I want to start what will probably be a series of posts about the spiritual or mental side of aikido practice (and probably other things as well). This is a pretty tangled subject, and it's related, I think, to questions about the role of culture in this kind of practice--so, as a starting point, I want to write a bit about theology. (Of course, "theology" is itself a fairly culturally-based term for the subject, but thinking in that way makes it impossible to begin to say anything)
Right now, especially in America, there is a cultural conflict between "science" and "religion." As in many other matters, this conflict is also about what the words "science" and "religion", in themselves, mean. "Science", in this debate, stands in for a particularly intellectual mode of thought--but it is also used to signify acceptance of certain scientific discoveries, independent of the thought process that produced them. The fact that these two things (the thought-process and the discoveries) may not be necessarily identical, or that the one may not necessarily produce the other, is entirely relevant to this conflict.
On the other side, "religion" is also used to refer to both a mode of thinking and a set of thoughts. By "religion" people tend to mean a sort of non-intellectual thinking, whether mystical, traditional, or just wrong (depending on which side is making the argument); but people also mean the particular teachings and traditions of Christianity in particular and other faiths in general. Again, the thought process called "religion" and the thoughts of various religions are not necessarily related.
(In both cases the difference comes partly from the fact that the terms "religion" and "science" get defined both by their supporters and by their opponents, and partly from the fact that words rarely do an entirely accurate job of dividing up experience)
Very, very broadly speaking, the argument for "science" seems to say that "religion" says little or nothing that is correct; and the argument for "religion" is that "science" says little or nothing that is valuable. This ignores both the extreme positions that consider their opponents actively malicious, and nuanced positions of many varieties, but is not I think a wrong characterization. Right now I am concerned with how the first part of this gets religion wrong.
What, at its core, is religion? That is to ask, not what various cultural traditions say, but what religion or spirituality or mysticism or theology is trying to accomplish, as an intellectual discipline. We don't often think of theology in these terms. (Those on the side of "science" don't really see theology as an intellectual exercise at all; and those on the side of "religion" tend to see their particular tradition as a given.) I think that theology (or religion, or spirituality, etc.) is an attempt to resolve the tension between our thoughts about the world, and our experience of the world.
I (as a generic human being, not as I, myself, Clayton) find that I have some ideas like justice, permanence, and so on that are abstractions; but when I look at the world, when I examine my experience of the world, I don't seem to find these concepts anywhere. Regarding justice, I may find some examples of people and events that seem mostly just, or partly just, or tremendously unjust, but I don't see pure justice anywhere. Similarly, I may see things like mountains that seem to last a long time, but more evidence points to the fact that they don't really last forever. So, what does this mean? Why, how, do I have concepts in my head that don't match up with anything in the world? Except that they do--I experience those concepts whenever I think about them, and I meet other people who seem to have those same concepts. (And then, of course, this raises the whole question of what my mind is, and why it is different from other things I see and experience)
Those kinds of thought that are called "religion" seem to me (now I'm back to speaking as Clayton) to be attempts to resolve this tension. Many kinds of thought have started from the premise that our abstract thoughts are somehow real--that they correspond to real entities somewhere that we don't normally experience; that they are elements of a true reality of which our daily experiences are only imperfect reflections; that the external world deviates from the ideals because of the actions of some other entities. Beliefs about god or gods are the result of these kinds of resolutions. But if we have explained our ideal thoughts, we then have to explain why our experiences are not so ideal. And as with all forms of human thought, we keep asking questions, and keep trying to analyze deeper. Sometimes we find that all of our thinking and analyzing has led us to a contradiction, or has resulted in making a claim about the world that later turns out to be strictly false. This is what makes the partisans of "science" ridicule theology and religion. But the enterprise of trying to understand the external world in terms of our internal experience is not an invalid one. After all, we live most directly in our thoughts, our feelings, our abstractions. It makes a lot of sense to try and explain how these thoughts will make us experience the world.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Internal Power and Bad Explanations
Recently I've become quite interested in the idea of "internal power" in aikido. (I just read Ellis Amdur's Hidden In Plain Sight and found it fascinating). But it's very difficult to read and think about this because "internal power" is "ki stuff" and there's a lot of very mystical thinking about that.
I don't believe in mystical thinking. This is a strong thing to say, and potentially offensive, but the position I take is less severe than it sounds--with some explanation. When dealing with things like ki and internal power, the mystical thinking I'm talking about takes the form of "well, ki is this kind of energy in the body that's totally unknown to western (or modern) science." Well, you can't do that. You can't say that. You can't get away with making ki this sort of extra-scientific thing.
Why not? People are used to putting all sorts of things outside of science. The big one is religion, and that's a big thorny issue which I'll mostly avoid. But not entirely. Within religion, the most common sort of extra-scientific claim is about what happens after death. And when someone says "after I die, something that is somehow 'me' will go on existing somewhere else," there's not much you can say about that from a scientific perspective. You can say it doesn't seem likely, that we can't figure out how it could be, that we haven't really seen it happen to anyone else; but what they're talking about is by definition unobservable to anyone alive, so that won't convince them. Ok, fine. But ki? Internal power? Now we're talking about punching and getting punched. That's pretty observable.
And you can't do the western science/eastern knowledge or modern science/ancient knowledge thing either. Science doesn't work like that. Anatomy doesn't work like that. The history of science, though, is divided into west and east. You can claim that something was discovered or invented in one place or another, but you can't say that it only exists in one place or another. And science understands the body pretty well. There just isn't room for some sort of energy flowing through the body. We haven't seen it; we haven't seen anywhere for it to flow.
What there is room for is a method of moving the body different from our usual understanding of strength. Maybe.
What leaves room for some kind of actual internal power is the fact that an explanation for a phenomenon can be completely wrong without the phenomenon itself being imaginary. Europeans believed in phlogiston for at least a hundred years--but they still managed to burn things. It is entirely possible that people practicing internal training could have genuine skills but no understanding of the basis of those skills. How could that work? Let me try to give an example. Imagine that nobody knows how to swim. Except me. I've figured it out, somehow, even though I don't really understand buoyancy or fluid dynamics or anything. So I show you this new skill, and you ask me how I do it. And I say, "there are lots of little invisible demons in the water that want to grab you and drag you to the bottom. That's why people who fall in sink and drown, you know. But if you push the demons away, you can stay afloat. The thing is, they're tricky, and they always try to get behind you. That's why I kick my legs like that--because the demons are sneaking up behind me." (sorry; it's not a very good bad explanation of swimming) This explanation is utter nonsense. But if you imitate exactly what I'm doing, you can learn to swim too. And then you can tell people how you do it, and they can learn also--but we'll all have this crazy belief about what we're doing. And, since our theory is wrong, it's very hard for us to improve on the method. Carrying big heavy holy implements to scare the demons? Seems like a good idea; not going to work. Creativity is unlikely to help, so we emphasize exact imitation and repetition as a learning method.
I think this may be very close to the traditional state of knowledge about internal training.
I don't believe in mystical thinking. This is a strong thing to say, and potentially offensive, but the position I take is less severe than it sounds--with some explanation. When dealing with things like ki and internal power, the mystical thinking I'm talking about takes the form of "well, ki is this kind of energy in the body that's totally unknown to western (or modern) science." Well, you can't do that. You can't say that. You can't get away with making ki this sort of extra-scientific thing.
Why not? People are used to putting all sorts of things outside of science. The big one is religion, and that's a big thorny issue which I'll mostly avoid. But not entirely. Within religion, the most common sort of extra-scientific claim is about what happens after death. And when someone says "after I die, something that is somehow 'me' will go on existing somewhere else," there's not much you can say about that from a scientific perspective. You can say it doesn't seem likely, that we can't figure out how it could be, that we haven't really seen it happen to anyone else; but what they're talking about is by definition unobservable to anyone alive, so that won't convince them. Ok, fine. But ki? Internal power? Now we're talking about punching and getting punched. That's pretty observable.
And you can't do the western science/eastern knowledge or modern science/ancient knowledge thing either. Science doesn't work like that. Anatomy doesn't work like that. The history of science, though, is divided into west and east. You can claim that something was discovered or invented in one place or another, but you can't say that it only exists in one place or another. And science understands the body pretty well. There just isn't room for some sort of energy flowing through the body. We haven't seen it; we haven't seen anywhere for it to flow.
What there is room for is a method of moving the body different from our usual understanding of strength. Maybe.
What leaves room for some kind of actual internal power is the fact that an explanation for a phenomenon can be completely wrong without the phenomenon itself being imaginary. Europeans believed in phlogiston for at least a hundred years--but they still managed to burn things. It is entirely possible that people practicing internal training could have genuine skills but no understanding of the basis of those skills. How could that work? Let me try to give an example. Imagine that nobody knows how to swim. Except me. I've figured it out, somehow, even though I don't really understand buoyancy or fluid dynamics or anything. So I show you this new skill, and you ask me how I do it. And I say, "there are lots of little invisible demons in the water that want to grab you and drag you to the bottom. That's why people who fall in sink and drown, you know. But if you push the demons away, you can stay afloat. The thing is, they're tricky, and they always try to get behind you. That's why I kick my legs like that--because the demons are sneaking up behind me." (sorry; it's not a very good bad explanation of swimming) This explanation is utter nonsense. But if you imitate exactly what I'm doing, you can learn to swim too. And then you can tell people how you do it, and they can learn also--but we'll all have this crazy belief about what we're doing. And, since our theory is wrong, it's very hard for us to improve on the method. Carrying big heavy holy implements to scare the demons? Seems like a good idea; not going to work. Creativity is unlikely to help, so we emphasize exact imitation and repetition as a learning method.
I think this may be very close to the traditional state of knowledge about internal training.
Monday, November 2, 2009
What does aikido look like?
A few weeks ago somebody asked me if I'd ever "used my aikido for real." Now, of course that question really means "did you ever get attacked and then kick the guy's ass?" to which the answer is no. But the answer I gave was that I use it every time I have to walk through crowds on the subway (and elsewhere. Hong Kong has a lot of crowds). I don't think my friend was terribly satisfied by that answer, and I'll admit it sounds a bit cute. But I wasn't trying to be cute when I said it, and I think it's not as stupid as it sounds.
I talked in my last post about the idea that aikido is a very different kind of thing from martial arts like karate or sports like judo. One of the big differences, on the technical level, is that aikido scales naturally with the intensity of the attack. If somebody grabs and pushes hard, they're setting themselves up for a big throw. If they're not holding or pushing as hard, they can be lowered to the ground pretty gently. And if somebody who isn't paying attention just happens to walk into you, well, you know how to use tenkan and other movements to just get out of the way. No need for violence.
So what does "real aikido" really look like?
There are a lot of people who say that, if you're really under attack, your aikido techniques should become more vicious, with additional strikes and more violent application of joint locks. But I don't think that's true. I think that the techniques of aikido are entirely capable of dealing with serious attacks. What they're not so good at dealing with is unserious attacks. We can see this in practice all the time with partners that don't seem to want to attack. Partners whose strikes miss by inches if not feet, who grab a wrist but don't really want to do anything with it, who don't turn and reorient after their initial attack misses--these people are difficult to throw. (And that makes it easy to imagine that a real attacker will be harder to throw) But, of course, these are precisely those situations which don't require us to throw our partner. If somebody walks up to you and punches you in the face, that's something you have to deal with. If somebody walks up to you and swings their arm near your face, that's a different sort of thing entirely. Irritating, sure. Definitely rude. Probably something to be concerned about. But as long as that's all they're doing, we're still in "irritating little brother" territory and not "terrifying murderer."
We all have a picture in our heads when we practice of what our aikido should look like. Usually that's the kata we practice: a grab, a body movement, a throw, and a roll or breakfall. But when your partner doesn't attack fully, what you end up with looks quite different. I think it's useful to stop and look at what does happen, rather than forcing a throw awkwardly. Sometimes your technique just winds to a halt. You turn, your partner doesn't and you stand there awkwardly holding onto your partner at some weird angle. But that's fine! He's not doing anything to you, after all. Not throwing someone who doesn't need to be thrown is just the same as "not thinking of defeating an opponent." Of course, as nice as that is, it's not a good way to learn throws. This is why it's important for the attacker role to be taken seriously--not because it makes the techniques look better, but because otherwise they make no sense at all.
One of the things I really enjoy when I watch Endo sensei demonstrate is that it always feels like he's calming the interaction. His partner might attack quite seriously, but as the technique progresses there seems to be less and less energy on both sides. Finally, somebody falls down, but it's not a big deal. That's wonderful. Imagine all of the arguments that you've been in that started over something small and ended up with a lot of screaming. Now imagine those other arguments where you both calmed down and ended up in a more or less relaxed discussion. Which was better? With aikido, it seems like physical interactions--fights--can be treated the same way.
I talked in my last post about the idea that aikido is a very different kind of thing from martial arts like karate or sports like judo. One of the big differences, on the technical level, is that aikido scales naturally with the intensity of the attack. If somebody grabs and pushes hard, they're setting themselves up for a big throw. If they're not holding or pushing as hard, they can be lowered to the ground pretty gently. And if somebody who isn't paying attention just happens to walk into you, well, you know how to use tenkan and other movements to just get out of the way. No need for violence.
So what does "real aikido" really look like?
There are a lot of people who say that, if you're really under attack, your aikido techniques should become more vicious, with additional strikes and more violent application of joint locks. But I don't think that's true. I think that the techniques of aikido are entirely capable of dealing with serious attacks. What they're not so good at dealing with is unserious attacks. We can see this in practice all the time with partners that don't seem to want to attack. Partners whose strikes miss by inches if not feet, who grab a wrist but don't really want to do anything with it, who don't turn and reorient after their initial attack misses--these people are difficult to throw. (And that makes it easy to imagine that a real attacker will be harder to throw) But, of course, these are precisely those situations which don't require us to throw our partner. If somebody walks up to you and punches you in the face, that's something you have to deal with. If somebody walks up to you and swings their arm near your face, that's a different sort of thing entirely. Irritating, sure. Definitely rude. Probably something to be concerned about. But as long as that's all they're doing, we're still in "irritating little brother" territory and not "terrifying murderer."
We all have a picture in our heads when we practice of what our aikido should look like. Usually that's the kata we practice: a grab, a body movement, a throw, and a roll or breakfall. But when your partner doesn't attack fully, what you end up with looks quite different. I think it's useful to stop and look at what does happen, rather than forcing a throw awkwardly. Sometimes your technique just winds to a halt. You turn, your partner doesn't and you stand there awkwardly holding onto your partner at some weird angle. But that's fine! He's not doing anything to you, after all. Not throwing someone who doesn't need to be thrown is just the same as "not thinking of defeating an opponent." Of course, as nice as that is, it's not a good way to learn throws. This is why it's important for the attacker role to be taken seriously--not because it makes the techniques look better, but because otherwise they make no sense at all.
One of the things I really enjoy when I watch Endo sensei demonstrate is that it always feels like he's calming the interaction. His partner might attack quite seriously, but as the technique progresses there seems to be less and less energy on both sides. Finally, somebody falls down, but it's not a big deal. That's wonderful. Imagine all of the arguments that you've been in that started over something small and ended up with a lot of screaming. Now imagine those other arguments where you both calmed down and ended up in a more or less relaxed discussion. Which was better? With aikido, it seems like physical interactions--fights--can be treated the same way.
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