Mass Warfare

Mass protest is back in fashion. Since 9/11, really, the idea that the people can influence the politicians by visibly banding together has had a new vogue. It’s been done before – in the 60s, in colonial India, in all kinds of places and times. These days, the internet, smart phones and social media have made it ever more possible to arrange flash mobs, sit-ins and marches. When these gatherings appear to be spontaneous, they’re hard to predict, prevent or police. It’s a kind of peaceful offensive by the masses against the officially empowered few – which makes it mildly ironic how often it’s used to protest against war.

Generally, every time mass protest makes a difference, or even makes the news, it inspires others to revisit the tactic for their own agendas. The Occupy movement, anti-bank and anti-greed, started in Spain, was inspired by the Arab Spring, which protested against tyrannical government.

Seems like these two aims have nothing in common – except that the behaviour of the mega-rich and the biggest banks borders on despotic, and the West’s governments seem powerless to discipline them even if they wanted to (which, it appears, they really don’t).

Mass protest works by sheer force of numbers – the general populace always outnumber the elite (whether that word is currently describing the rulers or the rich), it’s part of the definition of elite. And the elites know, on some level, that they are ultimately just as human as the masses, so when the hoi polloi rise up against them, they can either choose to surf the wave of public opinion or be drowned by it.

Occupy has been largely dismantled now, but that doesn’t mean the 1% has won. Just that the protest’s on hiatus – until next time.

Bravado

Rango: Warning, this blog contains spoilers.

Rango is a film about a pet lizard lost in the wilderness. I suggest you go see it, and count the number of other movies it references throughout (I lost count around 30).

Rango is targeted as an outsider and a soft city-slicker type who will never survive in the harsh conditions of a desert. So he does the only thing he can think of – ill-advisedly, he lies. And the audience cringes, because this can spell nothing but disaster. Rango creates, off the cuff, a persona and an alias a lot tougher than he is, as a front to intimidate his tormentors. He bluffs. It’s all bravado, bluster, boasting. There’s no substance to it whatsoever. Is there?

But that’s the thing – we all become whatever story we hear about ourselves most often. He tells a convincing story about his heroics to a crowded bar, and is treated like the tough guy he pretends to be – is now expected to be. And so what can he do, but live up to it?

The word bravado implies empty boasts, bluster, a front. But there’s a place for it when we bluster ourselves into a corner from which only actual bravery can extricate us. And that corner, back to the wall, facing off with the villains and the monsters, is exactly where the great stories come from – at least, as far as Hollywood’s concerned. 

Chi

The Law of the Conservation of Energy, as stated in the 1800s, tells us that total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed and transferred. These are the scientific facts, in our universe. Which is interestingly similar to the position of Oriental philosophy, with the concept of Chi and how it flows. According to physics, everything is made of atoms, and atoms themselves are made of charge and empty space. Charge is energy – so everything is made of energy (generally chemical potential energy, if I recall my high school science correctly). If I accept this scientific information, then it’s not really such a stretch to get to the idea of energy flowing, as in Eastern practices from martial arts to Feng Shui. The law of the Conservation of Energy lends itself to a person being able to borrow energy from her opponent to then use against them (a central principle of yin or internal martial arts such as tai chi, wing chun and chi kung).

This idea is what enables a small woman to disable a much larger man, should she need to. It should also enable us to manipulate the flow of energy to avoid feeling drained – if everything is energy, and the total amount of energy remains constant, and energy flows, then all we need to do is find a way to put ourselves in the way of that flow and absorb as much energy as we need to emit: as movement, as heat, as whatever form is required.

We live on borrowed energy then – all of us, all the time. 

Treading Water

They say discretion is the better part of valour, that you should pick your battles. But when you’re under constant bombardment, it’s not exactly easy to remember that you have that option. You don’t have time – or don’t feel as if you have the time – to stop and think and strategise, and the problem compounds until you’re living in a purely reactive way, and your brain is so busy reacting, it doesn’t have the free capacity to strategise and get you the two steps ahead that you need to be in order to have the time to stop and think and plan… It’s a nasty, vicious spiral leading to implosion under pressure.

This  is one of the hardest things about sparring when you start learning martial arts: it all happens os fast, you don’t have time to think. You have to learn to think faster, or at least faster than your opponent, while at the same time, not thinking at all, and allowing your body to react and adapt until you see the opening and timing to score a hit. It’s not easy, and it’s disheartening, especially when sparring against those who are better than you, because they seem to do it so easily, so calmly, so effortlessly – while you get flustered and never land a hit.

When life gets hectic, it’s too easy to fall into this pattern of reacting, of trying to change up your mental gears in a frantic effort to keep up.  The trick, it seems, is the same as in sparring – stop thinking, stop trying to keep up and just let it flow – adapt, don’t fight it, go with it. And that should give you the mental space to see the opening, the opportunity, the way through. Easier said than done, but also easier than drowning. 

Ready, Steady...

Anger. Adrenalin. Satisfaction. Pain. Offence. Fear. There are many possible emotions in a fight, but they have no place there, according to traditional martial arts training. Certainly fear doesn’t – fear freezes you, slows you down. Your heart races, but your mind panics and stands still. Anger doesn’t freeze you, but it makes you reckless, which will ultimately only result in injury, in pain, in defeat.

How do you cut off your emotions in a fight? Well, fights happen fast. Very fast. Bruce Lee could reputedly punch at the speed of a bullet (this is fairly plausible – Wing Chun is known for its speed). You don’t have time to think, to consciously process what your sight, hearing, skin are telling you. Which is why you train your body to react, to think for you. It can do so much faster, and without emotion, than you can. The Japanese term ‘muga’ is a state of alert passivity – the calm before the storm – in which the body is aware, all senses working at full throttle, but the mind is calm and waiting. It’s not stressed, but relaxed. Ready. Not waiting because that implies expectation, and most traditional Eastern martial arts are born of philosophies that discourage expectation.

Developing this state is a slow process, but hardly a difficult one. We do it when we learn to drive, to throw, to catch. At first we have to go slowly, thinking consciously about the physical actions required. Eventually, our bodies know the procedures so well, they don’t need us to think about them. They just do. And while a fight is more unpredictable and therefore more complex than playing catch, the principle is the same: don’t think, don’t lock up your muscles with tension, just relax and be ready.