motivation

Just found a great motivation for long runs, or really any other difficult undertaking:

“You are doing a great job, you no longer feel like this is going well, you feel that you may be about to fail. This is normal. When you attempt something bigger than yourself, somewhere towards the end, when finishing is in sight, you start to feel at your lowest and that you are not capable of finishing. The more of these experiences you have, the better you will get at recognizing this moment, the one just before you finish, when you invariably feel like giving up.”

- Milner Ball



Quoted in a longer article from Flagpole Magazine:
https://flagpole.com/featured/2020/06/24/milner-balls-fierce-drive-for-social-justice-lifted-all/

ostentatious diversity

Trying to think about what's so annoying about the current push for racial diversity and it seems to me that the problem with it is that it presupposes that we're all racists who need to be told what to think.  Seeing someone demonstrating against racism is boring and puzzling.  Who - besides a few chucklefucks whose opinions can be ignored - is actually in favor of racism?

So when I see an earnestly angry post in favor of racial diversity, I react the same way I would if someone were angrily demanding that I be in favor of the sunrise tomorrow.  I never had a doubt that it was going to rise, so I don't need reminders about it. Screaming at me that the sun will rise tomorrow merely makes me question your sanity and want to get the hell away from you. 

Nor do I need a strident voice telling me that black lives matter, especially when that message is accompanied by the strong taint of condescension and superiority and delivered publicly for maximum feedback to the screamer in search of validation, with such validation feedback drowning out all other voices.

Perhaps we need less ostentatious diversity messages and more matter of fact depictions of life as we would have it lived. Show me some sunrise photos and let me comment on their beauty.  Likewise, show me the beauty of world you want, and then shut up and let me admire it without you demanding that I do so.

Edited to add: Charles Love has a much better explanation than mine when he writes:

"Efforts to stop discrimination and stereotyping perpetuate the perception that black lives really are inferior. The implication is that black life is hard, black life is poverty, black life is scary, and black life is sad. Woke whites aren’t saying that black lives matter. They’re saying that it’s up to them to make black lives matter."

Here's the link: https://www.city-journal.org/white-wokeness

There is no leadership

We lack leaders, people who will take a stand, defend it and inspire us to join them.  There are plenty of politicians, but those are people whose highest ambition is to remain where they are, to get re-elected.  Those are not leaders.

If you accept the notion that the country is polarized - and I'm not sure I do accept that - then neither side, no group, really has leaders in the sense of inspiring people.  There are people in charge, but they herd; they do not lead.

There's no shortage of people who are against something.  Protestors infest every large city and many smaller ones.  They scream that they're against racism.  That's so boring as to make me yawn.  Who, in any civilized nation, is in FAVOR of racism?  The easiest thing in the world is to find a target for ire.  Much more difficult is to clearly and calmly lay out a goal AND the steps to achieve it.  Easy to tear down a statue.  Harder to make a new one that will be respected.  Harder still to explain why it should be respected.  And probably hardest of all to engender that respect, instill it in others so that the statue rises, not because a politician ordered it built, but because the people together decided that it is natural and right that it should be erected.

Tearing things down is easy.  Any two-year-old who can throw a tantrum can do that.  Building something to last - let's try that instead.  First, we need a leader...

Why I will not kneel

It's become quite the fashion in the last week or so to kneel, either in protest of the George Floyd murder or in sympathy with those protesting the murder.  In fact, all over the internet and elsewhere (newspapers, opinion columns, blogs) people are rushing to assure their audience that they're in step with the groupthink that says systemic racism infests America.  To show how progressive they are, people are either posting completely blank black pages as a "blackout" or they're physically kneeling.

I don't have a particular problem with bowing or even kneeling per se.  As a martial artist for two decades and a practitioner of Zen Buddhism for nearly as long, I'm intimately familiar with both bowing and kneeling - AS A SHOW OF RESPECT.

What is being demanded by the progressives with the current fad, however, is not respect but submission.  When I bow upon entering the dojo, it is a voluntary sign that I respect the space and those in it.  When I bow to my opponent, my opponent also bows to me in a mutual show of respect.  My bows and prostrations within my daily Zen practice are a show of respect: respect for the historical Buddha, respect for the teachings promulgated by his followers and respect for fellow sentient beings.

My bows show respect, but for the sheep thinkers who are demanding that I kneel before their cause, respect is not nearly enough.  They want submission, and that is impossible.

So I will not kneel, either literally or figuratively, to anyone.  As an American, I may show respect to anyone I choose in any way I wish, but I will not kneel to despicable despots whose aim is submission, not respect.

two takes on the same situation

Responding to the news story at this link:

https://flagpole.com/news/in-the-loop/2020/06/02/two-differing-views-of-the-protest/

 

 

This is an interesting look at the "peaceful" protests in Athens the other night.  Note that the first part is a report from the Police Chief and the rebuttal at the end is from one of the Athens Commissioners, who uses a lot of buzzwords and sounds like a virtue-signaling fool.  I find the Chief's account to be more believable, though like all police reports, it is deliberately bland by design and probably leaves out a good bit.

What's most interesting to me is the matter of fact description of the planning that went into the outside rioters' actions.  Look at what they brought to the game: gas masks, bricks, leaf blowers (to blow away tear gas), firearms, and so forth.  Who does that if they're planning a "peaceful" demonstration? 

I'm certain that these scenes were repeated across many cities and are probably planned for more.  Note especially the Chief's assertion that the plan was to tie up the police at the riot while another group broke into gun stores, which in fact did happen in Athens at Academy Sports.

These are not peaceful protests, but are premeditated violent uprisings, and those posting on social media today in all black with various idiotic hashtags are ignorant chucklefucks who need to shut the hell up already.