Soei Nage

It would seem that every culture has created its own form of martial art, sometimes by pure invention but most often by the modification of pre-existing forms from other cultures. The earliest origins of formal martial arts are disputed--with some claiming that India is the source of both Greek and Chinese martial arts (and we know that Japanese arts come from China) while others posit a separate lineage for ancient Greek style of fighting. The more modern forms of grappling--Russian sambo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo--have better documented histories and clear lineages (Japanese judo being the origin of the other two I listed).

The martial arts with which I am familiar are high school wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and judo (the Costa Rican flavor). Some judokas will claim that all judo is the same judo, but this does not negate the fact that there exist regional differences. The Russians are known for powerful explosive judo that begins to look like Greco-Roman wrestling (watch their kata garumas) while the French are known for leg sweeps and large leg movements. The core principles of judo persists though. Judo is fight for balance. Your weight needs to be balances better than your opponent and your body needs to be in the proper position to capitalize on this different in balance (between you and your opponent). The grip work with the gi is aimed at unbalancing your opponent. The movement work with your feet is mean to transfor your weight without disrupting your own balance so that you can move into position without sacrificing your own weight distribution.

Position is of paramount importance and it is what allows a smaller, weaker opponent to defeat a larger, stronger opponent. The force of gravity acting on the larger body is leveraged to the advantage of the smaller, more skilled judoka. Take the ippon soei nage for example. This throw awards the advantage to the shorter judoka due to the place of the smaller judoka's body as a fulcrum over which the lever of the larger judoka will move. Here is a video that demonstrates a series of soei nage throws, varied from one another by the grip and arm positioning.

The tori (the judoka performing the throw) must place his or her hips beneath the center of gravity of the uke (the judoka being thrown) to perform the the throw with maximum effect. There is first the unbalancing of the uke to the front and up, then an entry, then the throw, all completed with explosive movement that does not allow the uke to recover from the initial unbalancing.

The techniques here are not confined to judo. We may take balance, position, and explosive movement in a metaphoric sense when speaking of business or politics or in a more literal sense when theorizing about warfare. Indeed, the maneuver theory of warfare, used to great effect in the American invasion of Iraq is an example of these same principles put to use. The enemy's command and control structure is targeted, speed and communication are emphasized over the winning of decisive pitched battles, and the redloyment (rebalancing, we could say) of assets to target the off-balance opponent are key.

The juggernaut of the United States military, the most modern and and one of the best trained in the world, employed technology and the strategic lessons learned from centuries of decades of warfighting to unbalance the Iraqi army and keep it that way, but smaller, weaker forces have followed the precepts of maneuver warfare and the wisdom of judo many times in the past century while on the other side of assymetrical warware. Mao's famous dictum, "The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue" is a classic example of keeping a more powerful enemy off balance.

I believe that the application to armed conflict of this doctrine (both strategic and tactical) of balance and movement is sufficiently clear and that I have belabored the point enough. But I would like to end by suggesting that you consider the allegorical implications of this strategy in other areas of your life and in the world around you. Like the skillful soei nage practitioner, if you drop beneath the wary gaze of your opposition and insert yourself beneath his or her center of gravity, so to speak. Don't meet force with yet more blunt force but rather with redirection over a central point of rhetorical rotation. As you might imagine, I prefer subtly to choleric shouting, and I would recommend the same for you as well.

El Golem

I will write a shorter post tonight with the understanding that my introductory post was far too long to hold the attention of all but the most dedicated readers. Another detail that I neglected to mention in my first post is that I will occasionally write in Spanish and English or make reference to Spanish texts. Most of my friends are native Spanish speakers and though my Spanish is not perfect, I often find myself thinking in Spanish and I read it nearly as easily as English.

Tonight I have included here a favorite poem that is exquisite in its complexity and subtle mocking jab at both man and his creation (God, the golem?). The poem does more than suggest the frailty of man and the folly of his endeavors because just as the the reflections here pass down the chain of being so too do these ripples of reflected accusation move upward to the ultimate creator. Here is the Spanish original:

El Golem (por Jorge Luis Borges)

Si (como el griego afirma en el Cratilo)
El nombre es arquetipo de la cosa,
En las letras de rosa está la rosa
Y todo el Nilo en la palabra Nilo.

Y, hecho de consonantes y vocales,
Habrá un terrible Nombre, que la esencia
Cifre de Dios y que la Omnipotencia
Guarde en letras y sílabas cabales.

Adán y las estrellas lo supieron
En el Jardín. La herrumbre del pecado
(Dicen los cabalistas) lo ha borrado
Y las generaciones lo perdieron.

Los artificios y el candor del hombre
No tienen fin. Sabemos que hubo un día
En que el pueblo de Dios buscaba el Nombre
En las vigilias de la judería.

No a la manera de otras que una vaga
Sombra insinúan en la vaga historia,
Aún está verde y viva la memoria
De Judá León, que era rabino en Praga.

Sediento de saber lo que Dios sabe,
Judá León se dio a permutaciones
de letras y a complejas variaciones
Y al fin pronunció el Nombre que es la Clave.

La Puerta, el Eco, el Huésped y el Palacio,
Sobre un muñeco que con torpes manos
labró, para enseñarle los arcanos
De las Letras, del Tiempo y del Espacio.

El simulacro alzó los soñolientos
Párpados y vio formas y colores
Que no entendió, perdidos en rumores
Y ensayó temerosos movimientos.

Gradualmente se vio (como nosotros)
Aprisionado en esta red sonora
de Antes, Después, Ayer, Mientras, Ahora,
Derecha, Izquierda, Yo, Tú, Aquellos, Otros.

(El cabalista que ofició de numen
A la vasta criatura apodó Golem;
Estas verdades las refiere Scholem
En un docto lugar de su volumen.)

El rabí le explicaba el universo
"Esto es mi pie; esto el tuyo; esto la soga."
Y logró, al cabo de años, que el perverso
Barriera bien o mal la sinagoga.

Tal vez hubo un error en la grafía
O en la articulación del Sacro Nombre;
A pesar de tan alta hechicería,
No aprendió a hablar el aprendiz de hombre,

Sus ojos, menos de hombre que de perro
Y harto menos de perro que de cosa,
Seguían al rabí por la dudosa
penumbra de las piezas del encierro.

Algo anormal y tosco hubo en el Golem,
Ya que a su paso el gato del rabino
Se escondía. (Ese gato no está en Scholem
Pero, a través del tiempo, lo adivino.)

Elevando a su Dios manos filiales,
Las devociones de su Dios copiaba
O, estúpido y sonriente, se ahuecaba
En cóncavas zalemas orientales.

El rabí lo miraba con ternura
Y con algún horror. ¿Cómo (se dijo)
Pude engendrar este penoso hijo
Y la inacción dejé, que es la cordura?

¿Por qué di en agregar a la infinita
Serie un símbolo más? ¿Por qué a la vana
Madeja que en lo eterno se devana,
Di otra causa, otro efecto y otra cuita?

En la hora de angustia y de luz vaga,
En su Golem los ojos detenía.
¿Quién nos dirá las cosas que sentía
Dios, al mirar a su rabino en Praga?

[end of poem]

I hope you enjoyed the poem. I reading this poem years ago, I could not help but marvel at the grim ironies in play here (and the lengths to which he went to rhyme as well). The imagery was especially vivid for me as well, in my own reading of the piece.

With the focus on the power of the word and the cabalistic power of letters that serves as such an obsession for Borges (see the short stories La Muerte y la Brújula and Las Ruinas Circulares), it is not hard to make the leap from the rabbi to Borges himself and from the golem to his body of literary work. The element of the eyes and their deadness is also curious here when we consider the blindess that ran through the paternal line of Borges's family and which he knew he was fated to fall victim to midway through his life, literally deadening his eyes.

The desires of this rabbi of Prague are the desires of all writers and of all parents: to create new life and to reproduce themselves in that creation. And according to the traditions of the Abrahamic religions (as well as several other religions, Hinduism for example) this same desire for creation is reflected in the gods that we imagine. The disappointment evident in the final two verses of the poem, "¿Quién nos dirá las cosas que sentía/ Dios, al mirar a su rabino en Praga?" could suggest to us a lonely and despondent deity that is little more than the rabbi writ large in an almost farcical cosmology. But to do so tears at the foundations of the judeo-christian god and suggests to me that Borges, for all his spiritual metaphors and cabalistic fantasies, may have in fact rejected the ultimate truth of such a small god that would have created a rabbi, that is to say, a golem like Borges. Atheism? I think we err if we accuse Borges of being a gnostic Christian in the same sense that others do as they accused him of fascism. When history is but the series of several metaphors, as Borges once wrote, we must take care not to attach to much meaning to the symbols, especially when the symbol for truth is God.

Introduction Post

I have post-dated this first introductory post by so that it will always show up at the top of the blog list, since it is the introduction. After this, the blog is intended to be read in chronological order with the oldest posts being read first. When some points carry over from one post to the next, this may become significant.

The initial title of this blog is logocidio, a provisional title if there ever was one. Names and titles have never come easily to me and less so when the underlying signified to which I will attach the signifier is in such a nebulous state. We can see the root logos, the word, preceding the affix -cidio, which indicates killing. I had intended some ambiguity between the interpretations "killing words" where words are being killed and where words are the killers, but upon closer inspection, it seems that the poor words are being snuffed out as the root is the recipient of the action in the suffix here. When I think of a better title, I will redact it (thus modifying the entire latticework of lexemas supporting untold thousands of semas!) and hopefully sleep better at night.

When one writes a thesis, there is a an established procedure for declaring the intention of the text. Likewise with published works nonfiction, and occasionally fiction (though fiction writers lie more often than not). The reader is provided with a set of expectations and allowed certain assumptions upon which he or she may understand the pages to come, and interpret the statements with a common purpose in mind. When reading a novel, we often use the cover, the title, the epigraph, and any biographical information about the author to inform us on what the rest of the work will tell us. Thus the opening line "it was a dark and stormy night", cliched as it is, will be read different on a climatological text, a horror novel, a romance novel, or a piece of detective fiction. Each genre builds in its own set of assumptions and if the title of the piece is "Hurricanes" or "The Creeping Death" we will likely come to very different conclusions just after these first seven words. In the case of this blog there is screen layout, the color scheme, the title, the author's name (if it is present when you are reading this), and the nature of the first paragraphs you read.

If you are still read after the preceding paragraph, then perhaps nothing can dissuade you. Fine, let's being then. I don't intend to concern this blog with the mundane happenings of my personal life, because anyone who really cares that much probably already knows. I am interested most in the secret (that one, single inexpressible secret) that lies behind all things. Umberto Eco, in his novel Foucault's Pendulum wrote of a secret conspiracy to rule the world that was invented and discovered in one stroke. Jorge Luis Borges, in his Biblioteca de Babel writes of a book that indexes all other books in the cosmic library. I propose something no less grand.

This one ineffable truth is the true meaning of all great literature. The madness of Don Quijote is the madness of King Lear, the existential angst in La Vida es Sueño (Pedro Calderón de la Barca) es the same that Prince Hamlet was wracked by in Denmark. Every piece of good literature tries to address the question of this same sense of the numinous mystery of human existence, but never the same way twice. Art and philosophy aren't so different in this respect. Modernity, in the sense of a period of human thought and progress, seemed to suggest a singular answer while postmodernity rejects this in favor of a multitude of answers to this one question, each true from its subjective vantage point. This is where I make my entrance here. When I think and when I write, I want to understand the world, my world. This is one of the most noble endeavors of the human animal, in my opinion. This blog is my attempt to not only make sense of the world, but to convey the understandings I am gaining to you, the reader. And returning to the theme of postmodern discourse, my purpose is also to persuade you of the legitimacy of my narrative archetype (to borrow from Fredric Jameson) and to follow some of my precepts.

Knowledge and persuasion are my main foci, and it is fitting that it be so in a medium such as this. But my other project is one of action (or more likely, a bemused attitude towards inaction). What follows in this introductory post is the crass and unsubtle expression of a juvenile need to see our mark on the world around us and to correct the ills we see. Take for what it is and nothing more, but understand that it is the second thread that lies beneath my epistemological system--reflection for understanding on the one hand and understanding to exert power on the other. With that caveat, read on.

Let's conquer the world. If you began a thesis with that statement of purpose or opened a self-help book with that bold proposition, where would you go from there? Well, let us examine the question further. The proposition begins with "let's", a contraction of "let us" and so it already speaks of a plurality of agents. The predicate of this syntactic structure is "the world" and which seems to imply the widest possible interpretation, as no limits are given (e.g., the world of finance, the world of stamp collecting, etc.). Whether making such an outrageous challenge or a far more modest one, it is incumbent upon the challenger to take stock of what resources are available and the optimal manner in which to array them. And keep in mind that wise men learn from the examples of others.

Who else has tried or is trying to do the same? Quite a few religions have and are at present making their own bids for control, as are some national governments. Economic systems, capitalism and communism, have been struggling with each other for several hundred years (mercantilism had its day too) and capitalism is the clear winner at the present time. What methods do these systems use, how effective are they, what are their flaws, and how can one improve upon them? What motivates individuals to act in accordance with a group goal or set of goals? What structure can be built into a system of power that will evolve and reinforce that same structure over time? These are some of the questions we must answer at the outset.

To take one clear example from the second half of the 20th century, we have the pseudo-religion of Scientology. It was begun by L.Ron. Hubbard, a hack science fiction writer whose work had been viciously panned by both the critics and the reading public. He invented a mythology and an associated pseudo-religious framework upon which he built a cult. In some ways his organization resembled a ponzi scheme, with membership levels requiring increased monetary outlay and recruiting, and in other ways it resembled a cult along the lines of Heaven's Gate or any other cult driven to abuses by a charismatic leader. Hubbard identified the psychologically vulnerable as ideal recruits that could be molded into his obedient drones and reprogrammed and he followed in the footsteps of the major religions in some of his methodology. Again his enemies, his cult has employed tactics of infiltration, harrasment, subversion of government organizations, libel, intimidation, and even violence. If a Scientologist is reading this now, I can expect some reprisal. In these actions, they don't differ markedly from Islam or Christianity, and in this way there is some legitimacy to their claim that they are a religion (albeit one that is particularly malevolent and does little to disguise its thirst for dictatorial oppression of humanity). But to be honest, their mythology is ridiculous enough to repel all but the most credulous and desperate. But there is at least an attempt at secrecy, regimentation, and organizational hierarchy to support that system of space-opera type myths.

Moving away from religion for a moment, what other forces in the United States exert the most power? Those with money. There is a reason why the men of Wallstreet in the 1980s were known as the Masters of the Universe. In a capitalist society such as ours, or the Chinese or Russians for that matter, those with enormous wealth control the society on a level that the average person fails to comprehend. The rise of the hedge funds in the 1990s underscored this point as groups of incredibly wealthy investment fund managers who controlled private (and thus secret) account colluded to bankrupt entire nations. George Soros on his own broke the Bank of England through the use of the FOREX markets and by manipulating a combination of the world's exchanges, hedge funds disrupted the economies of several South East Asian countries (Thailand, for example). It was economic warfare for our modern age (for economic warfare is nothing new). The shadow economy, as this derivative economy is sometimes called now, has grown to be far larger than the real economy and the control of these arcane financial instruments has become control (or destruction) of the real economy.

At this point, what do we have? Do we control hundreds of billions of venture capital? Do we have hundreds of millions of loyal followers who believe in the divine truth of our mission? No. We begin with very little. Careful planning is necessary. This is my introduction: my statement of purpose. When I seem to deviate from this stated goal, it will be to pursue ancillary objectives or at times indulge private curiosities.

Of course there must be more than simple conquest. Islam desires the submission of all of humanity before it, but at the same time it sees itself as a perfect way of ordering human society and providing for the great benefit for all concerned (observe the functioning of any Islamic theocracy to test that theory). Communism seeks fairness and maximum enjoyments of human labor as a benefit of its imposition as the controlling force across the planet. Our plan too must provide for the optimal functioning of the system of the world. Put another way, the end result must be to improve the lot of mankind in some way. This is all very postmodern, when we consider the objectively negative improvements that Christianity, Islam, Communism, Capitalism and Nazism (to name a few) have imposed upon the world. But still, a better future for humankind should be the ultimate purpose for the exercise of power.

This post will serve as a general introduction to what will follow. That is all for tonight.