Category Archives: philosophy

On conservatism, Trump, and why I’m voting for Hillary

Politics is a passion of mine. I’ve always been interested in world events and the players who shape them. I don’t see politics as a sport or an interest or a hobby. This statement may anger some people I care very much about, but I must say it: politics isn’t something that one can have the luxury of “not being interested in.” Politics shapes our society: it sets the terms of our freedoms, our opportunities, our successes.

I earned a degree in political science and I have worked in a political environment for nearly a decade. I study politics every day — something far above and beyond the level of engagement I think every citizen should have. So maybe I talk a bit too much about politics for your tastes. That’s OK, and I’m sorry for being overbearing.

But I do think there are some critically important things we do need to talk about during this presidential election cycle.

I am a Democrat, a progressive, a liberal. I am strong in my convictions and I can lay out arguments as to why I stand for the positions I support. Nonetheless, I am always open to new information and different perspectives, meaning I have not always held the same opinions and won’t always hold the ones I hold now. But I am constantly in search of what is right for me, and in that search, I have always — since 1988, at age 4 — found my home in the Democratic Party. My loyalty, though, is not to the party, which may change, but to the ideals currently underlying it.

I have known many Republicans and even been friends with a few. Despite our differences, I have always been able to find common ground with everyone I’ve ever engaged in an extended conversation about politics. I truly believe that if we sit down and listen to one another, we can continue to have a beautiful, vibrant, incredible United States of America. After all, that has been our map to success thus far.

But there is a stark divide in this country. It is a divide that has always existed but only sometimes rises to the surface like it has now. It’s a divide that is not attributable to politics or government or banks or the establishment. It is a divide that is genetically coded into human beings:

We are divided by an instinctive drive to hold the levers of power for ourselves and for those we identify as a part of our tribe.

This drive to horde power is something those with the power can ignore when they are unchallenged. But every few decades, societal changes compel those with power to reckon with the prospect of sharing that power with a new group. It happened in 1776 when colonists rebelled against the king, in 1828 when the common man rebelled against old-money politicians, in 1860 when the enslavement of man was no longer sustainable, in the early 1900s as Roosevelt challenged the monopolies of business, in 1932 as the other Roosevelt secured a New Deal for the impoverished, and in the 1960s as we began to confront our festering racial disparities.

In 2008, the United States of America elected a black man to be president. The country convulsed with pride and patted itself on the back about how it had finally put racism firmly in the past. But over the subsequent seven-plus years of the Obama administration, as the demographics of the country have continued to change and as those who have been without power for centuries see a beacon of hope that they too may one day rise up, the power structure has been challenged again.

The old guard feels the threat, and the wheels of resistance have churned into motion. Government has ground to a halt. And a very bad man is channeling the fears and anxieties and disappointments of a portion of the nation that has never had to worry about these issues before into a toxic and dangerous presidential campaign.

I do not blame my Republican friends for this state of affairs even though it is the Republican Party that is preparing to nominate this very bad man for president. Like many of my Democratic and independent friends, most Republicans just do not prioritize their time to critically analyze what their political allies and heroes truly stand for; they have other things going on in their lives, like day-to-day struggles to feed and clothe their children or the demands of an 80-hour-a-week job. Unfortunately, that ignorance — and I mean a lack of extensive, specific knowledge, not an implication of stupidity or laziness — is easy to exploit so that those with power can keep the power.

There’s no delicate way to say this, but I think it is a self-evident truth: those who have held power in the United States of America since its founding have been straight, white, male Christians. Let me be clear: straight, white, male Christians are not bad people (hell, I am three of those four things myself). But they’re also not better people; they’re not people who are more deserving of power than any other group of people. And their behavior and their instinct to maintain that power is not a product of their sexuality or their race or gender or religion, but of their human nature. That is to say: if any other group of people had founded this nation, that group would behave exactly the same way; for evidence, look at the Middle East, East Asia, Africa, or anywhere else on the globe.

If there is some higher calling for humanity, it must be to overcome at least some of our animal instincts in order to create a less violent world. We can codify those efforts through morals or religions or constitutions, refer to them as God’s calling or as humanist rationality. The terminology and the structures don’t particularly matter, but I believe a vast majority of humans agree with me that less violence — not just physical violence, but mental cruelty, emotional warfare, and every other manifestation of unkindness — is a common goal that we can agree on.

Unfortunately, the temptations of power can blind us from seeing when we are working against that goal. As I said earlier, I have been thinking about these things on-and-off-but-mostly-on for nearly 30 years. And I have recognized some very ugly truths about the political spectrum.

To be a conservative is to believe that the current power structure in society does not need to change. This is not an opinion, but an actual definition of the term. A conservative believes that the status quo serves society best. Therefore, it makes sense that conservatism attracts those who already hold power.

Conservatism also attracts those who don’t appear to hold power, in the sense of occupying high government posts or having millions of dollars, but who benefit by being a part of the tribe of people who do. These people — the hard-working, blue-collar, good people who populate small towns across White America — fear that the power and security they do have, no matter how little, will be taken away by some other group.

This is where the concept of “white privilege” enters the conversation, and that is far too expansive a topic to dive into here. Suffice it to say: poor white people (again, I have been in that group) face very real challenges and struggles in their lives, but their race is not one of them. And because we share the same skin color as those who have held power, we are welcomed into the tribe. The arguments of conservative politicians include us in their vision, even as conservative policies continue to subjugate the poor to the power of the old guard.

When a power shift, real or perceived, reaches a certain tipping point — say, with the election of a black president — maintaining the status quo no longer serves the interests of those who have until now held the levers of power. In this climate, those who used to be drawn to conservatism feel that ideology was ineffective at protecting them. Consequently, they turn to conservatism’s cousin on the extreme right wing: reactionary politics.

Reactionary politics is a type of populism. Populism is an appeal to the broadest swath of people possible: a political approach to complex problems that offers simple, and therefore incorrect, solutions. Populism takes several forms, but one form is the exclusionary populism of reactionary politics.

Reactionary politics thrives on identifying an enemy that can be blamed for our problems. Because our most basic human instincts tell us to trust those who look like us and distrust those who don’t, reactionary politics almost always places the blame for our problems on those others. That simple answer is very comforting and appealing to those who feel down and out. And suddenly, our agreement to seek a kinder, less violent world is clouded by the promise of regaining that power we once seemed to have.

The man leading the field for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 is practicing reactionary politics. Even in times when reactionary politics are not in vogue, this region of the political spectrum always has inhabitants. These include the anti-immigration advocates, the Christian Dominionists, the white nationalists, and the outright racist white supremacists.

Even if Donald Trump himself is not a white supremacist, his rhetoric and policy proposals match the reactionary dreams of the racists and the bigots, so this is naturally his base of support. Despite being on the right wing, reactionaries like Mr. Trump do not need the same ideological purity as traditional conservatives to be accepted by the voters. They just need to assure the public that they will turn back the clock on all the “bad” things that have happened in the past few years. And in times of change such as this, the reactionary base of support expands by attracting the angry and the hurting — people who do not identify as racist — good people who are taken in by a false promise that if we just strip the power back from those other people, everything will be fine again.

The Republican Party has never been comprised of a majority of racists. But it has been the party of conservatives — status quo protectors — whose natural allies are the reactionaries. The politicians in the Republican Party have known this fact and they have long supported power-structure-protecting policies couched in friendly, appealing language (tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, “smaller government” that creates homogeneous governmental units where it is easier to keep a grip on power) while at the same time holding onto the support of the reactionaries with coded language and dog whistles (“taking the country back” and “protecting our values”).

(Please don’t interpret this to mean that I believe my Republican and conservative friends identify that way because they want to protect a pro-white-male status quo; I know that they believe in tax cuts and smaller government and other conservative policy positions because of a belief that they are the best tools for a just society, just as sincerely as my friends on the left believe in their principles.)

Now, the polish is off, and the reactionaries see no need for coded language. Now, Mexicans are rapists, Muslims should be deported, and Christians are under constant, premeditated attack. Reactionary politics is appealing to our basest instincts: to blame the new, rising classes for our problems when the real culprit has been the structure that made us feel empowered while we were really being exploited by those in control.

A lot of ink, pixels, and breath have been expended in comparing Mr. Trump to such infamous figures as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Such comparisons have been deployed far too frequently in our political discourse over the past decades — so frequently that we are now in a boy-who-cried-wolf conundrum. In the case of Mr. Trump, there really is evidence that a wolf lurks in the forest. It is simply an historical fact that the fascist dictators of Europe rode a wave of reactionary politics to power. The threat is real.

To be a progressive, on the other hand, is to advocate an inclusive power structure. It is the reason the Democratic Party of the 1960s onward has been an alliance of women, people of color, those of faiths or nonfaiths that emphasize inclusion, the non-cisgendered and non-heterosexual, and other historically excluded groups.

It’s certainly true that some in the Democratic Party simply want access to power so they can deny it to others. That’s one of the reasons why my loyalty does not lie with the party, but with the ideals. Progressivism as an ideology rejects the notion that expanding who has access to power is a zero-sum game that results in less power for those who used to be in charge. Alternatively, progressives can acknowledge the zero-sum nature of power but choose to reject the idea that one group or another should have exclusive access to that power. Maybe spreading our power around does dilute the power for ourselves or does make our success more difficult, but damn it, that’s the right thing to do for humanity.

So the thesis here is that I am asking you to reject the conservatives and reactionaries who would protect the old, exclusive power structure. But isn’t Hillary Clinton a part of that power structure? Isn’t Bernie Sanders the only candidate in the race who is challenging the status quo while rejecting reactionary politics? It’s a tempting thought, but it just isn’t so.

It is certainly true that Mrs. Clinton has had power for decades: as First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State. But holding power is not the same as denying power to others. Throughout Mrs. Clinton’s public service, she has supported policies that expand opportunities to women, to people of color, to people with different genders and different sexual orientations and different abilities.

And, importantly to me as a student of politics, Mrs. Clinton has fought those battles smartly, with a long-term strategy to expand opportunity to more people.

Of course, it is true that a long-term strategy is ugly when looked at over the short-term. In retrospect, the Clintons’ support for aspects of welfare reform, a disparate criminal justice system, and other Third Way policies don’t fit the mold of progressivism. But those compromises were elements of political relationships that allowed for the expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the earned income tax credit for low-income Americans. I acknowledge the tragic reality that a smart compromise for a comfortable politician can still be a life sentence for a troubled teenager. But in a diverse, free society in which half the elected Congress supports even harsher, race-based punishment, you are sometimes lucky to be offered half a loaf.

It is also true that Mrs. Clinton has changed positions over time. The cynic finds an easy way out when he claims that someone changes her mind because she gets a campaign contribution. And sometimes the cynic would be right. But I urge you to rise above cynicism and do a deeper, impartial examination of the entirety of a person’s career and ideology before diagnosing a disease.

Consider that another trade-off of being a successful politician who is able to fight for change is the ability to get elected. And for the entirety of Mrs. Clinton’s career, getting elected has required a lot of money — amounts of money that are only obtainable from large corporations. That paradigm may be changing now, as the success of Sen. Sanders’s grassroots fundraising shows, but it’s not how it has worked for 30 years — and I must remind you, it hasn’t worked yet in a presidential campaign. It’s a terrible system, but let’s indict the system, not the candidate who has no other way to succeed.

I do not believe Mrs. Clinton has changed policy positions due to campaign contributions or because she has no moral compass. In fact, I do not know anyone who was born with all the right opinions. And I don’t know any better sign of a mind that is closed to facts and self-examination than a person who clings to outdated perspectives. So when I look at the pattern of Mrs. Clinton’s policy shifts through her 30-year public life, I see a woman who has always shifted to the more progressive position. She is evolving with the nation, with me — with you.

“But Bernie has always held these progressive ideals!” In many instances, yes. In some others, no. And in terms of translating those ideals into policy changes … I’m still waiting. I am hesitant to use the names in the same sentence because their intentions are so diametrically opposed, but Mr. Sanders, like Mr. Trump, is a populist. His brand of populism is inclusionary instead of exclusionary, but it is still offering simple solutions to complex problems.

Sen. Sanders is a good, honorable man, and a reliable progressive. If you choose to support him, I respect that decision. But, as I urged with Mrs. Clinton, please survey the entirety of Sen. Sanders’s public life, including his ability to effect tangible change.

Polls today that show Sen. Sanders beating Mr. Trump by larger margins than Mrs. Clinton are simply fantasy, as Mrs. Clinton has had her numbers suppressed by national-level GOP attacks for 24 years, whereas Sen. Sanders hasn’t even seen the start of it. Consider the political reality he will face when the Republican Party unloads its full arsenal on a man who most people believe is a socialist, whether the label is accurate or not, in a country where Gallup found that 50 percent of people would never vote for a socialist.

Mrs. Clinton is not an ideal candidate. She has made too many poor decisions that have left her exposed to questions about her trustworthiness, even if those questions are almost always a part of a long-term, coordinated political sabotage. But I have not yet developed the ability to conjure from thin air the perfect candidate, so I’m left evaluating the choices I do have. If you are a dedicated progressive, I may be asking you to take half a loaf by voting for Mrs. Clinton. But politics is people, and if you want purity, you’re going to have to change human nature.

My appeal is this: understand what conservatives, reactionaries, and progressives stand for. Then calmly, coolly consider the consequences of a reactionary being elected President of the United States in 2016, and determine the best strategic choice for preventing that outcome.

I hope this long-winded screed hasn’t been too insufferable. Many people are built out of genetic material that makes it easier to set all these issues aside than to fret over them. But for whatever reason, I cannot. I have a biological need to spew this out into the world, imperfect as it is, for my own selfish reasons. To write this feels cathartic for me. I think it’s because the United States of America is my home. And I can’t deny that I am indeed only a human being, and that means I have an instinct to protect my home.

So please reject reactionary politics. Mr. Trump the Person is only fighting for the interests of one person: Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump the Candidate is using reactionary politics — an appeal to white power — to secure those interests. We must save this nation. This is not a drill.

Legend of Korra showcases versatility of animation

The idea that an adult male watches cartoons often provokes a good bit of laughter and social ostracism. It also raises a few eyebrows when that same adult male writes about 19th century Europe and the 1820s American political system. But it isn’t as strange as it seems, and actually makes a good bit of sense. A good cartoon can be just as thought-provoking as any show on AMC, and more often than not, the writing is better than anything that appears on the broadcast networks.

Ultimately, animation, like comics, is a medium, with its own unique potential that can be utilized to maximum effect. What a creator does with any medium determines whether or not a story is good. As a fellow contributor to Curiata.com likes to say, good writing is good writing, it doesn’t matter if it’s in a book or portrayed on a screen. The prejudice people have toward cartoons is based on the assumption that all cartoons are aimed at kids, or are using the cartoon medium to add to the joke of shocking humor for adult comedies like South Park. That is a painfully simple view that ignores all of the great cartoons released every year, particularly by the Japanese, which offer thought-provoking and imaginative takes on real questions.

Using a cartoon allows the storyteller unlimited creative freedom. Like comics, the visual aspect of the show is only limited by its creators’ imaginations. Unlike comics, cartoons can be made to illustrate epic, flowing action scenes and sprawling, panoramic shots of fictional worlds. Cartoons can then use these tremendous new worlds to tell us stories about our own, in ways that even the best movie director can’t. The right combination of inventive animation and meaningful writing can result in some of the best shows on television. Among these shows, which I enjoy just as much as Mad Men or Hell on Wheels, is The Legend of Korra.

The Legend of Korra is a sequel to the popular Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender. Both Avatar and The Legend of Korra are about a world in which some of the population has the ability to manipulate or “bend” certain elements. Benders are only able to control one element, usually depending on what nation they belong to: Fire, Water, Earth, or Air. The Avatar is the only person in this world who can bend all four elements. This person acts as the bridge between the human and spirit worlds and is reincarnated after death in the way that the Dalai Lama is said to be. Korra is the next incarnation of the Avatar after Last Airbender’s protagonist, Aang.

Avatar was an incredibly well-written show that was aimed at a younger audience. When Korra was given the green light, the creators had to decide whether or not to continue aiming for the young demographic, or to follow the path of anime, which inspired the art style of Avatar, and age with its audience to produce a show targeting older viewers. The decision was made to create a show that can continue to appeal to new viewers while giving older fans more complex storylines containing allusions to politics, social justice, and world history.

The first season of The Legend of Korra reintroduces the audience to the world of the Avatar — greatly changed since the days of Aang’s adventures. The four warring nations have come to peace and a new government has formed in Republic City: a steampunk-esque city modeled after both feudal Japan and the United States in the 1920s, complete with radios, film reels, and crude automobiles. Fans of The Last Airbender can see the changes of the world in the last 70 years instantly. The city, which was founded, in part, by the previous Avatar, contains many of the problems of the modern metropolis. A constant battle exists between crime syndicates, which usually contain several element benders, and the police force, all of whom are a special breed of earth benders: metal benders. The result is a plethora of intense and unique scenes.

The show takes the premise of Avatar and places it in a modern context. In a realistic world, the police and the crime syndicates would obviously make use of bending abilities to further their goals, whether noble or sinister. But the realism of the new industrial era of Avatar isn’t limited to criminals. The show includes a social movement — one that begins with noble intentions but also takes a violent and aggressive turn.

Upon entering Republic City, Korra is met with resentment from a group of marginalized people calling themselves the Equalists. The Equalists address an issue that goes largely ignored through Aang’s journey. Only some people on this planet have the ability to bend the elements. How does that affect the common people? What prevents benders from using their powers to subjugate the masses? In fact, the world of Avatar often shows that benders are in positions of power. Does their world actually operate under an oligarchy of the bending class?

The Equalists are a group of radicals, led by the enigmatic Amon, that demands the equality of all persons. Amon, who wears a mask to hide scars supposedly given to him by a fire bender, has the ability to take away a bender’s abilities — a power that had only been seen once before, from Avatar Aang. Amon’s ability and his uncanny knack for manipulating the masses gives him immense power and makes him a great threat to the status quo of Republic City and the Avatar.

Amon argues something reasonable but offers an answer that goes beyond what may be morally acceptable. The Equalists believe it to be unfair that only a select few have the ability to manipulate the elements. We can understand their feelings on this issue, but what right do the disgruntled have to take away a gift that has been given to others? Amon also uses the story of a single fire bender to propagate the idea that all benders are naturally a threat to the good, freedom-loving folks of Republic City. It’s Demagogue 101 — determine an “other,” attribute terrible qualities to them, use a single instance of truth to give your claims credibility, and appeal to the base prejudice in the people. By telling them that he will be their guide and their savior, Amon uses real feelings of powerlessness in others to empower himself.

The Equalists were also used as an “other” to further the goals of Republic City councilman Tarrlok, a water bender. Tarrlok’s lust for power rather than any desire to do good clearly colors his political decisions. This often puts him at odds with Aang’s son, Tenzin, also on the council, who seems to subscribe to the philosophy of noblesse oblige. As someone who was born into a position of importance, Tenzin sees his status as both a burden and a gift that must be used to help others in the world. He uses this philosophy to positively influence Korra to do the same. Korra may not have asked for her status, but she should use it as well as she can to help the less powerful.

Korra’s sense of social justice is important to her development as a character. As the Avatar, she is the embodiment of a world of privilege by birth. The entire society is centered around her. But Korra’s parents are simple people from the southern water tribe. Being the Avatar has made her arrogant, but she is still human and, ultimately, she believes in fairness.

The Equalists challenge her outlook on the world. Perhaps it is unfair that a select few have been given such great gifts while others have to work much harder to find relevance in life. But the Equalists’ philosophy drives them to terrorism. Amon uses his highly trained forces and electrified weaponry to make theatrical displays of power against benders, and the Avatar in particular. Korra and her friends are thus put to the test against these skilled fighters who prove that you don’t need to be a bender to be a force in their world.

Tarrlok, like any good power-seeker, uses the terrorist actions of Amon and the Equalists to further his own agenda. Average people protesting the decisions of the City Council are put under arrest by Tarrlok, who labels the protesters Equalists. While not taken to that extreme, Tarrlok’s actions bring to mind the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the idea that simply labeling someone a terrorist or enemy combatant removes any rights they have as human beings to be fairly tried.

Korra has to navigate this world of political intrigue and social upheaval while also protecting herself from Amon’s personal vendetta, leaving her completely uncertain who she can trust. And she must do this while her own morals are being put to the test. Korra, though a proponent of social justice, is quick to fight and reacts violently to people she views as evil. It is the duty of Tenzin, who was raised by the much more pacifist Aang, to show Korra the better path: There are men out there who would harm innocents for personal gain, or for a grander vision. We can’t be quick to pull the trigger, and we should evolve with the changing times. Those with whom we disagree don’t deserve violence. They should be heard and understood. Only when all other options have been exhausted should one resort to physicality.

The people of Republic City have a reason to be disgruntled. Despite the promise of its name, the ruling class of the City are hardly representative of the population. The council is made up of a representative from each of the elemental nations. Tenzin, whose nation consisted of only his own family, held equal power with the Earth councilmen, whose people were large and expansive. The Legend of Korra’s first season shows us how this system can change into something more democratic, as the season ends with the election of Republic City’s first president. Moving into a more presidential system shows how political movements can make a difference. But it was done through peace and negotiation, not brought on because of the violent actions of a few terrorists.

Despite its influence from Japanese art and storytelling, The Legend of Korra is ultimately a work of strong American allegory. It shows us the good and the bad with democratic systems, focusing on the problems that come with rapid progress and social change. And it does it all in a way that is eye-catching, interesting, and appeals to both children and adults. It is a show aimed at kids that still challenges adults. Yes, it is a cartoon, and it is one that I am proud to enjoy.

Superheroes approach killing from differing philosophies

Superheroes, whether in comics, movies, or animated television shows, make up our modern mythology. Like the mythology of the ancients, the stories we tell represent our greatest hopes, fears, and ideals. Then what does it say about us when our heroes kill?

Is there anything wrong with Superman killing General Zod to protect an innocent family? Does Wolverine’s use of deadly force to stop mass murderers make him any less heroic than Batman? These questions, though applied to fictional characters, hold great insights into who we are in the era of the drone and preemptive war.

The conflict is one of differing philosophies. Opponents of the death penalty and drone strikes share a philosophical mindset with some of our greatest fictional characters. These heroes, like Batman, Spider-Man, and Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender, are famous practitioners of deontology, a philosophy that states that actions themselves, regardless of consequences, have an intrinsic moral value. Under deontology, stealing is wrong whether it is for personal gain or to feed your family, and killing is morally reprehensible even if it is done to save the lives of millions.

Some of the strongest heroes in fiction, including Superman and Goku from Dragon Ball Z, try their hardest to maintain this philosophy, but have occasionally made the difficult decision to do the unthinkable when circumstances have dictated. Goku, for example, gave his antagonist, Frieza, numerous opportunities to leave with his life, but the Super Saiyan was left no choice but to fire back at the monster in self-defense.

Some heroes find the morality of killing dangerous men to be much less morally ambiguous. These heroes practice the philosophy of utilitarianism, which states that the moral value of an action is directly linked to its consequences. Therefore, if killing the Phoenix saves the lives of thousands or millions of innocent people, doing so is the morally correct decision. Wolverine, who did kill Phoenix in X3, is perhaps the most obvious example, but other heroes who practice utilitarianism include such squeaky clean characters as the Power Rangers and the Jedi.

Spider-Man’s origin story offers a perfect example of the conflict between deontology and utilitarianism. When a robber passes by Peter Parker, he is faced with a moral decision. Deontology dictates that Peter stop the thief. Stealing is, itself, a moral wrong, and Peter, possessing the power necessary to easily stop him, should have. He didn’t, and the decision had dire consequences. Utilitarianism states that not stopping the thief only became wrong when it later led to the death of Peter’s Uncle Ben. By not apprehending the man, Peter made the wrong moral decision under both utilitarianism and deontology.

But does the equation change when the stakes are raised? When Peter defeats his enemies, such as Green Goblin, he hands them off to the authorities, where they are then expected to go through the legal process. Should Peter have killed these villains instead? Under the American legal system, we expect citizens to only use lethal force as a last resort. And under deontological reasoning, killing is always wrong. But these villains are left with the ability to escape custody and further harm civilians. In one of the most famous examples, Green Goblin, who Spider-Man had refused to kill in the past, ended the life of Peter’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. The utilitarian philosopher would then argue that Peter’s refusal to kill the Goblin was wrong, because it led to Gwen’s death.

Under deontology, Spider-Man can’t be held responsible for the blood on the Goblin’s hands. Using the same philosophy, Batman also can’t be blamed for Joker’s murder of the second Robin, Jason Todd, or his crippling of Barbara Gordon. Batman is defined by his refusal to kill, even under the most extenuating circumstances. As shown in the animated movie Under the Red Hood, when forced to choose between saving the life of the Joker and killing the Red Hood, Batman found a third way by stopping Red Hood’s firearm, ironically saving the man who caused so much grief.

Letting someone die, not just killing, was a moral wrong in Bruce Wayne’s mind, and Batman could not let that happen, even though Red Hood’s arguments about the Joker were all true. Thousands died at the hands of the Joker, and because of his insanity, the legal system would never put him to death. According to Red Hood, Batman had a moral obligation to save the lives of the Joker’s future victims by killing the mad man when he had the chance. By not doing so, the blood of the Clown Prince of Crime was on the hands of the Caped Crusader.

Batman’s refusal to kill has long been the basis for his unlikely friendship with the Man of Tomorrow, even if Zack Snyder and David Goyer completely missed that. Superman, despite having the power of a god, has refused for most of his 75-year history to kill even the most dangerous of villains. The few times in which he behaved differently have been so rare that they either were used to reshape the DC Universe or were done in alternate continuities.

When Clark Kent finally crosses that line and allows himself to kill, it always acts as the beginning of a slippery slope. In the ongoing comic story Injustice, the Joker tricks Superman into accidentally killing Lois Lane and her unborn baby before detonating a nuclear weapon in the middle of Metropolis. Clark finally snaps and kills the Joker — something Batman had always refused to do.

Bruce immediately comes into conflict with Superman, but chooses to bide his time and hope that his friend will realize his mistake. Instead, Superman slips further into the role of seemingly benevolent dictator. After killing the Joker, Superman decides it’s time to stop playing with kid gloves, and he begins taking out those who have committed atrocious acts. Dictators fall, villains are killed, and the descent of the world’s greatest hero into mass murderer begins. Once the Rubicon has been crossed, Clark finds it increasingly easy to kill, even ending the life of Green Arrow over a simple misunderstanding in front of his own parents.

Batman stands by his philosophical beliefs and becomes the only man able to bring down the Dictator of Steel. But if he is given the opportunity, will Bruce Wayne be morally obligated to end the life of a super killer? Obviously, Batman says no, but other heroes would answer differently.

In Age of Ultron, the Marvel world is plunged into darkness by a robot-killing machine. When Wolverine learns that Ultron was built by Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, he decides to do what is necessary to save the world. Wolverine travels back in time to kill Pym before he even conceives of Ultron. Pym, at that time, was still heroic, a member of the Avengers. He had yet to do anything wrong, but Wolverine, believing in utilitarian ethics, chose to end the man’s life before his creation could cause any harm. The plan ultimately backfired, but Wolverine’s willingness to kill a still-innocent man provokes an interesting question about what makes someone heroic.

The Jedi of the Star Wars universe don’t have the benefit of time travel, but they do take seriously their duty to maintain the peace, even if that means killing. Unlike with Superman and others, there is no hesitation in the Jedi when it comes to taking down those who would harm the innocent. The Jedi, like the Green Lantern Corps and the real-world police, are charged with protecting the innocent and are thus allowed to kill when necessary.

In Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan Kenobi seemingly ends the life of the Sith Lord, Darth Maul, due to his personal feelings that the Sith are evil. We, as members of the audience, are inclined to agree with his decision, but have a very different point of view when it is Anakin Skywalker who behaves in the same manner. In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin cuts off the hand of Jedi master Mace Windu, allowing Darth Sidious to kill him. Anakin, like his old master, was taking action against a man he perceived to be committing an evil act — after all, Mace Windu was technically trying to enact a coup.

The death of Mace Windu led to 30 years of oppressive rule under the Empire. Does this result make Anakin’s actions any more reprehensible than Obi-Wan’s? Under utilitarian ethics, the answer is yes, but using deontology, both actions hold equal moral weight.

The beauty of fictional superheroes, however, is that morally difficult questions can be solved with creative writing. A hero does not have to choose between killing the supervillain or letting innocents die. Batman can stop Red Hood’s gun, Superman can turn back time, and Goku can use the Dragon Balls to wish his enemies back to life with new moral compasses. Unfortunately, these third choices can be seen as copouts at best, and poor storytelling at worst. One of the worst offenders of this copout came about as part of the most compelling and philosophically challenging stories ever told. On Nickelodeon, at least.

Avatar: The Last Airbender follows the story of Aang, the fabled Avatar. The Avatar is styled on the Dalai Lama, if the Buddhist leader could shoot fire from his hands. The Avatar is reincarnated upon death and is distinguished from other element benders by his or her ability to bend all four elements: Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. Aang is the sole survivor of the Air Nation, a society of pacifist monks whose abilities were used primarily in defense.

Aang is told his entire life that it is his destiny to defeat the Fire Lord, who has conquered most of the four nations and brought oppression to the people. No one doubts the Fire Lord is evil, but Aang is still a little boy and is unable to accept that killing his nemesis is the answer. When all of his human mentors tell him that he has no other choice, Aang looks to the spirits of his past lives — the previous Avatars — for another answer. Unfortunately, they all declare the same thing: the evil of the Fire Lord must be defeated, and Aang must accept his destiny by killing the man.

Even during the final fight, Aang refuses to do what is expected of him but finds a third way. The Avatar uses his powers to take away the bending ability of the Fire Lord, relegating him to the status and danger level of a regular human. Aang is able to stick to his deontological beliefs even with the fate of the world on the line. Sure, it was contrived and came with no foreshadowing, but it spoke to a strong ethical ideal and seemed to split the difference between deontology and utilitarianism. Aang was able to stand by his beliefs and still save the world, never compromising. But even the spiritual leaders of this mystic world from across the ages found nothing wrong with killing a dangerous man. Ultimately, it was Aang’s personal morality, not a universally held social morality, that prevented the Avatar from crossing a line he was unwilling to cross.

Perhaps this is the difference between Batman and Superman as well. Batman’s aversion to death comes from the trauma of seeing his own parents gunned down before him. Superman only ever experienced such loss in distant ways, and his morality was formed only by lessons from virtuous parents. Maybe this is why writers find it so much easier to see Superman finally crack and kill people. Wolverine’s willingness to kill comes from his understanding that the world is a much darker place, and it is sometimes necessary to do something morally questionable for the greater good.

These characters’ personal ethics about taking the lives of others does not dictate whether or not they can be considered heroes any more than it can in the real world. But it is these ethics that define the characters we love and that lend them their staying power. They give us examples to live by, just as ancient mythology did for our ancestors.

What do you think? Is Batman to blame when the Joker kills innocents? Should Aang have been prepared to do the unthinkable for the fate of his world? Is Wolverine any less heroic for killing an innocent Hank Pym? Did Zack Snyder make a mistake by having his Superman kill General Zod?

These questions are a lot more relevant now, in a world of terrorist attacks and mass shootings. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of writers who can concoct new powers for us when the time calls for it, and we may all some day be faced with a difficult decision that makes us rethink our moral codes.

Time management proves delicate balance

Readers may have noticed there was no Modern Urban Gentleman entry last week. Readers may also have noticed this entry is being published near 10 p.m., stretching the promise of a new post on Wednesdays to the limit.

The gentleman keeps a full schedule. Too often, the balance of time management becomes a house of cards: one appointment runs late or an unexpected circumstance arises and the entire ledger must be shifted. Sometimes, a less important item goes undone — or a very important one is skipped to keep the rest of the day in order. These are the perils of a modern urban gentleman.

The mantle of gentleman weighs heavy on the shoulders of any who try to live to the high standards such a title demands. Just take a moment and review the guidelines laid down at the commencement of this endeavor. Attaining and maintaining that depth and breadth of engagement with the world is all-consuming.

The gentleman would have it no other way.

Idleness is a waste of the precious few years a gentleman is given to breathe life through his lungs. An important distinction must be drawn here: consciously creating rest time, whether to sleep, meditate, or otherwise “recharge,” is not idleness. Indeed, regular recovery is integral to the health of all gentlemen.

But all those rechargings must be earned through physical, mental, and spiritual work. To borrow a metaphor, a gentleman is always in the forge: feeling the fire of life, finding the imperfections in himself, and hammering them away. The rewards of this process are manifold; the gentleman attains ever higher levels of appreciation for the arts, the smells, the tastes, the thoughts, the relationships he encounters.

Alas, nirvana is not attainable, and the challenges are ever-present. The most insurmountable of these is time itself. The investment of hours required to reach the goals of the gentleman far outnumber those given for a single lifetime. Consider just a few of the gentleman’s ever-out-of-reach ideals, in the style of the Boy Scout Law. A modern urban gentleman:

Is well-read. In the eight years since graduating college, the Modern Urban Gentleman has read 99 books. This certainly outperforms the average American total of five books read per year, but it means only reading 720 books between the ages of 22 and 82. According to Google, over 129 million books had been published as of 2010. Imagine the knowledge, the perspectives, the beauty left unexperienced by even the most ambitiously well-read gentleman.
Develops an interest in many diverse areas. If there is one kind thing the Modern Urban Gentleman might say about himself, it is that he is conversant in enough topics to feel at home among many groups, from professional actors to professional wrestlers. Nonetheless, the extent of stunningly interesting areas of study and avocation across the globe is staggering. Tune in to an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and marvel at the pastimes and traditions of the people of Myanmar and Tokyo, Copenhagen and Lyon, New Mexico and Los Angeles’ Koreatown. The treasures to be found all across the map are so innumerable, so compelling, so utterly humbling when viewed through the lens of our hourglass.
Learns and practices useful skills. Most gentlemen live in homes they could never build, drive in cars they could never fix, eat food they didn’t cook — let alone grow, hunt, or forage. We stand on the shoulders of those giants who invented and paved the way for us, and we should find no shame in that. But how exhilarating it is to craft something with one’s own hands, or to feel the brisk, bracing wind from a kayak as one paddles down a river. This gentleman has so many aspirations for skill sets to acquire, such as archery hunting, gardening, and tailoring. In the end, we are only able to focus on a precious few, of which we gain mastery of nearly none.

All of these, plus more, keep the gentleman ever striving. Add to that a full-time job, the administration of a website, a marriage, and so much quality television to watch and the Modern Urban Gentleman is left weary and searching for more hours. But without this stimulation, a gentleman would wither on the vine, fading into obscurity without adding anything to the people he met or the humanity he benefited from.

The Modern Urban Gentleman is reaching out to you, asking for your responses in the comments below. What are the things you just do not have time for — things that eat at you, things you wish you could fit into your schedule? How do you prioritize your time? And share the tips for time management you have found especially useful.

With those words and those questions, the Modern Urban Gentleman puts down the proverbial pen for one more week to get some of that well-earned rest.

Giri, burden of obligation, falls on those above, below

Sweat streamed down my face, into my eyes. My glasses slipped down my nose, the strap that held them to my head barely enough to combat the onslaught.

The tendons and muscles along my shins were burning. My muscles were sore and heavy. Every time my body hit the mat, part of me said, “Stay down here. Just stop moving. You know you want to.”

I had been at the dōjō for about a month, and the honeymoon was most definitely over. My ukemi (falling technique) had improved enough that I could do a slow front-roll. I could tie my belt. I knew where to line up. I was always at the dōjō the minute the doors opened so that I could get as much training as possible. I was meeting expectations.

So the expectations increased.

Before I had joined the dōjō, I had never done a regular workout. Push-ups and crunches were foreign to me. I couldn’t keep up with the group. And that was OK in my first week.

But I was a month in, still training. So it was time to get with the program.

No one ever said anything to me, or told me to step it up. I just knew that I had to do more. I would dread the opening of class, the conditioning set followed by the group ukemi practice. My legs would burn, my lungs would struggle to breathe air that was suddenly liquid with heat and humidity. I longed for a rest. I longed for a drink of water. I longed to lie on the mat after a technique just long enough to catch my breath.

When I threw them during practice, my seniors just got up and let me throw them again. It was the rhythm of things. They would teach me: a pointer here, a subtle hand-shift there. My technique was improving because these men and women kept getting up and helping me get better.

So I hauled myself off of the floor again, judo-gi heavy with sweat, short of breath, full at times of fear, at times of weariness.

I didn’t want to. But I owed it to these people to get up, and to attack again, and to be thrown again.

No one ever needed to tell me that.

***

Just a day before, the room had been a middle school basketball court. But today it was a dōjō.

This was Tai Kai, the annual gathering of our ryu. We come together and train hard, and party hard, and part ways with the regret and sorrow that can only come from intense and challenging activity done in the company of your brethren and in the service of something larger than yourself.

The morning session was physically demanding, a series of exercises that focused on shikko-sabaki, the Japanese method of knee-walking. We moved around the mats, shins and thighs burning with the exertion.

The most junior student in the room was to my left. He had only been training for a matter of weeks, and I could feel his suffering without needing to see the rictus on his face or hear the hiss of his in-drawn breath.

He was ready to quit.

I grabbed him as the room split into pairs to do the next exercise. It wasn’t a matter of encouragement, of supportive, kind language. It was a matter of pulling his spirit up. In between drills, I would bodily lift him to his feet and drag him along as I ran back to our place in line, push him down to a kneeling position as we received instruction. I would pull him up and drag him to the next drill.

He didn’t quit. He wanted to. It was written on every part of his face, on every line of his body. But he didn’t.

I nodded at him, said “Good job,” and watched as he ran off to scribble a few quick notes before the next session. I had seen what he was made of. So had he.

He was strong the rest of the day.

***

Giri, or the “burden of obligation,” is the debt you incur as you follow the path of budō. It takes time before the student realizes the full impact of this.

You start in the budō with red in your ledger; you owe giri to the men and women who have been working for decades to preserve the art, to give you a place to train, to get good enough to teach you. You owe them a debt that you literally cannot ever repay.

Giri doesn’t flow one way. When your juniors meet expectations, when they ask you to teach them, when they show up and work hard, they have placed you in debt to them. Their care and education are your responsibility now. You must give them your best. I owe my juniors a debt that is every bit as significant as that I owe my Sensei. They struggle in the trenches with me, doing their part without question or hesitation. I have to be the best model I can be for them, be able to answer their questions, be the example they deserve.

I remember being promoted to a green belt. It is the first formal promotion ceremony in my dōjō, marking the first significant step on your journey through budō. Sensei called me up in front of the whole class and presented me with the new belt. As I bowed and took it from him, he whispered to me, “Thank you for doing what was expected of you.”

We say these words to a newly promoted student as a reminder. No one gets here on their own. Everything I have that is of value to me in the budō is a gift, given to me without expectation of recompense. Everything I do, I do with an eye to this fact — that I must carry this debt, and that I must be worthy of it, and that I owe everyone, senior and junior, to be the best that I can be in all areas of life.

I shoulder my burden, and bear up under it for another day.

Finding Jedi path to mindfulness through yoga

Growing up, I wanted to be a Jedi like my favorite characters in Star Wars: training with lightsabers, using the power of my mind to control my environment, and realizing galactic-sized accomplishments. Mostly, I associated being a Jedi with power and running your own life. (Of course, that isn’t entirely accurate, but 9-year-old me liked to pick and choose the information I absorbed.)

A decade and a half later, I decided to revisit my ambitions of becoming a Jedi, but not for the power (which leads to the dark side), but for the mindfulness.

I didn’t realize it when I was younger, but being a Jedi has more to do with your mind than with your body. And on my quest to improve my physical health, I discovered that yoga and Jedi training have a lot of similarities. I found that not only were the physical benefits of yoga amazing (greater flexibility, less muscle soreness after working out, better posture, less pain in old injuries), but the mental and spiritual benefits far surpassed my expectations.

Like a Jedi, who needs a master to train him, throughout my own mindfulness practice, Yoda frequently pops into my head. This funny little green man with his backward phrasing whispers words of encouragement as I try to align myself with the Force.

I had read up on yoga practices before attempting any poses, and my anxiety had already gotten the better of me and psyched me out. I had to win at this. I kept thinking that maybe if I were as prepared as possible, I could be really good at it, blow through the different yoga positions, master each one in turn. But I couldn’t relax and enjoy the moment.

So I began my first day on a yoga mat with the book The Yoga Body Diet in front of me. When I couldn’t balance in several poses in the workout, I immediately became frustrated, angry with myself for not being able to do something I viewed as simple. I couldn’t do it. And just as I was about to scold myself for being incompetent, a voice popped into my head.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.

I feared I would fail. I became angry when I didn’t immediately master the yoga practice, and if I continued down this path, not only would I suffer, but those around me would as well. I didn’t want to turn into Darth Vader.

Shannon Paige, writer, sacred activist, and yoga teacher, said during one of her TED talks that yoga doesn’t solve depression or heal broken hearts, but it works as a mindfulness tool in overcoming these parts of life because “yoga works by creating the mind, body, breath connection.”

To connect mind, body, and breath and create self-awareness. To connect with yourself and with what’s around you. To tap into the Force. That’s what I want. But I knew I wasn’t in a good place to start with in that moment.

In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.

Thank you, Yoda.

And light my way it did. I started with step 1 instead of jumping into the poses. I started with breathing. It was time to “unlearn what you have learned,” as Yoda would say. I learned that the body interacts with the breath at a specific point in the respiratory cycle to give you a place where you learn new information, both mental and muscular.

“At the very emptiest point of every breath that you have, just before the breath becomes an inhale, you have the capacity to learn something new. Just depends on what you’re learning,” Paige said.

And with each breath, I began unlearning and letting go of 25 years of backed-up negativity: my fears of inadequacies, rejections, disappointments, failures, and what-ifs. Because I had held onto everything for so long, I couldn’t even imagine being happy, let alone actually experience it. But with each deep breath — the kind that fills your entire body — I began to look at my accomplishments, relationships, and friendships and restore my belief in myself.

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
— Yoda to Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith

I fear so much, but in letting go of some of those fears, maybe I can find some peace and calm. The fears will always exist, as will the negative things and tragic occurrences in this life, but it’s how we react to them that allows us to experience peace and a connection with the Force.

I had wanted yoga to solve my anxiety and depression problems, but yoga isn’t about solving problems to create peace and calm. It’s about what goes on inside ourselves each and every day.

Most modern yoga actually creates tension in order to teach you how to release it. Breathe in tension and then breathe it out. It’s not about our weight, anxiety, depression, illness, or heartbreak. Yoga is about connection and those links between our mind, body, spirit, and the Force. And now I feel that connection each day.

What you get out of daily mindfulness practice is what you put into it. “You only find what you bring in,” the Jedi master said to Luke Skywalker before he entered the cave in The Empire Strikes Back. Similarly, if you go into yoga with your type-A personality and think it’s going to solve all your problems, you’re sure to be disappointed. But if you start practice with the mindset that you’re going to understand yourself better and that this will help you take control of yourself and your surroundings and your interactions with others — Do or do not, there is no try — if you can do that, then there’s no telling where you may end up and what you may discover about yourself.

And if you start to feel disconnected again, just remember to breathe.

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.
— Yoda to Luke Skywalker on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back

What you bring and what you surrender

It was the Big Day. My friend and I had called the dōjō, spoken to the sensei, made an appointment to watch a class. We had been sent a package of information, giving specific instructions as to what was expected of us. We were dressed for a job interview — or at least the college-kid version of dressing for a job interview. We found the building and walked up to the second floor.

Stepping into the dōjō felt like stepping into another world. You could feel that the rules were different here. Sensei introduced himself. We sat and watched class. Once the class ended, Sensei began the interview.

Over the intervening years, I have listened to Sensei interview dozens of potential members of the dōjō; I have even done it myself on occasion. Though the questions asked vary somewhat, there is one we always pose. I remember being asked it myself, all those years ago.

His demeanor serious, Sensei locked his gaze onto mine: “Why do you want to do this?”

I am sure I babbled a bit, trying to justify my existence to this man, trying to convince him that allowing me to train would benefit his dōjō and the arts he studied. I knew as soon as I started watching the class that I wanted to join. I knew I would do anything to be given the opportunity to train. I remember struggling to say something that would prove to this man that I was worthy.

Sensei allowed us to join, though I am certain it was our obvious enthusiasm rather than our verbal dexterity that convinced him.

***

Forging a katana is a very work-intensive process. Japan is a mineral-poor land. Unlike Europe, where iron can be mined from the earth, the Japanese had to use iron found in sand. These iron sands would be refined into tamahagane, the steel from which swords are forged.

The form and artistry of the katana results from the necessity of refining poor quality metals into strong, flexible steel. The tamahagane is heated, hammered, folded, over and over, to refine it. Every step of the forging process is designed to maximize the potential of the materials by removing everything that is unnecessary. Along the way, an object of great beauty is formed.

***

The dōjō is like a forge. The traditional martial arts are predicated on the idea that the practitioner changes for the art. The art doesn’t change. In the dōjō, with the Ryū as the anvil and the art as the hammer, we are forged into something stronger.

Budō should enrich life. It shouldn’t replace it. While the study of budō is a transformative experience, the goal is to refine the self, becoming more capable, more driven, more focused. Like the iron sands that become tamahagane, you already contain everything that is required to be transformed.

I have written before about how there is no moral aspect to the mastery of martial arts. In fact, the ideal warrior is one who is at odds with society. Society teaches us from a young age not to yell and not to hit. The warrior learns to disable their societal programming, so they can deploy violence as appropriate.

If you sacrifice the fundamental aspects of your personality on the altar of budō, you run the risk of being consumed by this aspect of martial study. Budō is the study of power and its applications. Power is addictive. Applying your abilities against another person is physically pleasurable, in the same way that winning a foot race, sinking a three-point shot, or scoring the game-winning touchdown can be pleasurable.

And yet, training in budō requires sacrifice. The budoka must maintain shoshin (the beginner’s mind) and nyunanshin (pliable mind). The dōjō is not a place for individuals. This is a difficult concept for Westerners. Our culture tells us that our individuality is sacrosanct and inviolate. But the process of refinement requires heat and pressure. Submission to the demands of the budō provides that heat and pressure. Dedicated, consistent practice is the hammer that shapes the student of budō.

One of the reasons I have stayed on the path I chose those many years ago is that, when I look at my teacher and my seniors, I see what they have gained by submitting to the demands of the Ryū. They are focused, determined, powerful, intense, and disciplined. They can lead, and they can follow orders. They act without hesitation, often without concern for their own needs. They put the good of the group ahead of the good of the individual. When they are seated in the same room, it is obvious to even a casual observer that they are cut from the same cloth.

And yet they are all very different men, with their own deeply held beliefs. They have full and complete lives — careers they excel at and families they care for. They have sacrificed, and in doing so they have become more than they were.

Submission to the demands of the group and to the external standard of the Ryū is a core martial value. You model the behavior of your seniors. When you are given an order, you follow it. It is a conscious choice to give up your individuality in order to serve something larger than you, and to become something more than you were.

This is yet another of the many contradictions of budō: omote and ura, the obvious and the hidden. Through submission, one finds strength.

***

Forging a sword is a process with a beginning and ending, but forging the practitioner of budō is an endless struggle. As we pass through the world, we acquire impurities — distractions that keep us away from the dōjō, obstacles thrown up by work and life, the siren song of leisure activities. The budoka make the difficult choice to submit, to continue refining both technique and spirit through diligent practice. Perfection is unattainable, but striving for perfection is transformative. It is a process that only ends when the practitioner leaves the budō.

I am all too aware of my own failings. I return to the dōjō, to forge myself anew once again.

A duty to fight shadows, refine self, lead others

“When you started, we didn’t think you’d keep training,” my sempai told me.

I asked him what he meant.

“We just didn’t think you’d make it. You didn’t seem cut out for it.”

When I began training in martial arts, I was a college sophomore. Academics had come fairly easy to me, and so I had never learned to work hard. Near-sighted and bespectacled, I had never been very physical.

Seventeen years later, I have no answer as to why I am still training. If pressed, I would say it is because it has never been easy. It forces me to struggle every day.

There are two characteristics that are essential to the pursuit of budo, or martial arts training: a bullheaded stubbornness, and nyunanshin. Nyunanshin, “pliable mind” or “malleable spirit,” allows a person to continue to force himself to change, to empty his cup each and every day. It forces the budoka never to cease the quest for self-improvement, to view his study not as a destination to be reached, but as a journey to be taken.

It is necessary to cultivate this flexible, malleable mind, lest it harden.

Jungian psychology deals extensively with the shadow-self, the aspects of our psyche of which we are unaware, that we suppress. According to Jung, we encounter the personifications of these shadow-selves in dreams and visions. Though the shadow is not uniformly negative, Jung did say that “the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” When we meet our shadow self, we meet a dark reflection of our own positive aspects, and we must choose: either continue to live in ignorance of the things that influence us, or confront the shadow.

Wrestling with the shadow illuminates parts of ourselves that we are ignorant of. The process is unpleasant and uncomfortable. Marie-Louise von Franz, who worked alongside Carl Jung, said in her work Process: “If and when an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in others — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions.” It is, she continues, “…[a] painful and lengthy work of self-education.”

Joining a dojo is like becoming a member of a family; you inherit a teacher to guide you on the path and brothers and sisters who will support you, push you, challenge you. When you begin to lose your pliable mind, more senior students are there to set you back on the correct path. When it comes time to fight your shadows, they will stand beside you.

As one grows ever more senior, training becomes an ever more solitary effort. The work is something you must do on your own. You don’t spend as much time with those who are your seniors. It becomes easy to presume you are in the right, both in your training and your life.

Seniors are seen by their juniors as examples, models to follow. This is the challenge of all people in positions of teaching authority: those they teach will look to emulate them.

Despite the many portrayals of wise masters of martial arts in the media, the raw fact is that mastery of budo is exactly that: mastery of budo. Nothing more. There is no inherent morality to a proper sword cut. This lack of morality complicates the task of being a responsible senior, because it is inevitable that juniors will emulate their seniors’ behaviors, both for good and for ill. The onus, therefore, is on seniors to strive to be excellent examples in all areas of life.

There is a saying in my martial tradition: “My sensei didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” It was not until recently, when I found myself confronting a dark aspect of my own personality, that the ramifications of this saying became evident to me.

I owe a debt to the ryu to be the best example that I can be. This is how I honor those who have come before me and strengthen those who will carry on after I am gone. Over the years, I have observed my seniors, and my sensei, and seen that they are men of discipline in mind, body, and attitude. They are thoughtful men who speak only after deliberation and consideration.

When I look at myself, I find the difference between my reality and my aspiration is far greater than I had hoped. There are aspects of my own personality that I am unaware of, and that I must confront, understand, and acknowledge. I have become rigid in my thinking, and my nyuanshin needs to be strengthened.

Obviously, it is not wrong to support a belief or a position. Nor should one change his or her opinion simply to fit in. But it is dangerous to avoid looking into the “why” behind one’s beliefs and opinions. Ignorance of your motivations is a weakness, and a warrior cannot allow himself the luxury of deliberate ignorance of his own mind. The enemy we face most often is not external; it is ourselves that we must fight and overcome every day. It is through awareness of our dark side and willingness to confront it and change our actions that we prove to be worthy exemplars.

There is no excuse for leading those who look to you astray. They are the future, and we must be worthy of them.

I sat down today to capture moments in my training for posterity. Instead, I find a reminder of how far I still have to go before I am worthy of my ryu and of the respect of my fellow travelers along this difficult path that is budo. There is no excuse for my actions and no apology that will take back words already spoken. The only path forward is to own my choices, strive to be better, and leave these thoughts as a guide for those who follow after me.

The road is hard.

I sit in a quiet space, and do battle with my own shadows.

Our Pale Blue Dot, floating in the Cosmos

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The year was 1990. Nelson Mandela was released from prison. East and West Germany reunified. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched. The Human Genome Project began. The United States engaged in Operation Desert Shield, in what would become the opening moves of the first Gulf War. Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server, which would become the foundation for the Internet when it was released to the public in 1991. Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister of England after serving in that capacity for 11 years. The Warsaw Pact began to collapse as Poland became the first of its member states to withdraw from that treaty and abolish its state socialist economy. The Channel Tunnel was completed. The Cold War ground to a halt.

And nearly four billion miles away from Earth, the Voyager 1 space probe turned its eye back toward home for the last time to take a series of pictures that would be known as the Family Portrait. It captured a shot of Earth, caught in a shaft of light — a single blue pixel hanging in the great vast blackness of eternity.

Voyager 1 was launched September 5, 1977. It completed its primary mission in November 1980, having taken detailed pictures of Jupiter and Saturn and their respective moons. It will continue operations until sometime in the year 2025, at which point the probe’s generators will no longer be able to power its sensors and transmitters, and it will continue eternally onward, a lonely traveler far from home. At the time of this writing, Voyager 1 has been in operation for 36 years, 6 months, and 3 days.

Voyager 1 and its sister probe, Voyager 2, each carries a golden record in the hope it encounters an advanced civilization. The record, an audio-visual disc, contains, among other things, images of the Solar System, human DNA, and the music of Beethoven, Mozart, and Chuck Berry. The golden record is more a time capsule than a serious attempt to communicate with another civilization.

Carl Sagan, the cosmologist and author who pushed for the inclusion of the golden record on the Voyager probes, said, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this ‘bottle’ into the cosmic ‘ocean’ says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”

Sagan was involved with assembling the contents of the golden record. He had been a researcher and a science advocate for many years, working on the cutting edge of the science of space exploration. Sagan had been instrumental in the discovery of Venus’ high surface temperatures. He hypothesized about the oceans of liquid gases on Saturn’s moon Titan. He was a member of the SETI Institute board of trustees, guiding its mission to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Sagan’s most well-known contribution to science is the television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which premiered on PBS in 1980 and remained the most highly watched series on public television until the broadcast of Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War in 1990, the same year Voyager would take its famous photograph. Sagan released a book, also titled Cosmos, at the same time as the television series, and it became the best selling science book ever published in the English language.

The Cosmos television series will be rebooted this Sunday. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey will be presented by today’s most popular astronomer, Neil deGrasse Tyson; the executive producers are Seth MacFarlane and Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan.

As the Voyager 1 probe reached the edge of the Solar System in 1990, Sagan managed to convince NASA to turn the probe’s cameras back toward the Earth. The narrow-angle camera that Voyager carried was far better suited to this sort of distance photography than the wide-angle camera’s the Mariner probes had carried. The photographs of the first six planets in the Solar System would be the last pictures Voyager 1 would take.

In his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Sagan would eloquently describe this picture of Earth, distant and alone. He would speak from his perspective as an early activist about the dangers of climate change, as a man who spent a sizable portion of his career struggling against anthropocentrism, and as a survivor of the Cold War, a time when the possibility of mutually assured destruction in a hail of nuclear fire was no further away than a single moment of irrational international saber-rattling.

Sagan’s words are powerful. (Read Sagan’s full reflection; listen to Sagan read it in full; view the image in full) He speaks of the reality that there is as yet no other world that we know of that can harbor human life. He reminds us that we have been engaged in our many internecine struggles over possession of a section of a tiny mote of dust.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Sagan speaks to the ties within humanity. We are alone in this universe, and yet we throw ourselves at each other in bloody conflict over minutiae of ideology and nearly indistinguishable differences in genetics. Sagan reminds us there is no help coming from elsewhere: if we are to survive as a people, as a species, we must look to each other for the answers.

Today, the world is a very different place than it was in 1990. With the end of the Cold War, the specter of nuclear apocalypse has largely disappeared. The Internet has created a world that is more interconnected than we had imagined possible. We have created an International Space Station that might become the staging area for future explorations of the Solar System and beyond. Computer technology has become far more compact and powerful than once thought possible. The world we live in today is, in many ways, the future predicted in the dreams of science fiction.

Despite the progress we as a species have made, we must regretfully acknowledge that Sagan’s words still ring true.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

In the United States, political acrimony and partisanship have deadlocked the government. Africa and the Middle East remain hotbeds of ethnic and religious tensions, where being a member of the wrong tribe or worshipping the wrong god can lead to death at the hands of one’s neighbors. Venezuela and Ukraine are wracked by violent protests, and the ghost of the Soviet Union and Cold War imperialism stalk Crimea. The reality that we live in a post-9/11 world hits us every time we go to an airport, apply for a loan, or open a bank account.

We face the challenges of global climate change and its potentially devastating effects on our ability to produce food and have access to clean drinking water. Increasing denialism about the validity of scientific research has created a society ever more ignorant of the way the world around them works, leaving questions about how to handle genetically modified crops, vaccinations, and medical ethics in the hands of people willing to consider unrefuted scientific evidence as nothing more than an opinion.

While we may have made many amazing advancements, our future as a species is inexorably tied to the same realization that Sagan had when he spoke of the Pale Blue Dot. We feel that we are important, enthroned among our achievements. We need to be reminded on occasion of how big the universe is, and of how small a piece of it we have managed to master. When we look at the last picture Voyager 1 took of its home before turning its electronic eyes outward, toward the vast and unknowable distances between the stars, we should remember the words of Carl Sagan:

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Spirit fills room, students in Japanese martial arts

Traditional Japanese martial arts training takes place in a space that is set apart from the work-a-day world in many ways. In the dojo, there is a strange time dilation, like an adrenaline dump, that stretches the smallest moments out into impossibly long events. There is an informational density that is hard to explain to the uninitiated. Body, mind, spirit, history, and technique layer endlessly, one atop the other, stratifications of tradition and knowledge and intense physical activity. It is a transformative process.

I am often asked how martial arts has shaped my life. I can’t answer that question. My life is ongoing, my training is ongoing. The man I am today and the man I have been along the timeline of my life are only part of a narrative if I force one onto it. Real life is not a story.

The room is quiet. The mat spreads out before me, glowing in the last light of day that comes through the single window. The high ceiling is lost to shadow, metal rafters just visible through the gloom. It is a spare, uncluttered space. The few things hanging on the walls accentuate the emptiness, the blank space. The wall on the far side of the mat is covered with racks. Bright, colorful bags protect the live steel swords, the katana, that are prominently placed above the rows of the wooden bokken, aligned in precise, identical fashion. There is the sense that everything is in its place, and that there is no other place it could be.

It is the same room it has been for my 17 years of training, though it is not in the same space it was in 1997, when I climbed to the second floor of an office building in Camp Hill, Pa., for my first lesson. The space has moved, but it has not changed.

High on the front wall, right below the shadow line, is the shrine: the kamidana. My eye is drawn to it, the same as it always is, and to the banner above: bold kanji spelling out the name of the dojo. My body snaps to attention, a subconscious reaction, as I turn to face the kamiza and bow, back straight, hands sliding down the seams of my trousers, an action that I seek to make as precise and correct as I can every time. Every time it falls short of the ideal.

The room is quiet, still, ready for the students to arrive, to fill it with the noise of practice, of bodies slapping onto the mat, the war-eagle shriek of kiai, the distinct shuffling-sliding noise of feet gliding across the mat. It is patient, existing in a space both physically and spiritually different from the outside world. It is a room with its own rules and demands, and it brooks no deviation.

It is still and quiet and ready. But it is not empty.

It is never empty.

There are spirits here.

“Remember,” Sensei said, “people died for this.”

We stood, sweat-soaked, in a circle on the mat. Our wooden swords hung at our sides, hilts stained with the sweat of hours and days and years of practice. We were studying a classical system of swordsmanship, with an unbroken history hundreds of years long. The swords were heavy, the techniques subtle and powerful. Sensei had decades of practice under his belt, and was skilled and fast and strong. Working with him and with his senior students was an intense experience. Knuckles got busted. Heads got smacked. In the heat of the clash, minute mistakes in technique would be exploited.

In short, it was a demanding practice session, as all sessions with this Sensei were.

“People died for this,” he said.

Formalized swordsmanship emerged from combat. The winners would return home, and share the tricks and techniques that they had discovered and with which they credited their survival. If those techniques and tricks continued to work, they would be further refined. Successful schools were founded by men whose hands were bloody with victories.

The techniques we have today, the arts we practice, are built on the foundations of the defeated. We show up at the dojo and put on our uniforms and have a blast training for a few hours, but the fact remains that what we do is based on the skills of war and grounded in the deaths of those long-forgotten vanquished foes, the ones whose techniques and tricks were not quite good enough.

The Japanese are a complex people, with a language that can be exactingly technical and beautifully poetic, often at the same time. They talk about the meaning and the “meaning behind the meaning.” Ura and omote. Front and back.

Four times a week, I walk into a room that exists because people took the time to study the arts I love and to pass them on. People spent the currency of life: money, time, moments with family, friends, and loved ones. They sacrificed for us. I can name two men without whom the dojo would have folded, both deceased within my lifetime. I can name several others who have passed through on the journey of their lives, enriching all of us in the process. Kami is alive, and it retains some of everyone who passes through the dojo.

I am a lapsed Christian at best, and a man who feels that spirituality outside of religion is a pretentious concept. I am not superstitious. And yet when I speak of spirits and kami, it is as real as air, as water, as food. And as vital. Paradox and dichotomy. The budo are full of these contradictions.

When I walk into the dojo, these are the spirits that are waiting for me. The honored dead. They demand that I be worthy of them.

Someday, if I am strong enough, if I stay the course, my name will be counted among those who died for this.