Tae Kwon Do

They’re not so tough.

Aaron Cook Fighting in A Bronze Medal Match Against Zhu Guo at the 2008 Olympic Games, in the -80KG Event.

The Nature of Evil

Obstacles can be seen as opportunity if we look at them correctly. But, we have to look at them correctly. How do we learn how to do that?

The word ‘Satan’ means adversary. We have to understand who our adversaries are, but I tend to think the only real enemy lies within. Specifically, evil is the self-doubt that keeps you from doing what has to be done. We have to be clear. We have to think this through. There are people in the world who would like to stand in your way, but the only reason they can is because some part of you believes they have the right to do so. You have probably been taught to believe that there is some perfectly good reason why you shouldn’t want what you want. Notice that I didn’t say that you shouldn’t have what you want, but that you shouldn’t even want it.

It could be that you don’t believe that you deserve it. Maybe you think you’re being too selfish. But isn’t that what it means to want something? Of course it is your own desire that you wish to satisfy, even if that desire is to satisfy someone else’s desires. It’s the desire that leads you to act. But if you can’t even desire it, you surely won’t know if you have what it takes to get it.

I feel like I should talk about Nietzsche and his account of slave morality, but even if we understand the larger historical forces that have brought about our conditioning, we still need to deal with the conditioning we have suffered. In other words, it doesn’t really matter how it got there so much as what we need to do to get rid of it. We have to employ whatever tools are at our disposal to overcome the evil that has been put in us. We may have to take extraordinary measures if we hope to achieve our freedom.

That evil inner voice should be squirming in its seat by this point, “But, but, what about, did you ever think about…” Yeah.

Are science and religion compatible?

Are science and religion compatible? | Open Parachute.

This is THE war of our generation> Assumptions of incompatibility have got to go. However, if religion (or more properly, Theology) and science are compatible, it is by no means clear how.

Spinoza and Hegel will be useful guides in this debate, along with other great historical figures like Heidegger and Kierkegaard. The notions of time and causality are key, so Hume and Whitehead will have to be discussed extensively. We should also be aware of non-western sources like the Buddhist notion of codependent arising.

There is much work to do.