Recently my good friend and talented artist Aurelio Madrid asked if he could interview me about my experiences and background in both Mixed Martial-Arts (MMA) and academics. At first I was hesitant – enjoying my near total anonymity with regards to online affairs – but upon reflection I started thinking it might be a nice opportunity for me to think biographically for a change, as I am near pathologically anti-nostalgic, especially about my own life. The here and now is where all the action is. So Aurelio and I set to work, exchanged a few emails and the result of that conversation can be found on Aurelio’s blog HERE for anyone interested.
In retrospect I think I could have answered his questions a little more succinctly, but what comes through is perhaps a slice of who I am and where I am coming from. As I come to the end of my fighting career I am realizing just how much I have learned from martial-arts. Wisdom is the achievement of engaged bodies - beings fully of this world; and philosophy is more than reading books and measuring words: it is lived.
Below is an excerpt of me talking about embodied realism from the interview:
Read the Full Interview: HEREI think the most important philosophical insight I have had from combat sports came to me directly after my first loss in the cage. I competed against a much more experienced and dedicated fighter and was beaten pretty soundly despite going the full three rounds. A few days afterwards, I was reading some article on radical skepticism and Kant, and it struck me as so completely and brutally absurd that anyone could ever claim that humans do not have the capacity for direct experiential access to objects as such. Basically, here I was unintentionally beaten, bruised and deeply and emotionally affected while some professor sitting in some library was dreaming and writing about how humans do not directly experience things-in-themselves. Well, my experience and the state of my body demonstrated quite the opposite. What fighting has proved to me – beyond any sort of linguistic demonstration or logical construction – is that entities external to my perception and control have direct access to my substantial being. The plane of action is immanent. Not only did I experience my opponent’s powers cognitively but a felt them structurally, in the way he was able to intervene on my existence and disable (temporarily) certain aspects of my characteristic functionality. Never had I felt so affected. So I know that objects and entities can and do have direct and highly consequential contacts with each other. Realism is THE default position for anyone who experiences the world as a whole/embodied being. Ontologically speaking, we are open and vulnerable systems. After five minutes in a locked cage with a trained opponent, I believe anyone would become a realist…
Please note that the picture above is from Seattle based photographer Adam Smith. Check out his amazing body of work: here and on Tumblr: here. Comments, questions and/or trolling are more than welcome.
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2 comments:
yes indeed back to the rough-ground, or enter the octagon as you please, Alva Noe has done some very interesting work with dance and phenomenology that would easily translate to this realm of practice/discipline, and there was Shusterman's:
http://webnet3.fau.edu/humanitieschair/pdf/Somaesthetics_A_Disciplinary_Proposal.pdf
on the biographical angle I think that there is an important difference between gossip and context that this interview models nicely and that need not cut deep into privacy/anonymity.
…thank you too, I was surprised with all the connectivity we had with the ideas & also the benefit of meeting adam smith. the point you make on “pushing internal thresholds & resisting external powers” is good to hear because of its crossover from the physical proving ground of fighting to the intellectual power of trying to overcome past ignorance & acquiring wisdom in a holistic sense—as a whole person. this, of course, is linked to the idea that you were fighting with your fists, then transitioning into fighting with your mind to earn the respect of others. philosophical issues have this creative power if we know how to observe & use it. interesting that you should mention that you were introverted as a young man, so was I & with that, it is important to recognize the beneficial quality of having time to reflect & think through life’s problems with a theoretical & actionable way of interacting, so as to not only help yourself to battle the world around you, but also to share your insights into any evidence of your personal success. so, when you mention that nietzsche was an influence, your strategy becomes evident. for example, his ideas on “the will to power” which, from what I understand, not only had its roots in a human usage, as related to the will &c., but also just the issue of physical force & its intrinsic generative power. also the importance of the body for nietzsche & merleau-ponty which is what you seem to be strongly implicating with your blending of the intellectual & physical sides of your life—in a practiced, experiential way. this kind of thinking (letting go of cartesian-dualism) is something husserl was working hard to do-away with too, since phenomenological consciousness is locked in experience. this must be close to some of what merleau-ponty was heading toward, with all his emphasis on the experiential body. I have yet to dig in to his work with more time. yes, fighting became a way to know the world & philosophy does this too. a way to know the self, indeed like foucault’s “cultivation of the self” incidentally, I believe he references the ancients & a practice of keeping a personal diary/journal of ideas, thoughts, quotes, important thinkers &c. all in the effort to learn “know thyself” better through time & as a reference point into the future. this has to be similar to our contemporary blog phenomena, as we’re demonstrating here. …& yes, I’m interested in thinking about campbell’s work on myth, given that in a scientific way of knowing, such ideas are taken off the table. I’ll always argue for the necessity of myth, fiction, &c. for culture & in everyday life. science needs to have a better grasp of how it implicates ideology, faith, fiction & myth in its own way of explaining things—althusser couldn’t do away with ideology, yet we continue to think that ideology is only fanatical &/or only faith based. ideology, mystery & faith have use for us in a secular context too, but I diverge… as you can see, we still have a lot to talk about! this short interview helped me see the meaning of the virtual & also it introduced me to your ideas is a way that I didn’t plan for. we’ll continue talking…
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