This was on a Facebook friend’s status today. Thought it made a good point.
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Making real changes means making change real
I’ve been exploring the web site http://contract.rebuildthedream.com/ and I have to say that I’m in agreement with almost all of the various ideas advanced. This might seem to be a startling admission from someone who was a long time conservative.
Conservatism was never a natural fit for me. I came of age in the early Reagan years and I must say that his optimism was infectious. However, the crummy economy at the time forced me to consider the military in order to get a job and an education. There are few liberals in the military. Conservatism is as pervasive as air. You just become conservative because that’s where your bread and butter come from. It’s a survival mechanism. When they send you off to war, you have to believe that the people calling the shots are doing the right thing.
There is an area I call “no-man’s land” in the demographics of America. There is a social safety net for the extremely poor that keeps them alive but doesn’t give them a leg up out of poverty. Then there is an area we call “middle class” whose inhabitants earn a modest-to-well-off living. They drive two cars, live in a nice house, take vacations, and send their kids off to college while still putting money into a 401k plan. Between those two realms is a no-man’s land where the inhabitants are the working poor. They work in jobs that don’t pay enough to enjoy the security of a middle class lifestyle. They’re not poor. But one bad accident, a period of disability, an illness, or unemployment can wipe them out.
When I was approaching the time where going to college was my dream, I applied for financial aid. Back in the late 1970s, we occupied that no-man’s land where my father earned too much to qualify for aid, but didn’t earn enough to pay for college. He was a Coast Guardsman and, back in those days, nobody in the military earned much. We lived in a decent house, drove a car that was by no means new, and we had decent clothes and food. I had no reason to complain. Thus it fell to me to try to earn my way in life and find a way to pay for an education. It was the beginning of a long, hard slog that took me until I was 50 years old.
I think what turned me off about liberalism is that it became the domain of the hippy, the slacker, and the doper during that era. Ending the Vietnam War, marching to end segregation, promoting equal opportunity for equal work by women, and expanding environmental awareness was a great thing. There was a grave error, however, in that the young people also decided to abandon morality, the family, chastity, and so forth. Those things aren’t connected. More people would join liberal causes like promoting green businesses if it wasn’t associated with the “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” ethos that is associated with them.
Look at Occupy Wall Street and the Glenn Beck event on the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C. The Glenn Beck folks came out to hear inspirational messages, conducted themselves with decorum, and left the place spotless. Regardless of whether you agree with the content of their message, they were civil and decent. For all the noble intentions of Occupy Wall Street, they ended up leaving their occupied territories full of garbage, vermin, and infectious diseases. Numerous sexual assaults took place in several Occupy camps. The people involved discredited their own message by their conduct.
Take Van Jones for an example. He is Glenn Beck’s nemesis. I think he gets under Beck’s skin more than anyone—even George Soros. Why? Because Van Jones communicates the message effectively, in a manner that displays decency and civility. If you do a survey of pre-Revolutionary War history, Van Jones would have been a good fit with most of the founding fathers. There are a lot of similarities between Sam Adams and Van Jones. Beck considers Jones dangerous because of a statement that he made that he abandoned the “radical pose” to achieve the “radical ends.” That’s a good approach.
If you want to affect change in America, don’t “occupy.” Don’t destroy property. Don’t tear down the flag. Instead, take a bath. Get a haircut. Put on a suit, tie, or dress. Polish your shoes. Save the Birkenstocks for another day. Then learn to organize in a manner that has decorum. Martin Luther King didn’t wear shrapnel in his face and a hemp shirt. He epitomized decency. Divorce your personal appetites from what society needs. Don’t be undisciplined. The Shawnee Prophet, Tenskwatawa urged his followers to forsake alcohol and intoxicating drink. Ghandi controlled his emotions and his appetites. A person who can’t control his appetites can’t be trusted to do the right thing by others. Self-serving behavior is the problem that created the problem to begin. The greed that you decry in the “one-percent” is an appetite to which they submitted themselves. If you want to be different, engage in self-denial. Therein is true strength.
If you want to affect change, change yourself first. You’ve heard the motto, “Top down, bottom up, inside out.” Well the “inside out” part of the change has to happen inside you first. Governments become oppressive when the people are unwilling to govern their own behaviors. Achieving a just society doesn’t mean you’ll ever have the right to have anonymous hook-up sex in a tent on Wall Street with no attachments, no consequences, and no regrets. That’s not freedom or justice. Liberty isn’t libertine. Freedom isn’t licentiousness. To foster justice, you must be just.
We need to reform ourselves and find the discipline, propriety, and dignity of a Martin Luther King or a Ghandi. The world has had enough revolutionaries who taught one standard and lived another. Instead, consider Jesus who laid down his own life without resistance because of his own internal sense of justice. Clean up your appearance and your language. Clean up your room and your yard. Clean up your life. Do justice and then seek to be an example to others. If you don’t, nobody will ever take a good message seriously. Don’t just change your light bulbs–change your life! Making real changes in society means you have to make the change in yourself real. Otherwise, it’s nothing but empty posturing.
How history ought to be taught
I’m a history buff. I love history. I am convinced that history has been taught wrong by every school in existence. It should be taught backwards. We should start with the present and work backward. Students don’t care about what happened a thousand years ago unless you can connect it to what’s happening today. If you start with today’s conflicts and ask the question, “How did stuff get this messed up?” you can begin to work your way backward through history and see that everything is connected. When you begin to see links, suddenly things start to make sense.
Here’s an example. Right now, everyone is talking about Trayvon Martin’s murder. There are people who have a vested interest in keeping blacks and whites in a constant state of animosity. If you take a black baby and a white baby and put them down on the rug together, they will laugh and play together with no animus between them. That’s our nature, right there. Racism isn’t natural. So it’s interesting to look at the history of racism and to look for times when we made progress, only to have it dissipate before our eyes. You can look back in recent history and you can find some interesting moments.
One of those moments occurred in the 1960s. After a century of Jim Crow laws, white America began to see that they were on the wrong side of the issue. Dr. Martin Luther King’s non-violent movement touched hearts. Racism was indefensible and his method worked. But even deeper, there was something else that was going on that was beginning to transform society at a grassroots level. It was happening in the music.
In the 1960s up until the early 1970s, there was an amazing cross-pollenization that occurred in music. There were many singers and bands that reached across racial lines and changed hearts. Some African-American groups like the Sly and the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and many more crossed over from black radio onto mainstream white stations. Whites and blacks in colleges began to march to end the Vietnam War, to address racism, poverty, and many other social ills. Militancy on both sides began to give way to mainstream acceptance of equality. Hip-hop music began to attract a white audience. That alarmed whoever it is that wants black people and white people to hate each other. Oddly, during the late 1970s and into the 1980s—while our armed forces were fighting a secret war in El Salvador and Nicaragua—crack cocaine began to make its way into the black neighborhoods in L.A. and other major U.S. cities.
The “War on Drugs” combined with mandatory sentencing laws ended up busting thousands and putting them in new, corporate-owned prisons that depended on government contracts to make a profit. Into the 1990s, the growing prison population became the means for the U.S. to compete with NAFTA-outsourced slave-labor factories overseas. U.S. prison labor allowed some industries to remain competitive by paying prisoners less than a dollar an hour to compete with Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indonesian labor—and keep the “Made in America” label on their products. Not surprisingly, these prisons were filled with a disproportionately black population. By the way, did you know that the United States has the largest incarcerated population of any industrialized nation?
The drugs that flowed into the black neighborhoods in these major cities came from Central America. During that time, there were contract air transport companies working for the CIA that were smuggling U.S. firearms down into that region to support the Contras. The Contras were a counter-revolutionary insurgency intended to overthrow the communist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The shady pilots of these transport planes were paid in cash to take the weapons down, given clearance to pass across international borders without going through the normal customs or security processes. Since the planes were coming back empty, these guys saw an opportunity to make a profit on the return trip by smuggling cocaine into the country.
If you’re old enough, you remember all the fuss during the 1990s during the Clinton years about secretive dealings in a rural airport in Mena, Arkansas and connections to the Clintons, Bob Dole, and other important politicos. It was all linked back to earlier shady operations with money, guns, Iran, Colonel Oliver North, etc.
The scandal, the drugs, the establishment of the prison experience as a black rite-of-passage, and other effects of these actions drove a wedge into the unity that was just beginning to be forged in the 1960s. Music came close to healing the rift and that panicked some people.
Before you think I’ve gone off the deep end, this is the second time this has happened in history. Go back to the jazz age. When jazz began to enter the national consciousness, it came out of New Orleans, Chicago, and Harlem in New York. The incredible musicianship of black musicians like Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, and Cab Calloway caught the attention of classically-trained white musicians. The infectious rhythm and the exciting improvisational opportunities made white musicians want to learn to swing. Soon the Dorseys, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman were bringing the music of mixed race dance bands to the public. In a day when black musicians couldn’t even enter the front doors of the clubs they played in, white audiences flocked to see these bands. White folks ventured into Harlem to hear and dance to the amazing music.
People began to question the practice of racial segregation at that time and when they did, suddenly heroin made its way into the communities that were the hubs of jazz music. White and black jazz musicians began to turn up as addicts, but the onus was laid upon the black communities from which the music sprang. Again, just like in the 1980s, the effect was to reinforce racism and division after music began to break down those barriers. And where was that heroin coming from? Turkey.
In those days, Turkey was a newly created state that emerged after the demise of the Ottoman Empire. It was the British and the American allies that were instrumental in the divvying up of the Middle East, the partitioning of Palestine, etc. Thus the defeat of the largest Muslim political unit created a modern, secular Turkey, friendly to America, and the heroin somehow made its way from there to our Jazz Age cities. It’s déjà vu all over again.
Like black babies and white ones, white and black musicians find it easy to get along because, to a musician, it’s the music that matters. It’s uncanny how, during the two best chances to heal the black/white racial divide in the past hundred years has been disrupted by the introduction of drugs from foreign countries that were puppet-states of the great Western powers. Whose political and economic interests depend on keeping blacks and whites hating each other?
As I watch the Trayvon news coverage, there are headlines about the New Black Panther Party and the KKK setting up for battle in Florida of all places! The news media stokes the fire, hoping for dramatic and violent images to get you riveted to your television, so they can show you Aflac, Goldline, and Preparation-H commercials in between segments. (However, the Preparation-H might not be a bad idea because what they’re trying to do to us would have a tendency to aggravate hemorrhoids!)
If you start at the end and work your way to the beginning, you’ll see history differently. You’ll see how and why things are the way they are. You’ll figure out that the way to change things is different than what the powerful and influential people are telling you. The way to change things is not to be found in a court of law or in the halls of a legislature. The way to change is in the music halls, the radio stations, the dance clubs, the churches, and the schools. The way to change involves love and tolerance, not violence and harsh words. Love can overcome hate. Love is more powerful. Some people demand that someone pay the price—to be a martyr for justice. I want to just give my opinion that there has already been a martyr for justice, 2000 years ago. He died so that we might live, if we’d just believe his words about loving our neighbor. He is the only martyr whose blood needed to be shed. His blood can do it for us all. The path forward is through repentance, humility, love, and nonviolence. Those things can overcome all the money in the world if we will have faith in their efficacy. That’s what history can tell us if we look at it in terms of effect, then cause.
Idolatry and patriotism
Is patriotism a thing of the past? My father’s attitude was always “America–Love it or Leave It.” He had a bumper sticker that said so. I’m not sure I can embrace that point-of-view. There is a line that divides unreasonable support for a government’s policies and love for one’s homeland.
There is a picture I’ve seen that speaks a great truth. It says, “Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.” Native Americans have an attachment to the land that is truly patriotic. They love the land of their fathers. It is a deep, abiding love that is essential to their very existence. During colonial times, some Native Americans were captured and sold as slaves to the West Indies. Almost always, they pined away, weakened, and died, whereas the Africans who were brought there survived in the brutal conditions. It wasn’t that the Indians were less sturdy than the Africans. The Native Americans simply could not bear to be away from the land where their fathers’ bones were buried. The land was a part of their psychological make-up and their identity.
Interestingly, despite all the wrongs committed against Native Americans, they willing volunteered to go fight in America’s wars. The warrior tradition plays a part in that. Particularly in World War II, America had been attacked and there was an existential threat. Regardless of their views of the government and its policies, Native Americans fought to preserve their homeland from a military threat and did so with honor. You may have heard of Ira Hayes, a Pima Native American who was immortalized in the Iwo Jima monument, who served with distinction.
In that way, I think I’m patriotic. At one time, I considered moving my family to western Canada and applying for citizenship there. However, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Being an American is something special. If a foreign power tries to take over America, they’ll have a huge fight on their hands–and it won’t be because we’re trying to preserve our government. We’ll be fighting for our homes and our identity.
However, I don’t get all warm and fuzzy over our government. It has committed too may offenses. It poses a threat to individual freedom. It has been complicit with too many truly bad guys in history. I make a distinction between America the place and America the government.
I reluctantly joined the Air Force so I could take care of a new bride and get some training in a skill to make a living. It wasn’t a good fit, but I put up with it for eleven years. I tried to “put on the suit” in more ways than one. There came a moment when I realized I just couldn’t do it anymore and that my exit was inevitable. I was at NCO leadership school in Germany. We were preparing to have a “retreat” ceremony. For those of you who aren’t military brats, “retreat” is when they take down the flag at the end of the day. There is a ceremony that they do on all military bases. The either have a bugler or a recording of one playing the call to retreat. Then they play the national anthem and lower the flag. If you’re walking around on the base, you stop and face the flag (or the music, if you can’t see the flag), come to attention and salute.
NCO leadership school is where they drill all the old military stuff you learned in basic training back into you. After several years of working in the service, you tend to get “professional” which means doing your job competently, but you drift away from all the military “spit and polish” stuff. Leadership school is a way they try to give you some refresher training in all that stuff. There is marching, inspections, and all that kind of ceremonial stuff–and there is a retreat ceremony as part of the deal.
It was at that ceremony that I decided to make my exit when my enlistment was up. I was already dissatisfied with the Air Force. The stupid rank structure ensures that bright people get crushed into compliance and that the old, dead wood at the top maintains the status quo. It’s why they buy $900 toilet seats, because the guys who question those policies get labeled as troublemakers–but I digress. During that retreat ceremony, we were all decked out in our dress blues and we marched across the base to a parade ground and walked around like tin soldiers. Drill and marching is intended to teach discipline and the effects of one’s actions on the group. It’s intended to stifle free thinking and individuality It reinforces the role of the individual as a meaningless cog in the machine. After marching around aimlessly for a while, we ended up in front of a flag pole. The person in charge called us to attention and ordered the hand salute. We complied and she pressed the button on a battery-operated cassette tape player to start the music. For whatever reason, the tape player decided to not comply.
For the next ten to fifteen minutes, we stood there, some 30 or 40 of us, at attention, holding our arms in the salute, while three senior-ranking NCOs tried to rearrange the batteries, eject the tape, or otherwise get the music to play. While they fussed with the device, the flag still waved in the breeze and we stood there saluting it interminably. My arm was getting tired and it was apparent that the people in charge were so absorbed with the tape recorder that they were completely oblivious to the growing discomfort of the troops in the ranks. That didn’t matter, though. That damn tape player HAD to work! Eventually, they got a clue and they took the flag down without music and we got to put our aching arms back down.
I walked away from that ceremony a changed man. I had just witnessed, and had been compelled to participate in, a display of idolatry. The Bible tells me that idolatry is putting a thing (or the symbol of a thing) before God. It also tells me that the children of God, who are made in the image of God, are more important than the thing that represents a government. The American flag doesn’t represent the land of America, because America was here and peopled by millions of inhabitants who always held a true loyalty to the land. None of them ever saluted a piece of cloth for an unreasonable time while waiting for a few idiots to give up fixing a tape player.
After I left the Air Force, I worked for a brief period for a Native-owned corporation in Alaska. At a potlatch celebration, the Native people wanted to have a flag ceremony and they wanted a couple of veterans to bring in the flag. They asked me to carry in the American flag and another veteran to bring in the Alaska flag. Needless to say, I was reluctant, but I didn’t have the heart to say no.
They told us that we should come in when we heard the sound of the drum and the singing begin. As the other guy and I got into position outside the door, something unexpected happened. When the drum began, it wasn’t a martial drum like we’d use in the military. It was a deep Native, traditional drum. The singing began, but it wasn’t the national anthem. We came in the door and everyone stood up. Nobody put their hand over their heart. Instead, the singers sang a traditional honor song that paid tribute to the warriors who died defending their land. It was an entirely different feeling. I was seeing a display of real patriotism for the first time.
What made me think of this today was seeing this picture in an advertisement on a conservative web site:
The pin and bumper sticker advertised is the idolatrous union of an ancient Christian symbol with the symbol of the United States government. Anytime one joins a religion to the state, it’s bad news. It means freedom of religion gets limited for anyone who has a different view of religion or politics. The apostle John saw the corruption of the Christian church that committed “fornication” with the kings of the earth. One of the symptoms of the apostate “whore” church that John beheld was that it aligned itself with secular government. Apostate religion seeks power from the state instead of power from God. It resorts to legal compulsion instead of freedom of conscience. A pin or a bumper sticker sends the message to the world that one is a supporter of the “Babylon” that John saw, not the kingdom of God. This pin is marketed by and towards folks who say I worship a “different Jesus” and that Mormons aren’t “Christians.” Their idea of a Christian America is one where Mormon temples burn to the ground and a Mormon who has the temerity to run for president has to answer undignified, patronizing, and snarky questions about his underwear.
Am I patriotic? Yes, I believe so. I am patriotic towards the land and the people who live there. I comply with the laws of the government because God tells me that I have no need to break the laws of the land. Do I feel compelled to engage in idolatrous displays of devotion to something that often opposes the precepts of true religion? Not necessarily. It’s a thinking, evaluative patriotism that I feel.
Perhaps it’s that same sort of wary patriotism that the early Mormon pioneers felt in August of 1848 as they prepared to celebrate their first harvest in the Salt Lake Valley. They had been persecuted, mobbed, and murdered by their fellow Americans in the eastern states. They had been forcibly driven into a hostile desert and managed to barely survive. Needless to say, although they were Americans, their feelings towards the government that had declined to protect their rights were less than warm. For the harvest celebration, they put up a “liberty pole” and ran a white flag up to the top. At the bottom, they surrounded it with symbols of their defiance–sheaves of wheat, corn, barley, and other fruits of the field. Then they sang, to the familiar tune of “How Firm a Foundation” these words, penned by Parley P. Pratt:
Let us join in the dance, let us join in the song,
To the Jehovah the praises belong;
All honor all glory we render to thee
Thy cause is triumphant, thy people are free.The gentiles oppressed us the heathens with rage,
Combined all their forces and hosts to engage;
They plundered and scattered and drove us away,
They killed their shepherd, the sheep went astray.Full long in the desert and mountains to roam,
Without any harvest, without any home;
They’re hungry and thirsty and weary and worn,
They seemed quite forsaken and left for to roam.But lo in the mountains new sheep folds appear,
And a harvest of plenty our spirits to cheer;
This beautiful vale is a refuge from woe,
A retreat for the Saints when the scourges o’erflow.The States of Columbia to [pieces] may rend,
And mobs all triumphant bring peace to an end;
The star spangled banner forever be furled,
And the chains of a tyrant encircle the world.The storms of commotion distress every realm,
And dire revolutions the nations o’erwhelm;
Tho Babylon trembles and thrones cast down be,
Yet here in the mountains the righteous are free.
That’s a patriotic hymn that I can relate to. It honors God and his children, not a political state. I don’t have any overt hostility to the American government. It’s better than most in the world, but it will end up the same as all the rest. That’s just what governments do if they survive long enough. The acquisition of power ultimately oppresses the people and they collapse under the weight of their own corruption. I can see ours moving that direction with increasing speed. When something new comes along, will we be caught in the crossfire between two competing entities demanding allegiance? If so, consider the words of Parley P. Pratt’s “Harvest Song” and remember where our ultimate loyalties belong. There is no need for patriotism to cross the bounds of idolatry, if we remember where our allegiance truly belongs.
Favorite quotations, volume 1
“True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what’s right.”
~Brigham Young
“Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.”
~Mahatma Gandhi
“I am poor and naked but I am the chief of a nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.”
~Red Cloud, Oglala Sioux~
“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
~Harriet Beecher Stowe
“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.”
~Willie Nelson
“A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.”
~Mahatma Ghandi
“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”
~Alfred Einstein
“These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”
~Wiliam James
“Do right always. It will give you satisfaction in life.”
~Wovoka, Paiute~
“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”
~Malcolm X
“Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.”
T.S. Eliot
Remember, a chip on the shoulder is a sure sign of wood higher up.
~Brigham Young
“If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.”
~Swami Vivekananda
“That’s my gift. I let that negativity roll off me like water off a duck’s back. If it’s not positive, I didn’t hear it. If you can overcome that, fights are easy.”
~George Foreman
We believe profoundly in silence—the sign of a perfect equilibrium.
Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit.
~Charles Alexander Eastman
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
~Mahatma Gandhi
“We Sioux spend a lot of time thinking about everyday things which in our minds are mixed up with the spiritual. We see in the world around us many symbols that teach us the meaning of life. We have a saying that the white man sees so little, he must see with only one eye. We see a lot that you no longer notice. You could notice if you wanted to, but you are usually too busy. We Indians live in a world of symbols and images where the spiritual and commonplace are one…We try to understand them not with the head but with the heart.”
- John Fire Lame Deer
We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
~Sacred ritual chant
Bacon, obedience, and wisdom
I love bacon. It’s one of the best things ever. Just the smell of bacon can wake a man from a dead sleep. If Lazarus hadn’t been Jewish, Jesus could have raised him from the dead simply by waving some freshly-cooked bacon under his nose.
Everyone I know loves bacon. People eat it wrapped around steaks and sprinkled on their salads. They put it in beans and soups and quiche. My grandfather ate bacon and eggs every morning for over 80 years. One of my sons likes to experiment with putting various foods together. One combination he found that was delicious was a marshmallow wrapped in a piece of bacon. It was actually good! Another of my sons says he would like to see inventions like bacon-flavored chewing gum or bacon-flavored toothpaste. However, there comes a point of diminishing returns. If everything tasted like bacon, then bacon loses its uniqueness.
I think the reason I personally enjoy bacon is that it combines an enticing aroma and a savory taste with scarcity. There’s never enough bacon. You don’t get full just eating bacon. When you have a large family, there’s always a fight over the last piece of bacon. We don’t eat bacon every day. When we do have it, it’s a treat.
In our lives, there comes good and bad. We experience “opposition in all things” as Lehi in the Book of Mormon calls it (2 Nephi 2:11). To the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Lord explained:
And it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves; for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet—Wherefore, it came to pass that the devil tempted Adam, and he partook of the forbidden fruit and transgressed the commandment, wherein he became subject to the will of the devil, because he yielded unto temptation (Doctrine and Covenants 29:39-40).
We live in a world where good and evil abound and we are agents to act within it. We have freedom to choose from the full range of good choices or bad ones. The outcomes and consequences that are bound to those choices are also ours. Each of us has to learn to consider the possible or probable outcome of our choices. My wife uses a visual aid to teach this principle to young children. She has a stick. One end of the stick bears the label “Choices” and the other “Consequences.” It’s impossible to pick up the stick without picking up both ends together. The two are inseparable.
This is necessary condition if we are to experience joy in life. If everything was good all the time, as it will be in a heavenly existence, how would we know it? It would be as if everything tasted like delicious bacon. There would be no way to distinguish one thing from another. Despite the fact that we might wish for bacon-flavored toothpaste or chewing gum, it is necessary for us to know and experience the awful taste of cough syrup or Nyquil to realize how desirable the taste of bacon really is. Without any comparison, the actual quality of the experience is lost.
When we make a choice, we initiate a dynamic set of consequences that interact with other consequences. It is like dropping a pebble in a pond, then another, and then another. We can see the reverberations of the waves and eddies as they interact and influence one another. With seven billion people on the planet making choices, the interplay of these events is mind-boggling. Yet God knows and understands the outcome of all of them because he exists in a place where linear time as we experience it doesn’t exist. Our time has been assigned to us, thus it is artificial (Abraham 5:13, 3:4). It is not our natural element.
Some choices have only a small amount of energy attached to them their consequences dissipate rather quickly. For example, a teenager stays out past his curfew and a prudent parent takes his cell phone away for a couple of days as a consequence. Hopefully, it teaches the teenager to be more responsible and to use the cell phone next time to touch base with his parents and let them know he’s OK and that his arrival will be delayed. The consequence teaches a lesson and reinforces the principles of responsibility and courtesy. The incident ruffles the teen’s feathers for a few days, but if the lesson is learned, the waves of consequences turn positive through time.
On the other hand, some choices have consequences that endure far beyond our lifetimes and affect others in profound ways. Let’s say a high school-aged girl yields to temptation and the pressures from an eager boyfriend to have sex with him. A pregnancy results. The boy and his parents don’t want any part of this. They attempt to trash the girl’s reputation. Friends withdraw support. Parents are heartbroken and disappointed. A bright future of college opportunities begins to fade. New choices emerge, all of which contain their own positive and negative consequences. Abortion? Adoption? Have the baby and keep it?
The baby’s quality of life will be impacted by these choices profoundly and he is just an innocent “bystander.” Will he grow up in a home with loving parents who can provide for him? Will he grow up in the care of a struggling single mother who works a minimum-wage job, but who loves him deeply and does her best to provide him with a meager sustenance? Will he grow up to find his own calling in life, a beloved mate, and bring children of his own into the world, passing on the love learned by the example of a devoted mother’s sacrifices to future generations? Or will his life essence be extinguished suddenly as he is ripped from the womb by an abortionist doctor?
These examples are exaggerated by intent to illustrate the potential impact that is loaded into our decisions. It is for this reason that God gave us commandments to guide us and protect us. It is impossible to explain to a very small child why he shouldn’t touch the hot stove or play in the street. But if the child trusts the parent and obeys, he will avoid the dire consequences associated with those dangers. He retains all his choices, but by choosing to obey, he finds safety. He preserves the possibility of future, good consequences by his obedience. Disregarding commandments of God causes us to forfeit the benefit of his foresight and wisdom. Our choice to obey or disobey is associated with consequences that we cannot alter. We can choose to obey in faith that God intends to protect us.
Obedience is an act of faith and devotion. It is truly the only way we show God that we believe in him at all. There are some people who say they believe, but their actions say otherwise. When we obey in faith, we are trusting in God to bring to pass a positive outcome. In some ways, we can visualize the potential outcome. In other ways, we see “through a glass darkly” as Paul called it (1 Corinthians 13:12). The bitter and the sweet come to us, based not only on our own actions, but upon the actions of others. In this sea of whirling eddies of choices, the aggregate of all our choices can either build a Zion or a gulag. A Hitler, Stalin, or a Mao doesn’t come to prominence without the unconscious consent of millions. As Kahlil Gibran wrote, “…[A]s a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, so the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.”
The bitter must exist beside the sweet. Our existence is likened to the exercise of our agency. There is no existence if we cannot choose (Doctrine and Covenants 93:30). As much as I love bacon, it is the relative scarcity of it in my daily diet that makes it so enjoyable. Likewise, we come to appreciate health only through sickness, abundance through deprivation, a full belly through fasting, love through times of loneliness, and hope only once we have known despair. The duality is inescapable. It is only in experiencing opposition that we truly gain wisdom and understanding that we may take into eternity. Wisdom is a gift of experience and faith—one even more valuable than all the bacon in the world.
Top down, bottom up, inside-out
This slogan has been attributed to various leftist activists like Van Jones or Frances Fox-Piven. It is purported to be the methodology for bringing about fundamental change in the United States. Right wingers freak out over the notion, calling it a conspiracy to overthrow capitalism. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not. At this time, it looks like capitalism is doing a pretty good job of destroying itself.
I’d like to propose a different view of the concept—a spiritual one. How about we approach it this way:
Top down—
Accept God’s personal revelations. We are promised that if we lack wisdom, we can ask God and he will give it liberally (James 1:5). The catch? We have to ask in faith, nothing wavering. That’ll be hard for those who are secular or atheistic. However, no lasting change can take place without religion being a part of it. In anthropology, you learn that there are two constants in human groups: the family and religion. It is wired into our DNA. God wants us to look up to him and ask for help. It goes beyond what denomination you belong to. God will help those who ask. The help comes from the top down. Nobody outranks Deity.
Bottom up—
We need to address poverty. You don’t help the poor by tossing them some handout programs. The disease of poverty has to be addressed, not just the symptoms. We have to address two simultaneous issues: idleness and exploitation. The poor who are idle and lazy must be taught to work. They must receive training in marketable skills and receive employment. They must overcome the notion that to be a worker is to be exploited. To do that, the whole capitalist system has to be restructured to make workers co-owners of their workplaces. Some businesses use this model already. We have to get rid of the labor-management divide. Workers need to get a seat at the table as equals with management. Managers need to take off the white shirts and roll up their sleeves. The owner of the coal mine needs to go into the mine and labor beside his fellows from time to time. The factory owner needs to see what conditions are like on the assembly line. We need a more egalitarian system.
The Lord’s way is to “exalt” the poor by humbling the rich. He has said that it must be done in his own way to be successful. The history of collectivization is one of mass murder because the hostility toward religion. Divorced from morality, collectivization has starved millions. There must be a re-making of the heart that comes from the understanding that rich and poor are equals before God. Nowhere is this more visible than within the halls and walls of a Mormon temple.
Inside Out—
The last step is one of internal, personal transformation. It requires repentance. We have to embrace love. We have to come to terms with the principle of stewardship. We need to come to terms with three important principles:
- The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof…
- We are his children and thus, we are all brother and sisters.
- Unless we are united in equality, we cannot attain to the celestial worlds.
We need to re-think the entire notion of private property. We are all stewards of things the Lord has given us. None of us really owns anything. The Native American concept of ownership is a model that merits our consideration. The whole spectrum of human conflict arises from false notions of property and control over it. Cain slew Abel for his property. Wars are fought for control of territory and resources. Families descend into enmity as they fight over the possessions of a beloved member who passed away. Feelings are hurt, resentment flourishes. All of it is no more than fleas fighting over who owns the dog. Property binds us to the telestial earth and hinders us from rising to the celestial?
We learn in the Doctrine and Covenants that no government can expect to remain in peace unless it respects the rights of its citizens to own and control property. Nevertheless, the covetousness associated with ownership of property is a corrupting influence that should cause us to minimize our exposure to it. We need to learn when enough is enough—and that only comes through spiritual sensitivity. In other words, we would be wise to minimize the amount of property we own, because surely it will control us instead of the other way around.
Repentance is a process that works from the inside out. It can’t be imposed. Sometimes trials and difficult life situations can lead us to repentance. We are facing a period of time that will bring extreme difficulties for many people. The way the modern world works, the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed are not sustainable. The system will collapse unless we willingly reform it. That turning way from an old, unworkable system to something more manageable is going to require repentance. If we don’t realize it and repent, what will occur will be harsh, unpleasant, and riven with strife. Nevertheless, human beings are survivors. If repentance is what is necessary to survive, we will repent and change when the conditions are severe enough. If we sense what is coming, we can begin to make the changes now and mitigate the suffering that will come.
Top down, bottom up, and inside out is the way to bring about lasting change for a more just and godly world. It’s time to simplify and get the clutter out. Focus on relationships, not the acquisition of things. Focus on doing things that make you stronger, healthier, and more productive. Look around outside yourself and do something to make things work better. If you’re averse to hard work, get up and start doing something. If you’re wealthy, start shedding your wealth in a positive way. Don’t hang onto it. Invest yourself, not just your wealth, in the people.
We have a long way to go, so we might as well get started. Consider starting today.
Mormon conservatives—be careful!
One of the biggest problems in the history of history is the unholy alliance of religion in politics. I have written about this before, but not on this blog. If you look at history and religion, you’ll see this pattern in almost every religion:
- A luminary or prophetic figure emerges with a new revelation to mankind.
- The revelation runs afoul of the established orthodoxies of his time.
- The defenders of the established orthodoxies persecute and usually kill the luminary or prophetic figure.
- The followers of the prophetic leader write down his teachings so they will be preserved.
- These writings come to be regarded as scripture.
- A cadre of priests or scribes emerges to interpret the texts and to try to preserve them in an unaltered state.
- To prevent alteration, further revelation is banned (as if man had the power to silence God!) and attempts to deviate from their interpretations are regarded as heresy.
- At this point, the religion usually courts the state for authority to punish heresy.
- A symbiotic relationship forms wherein the state draws moral legitimacy for its acts from the religion and the religion has power to enforce what has now become an entrenched orthodoxy.
- God sends a new luminary or prophet to challenge the entrenched orthodoxy. The cycle starts all over again.
It can take from a couple hundred years to a millennium for this process to play out in full. No religion appears to be exempt from it. For that reason, latter-day saints—who represent the latest dispensation—have to be aware of the process.
We have been assured by revelation that our dispensation of the gospel is the final one before the Second Coming. The reason that this generation (using the term to mean the time since the Restoration began in 1820) will not end up like all the others is that the Second Coming will pre-empt this cycle. If the Lord would not appear for several hundred years, it would be difficult for us to avoid following the cycle to its conclusion, just like all the others before us. I suspect that it is would be possible for a breakaway church movement to overtake and persecute the core of the Church and become connected to secular government.
The church-state alliance is deadly. Right now, the Church continually declares itself neutral regarding politics. There are latter-day saints who live and worship in democratic republics, in monarchies, and in communist nations. In the United States, you’ll find members of the Church in both political parties, but you’ll also see that it is decidedly lopsided to the right of the political spectrum. Mormons tend to be conservatives and they tend to vote Republican. To me, that is a danger signal.
As I surf the web and look at LDS discussion groups that deal with political issues, personal preparedness, constitutional matters, etc., I find that a lot of them are unnecessarily alarmist in nature. There are quite a number of latter-day saints who, along with their sectarian Christian brothers, think that President Obama is the anti-Christ. That is, unless Mitt Romney becomes president, and then they’ll think that Romney is the anti-Christ.
There is a danger in allying ourselves too closely with either party. When it comes down to it, both parties hate us, but they want our votes. Joseph Smith said this was like voting to give the rope to the ones that want to hang us. When both sides want to hang us, does it make a difference who we vote for?
For just a moment, think about what the world would be like for latter-day saints if either party was able to eliminate any significant opposition and implement its full agenda. What would happen if the religious right won the fight and how would it affect latter-day saints? To answer those questions, let’s look at a diatribe I copied from a LDS conservative web site. It’s author had posted a rant about his opposition to President Obama, explaining why he was actively seeking the President’s defeat. Let’s analyze his objections based on what we know from scripture, from our history, and from the prophetic destiny of the Church. The individual wrote:
- I do not share his Abortion beliefs…
Latter-day saints oppose elective abortion, but we recognize that there are cases where it may be a medical necessity. Our prophets have taught that abortion is not murder so far as it has been revealed. The hard-core right wing of the GOP believes that abortion is murder in all cases. Suppose an LDS woman had a tubal pregnancy. It could not ever be a viable pregnancy. The baby would die AND the mother would die if the pregnancy was not terminated. How many latter-day saint husbands would be willing to require their wife to die for a tubal pregnancy? What we have is divine guidance that discourage abortion as a means of birth control and instructs us that we have a duty to bring children into the world. Yet the number of children a couple should have is left to the couple and the Lord to decide. The modern-day Pharisees of our time want to step between the couple and the Lord and force their biblical interpretations upon them. We know from the First Vision, that their teachings are based in uninspired creeds and the teachings of men, mingled with the words of scripture.
We are not proponents of abortion, but an outright ban would be harmful, unscriptural, and unjust.
- I do not share his radical Marxist’s concept of re-distributing wealth…
The Marxist comment of redistribution of wealth is wrong because Marxism is a godless philosophy. On the other hand, redistribution of wealth is at the core of the establishment of a Zion society under the united order. The Lord says that the rich must be humbled, that he requires their surplus property, and that he will exalt the poor by making the rich low (D&C 84:112, 104:16, 119:1). This is not communism or Marxism, but it is redistribution of wealth according to the Lord’s plan. Those who will one day inhabit a Zion society will have to abide by such a plan. Remember, a rich man will hardly enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:23).
- I do not share his stated views on raising taxes on those who make$150,000+ (the ceiling has been changed three times since August)…
Although a flat-rate tax is the more fair way, the rich in the United States have acquired more wealth in the past ten years while the poorer classes have grown substantially in number. There is a redistribution of wealth already taking place, but it’s going from the poor to the rich. The Doctrine and Covenants condemns the idle who eats the bread of the laborer (D&C 42:42). This doesn’t apply only to the slothful welfare-taker, but also the idle investor who lives off the profits made from the labor of others. This unjust transfer of wealth needs to go the other way.
- I do not share his view that America is Arrogant
Arrogance is based in pride. In the Book of Mormon, one of the chief characteristics of the proud was that they refused to labor with their hands for their support. Jacob, King Benjamin, Alma, and others taught that all people should labor with their hands as a sign of humility and equality. We read in Mosiah:
And there was a strict command throughout all the churches that there should be no persecutions among them, that there should be an equality among all men; That they should let no pride nor haughtiness disturb their peace; that every man should esteem his neighbor as himself, laboring with their own hands for their support. Yea, and all their priests and teachers should labor with their own hands for their support, in all cases save it were in sickness, or in much want; and doing these things, they did abound in the grace of God (Mosiah 27:3-5).
Today, the religious right is led by a cadre of professional pastors who are hirelings, paid clergymen who preach for filthy lucre. Priestcraft is one of the characteristics of a proud and arrogant society. Another trait is boasting. We read in the Book of Mormon:
And now, because of this great thing which my people, the Nephites, had done, they began to boast in their own strength, and began to swear before the heavens that they would avenge themselves of the blood of their brethren who had been slain by their enemies (Mormon 3:9).
I have heard Americans boast of their strength since 9/11. The crowds the flooded into the streets at the news that Osama bin Laden was dead, cheering “U-S-A, U-S-A!” gloried in their own strength instead of humbly thanking God that justice had been done. I don’t mourn the loss of that murderer, but his death was no time for arrogance and boasting, which simply further enflamed his followers. Our endless intervention in foreign lands wastes our strength, saps our resources, burdens the nation with debt, and alienates those who we might encourage to befriend us. The true assessment of our own arrogance comes from listening to the voices of non-Americans and how we are perceived by them. The Lord warned us:
And if ye seek the riches which it is the will of the Father to give unto you, ye shall be the richest of all people, for ye shall have the riches of eternity; and it must needs be that the riches of the earth are mine to give; but beware of pride, lest ye become as the Nephites of old (D&C 38:39).
- I do not share his view that America is not a Christian Nation
The Lord told us that the inhabitants of this continent would either serve Jesus Christ or they would be swept away (Ether 2:10). Yet latter-day saint Christians who serve the Lord in America are constantly accused by our sectarian Christian brethren of not being Christians, according to their creedal definitions? Will the majority of Christians in this “Christian Nation” recognize us as their brethren? Will they preserve our rights? Did they protect the saints in Missouri and Nauvoo? Did they stand up for the rights of Joseph and Hyrum Smith? Did they shed any tears over the murders of apostles David W. Patten and Parley P. Pratt? Would a “Christian nation” murder the prophets and apostles God has sent to them? American society is based on a perversion of Christianity, not the true gospel of Jesus Christ. They will oppose Zion when it comes, not welcome it.
- I do not share his view that the military should be reduced by 25%
It is strange that these “Constitutionalists” defend the maintenance of a large standing army which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. The size of our military has been justified by the longevity of certain executive orders issued by FDR. The Founders did not envision a perpetual standing army that would reach across the globe and project American power into foreign lands. A 25 percent reduction would still leave a military capable of defending our borders from within our own lands. In the Book of Mormon we read that the people of Nephi fortified themselves with arms, but they trusted in the “God and rock of their salvation; wherefore, they became as yet, conquerors of their enemies” (Jacob 7:25).
The scriptures repeatedly condemn those who trust in the “arm of flesh” for their defense. A smaller military would require us to change our policies to those of true defense, not pre-emptive war. In the Book of Mormon, we see that the Lord defended and preserved the Nephites against the Lamanites until a time came that the Nephites went on a pre-emptive war against their enemies. They shifted from defense to offense. This caused their complete downfall. A defensive military strategy of the homeland is the only justifiable use of military resources. Downsizing to fit that policy would easily achieve a 25 percent cut, if not more!
- I do not share his view of amnesty and giving more to illegals than our American Citizens who need help
I have written at length about the teachings of the scriptures regarding immigration policy. Unfortunately, there are latter-day saints who harbor bigotry toward Latin American immigrants and they support heartless policies that would divide families and displace productive members of our communities. Would it not be better to liberalize immigration policy and welcome new immigrants into our mix as neighbors and fellow taxpayers? We know from the Book of Mormon that the descendants of the Lamanites will play a significant role in building the Zion of God, the New Jerusalem. I believe that their coming here represents a fulfillment of prophecy and of God’s covenant with Lehi. Those who embrace conservative policies of deportation may well be fighting against prophecy and God’s promises. That’s not a good place to be for a latter-day saint.
- I do not share his views on homosexuality and his definition of marriage
Latter-day saints always work from the position of promoting the positive, not working against something. In Proposition 8, we stood for the blessings of the traditional family. We can differ in opinions from others without recrimination. However, we must be mindful to honor each person as a child of God, endowed with agency, and that each person will be accountable for his own sins. Everyone needs to repent and obey the commandments.
- I do not share his views that Radical Islam is our friend and Israel is our enemy who should give up any land
It’s a bad idea to pick a fight with another religion. We can share our faith and we can respect that of others. Certainly we should understand that, as we have been misrepresented by sectarian Christians over the years, it is entirely possible that their opinions on Islam are as misguided as they are about Mormonism. In the years I spent as a missionary in France, working in Muslim neighborhoods, no one ever did me any harm, no one ever slammed a door in my face, and that I was generally greeted with hospitality, generosity and kindness. Conversely, it was in the predominantly “Christian” areas where I was spat upon, struck in the head with a brick, physically assaulted, had the police called to harass me and had countless doors slammed in my face—while wearing a name tag that said I represented the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Experience tells me that some latter-day saints try to overlay their religious beliefs onto their feelings of xenophobia and bigotry. The Lord sees all of us as his children. The overwhelming majority of Muslims don’t seek to destroy us or Israel. Only a small percent of Muslims are radicals. Overall, latter-day saints and Muslims enjoy tolerant relations.
We must also consider that there is a strong cadre of radicalized evangelical Christians who, if it were not for the tempering influence of secularism, humanism, and watchdogs like the American Civil Liberties Union or the Anti-Defamation League, would still be persecuting Jews, Mormons, and other minority religions. If left unchecked, anti-Mormon zealots among their ranks would seek to destroy our temples and persecute us out of existence—in the same manner as the Taliban does to non-Muslims in Afghanistan. It is a treacherous trap for latter-day saints to closely ally themselves with conservative, evangelicals who harbor hostility toward us. Don’t be mistaken—they don’t believe we are Christians any more than they believe Muslims are Christians.
- I do not share his spiritual beliefs (at least the ones he has made public)
We also do not share the spiritual beliefs of Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopals, Presbyterians, or other Christian denominations. They reject us as fellow-Christians. Thinking that you, as a latter-day saint, have more in common with the Christian right than you do with President Obama is a mistake.
- I do not share his beliefs on how to re-work the healthcare system in America
This is a political position, not a religious one. From our religious point-of-view; however, we must realize that it is unjust that the working poor have no health safety net. Our system provides assistance in terms of Medicaid and Medicare to the very poor and the elderly, but for working families, health care is beyond their reach. A family on the margins just above the poverty level most likely cannot afford the hundreds of dollars a month for health insurance. Something has to be done. The current system is unjust, unfair, and burdensome on the lower middle class and the working poor. In Deuteronomy, the Lord gave commands regarding the care of the Levites, the poor, the immigrant, the widow, and the orphan:
And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest (Deuteronomy 14:29).
The Lord intended that the bulk of the population give to take care of those who lack the means to provide the necessities. Health care is one of those necessities. The parable of the Good Samaritan also sets an example of the Lord’s expectations.
- I do not share his Strategic views of the Middle East; and I certainly do not share his plan to sit down with terrorist regimes such as Iran.
A latter-day saint has faith that the Lord will bring to pass his promises to the people of Israel and all the sons of Abraham, which include the Arab peoples. Ours should be a voice for peace and justice in the Middle East, but it has not always been. The mention of Iran here makes it an appropriate place to examine the history of our dealings with Iran. During World War II, Iran declared itself neutral, but it was invaded by both Britain and the Soviet Union. Iran’s ruler, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate the throne in favor of his son. In the 1950s, a democratically elected government began making political moves to nationalize the oil industry jeopardized the British dominance of that market. A coup was orchestrated by the CIA, which replaced the democratically-elected government with the Shah of Iran as the US puppet. The Shah’s government was notorious for human-rights violations and oppressiveness. It was overthrown in the late 1970s by a fundamentalist Muslim movement headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Is it any wonder that, after decades of oppression by a dictator, who was placed there by the CIA following the overthrow of the democratically-elected government, that the Iranians would have hostility toward the United States? This kind of treachery exercised by the United States in the region has earned us the animosity we encounter today. It is not anti-American to say that our policies have been unjust and that our international neighbors are justified in their opposition to our policies.
For latter-day saints, we need to view the big picture. When God ordains that Zion will be established, it will be a place of holiness and justice. It will be a place where his laws and ordinances will be obeyed. The sectarian, the anti-Mormon, the dishonest, the corrupt, and the bigot will have no place in it. Knowing the divine power that is with us, why should we seek to court the kingdoms of the earth and ally ourselves with the corrupt political parties that seek to dominate them? Yes, as citizens we have a duty to vote. Yes, the scriptures teach us that, for a time, and to a limited degree we should make “friends of the mammon of unrighteousness” (Luke 16:9). The Doctrine and Covenants tells us to not speak of great judgments, and to abide peaceably among the people, and that God would give us grace in their sight for a time—until the “army of Zion” became very great in number (D&C 105:31). Then it would begin to exercise a spiritual influence that would cause the wicked to become compliant to its laws.
Until that time comes, there is nothing to be gained by investing ourselves and our energies in the partisan rancor that Satan would use to divide the saints and have them war among each other. The unity of the saints in the gospel is more powerful and more important that political platforms and parties.
I write this in the hope that my fellow-latter day saints will reconsider their commitment to support a conservative Christian agenda that simply puts the power in the hands of the children of the mob who murdered the Prophet Joseph Smith. Yes, we have those who hate us on the left and the right. For this reason, our own unity should become a paramount concern. We should set our sights on building communities of justice where we live and appealing to people of good will in every political party.
Judo – the martial art that isn’t cool
One thing you learn early on when you start judo. Nobody knows what it is and thus, it isn’t cool. Everybody thinks it’s some kind of karate, with kicks and punches. The kicks and punches in judo are something you don’t learn for years and you only learn them in the most advanced form exercises (kata). It’s also impossible to do judo without a partner. So when your friends say, “Show us some of your judo,” you really can’t. When people have asked me for a demonstration, I usually tell them, “OK, I’ll need a partner. Who wants to get thrown on the ground with a lot of force, or choked, or have their elbow joint locked and bent the wrong way?” Of course, nobody wants to volunteer for all that.
When people think of martial arts, they think of Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris. They think of people in snazzy kimonos jumping around doing stunt-man stunts and breaking boards or bricks. Let me speak to those things for a minute.
A judogi–what you wear to practice judo–is not a snazzy kimono like you see in a movie, with dragons and stuff on it. It’s like wearing a rug–a big, heavy rug. Judo is a grappling sport and the fabric has to take a lot of tugging and pulling. My judogi is a 1050 gram model. That means that it is made from a fabric that weights over two pounds per yard. There’s probably four or five yards at least in making one. After it has been washed, and it’s wet, it feels like trying to take a person out of the washer and stuffing him into the dryer. At least that’s how my wife describes it. Not that she’s ever had to transfer a person from the washer to the dryer in real-life before==
Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris are cool. They were great athletes. They were entertaining actors and stunt-men. I would bet that I could take an Olympic-level judoka (practitioner of judo) and put him up against either of them in their prime, and the judoka would probably choke them unconscious after taking a few punches.
I don’t say this to be disrespectful. It’s an amazing feat seeing someone break a board or a brick with their bare hands. But the board doesn’t move. It doesn’t grab you, throw you on the floor, and choke you until you black out. Judo chokes are extremely effective, as are the throws, holds, and arm-bars. Even though judo is the gentle way, you have to consider that it is the basis of what female MMA champion Rhonda Rousey does. She’s undefeated against boxers, wrestlers, and other martial artists. In two of her last four matches, she dislocated the elbow of her opponents. I’ve seen judo players defeat professional boxers, wrestlers (freestyle, Greco-Roman, and Sumo), as well as martial artists from akido, taekwado, tae-kwan-leap, Rex-kwon-do–you name it.
Despite its effectiveness, judo just doesn’t attract that many people in the United States. People who join a judo club soon quit. They realize early on that it hurts. They realize that it is going to take a long time. We don’t have clubs that sell “get your black belt in a year” programs. It will take a beginner approximately four years to get his first degree black belt. Some people don’t want to wait that long or have to learn that much to say they’re a black belt at something. You see a lot of people make it to yellow or maybe orange belt in the first six months and then they drop out. There’s a wall that seems to emerge suddenly at green belt. You have to know a lot of stuff and begin to show some degree of real proficiency by that point. Nevertheless, a green belt tends to get tossed around by brown and black belts, even though he’s been at it for a year or more. It can get discouraging.
To advance beyond that rank, you have to really know your stuff. You need to know technique names in Japanese, the contest rules and commands in Japanese, some history, and other odd facts Most of all, you need to have some good fortune to remain un-injured for a few years to keep progressing. Broken toes, feet, knees, and collarbones are somewhat common. After a kid gets a minor injury like a broken toe, a lot of parents will have him stop altogether.
And nobody makes a movie about “The Judo Kid.” It’s always Karate that gets the publicity. Besides, no one wants to make a movie about a sport where, if a person gets choked out on the mat, there’s a likelihood that they’re going to soil their undies in a white outfit that weighs 20 pounds soaking wet. Oddly, it’s a sport whose name means the “gentle way” that does that.
Despite all this, there is something about judo that grabs a certain percentage of people and turns them into devotees. People who practice judo regard it almost as a secondary religion and they approach it with an open mind–and when it grabs them, they are hard-pressed to let it go, even if no else thinks it’s cool. If you want to watch some top-level competive judo, here is a video of some cool judo techniques in tournaments around the world. Until next time, enjoy!
Proud papa alert!
This past weekend was a good one. My youngest son and I have been doing judo at the YMCA for the past year or so. We’ve been having a great time and he is getting quite good at it! Judo is a tough sport. It’s not like some other martial arts where they sign you up and tell you you can earn your black belt in a year. In judo, it’s a long hard slog to black belt that takes about four years if you hit all the benchmarks and you don’t stall out in your training. And the training is rough–no doubt. Judo takes a toll on a body. It’s a full-tilt contact sport where you grapple with, throw, choke, or do arm bars on a fully resisting opponent.
Last weekend, my son got a taste of his first judo competition. We traveled to Maryland for the Ken Tamai Memorial Judo Championships where he got to fight four tough, competitive matches. Tournaments like this are a good test of skill, because you have to fight opponents who you’ve never faced before in most cases. It’s all-out effort. When you win, it feels great. When you lose, you feel terrible. The experience teaches you to win gracefully and lose with honor. My son got a taste of both.
In the end, he came out winning a bronze medal. That’s fantastic for his first tournament. It was a great confidence-builder, but he saw a greater perspective and now he knows how much harder he needs to train if he wants to take a gold medal home in the future. This picture says it all. He’s happy, but he’s really tired. There’s a look of determination that wasn’t there before. It’s kind of cool to see.
