Monday, October 3, 2016

Why we will never travel in time as I see it.

I have given a lot of time and thought to time travel as it is presented in movies and television and there is one thing that stands out. In all of these representations of time travel someone goes back in time, changes the timeline, then comes back to a changed future. In that way "everything has changed". I am not convinced that time travel could or would actually be that way.
Think of time travel as a spiral instead of a straight line. Rather than going back then coming forward on the same line, you go back, change something then the future you move to is the one in which belongs to the changed past rather than the one you know. In that way, nothing is truly fixed, rather it is fixed as we know it or as what is our history but not universal.

This also presents a whole different problem that is often overlooked for the sake of simplicity. If you go back in time on this time line, then come back to a different one, unless in that one you also "Disappeared" you are entering a timeline where you exist at the same time. This may not be a true paradox, and may not strain the time space continuum but what it does do, in a very real way is create 2 of you. (Again, unless the you from the new time line also went back and changed things then moved to a different strand) This may not be as big of a problem as people think, but who knows.

Think of it this way. In timeline X you were born, had all of your life experiences up to and including the movement through spacetime. The fact that you went back at all creates all kinds of problems, (See butterfly effect) When you move forward from that point, you are moving forward into a timeline we will call Y. To that end the question of becoming your own grandfather is definitely possible as you could be the grandfather of someone who you are in timeline Y having been grandfathered by your own grandfather in timeline X. There is of course another point to timeline Y you may not or never have existed at all. (Say back to the future without fixing the relationship with mom) Here is the thing, You are made up of millions and millions of genes, all of which were dependent on which sperm fertilized what egg.  It is possible that in that time line you never existed, or you were a completely different genetic person based on the randomness of which sperm fertilized the egg. Even barring that, if you are the same genetic person, there is nothing that says that all of your experiences would have brought you to the exact same point or to be the same person you are today. In timeline X you get beat up in 5th grade and do nothing about it, in timeline Y you fight the bully back, thus changing a part of who you are. Or even more subtle, In one you are beat up and you are depressed, and it changes your whole outlook on life from that point forward, in the other you are beat up and you take it defiantly in the future. even this perspective shift could change the outcome of your life, so much so that when you change the past in the shared time, and you move forward and meet yourself in timeline Y you are not the same person at all.

Here is the point. Everything we do has an impact, whether we want it to or not. In Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" we are lead to believe that it is the dead butterfly that changes the future, but even your presence in the past would change the past.  For the time you are there, even if you were able not to meet someone you shouldn't have, you are there, breathing the air, which changes the amount of carbon dioxide on the planet for that time, that may not seem important but it could be due to the larger implications.

If we are to ever move through time, we will need to do so without interacting with it to avoid any movement from one timestream to another. Want to see the declaration of independence signed? You will need to do so by observing it but not physically being in the room. The added advantage this has is that if you are moving consciousness, rather than moving a body through space time it will take less energy to do so, as well as not having any impact on the past. To make time travel work we must find a way to be non participant observers rather than going back and being active participants.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Big ideas on change.

In taking my Archeology class last night I had a lot of thoughts come up that I felt needed some fleshing out in regards to change.

My base assumption both in the field I am studying as well as life in general is this:
People will do what works for them on some level or serves them on some level. OR Do what has worked in the past that does not any longer to the extent that it is not overtly destructive enough to force a change to a new paradigm or perish immediately. We do things that hurt us, but until it hurts too much, we do not want to change. We wait for the diagnosis of high cholesterol to do something about it, or we wait to have a friend die of lung cancer before we take stopping smoking seriously.

This is not just on the microcosmical level but the microcosmical level as well. We wait until a species is near extinction to do something about saving them. We wait until the air quality is really bad to worry about doing something about our air. The point is this, we do what has worked at some point, to define who and what we are.

We know that people do what works because the ones who do not live long enough to keep it going. An example I have given in the past, is if a culture says it is a good thing to kill all their children at the age of 8. that culture will not live longer than 1 generation without outside help like perhaps taking a warring groups children past that age as their own.

In reflecting on this in my own life, there are habits I have or things I do that do not serve me but they make me feel good. I eat poorly because at the time the food tastes good, regardless of what it is doing to my body weight. That is something that needs to change, but the only way to change it is to find other coping mechanisms. I have to find the bigger why.

In a strange way this also translates to my teaching students. I have taught for awhile that if something feels wrong, you are probably doing something wrong in your technique, and while that is true. it may make more sense to observe what is natural first then work with that, rather than just start with the assumption that people are doing something wrong.  When we look at weapons that were used in the past it is easy to say that they should have been used X way, but the way they break shows that at least sometimes they were used in Y way and that was it's weakness. The problem is we do not want to admit that what is natural may not be what we have in mind. Yes, sometimes what is natural is wrong, but it has something to tell us about what the student feels like works and that should not just be thrown out because we are the teachers and we know SOO much better than they do.

At the end we may be the end of ourselves as we grasp to paradigms that do not work and hope that if we just do it right, it has to work, when that may just not be true. Sometimes something has to break, so we can fix the challenges we have now and in the future.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

What are my priorities?

Tonight after work I had a meeting with an academic advisor then had some errands to run and a bit of down time before I had to be at my fencing class.

I spend a lot of time thinking about my Sword class, what I want it to be, how to make it better, what my long term goals are, but something hit me as I was thinking and writing in the down time tonight. I have to decide what my priorities are and go from there.

It was something that was clear. I have to decide what my priorities are before I can have any clarity about anything else. This is not just a sword class thing, this is a life thing. I have to wake up, decide what is important at any given moment, and either give it the priority it deserves or in not doing so, choose something else as the bigger priority.

In life, I have struggled with my weight for years, but the reason I do not take it off and keep it there is that in the moment, I allow eating the wrong things to take the priority over what I say id my big one. The satisfaction of that burger, or candy bar, or soda, takes the priority over how great it feels to eat well and how alive I feel when I exercise. I let the satisfaction and sometimes apathy of watching TV all night "because I deserve the down time"  take priority over things that make me feel good long term. So the question becomes what is my priority now, and will I allow the now overwhelm what I feel is the bigger Yes burning inside of me. This is not just a fitness or non-fitness thing, life is full of these decisions.

When it comes to my sword class I realized tonight that to me, my priority is to help my students reach their goals and produce the best quality fencers I can. I would rather 10 students who are dedicated and willing to study and do what is needed to reach them, than 100 students who show up because they have nothing better to do with their afternoon. The challenge is quality has to be defined both by me, and by my students. If my true priority is quality, I have to be willing to let everything go that does not support that to reach those goals, while also looking at their priorities of my students and realizing that we may not see the same things as quality.

Motives play a big role in this. I remember a few years ago one of my fencing students goal for the year was to beat so-in-so in their competitions. Who am I to say that it is not a good goal? I disagree with it, but that does not mean that it is any less real for them. I have to be willing to look at those goals and ask myself, what can I do to help them reach those goals? I must be willing to provide the tools I can, but I cannot make them train everyday out of class, I am responsible for giving them tools, but they have to make use of them if they want to reach the goals they set.

I am a big fan of being clear and that being what brings things into your life that you desire. In my HEMA class, that means being clear about what we are doing, being open to the needs of the students and also knowing that if I want quality students, I must be a quality teacher who is always looking to get better at what I know and how I teach. The moment I quit and say it is good enough is the moment that I accept that as the high mark for my students. You attract what you put out there. If I dropped the gear requirements and allowed boffers in class, we would grow. If I stopped focusing on building the best Swordsmen I can, and just had fin classes all the time we could be huge, but that is not what my priority is. My priority is to have the best students who want to come and learn the best I can give them to be better. If that means I have 10 students, or 100 students, so be it. At the end of the day if I am willing to do anything less, I am not being genuine to myself, and letting myself get away with less then my best.

You have to be willing to look for your best, and let everything else go. To make priorities, and stick with them. In life, though I love sword, it has to come down to this. I have to take care of me then my family, then my work, then my hobbies, and even those get sorted from time to time based on keeping my word and timeliness.

In life it is about priorities. wonder where yours are? look at your life it will give you all the feedback you need. As Voltaire put it, "The enemy of the best is the good." Some days you pick the good enough, but if you want to get where you want to be you need to let that go and pick what will get you there.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Why Compete?

I have asked the question the last little bit of several students and some others outside of my school why it is that they compete in local events and events at large. Here is my take on it, Drills have their place, I do action X my opponent counters with action Y thus proving why action Y is the perfect corolary to action X. Then I get a turn. We do this over and over until I can really feel the actions happening instead of forcing them to happen. Then comes the test. Can I do action Y when it is not scripted? When I may not know that my opponent may be "helping me"? I hope that this is not the case, I hope that my opponent is trying to make it work, so much so that if I do it wrong, they will in fact hit me. But why compete?

I compete to get feedback. When I am working with cooperative partners on a controlled drill it is easy to think that I am the best fencer ever because I can do this drill just right. The problem is that they may be "helping me" whether they know it or not. When I am teaching I tell my students that if their partner does not get the form right they should make contact and hit them. If the drill is one where student A is thrusting and student B is parrying student A should be trying to hit student B (not so hard they are hurting them but enough to say, hey do it better next time) the parry should be a good one. I sometimes have to remind them of this as I start to see with a little time on the drill people thrusting to places that there is no one there. In fact, if student B just stood there, they would not get hit at all. This is not always conscious but it does happen. When I say I compete to get feedback that is what I mean. My opponent should be trying to hit me, and I should be doing my best to counter that.

Fencing, be it Historical, or Modern fencing is a mental game. In the last few years I have come to see this more and more as I have been working more on it for myself. Find what your opponent is doing and then exploiting that is a great idea. Making them do what you want them to, is a better one, but either way it is about getting in their head and walking around. I have know people who crack when they have been hit 1 or 2 times and then the game is yours, I have also known some who are hard to figure out and it takes the whole match for things to go your way.

Competing, or at least free play, is a way to see how I am doing as a fighter. If I am having a hard time with something, I will go home to practice that, but the feedback is where I see how well I am doing to fix those problems. If I am doing terribly at hitting my opponent at the same time they hit me, I need to work on that, but I don't know if I am getting any better unless I get feedback, and for me that means doing it and seeing how I feel.

At the end of the day, the decision to compete is very personal. My instructor may feel like I am doing great, but if I can't see it, then it does not matter how he feels, if I feel like I am not improving.

The other side of it is this. I have been teaching my regular class for just under six months. In that time, I have had new students join and it seems like a few leave me to take classes elsewhere, or maybe leave completely. The reason that competing is important to me, is that it is a way of seeing how I am doing as an instructor. I do not get to take full credit for all that my students do, the best ones will be practicing outside of class and will probably be doing their own study, but competition's let me see where I need to work with my students in class so the next time they can do better. At the end of the day how they do is up to them. I can only give them tools to work with, but they are the ones building their skills and overcoming their obstacles. At the end of the day however if I am seeing improvement I know that I am doing an alright job. If I see problems we have not addressed, we can work on those. If I see problems that we have and are still not better, then it may be time to vary my approach. If I see back sliding and people not working on issues we have talked about or just becoming more sloppy, then those are changes I need to make in my way of teaching so that they improve.

In the end what matters is how happy we are with how we are doing. Not every fencer is going to be a gold medalist, and not everyone wants to be. For some people they just want to come to class, have some fun, learn a few things and go home. If they never go to an international event, that is fine by them because that is not what it is about for them. To me competing is about feedback. Seeing how I am doing both as a student and a teacher and deciding just what I need to work on as both. I have had times when I pushed myself hard and realized that it paid off. I have also had times when I thought I was pushing myself hard and it was mostly just thinking about it, not actually doing anything to improve. To me competing is about feedback and that feedback is invaluable.