Kinetic Energy

I was watching the Discovery Channel last night and they had that show on that uses the super slo-mo cameras to record interesting things and show how physics works in some odd situations. Long story short, they had a kendo practitioner on slicing through various meaty things with a katana. It was amazing how easily the effortlessly the blade moved through even pork shoulders, showing no slowdown even through thick bone. I've done a bit of reading into the techniques used in forging katanas, especially the careful balance between softer metal which makes up the core of the blade and the harder, more brittle material that comprises the blade. In order to maximize energy transfer and prevent shattering, while also ensuring a strong cutting surface, both need to be proportional. The New Yorker had an article a few weeks ago in the food issue about a modern knife forger who has attempted to integrate some of the elements of the Japanese style of forging into his kitchen knives (although truthfully we still don't understand all of the metallurgical principles that goes into the traditional Japanese forging techniques).

Yet what I thought was most interesting was the explanation from the swordsman, who was talking about energy transfer in what sounded like martial arts terms, and how those tenets were even more apparent in his strikes. The small amount of kendo that I have studied deals with an entire system of principles for combat which go far beyond the physical. Energy (and I'm purposely being vague here) is transferred not only through the blade and the strike itself, but also through other means of control. One of the key principles of kendo sparring is controlling the center line. When I trained, I was always told that the blade should come out in a straight line from a point between the groin and the belly button, at a specific angle to the body but without inclining the blade to the left or right. When sparring, we were supposed to make subtle movements to disrupt that center line, with the goal of dispelling the opponent's focus and energy, kinetic and otherwise, for long enough to move in for a strike. With katanas, it was easy to see how quickly a small loss of focus could open you up to a fatal strike.

The hosts of the show, however, interpreted this short bit of discussion about energy as kinetic energy transfer, showing kinetic transfer with techniques like the one-inch punch, etc. Biokinetically, this makes sense...at karate I think a lot about how to generate power through precise muscle control (mass is not particularly variable, but speed can be trained). But because more often than not there are not a lot of other high-level students, we don't get to explore the other side in practice, other types of energy transfer which were integral to the original martial arts systems. Energy transfer and redirection is a part of the techniques that I've studied, and re-applying those principles of transfer to earlier techniques has been enormously productive. Yet even kinetic energy is not directionless in my experience. In my religious studies work, I think a lot about intention and interpretation, and I think similar ideas apply to physical praxis, especially somewhat ritualized practices such as kata. Not being a particularly large man, I'm aware of the importance of precision and target recognition. When sparring with students who are larger than me, and lower ranked, I have noticed that the haymaker is very popular; kinetically, this makes sense. Swinging the arm all the way around makes for a far more powerful strike. But they very rarely set up the strike well, which is equally important - anyone with a reasonable amount of experience can see a haymaker coming from a mile away and avoid or block it. And when that intention is clear, it's easy to provide distraction, dispelling that energy in a way that isn't physical alone. A short jab to certain muscle groups or nerves will stop or drop an opponent who has committed that much power...this isn't using force, it's using awareness. And I think that's what the hosts of the show missed. Physical kinetics is not the reason the one-inch punch works, at least not exclusively. There's a certain amount of intention and understanding that makes the physical act possible, and without understanding those causes, the understanding of the greater phenomenon is faulty.

These ruminations might have been because of reading Braudel recently; his plea for cooperation between the human sciences resonated with me. But without trying to get into a polemic, I think the same problems apply to a lot of the work I do. In martial arts, I think most students who stick with it and devote themselves to it come to an understanding, conscious or not, of other forces at work besides just the martial; the 'art' portion of the term is just as important, if not more so. And in my academic work, when I mention that I study religion, people want to talk about Islam or Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' or what have you (I'll reserve comment...). Yet none of those things come close to what I consider to be the real import of religious studies work, which is placing other systems of thought, other human endeavors alongside our own experience in order to foster dialogue. Once again, Braudel's emphasis on models reather than narratives was a breath of fresh air to me, even though he wrote the articles that comprised "On History" over half a century ago. A model is contructed from the various contributions of the human sciences in order to explain a phenomena, but it is always susceptible to revisions as more information and analysis becomes available. A historical narrative imposes on events and puts them into a framework that is not nearly as malleable, and that has repercussions. Even with narratives that aren't as extreme as nationalist explanations of history, it can trap us into making predictions based on a story rather than on the actual circumstances. This isn't to say that we can or should ignore narrativizing, because that's neither possible nor desirable. Indeed, models become narratives the moment we utilize them for anything beyong their component elements. But it does mean that we should question those narratives and be receptive to other explanations of events or phenomena.

From kinetic energy to Braudel in four paragraphs...if that doesn't demonstrate the way various forces are inherent in any phenomenon, requiring multiple levels of explanation, I don't know what does.

I've been watching the Daily Show and thinking about Mumbai.

I do religious studies for a variety of reasons, mainly because it's interesting. But what it does is push out into other related fields, right now ethics and history. I've been reading and grappling with Foucault (Archaeology of Knowledge) and Braudel (On History) and wondering about structures and discourses and statements, and more than that, of possibilities. Braudel and Foucault both open up new ways of looking at possibilities, for academic studies and otherwise. Foucault (at least in Archaeology) wants to create a metadiscourse, a discourse about discourses. And when we look at discourses, when we analyze statements, we find out what's possible for us to think, what's possible for us to study. Foucault fights against structures (for reasons I have to go back and re-explore), but does it in such a way that he opens up new modes of analysis, new tools for use. But enough about Foucault; he's one of the seminal thinkers for a reason, and I'd need to do a deeper look at his nuances to feel more comfortable talking about him.

Braudel is interesting because of the ways in which he is a structural thinker, but not in the traditional sense of the term. He's not bound by structures, but instead is invested in methods and undercurrents, not slave to individual events but attempting to master them by putting them in a much larger stream. But more than that is his plea for the human sciences to begin listening to each other, contributing to the greater understanding of humanity/culture/civilization. I'm unclear on this first reading whether Braudel agrees with Levi-Strauss in saying that mythology is a type of longue duree, but I think it's certainly worth taking those tools outside of the human sciences and into the humanities.

The point of all of this (besides getting ruminations off of my mind) is to say that the situation in Mumbai needs to be addressed differently. There's a huge historical and theological component here that isn't being addressed; I know that kind of commentary tends to come after some more facts have come out, but in this case it's being overshadowed by this whole Pakistan situation. Historically, there's a whole lot going on here and we're getting a lot of rhetoric about American views on terrorism and very little about India. The long history of Islam and Hindu relations deserves closer examination. The problem is that our American discourse is conditioned by 9/11 and, in many cases, Islamophobia, and that does a disservice to the uniquely Indian elements of the Mumbai attacks. I read comments about how India may have gotten word about these attacks days beforehand and not done anything about it, and I wonder why that's particularly relevant in this case. What matters now is how we move forward; terrorism is a long-standing element of history, as is inter-religious or inter-national violence. How have those elements manifested themselves in different ways throughout history and how have we dealt with them? How have they changed now, and how should we think about those changes?

In some sense, this is a larger ethical question. I skim around on the internet, highbrow and lowbrow, and I keep on running across people who refuse to acknowledge the point of view of anything besides their own familiar context. Secular or religious, Euro-American or otherwise, I wonder whether there is an obligation, a duty to try to put oneself in the position of another. I'm fascinated by literary ethics, the work of Martha Nussbaum but even the ethical content inherent in Eco or the Sanskrit literary philosophers. We are permeable, and especially in traumatic or emotionally wrenching situations we have the opportunity to reflect and ruminate. Perhaps because we don't track personal change on the internet as easily as we do in real life, we don't get to see those changes very often, but there is a lot of obstinence and talking past one another.

I read an article recently that said that we've become a post-modern society, that the European schools of postmodern thought had the last laugh in the end because of the ways in which modern discourse analyzes events and news. We ask what identity means, what McCain's claims that we don't actually know "the real Obama" meant, we deconstruct and are willing to deal with subtler claims and how those claims are made. Yet as often as those are used as critical tools, they are very rarely used in a comprehensive mode of critical thought, one which is then applied back on oneself. This is one of the debates I have with myself: I don't do theology in the traditional sense, I may study it as a discourse or anthropologically or historically or one of any number of other ways, but not as a normative field. Yet in religious ethics and semiotics, I think there is a normative aspect (leaving aside the fact that I would claim that there is ethical content in any field of study or worldview) (and yes I am conflating ethics and normativity here for the moment). Is it the place of such fields of study to actually compel us to change on a personal level, not just on the level of discourse? Should we develop tools of analysis which we then apply to ourselves outside of our studies? I'm not so blase as to think that is possible.

This is the first post, the third time I've tried to start one of these blogs. I want this to continue because I think that discourse needs a partner, many partners, whether they agree or disagree. We'll see what develops, and I would like to look back on this in a few years and laugh at the development of this space, tentative early gropings at Foucault and Braudel and vague ruminations on ethics.