…and yet when I pump it through the analogical mapping I’m using here between mind and body, mental movements like this feel a bit like practicing grabbing things as I fall as a way of dealing with being pushed or knocked into. That seems like a useful skill, but like a second-order tweak after figuring out how to not get knocked totally off-balance when someone bumps into me. Sort of like trying to learn how to do parkour before learning how to brace one’s spine.
And appropriately enough, doing that with parkour actually endangers your spine. Mapping that back through the analogy to the mind again, I think I see a close correlate: I don’t know when I can trust my fictional “what-if” thinking to kick online when I need it, or if my attempt to do “what-if” thinking will still be dutiful rather than based on a sincere desire to know the truth.
…although I do think the technique you’re suggesting is useful, and I’m totally going to play with it.
...having considered your article, another potential line of investigation occurs to me. Consider; a lot of the martial arts practitioners, the ones talking about ki flow, are still managing to achieve good physical posture, even if they’re talking about it in terms of ki. So, consider how this began; presumably, (I’m doing a lot of guessing here) the earliest practitioners of akido didn’t really think in terms of leverage and forces and anatomy, they thought in terms of ki. And they noticed what worked and what didn’t.
Not why it did or didn’t work—merely what did or didn’t work.
Now, consider the idea of finding out how not to fall when pushed. It seems to me that the easiest way to learn what to do to accomplish this without learning why it works is simply to try a lot of things and see what sticks. For example, getting a friend to try to push you over several times, while you try not to fall; sooner or later, you’ll start figuring out what works.
In an analogous manner, getting mentally pushed a lot of times may help you to find a better way to hold on to your mental stability. Joining a local debate club might help for this; or just find a friend, pick an issue with some ambiguity to it, and then (this is important) toss a coin to decide which side of the issue each of you will argue (this way you’ll often have to defend a position you do not hold); perhaps take a few days to do some research; and then each try to persuade each other of the correctness of the side you randomly elected to defend.
Yep! I find stuff like this helpful.
…and yet when I pump it through the analogical mapping I’m using here between mind and body, mental movements like this feel a bit like practicing grabbing things as I fall as a way of dealing with being pushed or knocked into. That seems like a useful skill, but like a second-order tweak after figuring out how to not get knocked totally off-balance when someone bumps into me. Sort of like trying to learn how to do parkour before learning how to brace one’s spine.
And appropriately enough, doing that with parkour actually endangers your spine. Mapping that back through the analogy to the mind again, I think I see a close correlate: I don’t know when I can trust my fictional “what-if” thinking to kick online when I need it, or if my attempt to do “what-if” thinking will still be dutiful rather than based on a sincere desire to know the truth.
…although I do think the technique you’re suggesting is useful, and I’m totally going to play with it.
Hmmm. You may have a point.
...having considered your article, another potential line of investigation occurs to me. Consider; a lot of the martial arts practitioners, the ones talking about ki flow, are still managing to achieve good physical posture, even if they’re talking about it in terms of ki. So, consider how this began; presumably, (I’m doing a lot of guessing here) the earliest practitioners of akido didn’t really think in terms of leverage and forces and anatomy, they thought in terms of ki. And they noticed what worked and what didn’t.
Not why it did or didn’t work—merely what did or didn’t work.
Now, consider the idea of finding out how not to fall when pushed. It seems to me that the easiest way to learn what to do to accomplish this without learning why it works is simply to try a lot of things and see what sticks. For example, getting a friend to try to push you over several times, while you try not to fall; sooner or later, you’ll start figuring out what works.
In an analogous manner, getting mentally pushed a lot of times may help you to find a better way to hold on to your mental stability. Joining a local debate club might help for this; or just find a friend, pick an issue with some ambiguity to it, and then (this is important) toss a coin to decide which side of the issue each of you will argue (this way you’ll often have to defend a position you do not hold); perhaps take a few days to do some research; and then each try to persuade each other of the correctness of the side you randomly elected to defend.