate successfully (some do's and dont's).
Where do you fit in?
"I am here for the comradery"
Martial arts is a great place to meet people from all walks of life who become tethered together in the pursuit of prowess. This is an extremely valid reason to train, it sure beats becoming a barfly at the local. That said, if you fit in this camp, you may want to consider those around you and perhaps choose your training partner with this in mind. For someone preparing for a competition the thought of pairing up with you and hearing about your day in between some casual reps may not be overly appealing. We are not saying your day isn't interesting or valid, it's just that our minds are focussed on not breaking our arm in the comp this weekend.
DO - Continue to be friendly, we all need it and you are an awesome part of our community!
DON'T - Be selfish and take away from others training by talking during technique or putting in lazy reps.
SUGGESTION - Challenge yourself for one week and train as if you have a comp coming up on the weekend, this will help you to appreciate where your partners are coming from.
"I am only here for fitness"
Let's face it, rolling around on the mats and choking each other is a lot more fun than monotonously moving weights from point A to point B, we get the appeal of using grappling as a weapon against the bulge. However this is not an excuse for poor technique, "Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect", Vince Lombardi.
DO - Continue to train hard and push the pace, your team needs it, some of them are taking it too easy.
DON'T - Drill sloppy technique and skip details just to get a workout in, you are missing the point and this will ultimately hurt you and take away some enjoyment when it comes to rolling.
SUGGESTION - Take the time to get the technique down and then up the pace, yes this will eat into your shred time initially, however when you have the technique you will be killing two birds with one stone. Trust us, your rolls will be more fun and everyone wins (except the lazy blue belt).
"I want to be a World Champion!"
OK, this one is another kettle of fish all together and will be unique to the individual, these grapplers are either wired this way from the get go, perhaps they have come into the gym as an elite athlete in another field or as their skill and passion increases they find themselves obsessing over our sport. Either way, these are the guys who are going to lift everyones game around them.
DO - Keep pushing the envelope and striving towards your goal, the club and sport need you!
DON'T - Think you know better than everyone else including your coach or develop the view that your training is more important than your partners, everyone around you pays fees and needs the time just as much as you.
SUGGESTION - Keep in mind that it is always better to show people, mainly your coaches rather than tell them, the drive should first come from within and should not be tethered to outside accolades (especially if you are new to grappling). Lastly, it is ok to let your hair down and enjoy training from time to time, remember this is suppose to be fun and probably the reason you started in the first place.
We hope this is cause for positive reflection and planning, the next time you step on the mat (let's hope we are not too far off) consider which camp you currently sit in (perhaps another category all together), how you can maximise your training and if you may want to dabble into another mindset all together. Ultimately the choice is yours and how you train will reflect on you as an individual.
]]>
“Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.” - Norman Mailer
The Fight is acclaimed American journalist Norman Mailer’s account of the 1974 heavyweight boxing championship between then champion George Foreman, and former champion Muhammad Ali, which became infamous as ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’.
It is so many tales in one. Naturally the focus is on the fighters, their training, the psychological warfare they employ, and of course, the fight itself. But there are other subplots: racism and redemption, colonialism and post-colonialism, nationalism, and perhaps above all, the craft of journalism.
The story begins in Zaire, Africa, with both fighters already in camp. Mailer begins with a portrait of Ali:
‘There is always a shock in seeing him again. Not live as in television but standing before you, looking his best…Women draw an audible breath. Men look down. They are reminded again of their lack of worth.’
We soon get a glimpse of Mailer’s poetic insights. Here he is on Ali’s sparring partner, Jimmy Ellis:
‘Other champions picked sparring partners who could imitate the style of their next opponent…Ali did this also, but reversed the order. For his second fight with Sonny Liston, his favourite had been Jimmy Ellis, an intricate artist who had nothing in common with Sonny. As boxers, Ellis and Liston had such different moves one could not pass a bowl of soup to the other without spilling it.’
Ali is told that Foreman is the favourite:
“They think he’s going to beat me?” Ali cried aloud… “Foreman’s nothing but a hard-push puncher”…Now Ali stood up and threw round air-pushing punches at the air. “You think that’s going to bother me?” he asked, throwing straight lefts and rights at the interviewer that filled the retina two inches short…The funk of terror was being compressed into psychic bricks. What a wall of ego Ali’s will had erected over the years.’
And that’s another curiosity of this book: Mailer refers to himself throughout in the third person. Here he is (referring to himself) finding his story:
‘Now, our man of wisdom had a vice. He wrote about himself. Not only would he describe the events he saw, but his own small effect on events. This irritated critics. They spoke of ego trips and the unattractive dimensions of his narcissism. Such criticism did not hurt too much. He had already had a love affair with himself, and it used up a good deal of love.’
There is perhaps something unsettling about a privileged white man writing about two black fighters, both from impoverished backgrounds, and fighting in an impoverished country. Mailer questions his own sincerity:
‘But his love affair with the black soul, a sentimental orgy at its worst, had been given a drubbing through the seasons of Black Power. He no longer knew whether he loved Blacks or secretly disliked them, which had to be the dirtiest secret in his American life.’
He refers to this latent racism as his ‘illness’, and as medicine, undertakes an intensive study of African philosophy. The book is as much about Mailer rediscovering and reaffirming, through the fighters, his admiration for black people.
‘For heavyweight boxing was almost all black…So boxing had become another key to revelations of Black, one more key to black emotion, black psychology, black love…Of course, to try to learn from boxers was a quintessentially comic quest. Boxers were liars. Champions were great liars. They had to be. Once you knew what they thought, you could hit them. So their personalities became masters of concealment.’
Mailer then turns his attention to Foreman:
‘He did not look like a man so much as a lion standing just as erectly as a man.’
‘Other champions had a presence larger than themselves. They offered charisma. Foreman had silence. It vibrated about him in silence…His violence was in the halo of his serenity…One did not allow violence to dissipate; one stored it. Serenity was the vessel where violence could be stored.’
Mailer gives wonderful, pages-long descriptions of Foreman sparring and hitting the heavy bag:
‘These were no ordinary swings…a hundred punches in a row without diminishing his power – he would throw five or six hundred punches in this session, and they were probably the heaviest cumulative series of punches any boxing writer had seen…The bag developed a hollow as deep as his head.’
Here is a clip of Foreman hitting the heavy bag:
Mailer goes on:
‘…the rich even luxuriant power of Foreman’s fist. He did not just hit hard, he hit in such a way that the nucleus of his opponent’s will was reached. Fission began. Consciousness exploded. The head smote the spine with a lightning bolt and the legs came apart like falling walls.’
Wow! - Foreman’s power as elemental, nuclear, unstoppable.
At a press conference, Foreman is asked whether he likes being the champ:
“I think about it and I thank God, and I thank George Foreman for having true endurance.” The inevitable schizophrenia of great athletes was in his voice. Like artists, it is hard for them not to see the finished professional as a separate creature from the child that created him. The child (now grown up) still accompanies the great athlete and is wholly in love with him, and immature love, be it said.’
What a great insight: the deep-down child in awe of what he has become. Remember that next time an athlete (or in this case, the very writer!) refers to themselves in the third person.
Compare Foreman’s subdued press conferences to Ali’s:
‘The ring apron in Nsele was six feet above the floor…Ali sat on the apron, his legs dangling, and Bundini {Ali’s manager] stood in front. It looked like Ali was sitting on his shoulders…While he spoke, Ali put his hands on Bundini’s head, as if a crystal ball (a black crystal ball!) were in his palms; each time he would pat Bundini’s bald spot for emphasis, Bundini would glare at the reporters like a witch doctor in stocks.’
Mailer decides to accompany Ali on one of his 3 A.M. runs. In complete contrast to Ali, Mailer spends the night before eating and drinking and gambling. But, against his own good sense and despite his best efforts at self-sabotage, he shows up for the run. Accompanying them is Ali’s personal bodyguard Pat Patterson…’a Chicago cop no darker than Ali, with the solemn even stolid expression of a man who has gone through a number of doors in his life without the absolute certainty that he would walk out again. By day, he always carried a pistol; by night – what a pity not to remember if he strapped a holster over his running gear.’
Mailer sums up the whole story arc in half a page:
‘…two fighters would each receive five million dollars, while one thousand miles away on the edge of the world-famine Blacks would die of starvation.’ A Black Muslim revolutionary [Ali] ‘fighting a defender of the capitalist system’ [Foreman].
What Mailer is trying to capture is the magic that surrounds a big fight: the rituals, the superstitions, the whole game. We still see it today with the UFC. It’s the story which gets built around the fighters and their entourage and the varied characters which the fight attracts. The question then becomes: why do we need to create a narrative? Why can’t the actual fight speak for itself? Maybe because many times it doesn’t. But this time, as everyone knows, it did.
Rumble in the Jungle
Finally, we come to the fight. Mailer offers a luxurious forty-page description, which I won’t paraphrase too much because there are so many brilliant metaphors and observations. But I will give you one example. It’s long, but worth it. Pay attention to how subtly Mailer ramps up the pace and type of words he is using – short, sharp, percussive - to match the relentless onslaught of Foreman:
‘They sparred inconclusively for the first half-minute. Then the barrage began. With Ali braced on the ropes, as far back on the ropes as a deep-sea fisherman is braced back in his chair when setting the hook on a big strike, so Ali got ready and Foreman came in to blast him out. A shelling reminiscent of artillery battles in World War I began…Foreman threw punches in barrages of four and six and eight and nine, heavy maniacal slamming punches, heavy as the boom of oaken doors, bombs to the body, bolts to the head, punching until he could not breathe…and come in again, bomb again, blast again, drive and stream and slam the torso in front of him, wreck him in the arms, break through those arms, get to his ribs, dig him out, put the dynamite in the earth, lift him, punch him up to heaven, take him out, stagger him – great earthmover he must have sobbed to himself, kill this mad and bouncing goat.’
Enough has been said on Ali. Deservedly so. But Foreman’s life is just as interesting: poor southern upbringing, Olympic gold medallist, Heavyweight World Champion, bankrupt, preacher, successful entrepreneur. I’ll give him the last word:
“We fought in 1974 - that was a long time ago. After 1981, we became the best of friends. By 1984, we loved each other. I am not closer to anyone else in this life than I am to Muhammad Ali. Why? We were forged by that first fight in Zaire, and our lives are indelibly linked by memories and photographs, as young men and old men”.
Further
“What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other - where the other person is good and where the person is less good. Writers are like that but don't admit it.” - Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer (1923 – 2007) was an American novelist and journalist who became associated with the genre of creative nonfiction. Despite being a liberal political activist, he was infamous for his aggressive personality. He was married six times.
"[his] relentless machismo seemed out of place in a man who was actually quite small – though perhaps that was where the aggression originated."
- from Mailer’s obituary
When We Were Kings is the 1996 Oscar-winning documentary which documents the events surrounding the Rumble in the Jungle. Obviously, Ali is magnetic and worth a view just for him, but it also extensively features (an older) Mailer.
Interview with Norman Mailer
Joel Ingles
]]>Don't have a belt? Try using some rope or a normal belt etc. or you can grab one from us HERE :)
]]>
Man’s Search for Meaning is a thin volume, thick with ideas. Victor Frankl (1905 – 1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist whose psychological theories were informed by his experiences as a prisoner during the Holocaust, from his chaotic internment to his uncomprehending liberation.
‘As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps – concentration camps, that is – and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.’
Let me say from the start that it is not my intention in this review – nor in any of my reviews – to post extensive quotes from the book. They are meant merely as an entrée to the main meal. However, this book is full of such insight, and from a man who has walked the talk, that much of it deserves to be shared, regardless if you go on to read the book yourself.
The book is divided into two sections. The first details Frankl’s experience of the concentration camp, the second outlines the psychological doctrine he developed from that experience. The first part is hard going. It doesn’t matter how many books on the Holocaust you’ve read or movies you’ve seen, it never gets any easier.
‘He was a tall man who looked slim and fit in his spotless uniform…He had assumed an attitude of careless ease, supporting his right elbow with his left hand. His right hand was lifted, and with the forefinger of that hand he pointed very leisurely to the right or to the left…but far more frequently to the left…Those who were sent to the left were marched straight to the crematorium.’
There are too many examples of such brutality to document here, and particularly heart wrenching is the section where he thinks about his wife, also imprisoned. Besides, Frankl deserves to tell it in his own words. And as you would expect from such a highly educated man, his writing style is clear and precise, though not without poetry.
‘A man’s suffering is similar to the behaviour of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the conscious soul and human mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little’.
From anyone else this would be a perfectly innocent analogy expressed in scientific terms, but of course here ‘chamber’ has a more sinister double meaning.
Surprisingly, there is also some humour, even, at times, positivity. Far from being flippant, it is Frankl’s attempt to objectively reflect upon the entire experience of being a prisoner living with the daily – hourly – prospect of death. Perhaps wary of accusations of philosophical detachment, Frankl, ever the psychologist, states: ‘An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour.’
Being a doctor, Frankl documents the physical ailments of the prisoners: starvation, cold, bodily parasites, vermin, chronic lack of lack of sleep, malnourishment, physical exhaustion and various diseases. Then there are the concomitant psychological effects: general irritability, apathy, inferiority complexes, distorted perception of time (‘…in camp, a day lasted longer than a week’). Especially insidious is a focus on the past and nostalgia, where ‘it became easy to overlook any opportunities to make something positive of camp life’.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” - Friedrich Nietzsche (German philosopher)
So far, so horrific. Having detailed the routine (such as it was) of camp life, Frankl begins to reflect on higher moral and ethical concepts: How much do our surroundings and circumstances affect our psychological wellbeing? How can we maintain any hope through such overwhelming suffering?
‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’
It’s essentially a Stoic approach (see review of Meditations, this blog, or the movie The Shawshank Redemption), tested and implemented under the most unimaginable hardship. He continues:
‘The experience of camp life shows that man does have a choice of action…Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress’.
‘It can be said that they [Frankl’s fellow prisoners] were worthy of their suffering: the way they bore their sufferings was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.’
‘If there is meaning in life at all, then there is meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.’
Frankl makes the same point in slightly different ways, but it’s never belaboured or unwelcome: firstly, out of respect for his experiences, and secondly, because that’s how a philosophy is transformed into a practical tool.
‘It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.’
In other words, man must search for meaning in life. And that meaning can, in some circumstances, be found in one’s suffering.
(though Frankl cannot stress enough that one does not depend on the other)
‘When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his single and unique task…that even in suffering he is alone and unique in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden’
‘But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.’
(Think about that next time you see someone crying).
LOGOTHERAPY
After Frankl’s harrowing account of the concentration camp and the numerous occasions where he should have died (and others did) I was tempted to skip part two of the book. However, it is following Frankl’s liberation, when he is able to reflect upon his experiences and is able to draw upon these to form a psychological theory he terms ‘Logotherapy’, that the book really begins to open up.
From the late-19th century, Vienna had been the birthplace of modern psychotherapy, firstly under Sigmund Freud’s theory of ‘Will to Pleasure’ (man is driven by a need to fulfil needs and desires/avoid pain), then under Alfred Adler’s ‘Will to Power’ (man is driven by overcoming his inferiority-superiority dynamic).
Frankl’s Logotherapy introduces the ‘Third school’ of Viennese psychotherapy, the ‘Will to Meaning’, ‘…where its assignment is that of assisting the patient to find meaning in his life…rather than in the mere gratification of drives and instincts…or in the mere adaptation to society and environment.’ Logotherapy is ‘less retrospective and less introspective’ [as per Freudian psychotherapy] but ‘focuses rather on the future…on the meaning to be fulfilled by the patient in his future.’
For Frankl in the camp, that ‘future’ was the thought of seeing his young wife again. The ‘self-transcendence of human experience…being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself – being it a meaning to fulfil or another human being to encounter.’
Frankl offers a wonderful tool for how we should conduct ourselves in life:
“Live as if you were already living for the second time and as if you had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.”
He puts it alternatively:
‘Imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended.’
Frankl goes much deeper – surprisingly so in such a slim volume, which speaks to the simplicity and efficacy of his thesis – on the psychological workings of Logotherapy, and describes more practical tools which can be easily implemented.
I read this book at a low time in my life. Not many other books, if any, have lifted my spirits as this has. Naturally there is the immediate thought that your own experiences can be nowhere near as bad as Frankl’s (and the first time I wrote those last three words I spelled ‘as’, ‘ass’, which seemed so appropriate that I thought of leaving it uncorrected). But reading of his exhortations to embrace suffering and find meaning prompted in me a genuine physical thrill: I wasn’t alone in my thoughts. There was something – someone – I could focus on to find meaning. And far from being a momentary respite, Frankl’s philosophy is one which you can carry with you always and develop throughout life. As philosophy was intended.
Joel Ingles
Man's Search for Meaning audiobook
]]>INGREDIENTS
A chicken breast sliced in half length ways per serve
Quality whole egg mayo (make your own if you are up to it)
Iceberg lettuce
Quality bread crumbs (you can use an alternative here such as almond meal)
1 egg
Sesame seeds
Sant and pepper
Avocado (optional)
Tomato (optional)
METHOD
1. Slice all of the vegetables and set aside.
2. Mix salt and pepper with your crumbing mix. Egg the breasts and crumb liberally, ensure you press the crumbs in firmly. If you have some extra time it is a good idea to leave the crumbed breasts in the fridge for an hour to bind better.
3. Shallow fry or bake (if you want to be a little healthier) the breast until golden on each side. Allow to rest to ensure the juices are contained.
4. Build your salad to your liking, as you can see we added tomato and avocado. The mayonnaise and sesame seeds are a must!
OPTIONAL - If you are reading this and thinking to yourself, "stuff this, I just want a burger", you are not alone, you are certainly better off creating your own. The only thing we suggest is you take the time to steam the bun, you can thank us later.
Until next time!
]]>With the unseasonably warm weather and empty parks, now is a great time to get outside to exercise, for the mental as much as the physical benefit. Today I drove to my local rugby pitch just after noon and was the only person there.
The way we see it you have two choices, one, fall victim to circumstances, do nothing and ride it out (basically use this as an excuse to not train and progress) or two, take the time to think about alternative ways to ensure grappling growth, this is your time to work on all the other things you said you "don't have time for".
We are kicking you in to gear with 3 simple ways to use your gi for strength training.
1. Chin-ups
You might not have a chin-up bar handy at home, no problems, get creative. Hang your gi over a tree branch, head to the local park etc. this is a very difficult exercise, be mindful of your grips.
Partner option - Have your partner stand over you, set your grips and use a pull-up action from a laying start, this will also work your partners core and stabilisers.
2. Bent over rows
For this exercise we have used a kettle bell, again, get creative! We suggest a paint bucket, tie the gi around a dumbbell etc.
Partner option - Stand over your partner, set your grips on the lapel, ensure your partner is tensed in a up facing plank position and lift away!
3. Curls
These curl sets will not only create massive guns, they will also work the under utilised pistol grip (no pun intended). Instead of lifting massive weights we suggest mixing it up and going to failure, which will more closely mimic burnout during a roll. Don't have a dumbbell? use a paint tin or similar as suggested above.
Partner option - Your partner will wear the gi top while laying down, retract their hand down the sleeve and then make a pistol grip. Have your partner apply more or less pressure depending on desired resistance.
We hope these simple tips help you to gain your grappling fix! Send us an email with your creative workouts and we will post the best ones with a gift for your efforts! info@authorsupplyco.com
Keep moving!
]]>
I recently had some friends visiting from cold, grey London, and thought it might be nice to show them the bright summer constellations of the southern night sky. Trouble is, beyond the Southern Cross (officially ‘Crux’), I didn’t really know any of the others. So, I set out to learn them: Centaurus, Hydra, Orion, Canis Major, Corvus… Night after night I would go outside searching for them – and night after night I would lose my bearings and forget which constellation was which. Because the stars are dynamic: obviously they move across the sky, ‘rising’ and ‘falling’ as the night wears on, but each day they also rise and fall in slightly different parts of the sky.
Then I found Orion. Or I should say, he found me, because Orion is ‘the Hunter’ from Greek mythology, whom the goddess Artemis had killed by a giant scorpion (hence the constellation Scorpius). It’s a relatively large constellation, easily located by its distinctive geometric shape and several prominent stars: the red giant Betelgeuse that marks Orion’s right ‘shoulder’; the cool blue giant Rigel that denotes his left ‘foot’; the three stars which mark Orion’s ‘belt’. More than that, by tracing a line between any two stars and extending it we can locate several nearby constellations, and from them, find other constellations. We can use ‘the Hunter’ to hunt.
In trying to learn the constellations it reminded me of learning jiujitsu, with the constellations representing the unique positions of jiujitsu, and trying to discern how one relates to the other. Like a novice grappler, I was trying to learn every constellation/position at once (and becoming just as confused). By going deep with Orion and learning to locate it at any time, I had found an anchor point that I could always get back to if I lost my bearings. It was the astronomical equivalent of a closed guard. From Orion, I could find other constellations, much like knowing which other positions I could find from closed guard. Simple enough.
But there’s more to it: by learning the story of Orion (and each culture has their own story) my relationship with it was enhanced. Orion is accompanied by his ‘hunting dogs’, the constellations Canis major (containing the brightest star in the sky, Sirius – from the Greek ‘scorching’ – and also known as the ‘Dog Star’) and Canis minor, as they pursue a ‘hare’, the constellation Lepus, as well as fighting a ‘bull’, the nearby constellation Taurus. Some have Orion holding a shield in his left hand, or a lion’s skin. Some see him holding his club aloft in his right hand. It doesn’t matter: what’s important is attaching your own story to it. Then it becomes yours and you remember it (Eddie Bravo and the 10th Planet system, I’m looking at you).
What’s this got to do with jiujitsu? Well, recently I’ve been going deep on De La Riva guard: like with Orion, learning to ‘find’ it from whatever position I was in, learning the ‘story’ of it (why it was developed and hence when to use it), and learning where the other nearby positions relate to it (X guard, single-leg X, shin-on-shin…).
My point is, don’t think that you have to master every position at once. Pick one. Go deep. Learn the ‘stories’ around it. Eventually the other related positions will present themselves, like stars emerging from behind a cloud. And next time you’re outside at night, give a little nod to Orion.
Joel Ingles
]]>