God's Gift of Evil

The other day, while I was at Stanford for Entrepreneur Week, I happened to notice a flyer on the community bulletin board in the Graduate School of Business. It caught me off guard because I didn't expect to see it. The question posed concerned God and the existence of evil. It's an age-old question. How can an all-powerful God allow for so much suffering in this world?

It caught me off guard for several reasons. First, it was not a question I expected to see at a Business School. But more importantly, I was surprised that they considered this a legitimate question. Not because of context-- I applaud Stanford for creating an environment where they felt comfortable exploring this issue. No, I was surprised that it was, in fact, still a question. It seems obvious to me why there is evil and why a benevolent God would allow it.

I should say now that I do believe in God. Not necessarily the God of the Evangelists. More accurately, the God of Spinoza. I like the idea of loving God without ever expecting to be loved in return. That makes sense to me and dispels the illusion of a quid pro quo relationship. After all, it would be rather silly to think that I had anything God would require or that I could keep it from Him if I chose. It seems to make sense to me also because immaturity is proportional to self-absorption. A good friend of mine told me once that his job as a parent was to instill in his kids of sense of others. As he put it, there's no more selfish creature on this earth than a baby. The parents' job is to move the focus from self to others as the child grows so when he becomes an adult, he can become a productive member of society. If you extrapolate this idea out, it becomes clear that our lives are designed to have an exterior focus. The humor of it exists in the fact that we must have a highly develop internal focus in order to be effective in our exterior focus. For some reason, that cracks me up.

But I digress.

I believe in God and I believe he is a loving God. I don't believe He is a doting parent, though. Let me put it to you like this. Years ago, I participated in a seminar with a world famous martial arts instructor. During one demonstration, he was particularly rough with me. I didn't think anything of it but that 3 minute session left me with a loose tooth and a really bloody lip. I had come from a Japanese tradition so it was no big deal to me but the other participants (NorCal Softies) were shocked. Later, a person asked the instructor if he was mad at me. Somebody told me later of his answer. He said that a flower can be raised in a hothouse where it would be given everything it needed and treated with kid gloves. This flower would grow into a beautiful flower but if something were to happen o the hothouse, there wouldn't be much chance for the survival of the flower. On the other hand, you could make the flower grow in the wild where it would be subjected to all kinds of strife-- wind, rain, sun, animals... If that flower grew up, it would be beautiful and tough and capable of standing on its own.

Needless to say, I was deeply touched by what he said. I think God is like that too. Evil must exist because without it, what would we struggle against? What would we have to prove we are worthy? That's not a popular idea these days. We no longer let our kids compete in school. We've taken away losing from their curriculum. But that does them no favors because it gives them an unrealistic view of life. Some people win and some people lose. And it's always better to be a winner. This struggle defines our humanity. Without it, what would we have?

Like the ancient Greeks believed, this struggle is our special gift. It allows us the opportunity for greatness and true moral achievement. This is something not available to God. God knows nothing of courage. How could He? What does an all-powerful deity know about fear? No, it is in our potential for failure that we achieve anything. It is only through this courage can we really feel our humanity. In our modern society's desire to moderate and eliminate risk, we remove that which makes us human. If there is no failure, no evil then there is no greatness. Evil must exist and it is God's gift to us. In our struggle against it, we find our deepest morality.

Defending Obama?

I never thought I would write something supporting Barack Obama. After all, he's a Punahou boy. But after reading what Senator Daniel Inouye said about him, I felt compelled to step up. There are plenty of reasons to think that Obama isn't qualified to run the Country but where he went to high school isn't one of them.

Folks who aren't from Hawaii may not understand what Inouye was trying to pull. When he said that Obama went to a "ritzy" school and was "out of touch," he played on the worst part of the local Hawaiian culture. I don't know what Obama's financial situation back then. I'm also unsure what that has to do with anything. As if HRC had it any different. In Hawaii, the first question somebody asks you when you first meet, no matter how old you are, is "Where did you go to high school." You are totally judged by your answer. All kinds of assumptions are made about you. What makes it worse is that you cannot ever change that opinion. When Inouye reinforced the prejudices against Punahou, he was playing the race card in a huge way. Punahou was the school started for the rich, white kids and everybody in Hawaii knows it.

Inouye, a Japanese-American, who lived through the internment camps of WWII should know better. He's been the victim of identity politics. I can't believe that he would subject someone else to the same pointless racism. I'm ashamed and embarrassed by his behavior.

The Media Panel and the Nerds

I just got back from a panel at Stanford. The discussion topic was business/media relations. Before I went down, Robert Hessen asked me if thought it was truly worth the drive from San Francisco. I didn't really have an answer for him then. Post-panel, I'd have to say it was worth it but not for the reasons you might think.

I have always been suspicious of the media. It was ingrained in me early in my career by own experiences and the experiences of my mentors. At the same time, the media in general has been pretty kind to me. I was first published when I was 22 because the editor of a magazine happened to like some of my ideas and decided to let me run with it. At the same time, I've had to deal with media scrutiny which is less pleasant. I was interviewed by a Wall Street Journal reporter under the condition of anonymity. I have to admit that he was very good at his job because he got me to open up far more than I wanted to. He might as well have named me in his article because it was readily apparent who his quotes came from. That caused me quite a bit of drama.

When I lived in NYC, I made friends with Lee Smith-- a prominent journalist. He gave me hope in the profession. Those hopes were again dashed when I realized there were few journalists of Lee's courage and perspicacity. But it never really concerned me because those in my profession mostly tried to avid media. Attention was a bad thing. Craving it was the ultimate sin.

On a side note, that's what makes me so uncomfortable about Myspace and Facebook. They seem to market in a level of self-absorption I'm uncomfortable with. I know that seems disingenuous given that I have my own blog. The only thing I can say in my defense is that I try to be useful here. i don't assume that the minutiae of my life would be interesting to anybody.

So it's an interesting twist of fate that I'm now in a business that almost requires media attention. I have to deal with the one group of people I've spent my entire professional career up to now avoiding. If that's not some sort of cosmic joke, I don't know what it.

What I learned tonight was that I understand media relations far better than I thought I did. I guess all those years of avoiding media attention taught me something of their habit and forma mentis. It was gratifying to see that my conception of media relations was almost exactly the same as the panel. The only difference really was that they were talking about tech.

Another thing really caught my attention. When it was time for questions, only one person was able to frame a cogent question. The rest were a miasma of buzzwords and delusions of grandeur. It's no wonder why so many tech companies fail. They have the same problem as the restaurant business. Promote a waiter to manager and you have a manager who doesn't know how to manage. Same with an engineer I guess. Adult supervision? Maybe. But how about having the right skill set for the job.

Entrepreneur week at Stanford seems to be a pretty cool thing. I'm really glad I went. It's been a while since I've been to a quasi-education lecture. I really enjoyed it.

Standards and Other Tunes

San Francisco is filled with writers. Or to be more accurate, San Francisco seems to be filled with people who fancy themselves writers. The only standard here for being a writer is the desire to call yourself one. The only skill you seem to require is the ability to string together a couple of coherent sentences. Or maybe a polysyllabic word... San Francisco is a lot like LA when you think about it. In LA, everybody is an actor. You meet a waitress or a bartender and they'll tell you that they're actually an actor. Here in SF, it's exactly the same except with writing.

Now, maybe I'm being a hard ass but I think standards matter. I published my first article in a national magazine when I was 22. I've perhaps 2 dozen pieces of work strewn out through different national magazines. Still, I don't consider myself a writer. If anything, I'm a philosopher who uses words as his medium for communication for lack of a better method. I've always felt limited by language. That probably has to do with my lack of facility more than anything. I wonder if men like Hitchens feel the same way. A writer is someone like my friend John Hessen. He has written speeches for the UN and for President Clinton. He's a writer. A writer is my friend Lee Smith who is also a vigorous thinker. His way with words often shame to silence.

I recently had to fire an individual in my employ. I let him go for several reasons but primarily, it was because he couldn't do what he said he could do. He majored in English in college. Specifically in poetry. He constantly talked about writing and seemed to be genuinely interested in the topic. I had no reason to believe he could not write. Needless to say, I was shocked at how poorly he actually wrote. It wasn't just substandard. It was complete garbage. I remember looking at his work and thinking that a 5th grader could do better. Yet, this person fancies himself a writer. Tellingly, he told me that he showed his work to several people and they assured him that is work was of professional quality. English must not have been their first language.

This trend is distressing. I personally didn't feel comfortable calling myself a fighter until I was in my 30's. And I started the martial arts when I was 6. I started competing internationally when I was 15. I've spent my entire life fighting in the dojo and in the streets. Yet, it wasn't until I reached a certain level of proficiency that I could give myself the title of "fighter" without embarrassment.

This is all just to say that standards matter. You can't just say you are something because you like the idea. If we all started to do that, then nothing would mean anything. Words used to have an empirical meaning. C.S Lewis wrote about the day when being called a gentleman meant something more than the fact that the speaker thought positively of you. It used to mean something tangible. Now it's just a matter of opinion. I think being a writer should be something observable. Otherwise, it is meaningless.

Big Day

It was a big day for my company today. About 8 months ago, a friend and I started a hospitality consulting company. It's gone through a quite a few growing pains in this short amount of time. We've changed focus. We've fired and hired personnel. But we also came up with one big idea that seems to have started the ball rolling. Today was the day we unveiled it to the general public and it went far better than we could have hoped.

I don't want to turn this blog into one big ad for my business. There are far too many blogs doing that. I want to keep this blog pure in the sense that I only want to use it to address issues that interest or concern me. Because of that, I'm not going to get into the details of my business right now. Nor will I get into the specifics of why today was so huge. But I will say this. There's no better feeling than coming up with an idea from scratch and seeing it come to fruition. To see what only existed in your mind existing in reality is an incredible rush. Execution is the biggest high there is, I think.

I was asked today how I came up with the idea. The question caught me off guard. I hadn't thought about how I came up with the idea. It came to me while having Chinese food at Ton Kiang. I had been rereading Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics and my head was filled with Aristotlean-type questions. I had applied Aristotle's precepts to many things in my life and it had always brought me success. I used his methodology to increase my ability to learn martial arts. I borrowed liberally from him when I came up with a hand-to-hand program for the U.S. Marine Corps. It's pretty clear that I've never had an original thought of my own. Anyway, I just applied his principles to drink and through some trial and error, we came up with something that really created quite a buzz today.

This idea, in and of itself, is pretty cool but what makes it really great is that it has allowed us to develop relationships with people we would never have had a chance to work with before. This little idea has opened up some huge doors and now it's just up to us to take advantage of them. Maybe, I'll talk more about my business in the future. I don't want to jinx it.

But for right now, I just want to enjoy today's success. I remember what Kawano Sensei told me when I won my first tournament as a little kid. He said, "Boy, you're champion for today only. Tomorrow, you're nothing again." So today, I'm a success. Tomorrow, I'm back at it again-- trying to prove I'm not just taking space on this planet.

The Unintended Legacy of an Iolani Education

I've been reading Guy Kawasaki's blog a lot recently. Guy wrote a great book called "The Art of the Start." I highly recommend it if you're starting anything. It's a no-nonsense primer written in a way that's easy and fun to read. You can tell Guy doesn't brook a lot of bullshit. Check out his website. www.guykawasaki.com. Anyway, Guy and I went to the same high school. I have to admit I got a really good education from that school even though I had a really difficult time there. Iolani adopts the Asian model for education which mostly focuses on rote learning. Rote learning has its place but it must be balanced out by critical thinking. Iolani not only completely fails in that department but actively works against it. As I like to say, Iolani is training the next batch of middle managers for CitiGroup.

The school has changed quite a bit since I was there. I recently went back to help my friend coach water polo and I was appalled by what I saw. Under Rev. Coon, Iolani was a strict, academically challenging institution where principles mattered and you were treated accordingly. Now, under the new headmaster, it seems that the school has whored itself out. In its zeal to add to its prestige, it sold the only thing that made us better than our better-heeled rivals, Punahou. We always had a pride, a character that came with hard work that Punhou boys never had. Sure, we were generally poorer and lacked their opulent facilities but we had something money couldn't buy-- the pride of hard work and accomplishment that didn't come from a rich Daddy. Iolani has lost that. Sure the academics are still rigorous but it doesn't take much of a teacher to inundate his students with homework. Any fool can do that. My experience the the current crop of students was woefully disappointing. They were an unremarkable group and embarrassingly spoiled. The were like a group of Asian Punahou kids. Pathetic.

But that's not what I wanted to write about. Reading Guy's work, I began to notice an interesting trend. Guy refers to himself as a democratizer of information. He actively works to dispel grand myths and it seems he derives a certain glee in mortalizing the Gods. I wonder if this is a Hawaii thing. Maybe it's indicative of our Iolani education and always playing second fiddle to a better known Punahou. I notice this same desire in myself.

I remember how my European counterparts made me feel on my first trip to Europe. I didn't know anything about wines or beers or cuisine. I was a local boy from Hawaii from God's sake. Heineken was the best beer I'd ever heard of and a good restaurant was any place that had cloth napkins. I remember how those fuckers lorded that information over me and did their best to make me feel insignificant. No matter how I outperformed them in anything else, they would invariably default to this position. It took me a long time but I gradually got to the point where I would not fall prey to such behavior but I still seethe whenever I see anyone who fancies himself better simply because he knows more about wines. Recently, a buddy of mine from Iolani and I started a hospitality consulting company. Our goal is to expose Asia to Western cuisine, customs and drink. Personally, I want to do this because I see how the Europeans mock my Asian brothers for their admittedly boorish habits. i want to completely destroy their ability to hold this over them. I was to demystify food and drink so nobody can use it to create a frivolous aristocracy.

I don't mind people being better than other people. I know lots of people better than me. But knowing more about wine doesn't make you better. Knowing more about scotch doesn't make you better. So in the tradition of Guy Kawasaki, I'd like to democratize this. I want to teach my Asian brothers to drink like gentlemen. Anybody got a problem with that?

Alltop

I don't often do PSA's but I came across a site that y'all might find interesting and useful. www.alltop.com. It's the top website from all these different categories. It's very cool and a luddite like me could make sense of it. I'm really stoked because it's one of Guy Kawasaki's new ventures. Guy is a Hawaii boy and incidentally, we went to the same high school. He must have been a mediocre student in high school because I think he could only go to Stanford but obviously he's done quite well for himself despite that. I wish I had more to say but unfortunately, I'm not much of a techie. Check it out. Let me know if you like it. I know, it sounds like the last name of a stripper I knew in New York: Bunny Alltop. Or was it Candy Alltop. I don't remember anymore...

CI

Epistemology is one of my favorite areas of study. According to my dictionary, Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. It is a theory of knowledge with regards to methods, validity and scope. I was tremendously confused when someone first tried to define this area of study for me. It's really a non-Western concept when you think about it. It's something before cogito ergo sum. Perplexed as I was, I struggled mightily with this subject until Professor Codevilla casually said to me, "It's just a fancy word for counterintelligence."

Counterintelligence can broadly divided into two sections offensive and defensive. Offensive CI is mostly about disinformation and feeding the enemy information we'd like them to believe. As a free society, we've never had much success at this. Defensive CI is about validating information and its methodology is indistinguishable from epistemology.

When faced with any bit of intelligence from a foreign source, CI encourages us to ask some very simple questions. How do I know that this is true? Do I have a particular inclination to believe this? Is so, is anybody aware of this inclination? Who stands to gain if I judge this piece of information as valid? What actions do they believe it will induce me to take? Who would benefit from those actions?

If you take this line of thought seriously, as epistemology asks you to do, you will find yourself soon without bearings. When it comes right down to it, what I know is very limited. Everything is a guess or based on someone else's word and I must judge how much validity to give it. Science is just that way. Unless you've done the experiment yourself, what is touted as science is just somebody else's opinion. It may make sense. It may be commonly accepted but that doesn't necessarily mean it true or valid.

Most people don't have the energy to engage in this type of disciplined thinking. It's not easy. It's also uncomfortable because at the end of the day, all you're left with is a big bunch of uncertainty. And most folks don't like that. It's far easier to believe that someone or something is working actively against you rather than facing the fact that you are totally insignificant to the Universe and its means and movements do not and will not ever take you into consideration.

But this is necessary. Because only after you force yourself to parse down your beliefs to what you actually know, first hand, can you start to separate your justified beliefs from opinion and hearsay. The bottom line is this, unless you have first hand experience with it, you don't really know it and if you don't really know it, you're hardly in the position to judge its validity. So ask yourself: what do you truly know? What do you truly believe? Subject these beliefs to epistemological rigor and if they survive, you'll truly have something worth believing. It still may not be right but you'll have done everything that could reasonably be expected.

The Forms of My Youth

I was never much on kata. Practicing a form in the air didn't seem to make much sense to me. I've always had a shrewd eye for movement so replicating a movement has never been much of a problem. I could pick up the most omplex katas after a few passes and because of the ease with which I approached this area of study, I've always neglected it-- opting to try to train something I found more difficult and interesting.

But recently, I found myself longing to practice these forms. Obviously, it has something to do with my injury. I'm not as agile and athletic as I once was but I think something deep inside of me wanted a serious practice again. So I've started my training again. It's not much. I practice one Wing Chun form-- Sil Lim Tao-- several times and I start and end with some Chi Kung exercises. It's really all I can consistently do. It may not be much but there is something in my muscles that remembers these movements. I find my mood immeasurably improved, even after just a few days.

I'm a little embarrassed I was so against this practice when I was young. If my teachers could see me now, they would all give me a big, "I told you so." That's the thing about the arts. The older I get, the more I see how wise my teachers were. I was really lucky on that account. With all the shopping mall hacks teaching some version of a martial art, I was tremendously fortunate to have only trained with the best of teachers. Every one of them was a spectacular martial artist. Some had their demons as people but that also taught me an important lesson.

I'm really excited to be training these forms again. It feels like I might on to something; that I might be finally concentrating on the one area of my training that I've neglected for 31 years. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

A Humble Mind

A little while ago, I was fortunate enough to get my one of my mentors, Angelo Codevila, on the phone for a social call. Professor Codevilla was and continues to be a major influence on me. I learned a great many things from him but most importantly, I learned how to think. I don't agree with him on everything. (He is far more conservative than I am) Still, I've met no one who thinks more clearly and critically than he does. He showed me that good men of conscience can honestly disagree and arrive at very different places despite working with the same materials. At the same time, he showed me how to avoid all the many errors of thought that trap most people when they attempt to reason. I recommend all his work. Even if you do not find favor with his arguments, I'm sure you will marvel at the lucidity of his thinking.

I met Professor Codevilla when I was in my early teens. At the time, I thought he was crazy. I couldn't see how he could see the world as he did. As I look back, I'm deeply embarrassed by some of the conversations we had. But I picked up one of his books after a few years in the field and everything changed. Bolstered by actual experience, his ways of looking at a problem made sense. When I went to him for counsel, he again pushed me towards Thuycidides, Machiavelli, Plato and Aritotle-- all of whom have become very close friends. Simply put Dr. Codevilla taught me a framework with which I could make sense of the world. More importantly, he gave me the courage to honestly assess new ideas.

Saotome Sensei was asked once what was the difference between his American students and his Japanese students. He answered that if he told his Japanese students to do something, they would do it a thousand times without question. If he told his American students to do something, they would do it 25 times, say they knew and and ask for the next lesson. There are certain lesson that can only be learned through time just as there are certain truths in poetry than can only be divined after you have memorized the poem. For the uninitiated, this makes no sense. Rote learning is not the answer to everything but it does teach lessons that can be learned through no other methodology.

I say all this to indirectly comment on a phenomenon that I find distressing. I'm constantly dealing with thought errors on a daily basis. By thought errors, I don't mean people who think the wrong thing. I mean people who arrive at a conclusion through faulty methodology. I think it has a lot to do with emotion. When I first started teaching my latest group of students, they were highly resistant. They simply couldn't believe what I was saying. They were used to understanding thing before they engaged in an action. The idea that they would have to do the action and achieve proficiency before they understood was anathema to them. To them, understanding was the prerequisite, not the reward. But I come from a different tradition. Perhaps it's because of my martial arts training but I'm totally comfortable with not understanding something. I just have to trust the person asking me to do it. To me, understanding was always the reward. Achieving it was my raison d'etre.

I'm going to write more about thought errors in upcoming blogs. I'll take them apart one by one-- at least the ones I have to deal with but let me end this installment with something to think about. It about "doing." It's about actually being able to move through the world. The man who does something will always have a deeper understanding than the man who just thinks about it because reality is the standard that thoughts must be judged against. There are limitations in language-- major ones for me, less so for a Christopher Hitchens but those limitations exist nonetheless. Epistemology limits our ability to truly communicate with each other accurately. There's a whole lot of truth in Bob Marley's words: He who feels it knows it more.

Be that as it may, language is what we have and we must be precise about it because sloppy language breeds sloppy thinking. Though my friend TheAikidoist doesn't agree with me, our thoughts are shaped and contained by our language. Thinking exists in language. But I digress. We're talking about something basic-- determining validity. To do this properly, you have to rid yourself of thought errors. Unfortunately, this isn't really taught in school anymore where education has become more indoctrination.

Dominican Priest Father Xavier said to me once that one of the keys to understanding was wonder. You had to be able to think about things you didn't understand. You had to allow for ideas that were foreign to you. That's the first thought error that I'd like to talk about-- a lack of wonder. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's not true. I think that requires a bit of humility and sadly, that's lacking in academia and humanity in general. In our primal need to feel safe, we default to untested certainty. We accept answers where they may be none. We generate explanations to explain what the human brain may not be suited to understand. So that's what I'll leave you with. Be open to not knowing. Be open to the possibility of not understanding. Be open to something that might simply be beyond you. It is only with that forma mentis can you truly approach the really interesting questions of your life.

Training for Nerds

I'd like to tell you about my group class. I teach martial arts to a group of brilliant middle-aged men. I'm not exaggerating when I say brilliant. Each is successful enough in his field that he can take a few hours of in the middle of the work day to train. Each is self-employed in a market that is ruthless when it comes to talent. I've written about these guys before. When they started, they were the most uncoordinated and unathletic group I had ever worked with. Not one of them was a fighter and most had never participated in a contact sport. But I have to say: 8 months later, I'm more proud of this group than I am any band of elite warriors I've trained or worked with.

This group has had its ranks thinned since its beginnings. There's nothing like full-contact sparring to separate those who really want to learn and those who simply talk a good game. Our core group is a tough little band of computer nerds and traders. Not what you would traditionally classify as warriors but warriors nonetheless.

That term is thrown around a lot, particularly by those who want to lend some morality to their ass-kicking. I've never used it lightly and I've had major arguments with my mentors and employers about what I thought was their unjustified use of the word. I have some simple rules about warriorhood.
1. Only another warrior can initiate you into the band. It doesn't do any good to have your mother call you a warrior unless she's a warrior too.
2. You actually have to have some physical ability to fight. If not, you're just an athlete, not a warrior.
3. You have to have an ethical code. Without that, you're just a thug.
4. You will have had to overcome some significant obstacle. As George Leonard wrote, "Being a warrior has nothing to do with winning or even succeeding. It has to do with risking and losing and risking again as long as you live.
5. You've got to be willing to put it on the line for something greater than yourself.

My motley crew of nerds have certainly fulfilled all these requirements. In fact, what there were mostly missing was the physical part. That was easy enough to teach them because the core elements were there. The thing that amazes me, though is how much I've learned from them. I don't come from their world. I grew up fighting so I was relatively unfamiliar with the fear and apprehension they felt about training. None of the men I've trained before exhibited any of that fear. If they felt it, they would have had to choke it down for fear of ridicule. But that's a different thing entirely. The closest thing I can relate to was when I got to college. I shouldn't have been there. I was a trouble-maker, a fighter and a world-class martial artist. I had no business being at an institution of higher learning. But I was lucky enough to have some phenomenal professors who took me under their wings (I'm still no sure why) and guide me through my academic life. To my great surprise, I found that I was actually quite good at it.

My nerds, in their approach to training, showed me that I had a lot in common with them. Their apprehension (and mine) was based in a lack of familiarity. If I could be guided through gently (as fearful as I was) hopefully, I could do the same with them. I spent so much time and energy thinking about how to explain things, how to teach certain concepts that were second nature to a fighter but completely foreign to a computer nerd.

When it comes right down to it, I think that these students were all far braver than I've ever been. Fighting, jumping out of an airplane, etc. has always been second nature to me. Sure, I've been scared but it was always mixed with exhilaration. School was terrifying because it made me question my value as a person-- at least in the beginning. My students had far more to be really scared of. None of them, before the started class had ever taken a really good punch before. Now, they are mixing it up like seasoned amateurs.

One of students once said to me that he never used to believe me when I said that there were certain things that could only be learned through physical force and violence. He said that he thought I was just being a macho asshole. It wasn't until after he'd gone through my training that he understood what I was talking about. There aren't words for what I'm trying to say. But I can show you physically. We can talk about it after you understand.

That's the thing with martial arts. You have to trust your teacher because many of the lessons do not make sense until you can do them. I guess that why I favor Spinoza so much more than Descartes. In purely physical terms, a Cartesian mind would never understand the martial arts. You cannot wake up one day and know Kung Fu.

I'm really proud of my nerdy students. I'm also continuing to refine the teaching method. I think, in there somewhere, is a lesson that would benefit nerds of all stripes. This is the greatest gift of my injury. It has forced me to teach a group of men I would have never thought of for a second before. I'm a better man because I know them. I honored to count them as friends.

A Few Good Men...

A little while ago, an oil geologist friend of mine recommended that a I read a novel called, "The Shell Game." My friend said that the author, Steve Alten, had come up with a pretty impressive piece of conspiracy theory. I'm not much of a fiction reader-- particularly modern fiction but my friend strongly suggested that I read it. He simply said, "People actually believe this." So trusting my friend as I do, I decided to give it a read.

First, let me say that it's an impressive piece of fiction. Well written and timely, I definitely enjoyed the time I spent with this book. Do I recommend it? Sure, it f you are a sane, rational adult who has some sense of how the government actually works. Unfortunately, this book will appeal to stupid people just like The DaVinci Code. Alten goes to a lot of effort to surround insane suppositions with actual fact, giving his conspiracy theories the whiff of the truth. In that sense, it is an impressive piece of work. Obviously, he has an axe to grind with neoconservatives. But just as obviously, he's pretty unclear about actual neoconservative doctrine. Admittedly, the term has been co-opted by members of the current Administration but I'm of the belief that if you are alluding to scholarly discipline, you really ought to have some of it.

The thing about well written conspiracies is the fact that you cannot conclusively disprove them. The DaVinci Code was replete with this type of innuendo. The Shell Game is well-written and well-thought out (for the most part). Occasionally, it went to far in trying to tie up loose ends which only served to distract from the weight of it arguments. Be that as it may, it would be pointless for me to dissect all the little fallacies and misconceptions that the author complied to tell his story. Still, I do feel like I need to address this conspiracy nonsense. So here it goes.

First, let me start with my nemesis, Rene Descartes. I'm sure readers of my blog are quite sick of hearing me rage against him. Well, too bad. Personally, I never tire of besmirching Descartes-- such is the malice I direct toward him. His philosophy for determining validity is the source of an incredible amount of stupidity. To those that are unfamiliar with this, I will briefly explain. Descartes believe that you determined the validity of an idea by testing it against your own experience. This form should be recognizable because this is what most people do. Now, admittedly, on a day-to-day level, this modus operandi is fine. But what if you encounter an idea that is beyond your realm of experience? Do you automatically label it invalid? If so, how do you grow? All real growth is dependent on experiences that expands your understanding;that forces you to question your conception of the world. Descartes simply doesn't allow for that. More than anything, his form is a justification for ignorance.

Sp what does this have to do with conspiracies? Hang on, Im getting there. A good friend of mine hates Fox News. Vocal and virulent in his hatred, he rarely misses an opportunity to malign the network. I asked him why one day. His answer was that Fox was biased. I asked him how did he know? Was he ever involved in any situation that made Fox News? Could he disagree with the reporting from a first-person point of view? He could not. I pointed out that the only way he could accuse someone of bias is if he was personally involved in that event. Otherwise, it's just another uninformed opinion. I cite this example as a classic example of the negative effects of Descartes. Another friend once said that Fox was biased because most of the country is liberal. I asked him why he thought that. He answered because most of the people he met were liberal. I offered that this was more a factor of where he lived, worked and socialized (San Francisco) than what was actually the state of the country. It's pretty easy to have a skewed view of the country if you use the Bay Area as a meter. I think Berkeley just discovered that fact.

The funny thing is this. People who believe in conspiracies rarely know a soldier, government agent of any anybody for that matter who makes his living where the rubber meets the road. I'll tell you why I believe above all reasons why we actually landed a man on the moon. Because those men, John Glenn, Gus Grissom and their brothers are simply not the sort that would lie to America. Not a huge lie like that. You don't get to that position without displaying the strongest ethics and character. Those men would not and could not have been coerced into such a charade.

Let's look at the World Trade Bombing. Lost of silly people believe this to be an internal demolition. These same people often learn about explosives from the internet. The thought is because the building collapsed under its own weight that demolitions were placed at its foundation. I'm not going to get into the physics of this because that's not the point I'm trying to make. What I will say is this. People would have had to place those explosives. Those people would have to had been very good at their jobs and more importantly, proven their reliability on other clandestine jobs for God and Country. You would not use a rookie for something like that. Men who are chosen for that kind of work have to display tremendous reliability and intelligence. They are also judged on their patriotism. After all, you wouldn't train a man to do all manner of dangerous things if you thought there was the possibility that he would use those skills against you. Now given all that, does anybody reasonably think that men like those would willingly kill American citizens on such a grand scale? Or is it possible that these men who are often highly educated in civilian schools could be fooled so easily into thinking that it was for the "greater good?"

The sad thing is that most of the people here in San Francisco do think it's possible. But that's only because they usually don't know any of the type of men I'm talking about. Unfortunately, those men are in short supply in the Bay Area. Berkeley should thank God above for the United States Marine Corps. It's highly unlikely they could muster enough good men to defend themselves from a marauding band of Lilliputians.