My Utopia

The other day my friend got to talking about his vision of an ideal society.  In his enlightened dictatorship, half the economy would be communist, and the other half would be capitalist.  For maybe fifteen hours a week, everyone would have to perform menial tasks: sweeping streets, picking strawberries, shoveling shit.  Everyone all the way up to the presidency (premiership?) would have to participate.  Job assignments would rotate seasonally, to prevent anyone from ever developing seniority or specialized expertise.  The rest of the time would be perfect lassez-faire capitalism; anything goes.

Whatever the merits of my friend’s personal utopian dream, I’d like to share my own vision for the future.  Recently, I began teaching kindergarten at a Montessori school in Taipei.  An opportunity to work in alternative education is a rarity this part of the world, which is dominated by a crass and venal system of cram schools and entrance exams.  Foreigners get burned out quickly from this racket.  I’d already worked one job “teaching” catatonic twelve-year-olds, long enough to know that it wasn’t for me.  To paraphrase John Taylor Gatto, I can’t in good conscience earn a livelihood from hurting children.  So I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the Montessori system from within.  It requires that I wake up at the crack of dawn and commute an hour-long either way, just for a lousy hour and a half of teaching (plus another half an hour – unpaid – of filling out comments books), but I endure the ride with pleasure.

For the most part, the school is more like an ordinary kindergarten than I’d anticipated.  Admittedly, it is an exceptionally well-run one, with exceptionally well-behaved children.  In part, this might be thanks to the Montessori system.  Contrary to its hippie reputation, Montessori education strongly emphasizes focus and discipline.  It doesn’t hurt, though, that most of the children are girls, and that Asian kids are famously calmer and sweeter-tempered (and, I hate to admit, cuter) than their Western counterparts.

In the brief time I’ve worked there, teaching these kids has already turned out to be one of the most valuable and formative experiences of my life.  If you really want to learn about being present in the moment, and about what works and doesn’t work as a teacher, toddlers and small children are the people to study.  Even the youngest children (I teach kids between two and seven years old) already have distinctive personalities of their own; I was able to learn all of their names in a couple of days.  By the ages of nine or ten, the students begin to blur together into one indistinguishable, stone-faced mass; their individuality and confidence has already been crushed.

The Chinese Daoists, and other primitivists throughout history, idealized childhood as a time when we are free from societal conditioning, totally spontaneous, without preconceived notions, hangups or neuroses or any kind.  I don’t know how anyone who’s worked with kids this age could fail to think that there is something to this.  Until the age of about eight or nine, children are the ideal students.  Learning is still fun for them.  As long as you keep the energy level up, they’ll pay attention to you.  They’ll do anything you tell them to, without second-guessing or having to understand, consciously, why.  They do things without worrying about being right, or about what others think.  No matter what happened a minute earlier, you always have a chance get things back on track; for a four-year-old, thirty seconds ago is history, and thirty seconds from now is the future.

I’ve learned a lot from kindergarteners as well in terms of the things that intrigue them.  They are interested in all of the right things: songs, stories, animals, concrete objects that they can grasp and manipulate.  They love all sorts of rhythms, melodies, nonsense and doggerel.  For them there is no difference between sounds that carry meaning and sounds that do not.

Kids this age are hardwired to imitate.  They are so good at it that it can seem uncanny at times.  One friend of mine taught kindergarten for a while here.  He has a full beard, and has a habit of stroking it thoughtfully.  After a few weeks teaching his kids, they would all begin playing with their ‘beards’ as soon as he walked in!

When I say that kids are ‘hardwired’ to imitate others, I’m using a current cliché derived from neuroscience.  But I have a big problem with this verbiage because it implies that kids this age are organically different from us; “their brains are different.”  Obviously, there is a grain of truth to this proposition.  From an evolutionary perspective, one can see the adaptive advantage for small children to have exceptionally plastic brains, primed to absorb stimuli like a sponge.

However, this takes for granted a certain nature-nurture duality, a linear cause-and-effect relationship that I refuse to accept.  Everything we do changes our brains, which then in turn change our behavior.  Perhaps the reason why children learn skills so much more easily than adults do, isn’t because of some sort of ‘genetic tripwire’ that magically turns people into morons past early adolescence.  Perhaps it’s because of the accretions of socialization and conditioning which are imposed on us as we grow older, and because of the blockages and bad habits which we impose upon ourselves.

At the very least, until someone’s designed a placebo-controlled double-blind study that can eliminate all of these variables, I refuse to accept that the negative changes that take place between childhood and adulthood are simply a matter of genetic predestination, or that they can’t be undone.  Perhaps there is a way to circumvent these accretions, or to prevent them from accreting in the first place.  Perhaps what separates geniuses from the merely talented and accomplished, isn’t a question of what they’re doing, i.e. how much they know, how much they’ve practiced, what training they’ve received.  Perhaps it’s a question of something they’re not doing.

When we look at genius-level performers in any discipline, they often exhibit a certain childlike quality.  Think of Marcel Marceau, Vladimir Nabokov, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Rickson Gracie, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynmann, Louis Armstrong, Michael Jackson or Paul McCartney.  Or watch this video of Bobby McFerrin:

But for the most part, the tendency has been to dismiss them as flakes, natural prodigies, ‘geniuses’ from whom we have no chance of learning anything meaningful.  (From whom would you rather take piano lessons– Mozart or Salieri?)

Perhaps, though, it’s simply that these people have hit on something that they don’t teach in school; and just because it isn’t taught in school, doesn’t mean that it can’t be.  (More precisely, what they’ve hit upon is exactly what’s been untaught in school.)  Perhaps they’ve discovered some sort of a cheat code or mind hack, which enables them to bypass the junk that prevents ordinary individuals from achieving their full potential.  Perhaps becoming childlike is a skill, not an attribute, something which can be learned and practiced and improved over time.

So, going back to the original topic, here’s my proposal for an ideal society: nobody is allowed to graduate kindergarten.  No matter how old we get, how much we have, how much we know or how skilled we become, for two hours a day everybody has to get together and sing songs, listen to stories, take naps, learn the names of animals and plants, run around and play games.  Or maybe it wouldn’t be every day; maybe each year you’d have to rack up a certain number of hours of ‘continuing education credits’ like most professional organizations require.

Either way, this much is clear: if you want to know the jibengong set for living life (see our first entry), go back to the skills you learned in kindergarten, and have since forgotten.  There are many mysteries and secrets contained in this first form.  Don’t take them lightly.

Manifesto of a Comprehensivist

So far we have talked about music and martial arts. As we continue, we’ll get into other areas of skill development, including language learning, mathematics, dancing, and so forth.  Today I want to address an important question that may be on some readers’ minds: Who the hell am I to offer my opinion on such a broad range of human endeavors?  I am twenty-eight years old.  I have not mastered – or even, by some measures, learnt to basic proficiency – any one of the skills that I purport to know so much about.  Why would anyone care about my opinion, when I myself am by my own admission a rank dilettante?

From the perspective of an outsider, it may seem as though I am a “generalist,” whose disparate interests do not relate to one another in any meaningful way.  To me, however, they are intimately interconnected, and represent one single, unbroken stream of intellectual development.  You might say that my primary interest lies not any one particular field, but in catholically sampling from many different subjects and extracting common principles from amongst them.

In this respect I draw inspiration from the 20^th-century designer Buckminster Fuller, who demonstrated similar proclivities.  Fuller scholar J. Baldwin writes,

“With no “license” in a specialty, Bucky was regarded as a “generalist,” a polite term for persons with no real expertise.  Generalists know a little bit about a lot of things.  They tend to generalize to the point where credibility is lost.  Regrettably, Bucky sometimes used the term “generalist” himself, when “comprehensivist” would have been more accurate.  Comprehensivists concentrate, as he did, not just on things, but on connections and relationships.  He certainly was an expert at that, but comprehensive analysis remains a discipline which is not yet widely understood or taught.”  [BuckyWorks, p. 81]

I believe that this type of interdisciplinary “comprehensive analysis” has value.  This value, I believe, is increasing in proportion to the increase in sheer quantity of information that characterizes our age.  Most modern institutions, including the corporation, the university, the military, and indeed the state itself, derive from a linear, hierarchical conception of information.  This approach is based upon breaking knowledge down into discrete, manageable disciplines or specialties.  It first arose with the development of printing technology, and intensified with the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions.

That other great comprehensivist, the late Marshall McLuhan, argued that this linear model of knowledge is receding with the advent of modern information technologies.  In its place is an emerging “global village” whose orientation is closer to the field-like, immersive experience of primitive man, who knew no specialization.  The primary institutions of our society, which are oriented around a print-based, hierarchical model, are ill equipped to cope with this transition.

In many respects, the institution most anachronistically wedded to the print model is the educational system.  Formal education will be a regular whipping boy on this blog.  I have many things to say on the subject, but nothing sums up my feelings on the subject so elegantly as the following presentation by Sir Kenneth Robinson:

Obviously, the university, the state, and the corporation won’t be leaving us anytime soon.  However, in order for them to adapt to the realities of the twenty-first century, our institutions need to begin placing some systematic value on looking at interconnections between things.  At present, the patterns of prestige in our society are skewed heavily toward specialization and atomization.  In the words of Robert Heinlein,

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Playing by Ear

Another one of the complex skills we’ll be looking at in this blog is music.  I am not an accomplished musician – in fact, I am not particularly accomplished in any of the skills we’ll be discussing here.  (Actually, that’s kind of the point of the blog, but I’m going to save that for another post.)  However, I’ve made a few discoveries of my own, which I think might be helpful to other musicians/language learners/martial artists/fine artists etc.

Today I want to talk about playing by ear.  Learning songs by ear and transcribing them is a fundamental skill for any musician, especially anyone who wants to learn jazz or composition.  However, many musicians can find this process intimidating.  Initially, most people prefer to learn songs from sheet music or tab.  Wrong idea.

As a professional musician, sight-reading is a critical skill – you need to be able to interact with other musicians whom you have never met, with little or no rehearsal time, and to master a highly complex repertoire.  Only notated music can facilitate this.  However, for beginning and intermediate music students, I am opposed to learning anything from sheet music/tab, or even learning to read music at all.

This is an argument that I intend to develop and extrapolate further as this blog progresses.  For the time being, however, let us just say the following – as a young child, you learnt to listen and to speak your native language before you learnt how to read and write.  This is the natural progression in any complex skill.

No magical change has taken place since you were that age.  The only thing that has changed is that you are more afraid of making mistakes and taking a long time.  You want a shortcut to learn things faster and prettier by using your conscious mind to learn things (rather than your subconscious mind, which is where real learning occurs).  In so doing, you only wind up cheating yourself.  The fastest and most direct way from point A to point B is always the hardest way.

Back in the day, they believed that there were hard and fast neurological changes (“mylenization”) which took place in adolescents and young adults.  These changes, it was claimed, essentially made us into retards past a certain age.  Therefore, it was impossible to achieve a native level of proficiency in a language acquired past the age of twelve or so, and adult learners required a totally different method of instruction than young native learners.

The general thrust of neurological research over the last decade or two has debunked this hypothesis.  We retain a much greater degree of neuroplasticity, and to a much more advanced age, than was previously suspected.  Moreover, the choices we make in our life can do a great deal to impact the degree of neuroplasticity that we retain (or do not retain).  This has far-reaching implications, not only for complex skill acquisition, but also for the structure of society and its institutions, the way we conceptualize identity, life, the universe, and so forth.

In conclusion, learning to play repertoire by ear is not an advanced skill.  It is a basic skill, which ought to be cultivated from the first day one begins to learn one’s instrument.  Although this is not the mainstream view, I am by no means the first to suggest this — it is this very philosophy which underpins the Suzuki method of music pedagogy.  Although I have not studied the system myself, I believe that the basic idea behind the Suzuki method is sound and can be extrapolated to spheres of learning besides music.  But that’s a post for another day.

Internal Martial Arts and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Pt. II

Here is the second essential insight of the NLP movement: Most people think that being hypnotized is bad, or that they are too smart to be hypnotized. That is wrong. Studies show that the smarter people are, the easier they are to hypnotize. The reason for this is twofold. First, hypnosis requires focus, and intelligent people are able to focus more easily than stupid people.

Second of all, intelligent people tend to use their conscious mind/reason more than stupid people, who tend to rely more on instinct. Hypnosis does not operate on your conscious mind, it operates on your subconscious mind. Therefore, the busier you are with the internal dialogue, the easier it is to get in through the ‘back door.’

Therefore, being hypnotized is not a shameful thing. It is, in fact, a skill, called the suspension of disbelief. This skill has to be developed. If you want to learn to hypnotize people — that is, communicate with them — first you have to allow yourself be hypnotized by other skilled hypnotists. Before you can create a world which will be compelling and useful, first you need to enter into the worlds of others and play their games for a while.

One teacher of mine has talked about the importance of being able to turn off the ‘editing software.’ We all have an internal filter which we use to selectively listen to what others have to say. Before we’ve even considered some assertions, we’ve tagged them as ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ and placed them in their respective boxes.

What we don’t realize is that this very editing software also makes it impossible for us to go the other direction and get into the editing software of others. We don’t have the ability to turn it off and on again at our discretion. In order to get ‘under the hood’ of others’ machines, first we have to get under our own hoods and observe the subconscious processes at work there.

Mirrors

The mirror is a key implement in any discipline.  Singers, magicians, and dancers all make extensive use of mirrors.  In the West, we tend to associate mirrors with vanity.  In Japan they carry a religious connotation, representing self-refinement and the ‘originally pure mind,’ capable of reflection without conscious thought.  Mirrors help us to distance ourselves from ourselves and to become attentive to what is actually happening in front of us.  Every day, most of us see our reflections dozens of times, but few can bear to look in the mirror for protracted periods of time — it is too honest, like hearing one’s own voice on an answering machine.  (I guess they call that “voice mail” these days.)

In learning how to learn, it is very important that one learn and develop the ability to see oneself in the third person.  To paraphrase J. Krishnamurti, “The beginning of true spirituality is the separation of the observer from the observed.”  If we want to change habits we have to be able to look objectively at what is actually happening, rather than what we feel is happening.  The mirror, like the tape deck, is a very important tool toward that end.

It might seem counterintuitive that we would want to “see” ourselves rather than “feel” ourselves, because music, for instance, is largely an art of emotion.  But there is a world of difference between feeling the music and feeling oneself feeling the music.  The latter is the condition of the untrained individual — you think you’re in the moment, but really you’re in your head.  In the realm of movement, this generates tension and uncoordination, which is precisely what we seek to eliminate.

Internal Martial Arts and Neuro-Linguistic Programming

One of my specific areas of interest includes the so-called ‘internal martial arts,’ henceforth referred to ‘IMA.’  Over time, that interest broadened to include all forms of martial arts and movement, but my foundation comes from the so-called ‘internal systems’ of Chinese martial arts — xingyiquan, baguazhang, and taijiquan.

The definition of ‘internal’ varies, and is a subject of hot debate on Internet forums and the like.  I tend to adopt a broad view of what is ‘internal.’  For the purposes of our discussion here, ‘internal’ refers not only to the Chinese ‘big three,’ but to aikido/aikijujitsu, Systema, some forms of Wing Chun, and so forth.  At the higher levels even things like Brazilian Jiujitsu (BJJ), judo, and other grappling arts can also tend to approach ‘internal,’ but I don’t tend to include them under that heading.

In IMA circles there is a great deal of interest in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming).  NLP is a movement (some would call it a cult) which came about in the 1970’s as a result of the work of Richard Bandler and the linguist John Grindler.  They attempted to systematize the work of the pioneering hypnotherapist Milton Erickson.  Erickson is an interesting character we can talk about later on.  He was a legendary hypnotherapist who developed a level of skill which for some people bordered on magic.  Unfortunately, he was unable to communicate this level of skill to any of his students.  (Later on we can talk about why I believe this was the case.)

Bandler and Grindler developed NLP to establish a coherent vocabulary and framework for understanding his work, so that it could be communicated to ordinary mortals.  The organization headed in many disparate directions after its initial successes, but its early works remain classics in the fields of hypnotherapy and communications theory.

The reason for the overlap between IMA and NLP goes deeper than the fact that they are both lunatic fringe subcultures. The reason for the interest is that NLP is based in the study of hypnotherapy.  IMA, too, regardless of style, is a form of hypnosis.  Wait, I’ll put that in italics, in case you missed it: Internal martial arts are a subset of hypnosis.  However, unlike conventional hypnotherapy, the IMA are active not only on the mind — they are active on the mind and the body, and on the interface between the two. All of the sophisticated manipulations of balance and structure we see in the IMA are the result of direct control over this interface.

Needless to say, people in IMA circles are very resistant to this assertion, because it makes it sound like what they do is bullshit, useless for fighting, etc. But that’s just because they don’t understand what hypnosis actually is.

The central insight of NLP (whatever you might think about NLP) is that there is no hard and fast distinction between hypnosis and ordinary communication. They exist on a spectrum — hypnosis might be thought of as ‘extraordinarily successful communication.’

Therefore, if you’ve been communicated to successfully, you’ve been hypnotized. As you read these words, if you are in any way receptive to what it is that I have to say, I am hypnotizing you — you’ve entered into my world. This is a very important concept to understand things like politicians’ speeches and propaganda, and lots of other forms of communications besides.

Most hypnosis, moreover, is consensual. Stage hypnosis, where people are made to do things against their conscious willpower, is maybe 5% of the picture. Most hypnosis is things like hypnotherapy, where someone willingly submits to a hypnotist in order to quit smoking, get over some sexual hangup, etc.  Even more fundamental than consensual hypnosis (and more effective in terms of therapeutic outcomes) is self-hypnosis, which underpins all forms of meditation, qigong, creative visualization, etc.

It is possible, however, to hypnotize someone against their conscious will — despite the claims of hypnotists to the contrary. However, because of the layers of resistance are very deep, it is MUCH more difficult than consensual hypnosis! Nonconsensual hypnosis is a master-level feat which can only be attempted by those with extensive experience in consensual hypnosis.

Going back to our original assertion that IMA are a form of mind/body hypnosis, this is why there are so few people who can actually use them in fighting. The gap between being able to perform these skills in a cooperative setting, or even in a mildly uncooperative demonstration, and being able to use them in a real fight, is vast.

A lot of the training we see in IMA — be it push hands, sticky hands, or what have you — is really a form of two-person consensual hypnosis. (They are also forms of what dancers call ‘contact improvisation,’ but we can talk about contact improvisation later.)  Two people agree to enter a world and inhabit that space for a period of time. Playing around in this world consensually is the necessary foundation for learning to bring others into that space against their will.  (The more fundamental skill, in fact, is self-hypnosis, which is why nearly all IMA incorporate one or another form of solo jibengong.)

 

Jibengong

Jibengong 基本功 means “basic training,“ literally “foundational” training.  If you practice Chinese martial arts, in order to live that and inhabit that space, your must train boring and painful jibengong, such as stance work, daily.  For the rest of your life. 

There are qualifications to this statement, just as with any other.  Another principle we’ll be discussing here is “always is always wrong, never is never right.” However, as a lowest-common-denominator point of departure, you cannot do better than this – basics every day. 

If you are a musician, your jibengong would consist of scales, arpeggios, long tones, paradiddles, flams, and the like.  If you are a calligrapher, jibengong would mean lines, dots, spirals.  For a basketball player, it might mean free throws, lay-ups, defensive slides, footwork and dribbling patterns.

In a good martial arts system, if you’ve got the jibengong right, you’ve got the system.  Everything else is just commentary and elaboration on the one little idea articulated in the jibengong of the system.  (In fact, the name of the first form in Wing Chun, siu lim tao, means “little idea form.”  What’s the little idea?)  If you’re smart, you should be able to derive everything else from the basics.  (In practice, this rarely happens; hence the need for a good teacher.)

Here is a video of the late Mike Martello [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUPpEYZZA48] speaking the truth about jibengong.  At 0:30 he gets the Holy Spirit in him :

“Jibengong for beginners, and jibengong for advanced students, and jibengong for higher level students, is different.  But even though, it’s basics.  As the student grows, and the level of the student grows, so must the basic [sic].  It doesn’t mean that the general jibengong basic is gonna be changed any different than the jibengong basic of the advanced or of the beginner.  Take ma bu [the horse stance, universal to all Chinese martial arts] i.e. as an example.  You have a beginner doing ma bu and you have an advanced student doing ma bu.  The jibengong is the same posture.  But what’s going on completely different.  And that’s where the level has to change.  Even so, when you’re practicing the moving kao da ke shou [Eight Step Mantis jibengong] – this is considered jibengong, for example.  But the basic student who does the moving three star arms, stepping forward, three star arms, versus the advanced student who does the moving three star arms, stepping forward, three star arms – same basic technique, same basic conditioning idea.  But the level of the philosophy, the level of the understanding…”

Preach, brother.

For this process to take shape, a good jibengong set should have the quality of scalability – it continues to provide new and intriguing challenges for students at all levels of practice.  Like that game Othello, it takes “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master.”

What is Gongfu?

This is a blog about gongfu 功夫, or “kung fu” as it is usually rendered in English.  One common misconception about this term is that it refers to Chinese martial arts.  Martial arts are one very important type of gongfu; to my mind, they encapsulate the heart and soul of this Chinese idea.  However, the two are not synonymous.  Martial arts, as a discrete skill or endeavor, are ordinarily referred to as 武术 wushu (an interesting term in and of itself, which we will discuss at a later date).

“Gongfu” refers to any complex skill, mastered to the point that it becomes effortless.  (Baldasar Castiglione’s Il Cortino calls this effortless quality esprezzatura, another concept that I hope we can examine at some point).  There are many types of gongfu; martial arts is but one variety.  Other types of gongfu include movement arts such as dance; fine arts such as painting, calligraphy and music; conoisseurship such as tea, wine or scotch (a popular one here in Taiwan); craftsmanship such as carpentry and stonemasonry; literary activity and scholarly pursuits; and so forth.

One commonly given definition of “gongfu” is “consistent effort over a long period of time.”  Although this is not the last word on the subject, it is a pretty good first one.  The term is used very liberally in everyday Chinese in the sense of “working really hard,” as in 我花了不少的功夫在这件事, “I expended no small amount of gongfu on this.”  This could be used in as mundane a context as studying or working late at your job (also popular pastimes in Asia).

Personally, I like the following folk etymology: the first character 功, “gong,” is composed of the characters gong 工, “work,” and li 力, “strength/power.”  The second character, fu 夫 ，means (amongst other things) “husband,” as in zhangfu 丈夫 “husband.”  Therefore, gongfu means “work is your husband.”  Or, more colloquially, “you are work’s bitch.”

From this perspective, gongfu might be seen as the Chinese equivalent of Indian yoga.  Literally, “yoga” derives from the Sanskrit word meaning “yoke,” as in the yoke of an ox.  It is a burden we must bear as we work through our karma in this world.  Just as gongfu does not necessarily connote martial art, yoga is much more than just physical asana or posture practice (“stretching”).

The yoga which has become popular in the West is derived from hatha yoga.  This is but one of many types of Yoga, including the yoga of devotion to a deity (bhakti yoga),  devotion to a teacher (guru yoga), service to others (karma yoga) as well the yoga of abstract philosophical contemplation (jnana yoga).  Yoga, like gongfu, is an all-encompassing way of life.

We can talk about the eight limbs and the philosophical aspects of yoga later on, but for now the point is straightforward: All higher civilizations have their own concept and cultural space for their own forms of gongfu, their own ways for the development of man.