Fighting styles and metaphors

We've all heard some form of the saying, "style x counters or defeats style y."  The weird part about that is that we've all heard that saying from different places.  A gamer might say Soraka hard counters many top laners.  I might say Aikido will always triumph over Kung Fu.  A mother might say to her child, "with your sister, it's sometimes just best to just walk away."  This déjà vu of this statement is not accidental.  

Household disputes, epic battles, nail-biting duels, philosophical debates, fighting of every kind is a metaphor; timespace's representation of the battle between the wills of the participants.  In my opinion, the most successful participants are the ones who can read the style of their opponent and change their mindset to counter it.  The tenacity of their focus on this mindset will win them exchanges safely.  While switch ups are necessary, the fewer actions that violate the style they are countering with, the greater their chance of success.  This is all well and good if I am talking about fighting as not many can say they have battled to the extent that I have, but what about all that stuff about disputes and debates?  How does all that sort out?  Dear reader, the two are but shadows of the same truth.  Let me explain with a personal example.

When speaking to my own mother, it is common for me to become irritated at how often she throws out the same bits of information out at me.  I don't have a problem with it per say, I understand it is from the best of places, but it is just one of those things that just gets me.  We all find them in the ones we love, so overcoming them is most probably a universal battle waged by all humans past a certain age.  If this were some fantasy battle, I'd characterize my mom's comments like a cloud of gas around her that deals a tiny bit of damage while around her for long periods of time without movement or action.  In said fantasy battle, if I were to leave the poison cloud, I'd no longer take damage, but I'd also deal damage to her because she wants to talk to me.  So I can't leave.  What do I do?  I'd probably cast a spell or just cover my mouth to stop myself from ingesting the poison.  Ironically, this technique works equally well when not in the fantasy setting.  I love the word irony here and I think it is perfect, but I want to expound on that point by saying that this mirroring of actions across mediums of expression is more than metaphor.  It is true congruency.  

Next time you feel someone's presence is defeating you, consider observing their mindset and asking yourself what mindset you must be loyal to in order to benefit the current situation.  If they are hurting you, are you going to hurt them to show them that you are in pain because of them?  Are you going to do something that will protect yourself from the actions you know you can defend against?  Are you going to simply leave the battle because you can't defend against it?  Are you going to burn bright and warm to pacify and heal?  We all know the coworker with the stonewall smile and I-don't-give-a-shit to their boss.  We all have met someone who strikes the most exposed nerve you have just to make you feel as in pain as they are.  How do you deal with those tactics?  Do you defend yourself?  Do you fall like a soccer player to show them how successful their strike was?  Do you make the first move or the second?

Ask these questions as martial artists do, modify your footwork and your tactics, let that mindset lead your actions.  Remind the world that all forms of expression are the real metaphor.  For all of it is metaphor for the truth as it is in this very moment.

College, redefined

Many of you know that I am neck-deep in the wake of the tidal wave that is the programming project I am working on.  As I work, I think to myself, "I wish I had some kind of place I could go to learn and have help giving physical form to the ideas I have."  Then I stop.  I am reminded of a game I played where the fantasy land had a college that was just like this.  It was a place where all the brilliant eccentrics hung out together.  The college had floors of research labs open for all to participate and discover with.  One wasn't ever a "graduate", academics were simply judged on how long, and how much, they gave to that community.

I want one of those for my world.  While I do know the first thing about programming, I am nowhere near knowledgable enough to complete this programming project without help.  So I picture a world where these colleges and their inhabitants are updated in real time via the internet.  I can know where all my favorite minds are (looks like Sir Ken Robinson is in Scotland today), I can search for communities of programmers (looks like there is a campus ten miles out where Wiemar used to be that is home to some programmers who could help me), and I can have access to all these resources at any time (looks like my tax dollars for education will be well spent this year).  Picturing all of this in my head is the first step.  Pulling the present forward to meet this imago is the next step.

The way I see it, first world countries would not have to build a single building or earn a single cent to turn this into a reality.  Dump administration teams and testing coordinators and curriculum designers and let the WORLD decide what needs taught.  School presidents would become gigadeans and their whole campus would now be rentable with access to equipment to students looking to learn and do.  I'm sure many teachers would rent out their room and hold classes of their fancy open to all.  I'm sure a few hundred local teachers of pottery, martial arts, yoga, or literature would be overjoyed to be able to have their midnight class in a safe place with free rent.  This would facilitate lower prices which is the direction we must go, for it is in direct incompliance with our current economic model.  If you wanna know more about that direction, stay tuned for next post.  Dear reader, thank you as always.  Til next time.

Homeschooling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY
Watch this.  Please.  Come back when you are done.

So.  Yeah.  He's 13.  No one judges him but him.  He is free and awake and confident, independent and idealistic.  What changed?  Well, he became basically uncivilized by our societal standards.  He hacked his world wide open like a watermelon and is devouring every delicious piece of eternity.  He didn't do what someone told him to do, he learned how to find what makes him alive.  He was homeschooled.  He was rescued from the modern paradigm.

Tokes of Awe 2

Welcome back to episode 2 of Tokes of Awe where we honor the show Shots of Awe by taking QUITE a bit more weed than Mr. Silva before sitting down to write.

"

I love plants.  They are so beautiful and hopeful and resilient.  Their babies, their SEEDS, have the strength to break through concrete in order to reach up towards their energy source, the sun.  Once they reach the sun, abundance is found; all of their wants and needs disappear and they party in the vast plenitude of it's radiance.  They begin to produce fruits and seeds to GIVE to the world for free because they are so satiated by this concert in the sky.  

Now I have partied with some intense disciples of the universe, but plants take the cake.  Sticking with this concert metaphor, plants extend with exuberance like groupies on the roadshow of their life EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Even if they run out of food and water, they'll still rock out until they wrinkle into crunchy husks.

So take care of your plants.  Give them water with the same care as you would give to a groupie barely conscious from rocking out too hard on without a water bottle.  Do that and she'll share with you the joys of her life completely freely.  ... Yeah, that's what I came here to say.
"

Heroes of the Storm: Malfurryman Build

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Fanfiction

For all ya'all who don't know, I love me some Avatar: The Last Airbender.  If I'm honest, I think I like Legend of Korra better, but a part of me bows in respect to the origin of a series that has matured many-fold into such a beautiful creature.  I'm not here to compare though.  I'm here to talk about fanfiction.  ... I like fanfiction.  No judge, plox.  

My favorite type of fanfiction involves the act of changing one or two small details that change EVERYTHING about the characters and how they interact.  The best truly try to archive these alternate realities with as much integrity to the source material as they can.  It's a wonderful mental exercise and I truly believe that young people echo participate in this exercise, be it about Master Chief or just straight slashfiction, will grow greatly in doing so.  

You know what's coming next.  An example.  Here we go.  Let's try to create a new universe out of the Avatar universe.  What if we just swapped air with fire?  What if the fire benders were the peaceful, nomadic benders and the air benders were the army republic?  "Everything changed when the air benders attacked."  This begs the questions then: how are the air benders to match the destructive force that the fire benders were in the show and how are the fire benders going to make sense as pacifist nomads?  

Air benders could be brutal if they were not pacifists.  Air benders could be flying dervishes of lethal pressure blades, they could launch others sky high and let gravity take care of business with all the ruthless efficiency of physics, an air bender could even suffocate their foes if they simply did not let them breathe.  Good villains?  Check, but we will have to modify the respective characters to fit their new world.  Perhaps Zuko's father severed his hand instead of scarred his face.  How would this change his attitude and his legend?  

In the third book, Aang learns that fire does not need to be about rage and destruction, but instead can be seen as the primal fire of the heart-- the spark of life that animates the clay of our bodies.  Perhaps fire benders in this fic practice pacifism to align their lives towards this belief.  Their flames would shine like the heavens as they defended.  A touch could draw that life force away to stun or even to radiate to revive and revitalize.  Pursued far enough, I believe the flame of a fire bender could solely sustain the human body, allowing these nomadic healers to never need to eat (they'd drink a lot though and need to pee all the time).  Aang's whole journey and struggle for nonviolence remains intact with this small detail switched, but all the details change.  Who teaches Aang the gentler side of the ruthless air bending?  What kind of children would he and Katara had?  How would this new historical legacy of fire mesh with the existing spiritual mythos of the story?  

These questions and the details they reveal are the keys that make this exercise so powerful.  Every question is an act of creation.  You take a young and imaginative mind and just start getting them to ask these questions and explore in the endless universe fountain of their imagination about whatever it is that interests them.  Be it a book or a movie, a video game or a garden, this exercise is not only fun, but also intense training in a skill that is absolutely necessary in the dire straights my generation is in.  

So yes.  That, dear readers, is why fanfiction is the national pastime of my brain.  Have a nice day with that.