Geoff's Miscellany

One of the weirdest struggles I have is periodic long stretches of depressive/depressing thoughts.

I’ve never been diagnosed with depression, but I sometimes struggle with debilitating self-doubt, lack of confidence, and even feelings of meaninglessness. And when I said debilitating, I meant that on a vacation I’ve been able to literally sit and do nothing unless somebody asked me to for days in a row. I’m sure that I don’t have clinical depression, because I manage to snap myself out of it. The point of this post is that tremendous self-doubts can be overcome, but not always by debating yourself.

Over at the Bold and Determined blog there is a post about the Three Cs of a morning routine (their post is great, read it).

They are:

1. Coffee
2. Cardio
3. Cold Shower

Not only would I change the order, I would add a fourth.

Previously, I’ve written about two thought katas:

1. The Beginner Kata
2. The Advanced Thought Kata

All habits have a purpose with a point of view based on assumptions which have consequences and form our identities.  With facts, data, and our experiences, we use inferences and judgments in order to determine if our habits are worthwhile.

Application of the first move

In a previous post, I mentioned the five step thought kata my English teacher taught me.

After talking with him last week, taught me this advanced kata:

All thinking has a purpose with a point of view based on assumptions which have implications and consequences.  With facts, data, and our experiences, we use inferences and judgments in order to solve problems and answer questions."

(Richard Paul and Linda Elder of the critical thinking movement)

In karate I found that three forms of training most prepared my mind for fighting:

1. Kata (MMA people hate this, but whatever) Kata is practicing a preset pattern of attacks, blocks, and combos. They were allegedly used to encode entire fighting systems into an easy to memorize format so that the moves could be traditioned to the young. Katas must be memorized and preformed with absolute conviction and focus. I still do two katas on a regular basis.
2. Makiwara (heavy bag is the same thing, really) Makiwara is hitting a post in order to strengthen your muscles and toughen your hands. The idea is to work up to full contact to work on focus and to practice hitting something with resistance similar to a rib cage or abdominal wall. I prefer hitting a heavy bag, but when I was in high school and for my first two years of college, I hit the makiwara every day before I bought a heavy bag. I'm certain that a great deal of my punching power (my instructor said I punched unusually hard for somebody my size) came from the makiwara.
3. Kumite/Randori  This would be free-flowing combat or sparing. We did this most often with jiu-jitsu drills on Fridays, but every couple of weeks we'd do drills with specific constraints (boxing gloves, no groin blows, w/out gloves no head shots, etc).

1. Identify and define the problem
2. Form tentative hypotheses
3. Gather data
4. Test hypotheses
5. Evaluate and decide

In all seriousness, it has gotten me out of many a jam.

Two of the most powerful rhetorical tools are exclusion and shaming.

These tools are related, but distinct:

• Shame- "People like this are terrible, just terrible. Nobody should be like this." Stated as a fact, this may or may not be true. But stated as rhetoric, the idea is to get those who agree to distance themselves from those who disagree and to get those who disagree to feel bad enough to change their minds.
• Exclusion- "As a civilization we're past ideas like this. For instance we have science, but these people still believe in a creator god." This is designed not merely to get the audience to distance themselves from the bad people, but to make them feel like outsiders to the party of fun and brightness that they are missing.

One of the most unfortunate losses during the reformation was the loss of focus on the four cardinal virtues as simple excellencies that are praiseworthy in anybody, but find their truest expression in the Christian Scriptures.

I've written about the cardinal virtues (justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom) briefly in the past and their place in the Bible in the past. They are called cardinal because other virtues tend to hinge on them. For instance power depends upon courage because one must act to gain power, generosity depends up temperance and justice because one must first give to those who deserve and moderate his own desires in order to have extra to give to the needy. I don't intend to say that the cardinal virtues are actually the only hinge virtues, but I see no reason to deviate from a helpful rubric for thinking about human virtue until it is proven useless or wrong. Showing it to be incomplete would be no more damning to the system than showing modern physics to need improvements would be a proof that we should abandon it.

In teaching the common topics, I’ve had my students read Managing Oneself* by Peter Drucker. The goal of the assignment is to have the students see which of Aristotle’s topics Drucker uses to make his case and to determine if his points are persuasive. For Christian readers who don’t want to learn from a secular author, read this. Anyway, Drucker had these points that would be helpful to anybody pursuing any goal, including becoming more like Christ:

Some Christians feel squeamish about learning anything from non-Christian authors. This is understandable, especially in light of the fact that in the Bible there is a clear emphasis on not emulating the evil or desiring the riches of evil people or basing your life on human traditions and false philosophies (see Colossians 2:1-10). Perhaps the most obvious example of this is Psalm 1:

Psalms 1:1-2  Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;  (2)  but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Here are some of the Bible passages about learning from people just because they are wise, regardless of their religious situation:

I love reading and I love reading a lot. But sometimes I get depressed and don’t “feel it” or I get busy and don’t pick up a book. Author Jeff Olson, in his book The Slight Edge offers a solution to this problem:

Everything you need to know to be successful—every how-to, every practical action—is already written in books like these. Here’s a Slight Edge action guaranteed to change your life: read just ten pages of a good book, a book aimed at improving your life, every day.

If you read ten pages of a good book today, will your life change? Of course not. If you don’t read ten pages of a good book today, will your life fall apart? Of course not.