Continuing on with Confucius 4.7;"Your faults define you. From your very faults one can know your quality"
My linkage to old mate Jeff Dahmer probably wasn't the best, but it smacked of "did Jeff have ANY qualities?" Apparently his brother doesn't think so, he changed his name, but his 'mom and pop' still maintain the Dahmer moniker, as well they should, and say they "still love their son despite his crimes" so this tells me he obviously had SOME qualities. I'm not a philosopher, I really shouldn't be allowing these thoughts to migrate from my head to the keyboard (damn you fingers!) but I figure throwing it out there may get someone else thinking about it, someone smarter than me, and I'd be keen to see their thoughts. Nature vs Nurture, etc, etc, and only a mother could love him all ring true, but there are cases where parents and family have completely disowned someone for lesser crimes than Mr Dahmer, but his stand by him.
So from his faults, can we know Jeffrey's qualities, or is that something that only he can know himself? In his mind, Dahmer may have considered his murders as ultimate acts of fulfillment, and thus, they were his qualities; its just that no one else saw them that way. The way we interpret our qualities is just as personal as our qualities themselves I guess.
The ORIGINAL reason this verse came to stand out was in relation to my training. In the martial arts, you can teach someone (anyone) how to perform a front kick; you can demonstrate it for them, break it down and explain the mechanics, the theory, the reasoning, the application and the variations, but you cannot make them perform the perfect kick; their faults won't allow it. The art is perfect, humans are not.
As long as we keep this concept in our head when training and instructing, you're sure to get good results from all students. I cannot perform the perfect kick, but I visualise it in my head and continually strive to better my technique. My students do likewise by watching me and imitating what I do (hence why I have to be continually improving myself). The front kick I can perform isn't bad, my right leg is far more powerful than the left, but my left offers greater reach and height; these are my faults, but also my strengths. If I'm breaking wood, I use my right. If I'm demonstrating how to kick for length and height, I use my left. I am able to demonstrate both variations of the same kick, effectively, because I KNOW MY FAULTS and have learned to put them to an advantage. The faults in this instance are numerous; multiple groin injuries and ankle issues on the right side and muscle tissue problems and a knee operation on the left have resulted in me refining the kicks I perform with each leg slightly differently, but that's my quality. Ideally I would like to be able to perform perfect kicks on both legs, but I cannot, and never will due to the injuries, so I maximise what I DO have.
That is my interpretation of the verse, not a scholarly view, but the view of a martial artist looking to improve physical techniques with brains, not brawn.
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So that was Sunday; lots of posts, scroll down and see 'em all; there's bound to be something there that'll spark you up for a Monday morning of abusive commenting.
And for the record, The Besnard Lakes sound NOTHING LIKE THE ARCADE FIRE as I had been lead to believe.
2 comments:
Don't worry, I didn't do that well in school.
But I'll give your piece a thought and get back to it later.
—I understand what you mean by art vs human: You can't really transmit "correct action" by pure teaching—some form of effort must come from the student himself.
It's like what Confucius said about learning.
(Visit VIC? :) I've only got a year more in Oz.)
I don't think you can even 'teach pure' either, because the teaching must come from a human; fallible.
The art (all art I guess, but in this instance, the martial art I study) is perfect, it's just that it needs to be interpreted and then transmitted by humans, who can only do their best with the faults they have to work with. The result is that when people perform the art, it's their differences (their qualities?) that shine through and that is what makes them different from the next student.
Did that make sense? Might be off the point a little, but is actually one of the points I wanted to make in the original post.
And as I live on the other side of the country (north) I don't expect I'll be in Melbourne anytime soon ... I'm actually closer to Singapore than Victoria!
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