Why you don't want to be a meercat
Published: Mon, 08/19/19
I am glad I am not a Meerkat in a zoo. I would be fed up with people shouting ‘simples’ at me in a mock Russian accent. And since I probably wouldn’t have access to TV I would not even know why people were saying it. Sorry, getting a bit whimsical there, but the word simple can be pretty loaded.
There was a time when some people got referred to as being a bit simple. It wasn’t complimentary in that it suggested that the person wasn’t very intelligent, although it usually implied too that they were also quite innocent and harmless.
Teachers and instructors are sometimes advised to use the KISS principle, keep it simple stupid! Can be good advice as far as it goes. Einstein is reported to have said; ‘make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.’ So, what do we actually mean by simple? In a sense simple is the opposite of complicated but can you really define complicated? The issue really is understanding, and what it takes to genuinely understand something. It is easy to say that, ‘the simpler something is, the easier it is to understand’, but that isn’t actually true, as Einstein apparently recognised. In reality understanding is about making conceptual leaps. Until a leap has been successfully made, there is no understanding. And two different people may look at exactly the same conceptual challenge and one might declare it too complicated to engage with and the other too simple to be worth bothering with. Which again is Einsten’s point,
simplicity is good, but over simplification does not actually benefit anyone.
A couple of examples.
I have always had problems with maths. I can do perfectly good calculations for accounts, measurements and quantities. I can even do basic trigonometry for designing shapes and structures. But I struggle with anything but the most basic algebra and I am not at all sure what calculus is even for, let alone being able to do it. I simply never made the conceptual leaps necessary to do maths at this level. I went to a good school and had good teachers, I am sure that they did their best to make the subject as simple as they could, but somehow I just didn’t connect with it.
When I was a school teacher for a few years I did some special needs teaching. I remember having one to one sessions with children who simply could not get to grips with the most basic mathematical challenges. Remembering my own struggles with the subject I would do my best to help the pupil make the necessary conceptual leaps to grasp multiplication or division. Take nine counters, divide into three groups of three and it should demonstrate that three times three is nine, or nine divided into three equal groups is three. That was my approach anyway but I can’t be sure that I achieved anything conclusive.
Another example is teaching close range striking as I was trying to do at a camp a few days ago. Most people can punch kinetically in the sense of ‘throwing’ a punch and hitting a target. However it is also possible to strike from very close range, starting pretty much in contact with the target and sort of exploding into it with no more than minimum movement of the whole body. It is a fairly well known principle of striking and the boxer Jack Dempsey, an American heavyweight champion in the 1920s, explained his exceptional punching power as coming from his use of a ‘drop step’. This idea has been taken up in various pugilistic and martial arts circles ever since and a way of generating punching power. It is a way of describing how to develop the wave of action within the body which can then be expressed as a strike. However, in my opinion, it is actually an over simplification. In Guided Chaos, which is an extremely sophisticated
martial training method, they simply talk about ‘getting out of your own way’ in order to release power. In martial arts it is common to have excessively complicated training systems, the orientals tend to be guilty of this. Or oversimplifications as in ‘just use a drop step’. Making conceptual leaps is a process and we all make some leaps successfully and either fail, or never actually try, to make others. That is okay, we can’t all be good, or even competent, at everything and we don’t have to be. But don’t think that simplification is the answer to everything either. Anything can seem quite simple once you have made the necessary conceptual leap. However, making something simple is no substitute for real engagement until understanding comes. Or accepting that perhaps this is simply not your thing and this is why we have teamwork.
Another summing up as to what holds us back: Don’t drown in information, trust that knowledge will come just in time, your mind is not static and that is okay and simplicity is not a substitute for real engagement. One more problem to go.
regards
Graham
PS Just got back from three very pleasant and interesting days at Fightcamp. I am still processing what I learned but I think I made a couple of conceptual leaps which I will share with you later in the week.
PPS Reminder of next training opportunity in Beverley on the 7th of September http://iceandfire.org.uk/train.html