Pentathlon

...if, nine days hence, the rosy morn
Shall with unclouded light the skies adorn,
That day with solemn sports I mean to grace:
Light galleys on the seas shall run a wat'ry race;
Some shall in swiftness for the goal contend,
And others try the twanging bow to bend;
The strong, with iron gauntlets arm'd, shall stand
Oppos'd in combat on the yellow sand.

In the Aeneid, the hero, Aeneas sponsors a festival of games in honor of his father, Anchises on the anniversary of Anchises’ death. There were four events; sailing, a footrace, boxing, and archery. Then there was a fifth event, a mock battle on horseback. Thus was described the earliest (that I have read) account of one of the coolest events in the history of Olympic-style games – Pentathlon.

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The ancient pentathlon consisted of five games that were thought to bear upon warrior skills. The five games apparently varied but were typically drawn from a short list including running, wrestling, boxing, jumping, javelin, discus, archery, horseback riding, and swimming. Running and wrestling were always represented in pentathlon, and running was considered the main event.

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Likewise, in the modern pentathlon, five events were drawn from a short list of paramilitary skills. The first modern pentathlon included hurdles, shot put, high jump, long jump, and running. More recently, a more standardized group of five events emerged, representing the skills expected of a military courier or cavalry trooper.

• pistol shooting
• fencing
• swimming
• horseback riding
• running

I have always been fascinated by the pentathlon. Now, when we run kohaku shiai (club tournaments) at Mokuren Dojo, I tend to select four judo-like games in addition to the standing shiai to demonstrate different components or skill sets of judo. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to run our own pentathlon, maybe consisting of five events from among the following?

• free running
• swimming
• horseback or bicycle
• judo, wrestling, or jiujitsu
• boxing or karate
• pistol or rifle
• schlager fencing or pugil sticks

Great intro to randori

Very interesting lesson follows. For a good introduction to aikido randori as we practice it, watch the video and substitute the word, "randori" whenever this instructor says, "push hands."

February Promote Three

Time for the February Promote Three. When I was checking out the Toplist looking for three bloggers to feature, I remembered one particular blogger who sent me a fine reminder several months ago about the Promote Three feature:

“That's a very nice thing you are doing, but I don't think the rankings on that list have anything to do with the quality of the blog. I've seen some much better blogs than mine have much lower rankings.”

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And that’s exactly right – and it’s the point of this whole Promote Three thing – every month I point out three blogs that I like and that I think are under-trafficked and therefore under-ranked. Hopefully I can spread some link-love and send some traffic out to these guys who really have a lot of interesting material to read about on their blogs. With that said, I think the following three blogs deserve honors, traffic, and link-love greater than they are getting:

• to Becky’s Fine Martial Fiber – a blog about Karate, and sketching, and knitting and … other stuff. Becky has a lot going for her – first, she’s blogging from her secret headquarters in Mississippi. Maybe Dixie bloggers are taking over the martial blogosphere. We can only hope so. And not only does she have the right geography, but she posts really interesting opinion pieces related to her karate training. …and then there’s the knitting…
• to Rick Matz at Cook Ding’s Kitchen a blog about martial arts, history, poetry, etc… etc… etc… There’s a lot of thoughtful material here. This month Ding is starting his annual Lenten training challenge. Be sure to check that out and, if you think you’re up to the intensity, jump in there and participate.
• to Rory Miller of Chiron Training. This is really breaking the Promote Three rules because he’s not on Toplist, but I made the rules and I figure that, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind.” This is an amazing blog! Possibly my all-time favorite. Rory thinks like a man of action and acts like a man of thought because if it has to do with use of force, he’s been there and done that. This is one blog that I never miss. Rory is coming out with a book the middle of this year. It is to be titled, "Meditations on Violence" and y'all will likely want to pre-order your copy from Amazon. Rory also gets bonus points because he identifies himself with Chiron, the Centaur warrior scholar who taught Achilles to fight.

How did you decide, Martin?

Today we remember one of our country's foremost warriors in the cause of peace, equality, and freedom - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Though in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, he states that he was a force of moderation standing between extremists on both sides, King was considered extreme by the establishment of the time, and this led to his assasination. Dr. King could have possibly prolonged his life if he had skillfully shifted his position based on the forces that he encountered (aiki), perhaps going along with the prevailing forces until he could overpower them or unbalance them (ju) but instead, he effectively took a stand and spent his life all at once in the service of his cause (kime) - And it was certainly a worthy cause.

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But this begs the question, how do you determine whether to stand and fight right here and now or shift and live to fight another day? At what point is the evil you face so grievous that you decide to spend all of yourself right now in its downfall? Or do you simply let your enemies decide when you take your final stand?

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What do you think King's effect on the civil rights movement would have been like if he were alive today? If he had accomodated the establishment to any significant degree he would have sacrificed some of the moral power of his cause, but he would have had many more years to exert that lessened power.

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CARNIVAL TIME!

With that question as an introduction, welcome to the January 2008 edition of carnival of martial arts. This is a themed issue on peaceful warriors and conflict resolution - not that every article submitted is directly on topic, but all are interesting and worth checking out.

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Hilltown Families presents Peace Episode on HFVS (New Year's Day '08) posted at Hilltown Families. A little peace music to stimulate your sense of nostalgia as you peruse the carnival.

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Patrick Parker presents Nonviolent self defense posted at Mokuren Dojo. A curious look at a (perhaps) faulty idea of non-violent self-defense.

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Dave Chesser presents Aikido-like Chinese IMA posted at Formosa Neijia. A potential answer to the question in the above post.

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Patrick Parker presents Rolling the ball and brushing off posted at Mokuren Dojo. My own take on Dave Chesser's article above.

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Chris presents Conflict Resolution: A Casualty of Non-Violent Martial Arts posted at Martial Development. A valuable reminder in light of the above articles.
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Nathan Teodoro presents Preventing Sexual Abuse in Martial Arts posted at TDA Training.

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Michael Bell presents Why Study Martial Arts? posted at live-it-true.com.

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Dave Shevitz presents Jury Duty and Ki Tests posted at AikiThoughts. Nobody I've seen has done a better job of applying the philosophy of aiki to his everyday life than Dave Shevitz.

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Patrick Parker presents Creamed Asparagus posted at Mokuren Dojo. Another perspective on nonviolent self-defense - in the context of bullying.

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Dave Shevitz presents Martial Arts and Bullying posted at AikiThoughts. A very good answer to the above post about Creamed Asparagus.

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Dojo Rat presents The Significance Of Billy Jack posted at Dojo Rat.

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Argonautica presents Jujutsu Suffragettes posted at Argos Classic Martial Reprints .
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Eric Frey presents Martial Arts, Why Belt Ranking Systems Are Bad. posted at Eric Frey Dot Com.

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Eric Frey presents Martial Arts Training, How To See A Punch Coming A Mile Away. posted at Eric Frey Dot Com.

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Shaheen Lakhan presents Martial Arts Program for Children with Epilepsy posted at GNIF Brain Blogger.

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That's it for this month's issue. Thank all of you for participating - I hope we can keep this important discussion going. Drop by the articles you find most interesting and leave comments.

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Submit your blog article to the next edition of *carnival of martial arts* using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Lastly, but certainly not least, We're always looking for blogs to host an upcoming issue of the Carnival. If you are interesting in having the Carnival appear on your blog, drop Argonautica a line at Argos Classic Martial Reprints .

Upcoming carnival deadline

You still have time to submit an article for the Carnival of Martial Arts Blogs theme issue on the peaceful warrior idea. The deadline is tomorrow (1/19) and I'll have the carnival up and posted on Monday (1/21) - MLK day - The United States' day of rememberance for one of its' foremost peaceful warriors.

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I've already gotten a host of good submissions but there are some great martial arts bloggers out there who are notably missing. I'm sure y'all all have an opinion on the topic of peaceful conflict resolution - and I'm pretty sure I've seen appropriate articles on most of y'all's blogs. So you already have the material sitting out there ready to be re-published at the carnival - ready to create some more exposure for you and your ideas - ready to drive some new readers to your blog!

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So go ahead and jump in with your submission. CLICK HERE to submit a post.

Carnival of Martial Arts Blogs

Carnival of Martial Arts #4 has just been posted at TDA Training with a host of great articles. I particularly like the movie trailer for Bacon Samurai. Check it out!

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Carnival of Martial Arts #5 will be hosted at Mokuren Dojo, and I wanted to try a new little twist. Carnival #5 will be a “Warriors for peace and justice” themed issue to coordinate with the observance of MLK day in the United States. .

There has already been a great deal of discussion in the martial arts blogosphere related to the concept of warriors in general, and in particular, the Peaceful Warrior concept. I know nearly everybody out there has an opinion on issues related to MLK, Gandhi, social justice, peaceful warriors, civil disobedience, and the like.

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So come on and submit your related articles (old or new) for inclusion in the January 2008 Carnival of Martial Arts Blogs.

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CLICK HERE to submit a post.

Submission Deadline: January 19, 2008

Carnival Posting: January 21, 2008

Boiling poisonous acid lava

Tonight we had the pleasure of Sensei Dave Shorey of Acadian Judo visiting our kids' judo class. He seemed to enjoy the class and I sure enjoyed having him drop by. It's good to get to know some more of the local grassroots judo crowd.

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Kids' judo with Dave, Jill, Gavin, Whit, Mason, Knox, and Emma

• ROM and ukemi as usual.
• Laps across the mat galloping, alternating one kid out per lap to take an assisted teguruma fall. Of all the types of movement skills I've worked on with these kids, galloping has been the toughest, so I had them gallop with a flag held in a hand and gave them the condition that they had to keep the flag out in front of them the whole time. Worked like a charm to get them galloping.
• Crab war. I told them that the mat was boiling lava and poisonous acid and they had to keep their bottoms up out of it while trying to knock the other guys into the boiling poisonous acid lava. Again, they loved it.
• Repetitions of suwari kubinage into kesagatame. I was pretty loose on the form of the thing - just wanted to get them knocking each other down with something approximating the technique. Then we had races to see whih judoka could throw his partner seven times in the least time.
• Amazon wrestling (the river, not the naked, one-breasted, warrior women) This was our approximation of the ethnic wrestling style featured recently on Discovery Channel's Last One Standing. They did well and seemed to have fun. They've practiced tactics to get around to the back and secure a bearhug but they pretty much all favored the knee control route to winning.
• Cool-down with seated meditation. Really just a quiet concentration game at this age. Quiet sitting with eyes closed trying to remember all the sounds they hear.
• Tomorrow is the kohaku shiai for this month.

Discovery Channel's Last One Standing

The Discovery Channel has come out with an outstanding series called Last One Standing. The premise is that these six athletes from the U.S. get to travel to various remote villages and train with the natives in the indigenous warrior games, after which they get to compete against the tribe's enemies. Tonight the episode (perhaps the pilot?) was about this ethnic wrestling style in Brazil. One thing that really interests me is how the game of grappling changes when you change the ruleset. Well, in these contests, there were three ways to win:

• get your opponent in a rear control (i.e. rear bearhug)
• get your opponent's back on the ground
• get control of one of your opponent's legs

It looked like the rules were loosely enforced, I guess based on whether or not the fight was interesting to the observers and referees. For instance, there were instances of someone getting a single leg pick and the match continuing into a double leg pick and bodyslam similar to teguruma. There were also instances where legpicks were broken and didn't stop the fight.
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Three of the Americans were such noobs that the Chief disqualified them from the competition to keep them from embarrassing his village. The three that fought did pretty well.
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I would have liked to see a good collegiate wrestler pancake some of these natives and I would have liked to see how a BJJ guy would have fared naked in the dirt with greasy body paint and alien rules. And I'm not picking on the BJJ guys, I just think it would have been interesting to match some Brazilian JJ guys vs. these Brazilian natives.
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Next week's episode is about Zulu stick and shield fighting. In the trailer I saw a clip of several stick-wielding natives chasing a white guy down in the bush, apparently whipping him for turning and fleeing. I aslo saw a guy's head laid open to the skull with one of these canes. Should be good watching...

Counter-examples

To be fair in my warrior discussion, I should give some better exposure to some of the great counter-examples that some of the commentators gave in our previous thread on the Ranger grappling video. First, I’d like to mention something that stuck out to me – the video contradicts itself pretty blatantly.

"Fort Benning…is a place where the study of martial arts is not geared toward spiritual development, sports, or self-defense.”

But then, the narrator says explicitly, “our task is to imbue them with the warrior ethos.” That is, by definition a spiritual pursuit. That does not make it a less noble or less functional goal, but these guys seem to want folks to think that the Army BJJ program is all about practical combat efficacy, when it is really about spirit, heart, and gut.

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But on the other hand, The BJJ stuff that the military had gotten into is not without its apparent functional utility, as demonstrated by this news article that Nathan pointed us to a while back. Here the soldier grappled from a position of extreme weakness against an armed opponent long enough and successfully enough to save his own life.

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Rick Fryer made another excellent point, that it takes heart and guts to stand toe-to-toe in a boxing ring (for instance) and trade rib-crushing body shots. This is true. There’s a different kind of feeling to it, but it’s still courage. Incidently, for years the army combatives program emphasized boxing/karate type skills, and apparently found it sufficient for combatives skills but found it insufficient (or at least less-so than BJJ) for instilling the desired ethos.

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Dan Paden brought up the fact that it may not be illusory (as I phrased it) to think that a clean, hands-down victory might be possible. This is a great video that Dan had recently posted of a one-shot clean knockout in a street fight.

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Chiron has posted a couple of great articles that, if they weren’t inspired by this discussion, fit perfectly into it. I wish he'd enable post links so that I could reference them directly, but of you go to his blog and find his September 18 and 19, 2007 posts - they're well worth your time. Some of the best material on the spiritual side of martial arts that I've ever read. While youre there, read the rest of his posts. Great material.
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And, while it's not exactly a counter-example, there's another great tangent on the subject that was posted at Aikithoughts.

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UPDATE: Steve has posted a very good opinion piece that touches on the subject at hand - but from a very practical, non-woo-woo way.

What is it about grappling?

Rick Fryer posted a good comment on my last post. He reminded us that you don’t want to grapple with a guy who has a knife. I agree. Of course you don’t want to grapple with (or even be near) a knife guy. The guy in the video says that. The idea of teaching to defend against a knife is nearly ludicrous because you can’t afford to screw around with knife guys. It’s such a good weapon it makes virtually anyone mortally dangerous.
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But the point that the guy in the video made that was so interesting to me was that there is something about grappling that seems to bring out the warrior spirit in people. They are not teaching soldiers to grapple; they are explicitly involved in fostering the warrior spirit in these soldiers. This is because, as he puts it, we don’t win wars by grappling, but we win wars by being warriors (my paraphrase).

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So, what is it about grappling that fosters the warrior spirit?

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Grappling instills a willingness to get down and dirty and closely involved with things that inspire primal terror (i.e. being immobilized and choked, being dominated and forced to submit, being in peril of broken joints, the possibility of grappling with a guy who might have a knife, having your every action make your situation worse, impending total anaerobic fatigue, etc...)

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It is this willingness to engage the enemy even under conditions of terror that defines courage, and grappling instills this ethic better (in my opinion) than stand-up fighting styles because the student of stand-up fighting is allowed to hold out the illusion that it might just be possible to achieve a nice, clean, hands-down victory. It is this stand-offishness, this unwillingness to dirty oneself for the cause that seems antithetical to the warrior spirit.

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This seems to me the basis (besides friendly competitiveness) of why Marines and Army guys ridicule Air Force and Navy guys. Marines and Army are stereotyped (or maybe archetyped) as the guys that are willing to get dirty to win a war, while the Flyboys and Navy guys are portrayed as stand-back, technological fighters or as bus-drivers for the real warriors. Well, in this world of advancing technology, it is easy for the Marines and Army to develop this same creeping stand-offishness and lose part of the warrior spirit. Has anyone seen, for example, the Newsweek some years back about the new generation of electrically-fired rifle that will shoot timed, exploding bullets around corners?. So it seems the Marines and Army have instituted this jujitsu grappling training to nurture that old-style jarhead/grunt ethic of willingness to engage in the mud.

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And that is what I think the guy in the video is talking about that makes the video so interesting to me.

Army Ranger grappling training

Interesting video. he has some good comments on some things we've been discussing on this blog for a while, including the knife thread and the warrior thread.

Mississippi, land of warriors

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The warrior spirit does exist

For the record, I disagree with the folks that say that there is no such thing as a warrior, or that it is a romanticized glorification of violence by weekend soldier-of-fortune wannabes, or that it is an artifact of imperialistic nationalism. The Warrior Spirit is a vague thing, but it does exist, it is noble in some sense, and is worth defining and discussing. My gross generalizations of what we've learned in this discussion include:

• The warrior spirit seems to be something that pervades or accompanies warriordom of all types of all ages. It is common to the times and cultures of Achilles, Gilgamesh, and Beowulf as well as those of World War II and the Civil War soldier.
• It has something to do with manhood, though there were notable female warriors (eg Dido, Boudica, Amazons. Perhaps even Rosie the Welder).
• It seems to be associated with sacrificial service to a group (i.e .samurai, Heckler). See this quote at Nathan's blog.
• It is associated with several virtues (honor, courage, strength, etc…)
• There are conspicuous potential mis-uses of it (machismo, misogyny, etc…)

Warrior as martial genius

Howard Gardner, in his Multiple Intelligences research, proposed that intelligence is a multifaceted wonder. In Gardner's model, it is possible to be intelligent in some domains but not some others. The domains of intelligence identified by Gardner and some of his successors include:

• Linguistic
• Logical-mathematical
• Spatial
• Bodily-Kinesthetic
• Musical
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
• Naturalist

So, how did Gardner come up with these areas as potential domains of intelligence? He had three criteria:

• There has to be a particular representation, or structure in the brain for that ability. This could be demonstrated by observing the effects of stroke on ability. For instance, a stroke may destroy kinesthetic sensitivity, so kinesthetic ability must have a physical structure in the brain.
• There have to be populations that are naturally good or bad at that domain. For instance, each of the above domains has to potential to be expressed anywhere from genius to total incomprehension in a given person.
• The domain has to have had a plausible evolutionary or selection value. It is not too much of a stretch to figure out how each of the above domains might have created survivability in a genius of that domain.

What I'd like is some discussion on is the potential for martial skill to be considered a domain of intelligence. It obviously fits the third criteria above, but on the other two I'd have to say I'm not sure.

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So, is martial ability a form of intelligence or is it more of a combination of the above domains of intelligence or is it an altogether different thing?

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If martial intelligence exists, then might you say that a martial genius is a warrior?

Warriors in a cage

The modern warrior

I realize this might be video overload, but these give an idea of what folks think a modern warrior is. Or maybe what the Military wants folks to think a warrior is. Or maybe even what the military thinks folks want to believe about warriors.
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What do you see in these videos? What is the warrior spirit portrayed here?

Warrior fraternities of yesteryear

Strozzi-Heckler talks in his book about the fraternity, or brotherhood of warriors. I don’t have the book with me right now so I can’t come up with specific citations, but the premise is that part of why men are warriors is because as such they receive positive affirmation from other men. A while back I wrote about Susan Faludi’s book, Stiffed, in which she comes to the same conclusion.

This aspect of fraternity has apparently always been either a part of the warrior spirit, or coincident with it. It is easy to find examples of the warrior fraternity in ancient literature; Achilles and Patroclus, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Beowulf & Wiglaf, David and Jonathan.

The strongest point that Strozzi-Heckler seems to make in his jumbled mess of a book is that it would be a good thing if someone could find some way for men to tap into that warrior spirit and affirm each other without actually having to be destructive. To give that warrior archetype an outlet, not for aggression and violence, but rather for service.

The warrior in America

My dad was a warrior. He was a Lieutenant Commander on a destroyer in the Pacific in World War II. He's never talked much about the war, just an occasional hint or two, but today he told me about some action that occurred in the Philippines. His destroyer took part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which saw the first use of kamikaze aircraft in the war. Dad says he watched a plane pass over him and miss its target by about 30 feet, piling into the water and exploding. Not yet realizing that the pilot's intent had been to fly into the ship, dad's thought was one of awed sympathy, "that guy never had a chance!" Later he said he saw two planes fly into the USS Mississippi. During this action in the Philippines, a shell from a shore battery hit a nearby ship and utterly destroyed everything from the mast forward. My dad took a whale boat into the wreckage and picked up 20-some-odd survivors. As he was offloading the men onto a mid-sized transport, the transport was hit and destroyed and he had to go pick up the survivors again. For this action he earned an award (a Bronze Star Medal?)

After the war, he gave up warrioring and became an engineer, a businessman, and a family man. But beneath these hats there was still a warrior. There was (is) some part of the warrior, noble and stern, dignified and proper, remaining in him.

But I didn't intend this as a simple tribute to my father. My father is an example of an extremely common nobility in America. Because of the relative youth of this country and the frequency of conflicts, America has bred warriors in every generation. I think you'd be hard pressed to find an American that is more than one or two generations removed from this warrior ethos represented by my father. This idea was somewhat hinted at in a quote by John Adams that I posted a few days ago;

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

The idea being that despite our desire to believe that we have evolved into artists, poets, and philosophers, not only are we at most a couple of generations removed from the warrior, but we are indebted to him (or her).

About 120 years ago, Jigoro Kano saw this same thing happening in Japan. His country was emerging from feudalism into the modern era of industrialism and multinationalism and he saw that there would be no place for the professional warrior as he had previously existed in Japan. The next generation would be engineers and businessmen and the following generation would be artists (so he thought or hoped). Gichin Funakoshi in his autobiography, Karate-do My Way of Life, describes coming to the same realization when he had to get his topknot shorn in order to be admitted to a modern school. So, what did these guys do? They reorganized the martial traditions that they had access to in order to preserve the nobility inherent in the warrior ways. That's part of what we are doing in the martial arts - conserving the warrior spirit.
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You know, I think it's funny that my dad, the warrior fought the Japanese and it is Japanese martial arts that have allowed me to learn and preserve part of that warrior spirit.

The Warriors of Vicksburg

This past weekend, my wife and I went to Vicksburg and stayed at a bed&breakfast that was part antebellum, part Victorian. The Baer House was a wonderful experience with a host that really went out of his way to make his guests comfortable and welcome. I'd highly recommend this B&B for anyone in the vicinity who wants an exceptional experience.

While there, we went to see the old Court House Museum. Fascinating history. One of the most interesting artifacts (to me) was a copy of a newspaper that was unfinished at the time of the seige. One of the last articles to be set was basically an editorial about how there was no way in hell the Union would ever be able to take Vicksburg. Well, they did and the Union army found the newspaper and finished setting he last column and printed copies of it. In the Union addition to the paper was a counter-editorial that essentially said,' a couple of days make a lot of difference, don't they?" But the most interesting part of the counter-editorial was a comment to the effect that the Mississippians ought to be grateful to the Union because they (the citizens) need not live in caves and eat cats anymore. Apparently, according to the artifacts at Vicksburg, both sides had noble motives. One was fighting for Unity, the other for Homeland. The one side thought that they were the noble defenders against 'Northern Aggression,' while the other side saw themselves as saviors and liberators.

The next day we viewed the Battlefield Memorial Park, a 16-mile long trail winding through the sites of the emplacements of the various Union and Confederate troops during the seige. Now, the trail is populated with massive, impressive memorial structures to the various states and companies and groups that took part in the seige. At the end of the trail (not really the end, but we were exhausted by the time we got there, so the rest of the trail went really fast) is the USS Cairo museum (the first armored steamship to be destroyed by a torpedo (what we would now call a mine).

I'm certainly not a Civil War buff, but this was fascinating military history. It was touching to see the battlefield memorials to the various warriors on both sides that fought this conflict to determine what kind of country this would be. I thought this trip had a good bit to say about the role of the warrior that I've been discussing with Dojo Rat lately.

Richard Strozzi-Heckler's Warrior Spirit

I have finished reading Richard Strozzi-Heckler's In Search of the Warrior Spirit that Dojo Rat recommended I read and review and which Patrick Waits (P3) subsequently loaned me. What can I say? Overall an interesting book. It's got all the things that should make for a fascinating read - aikido, Green Berets, hi-tech biofeedback voodoo. The premise is that in the mid-1980's the author got to try to teach a bunch of soldiers aikido, meditation, biofeedback, etc... to see if there was anything in these new age modalities that would make the soldiers better warriors.

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Despite the great premise the book fell somewhat flat with me. First, their explicit premise seemed to be to bring the mythical Jedi warriors from Star Wars to life in the form of the United States Special Forces. The project's motto was Vi Cit Tecum (may the Force be with you) and their logo depicted crossed light sabers over a Trojan horse. Those that know me know that this is a pet peeve of mine - trying to take movie spirituality and use it as a justification for some behavior. I had a sensei who used to love to motivate us by quoting wise-sounding sayings of Yoda et al. And sure, I have found over the years quotes from movies that significantly mirror parts of my martial arts philosophy (perhaps most notably, "Power without perception is spiritually useless ..."), but I don't toss these quotes around as resources of wisdom or cite them as guides to belief or action.

Also, on a purely personal note, I went into the book with a couple of expectations, One: I expected that somewhere in the book, the author would come to the conclusion, "a warrior is..." and that would be interesting. He did cite various qualities, like courage, mindfulness, patience, etc... but either he skipped it or I missed it in my reading. Two: and this is related to the first point above. I expected this book to move from point A to point B making some progress and describing it. It didn't. Instead it vaguely meandered through selected vignettes that occurred during the project. To put it into Meyers-Briggs terminology, the book is very intuitive-feeling-perceiving (NFP) and not very sensing-thinking-judging (STJ).

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All that is not to say that it is drivel. It is not. The book was thought-provoking and there were many parts that I am going to want to think about a lot. It is the type of book that I will want to re-read more than once. I intend to dissect some of the issues in the book and cover them in future posts, hopefully translating them from NFP-speak to STJ-speak. Stay tuned...