I was watching this video of BJJ and Tae Kwon Do Black belt Joe Rogan showing how to salvage a failed Darce choke and turn it into a neck crank:
It has been a while, but that whole ambiance brings back a lot of memories. I can even feel how that scene probably came to be.
Judging by Joe’s enthusiasm, at some point, Joe likely happened upon that himself and didn’t learn it. He probably went for a Darce, couldn’t get it, and was rolling around tied up with his opponent’s leg hooked, buying time to see if he could advance somehow. As happens so often in all martial arts, he ended up accidently doing the opposite of what he thought he should have been doing, maybe just because things were stalled and he wanted the fight to go somewhere, and as he twisted the wrong way with what he had, he found he had the right leverage to produce a quick and easy submission.
I have seen things like this happen, and the aftermath, more times than I can count. And it always looks exactly the same. A guy is fighting, he does something counter-intuitive, it yields a good advance, and he then eagerly shows it to everyone, beaming with pride, simply at the idea he can help his fellow fighters.
Look at how excited Joe was to have found a killer move, which could submit just about anybody quickly. Look at him in the video, and how excited he is to be able to help somebody else raise his game as he freely gives away this killer move to whoever he can. He loves doing it. He is thrilled when they get it. If the guys get it wrong, he helps hone their understanding so they can do it perfect. Try to feel what that world is like, where everyone is committed to your success as much as you are committed to their’s. It is a giant in-group of allies, working toward a common goal.
If he were a BJJ capitalist, he would have immediately hidden that move away, and saved it to dominate every night on the mat. He could have beaten a lot more people by keeping it secret, and only using it judiciously. And yet, what is his philosophy here? From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Fuck that, it is even more. It is whatever I have, I want to give it all and then some to everyone else, whether they need it or not. And everyone else on the mat feels the same way with respect to him.
In martial arts, your knowledge is power. It is how you make yourself great and compete.
I’m sure Joe proclaims himself to be a capitalist. And yet, Joe could be better than everyone else on the mat with ease. But in the world of martial arts knowledge, he casts that aside and works as hard as he can to produce as much as he can through his diligent effort, and he then gives his product away to anyone he can get to take it, whether they need it or not, to focus on making them better. When his innermost instincts are given free reign to emerge unbidden, Joe is a communist to the core. And the best part? Those guys Joe is working with are commies at heart too, because one day they will do for others exactly what Joe is doing for them.
And having seen that world firsthand, I can say it is beautiful in the most incredible, spiritually-magnificent way. It is pure, and the epitome of moral and loyal. Moreover, everyone here would love it as much as me, if they jumped into it. So why aren’t we communists? Why can’t communism work?
The obvious answer is the ideological communists who want communism. Real ideological communists who call for communism are assholes. Just fucking despicable, loathsome pieces of shit that any decent human being would want to murder in the most brutal, painful, and drawn-out way possible.
The reality is communism works in martial arts because guys who can take a beating and come back every night, despite the periodic major injuries and dangers of more, are K-strategists. They grasp reality. They tolerate adversity. They welcome it.
And the reality about communism in regular life is there are too many assholes who will take, take, take, and then try to fuck everyone else over in return. Those are the r-strategists, who are programmed to take free resources, and then engage in low risk backstabbing to try and gain status for enhanced mating success, while not enduring the consequences or risks of honest competition. They get weeded out of Martial Arts because they can’t take the dangers, pain, and adversity. And there is probably an aura they give off which would make the K’s on the mat reject them instinctually.
So I think communism doesn’t fail every time because it is a flawed system itself. I think the commies are right, that it fails because the wrong communists implement it. The only thing is, every communist who wants communism will be the wrong communist because they are r-strategists, and thus unable to, like Joe, constantly strive to produce quality products, and share them with their fellow K’s. Basically a communistic system which includes r-strategists is destined to fail, and spectacularly, with dead bodies filling mass graves and economic misery and so on, because leftist r-strategists are just assholes who only think of themselves.
I think Communism is beautiful though if it is implemented properly, and is even, to some degree something K-strategists are designed to implement naturally within their in-group. But we are designed to implement it volitionally, among in-groups which we voluntarily self-sort into, where everyone is a K-strategist contributing to the betterment of each other, and any cheaters and r-strategists are ejected, usually brutally and with great satisfaction. So communism only works if you get all the fucking commies out, whether you eject them or kill them.
But once you do, it can be wonderful. I would hope every K can one day find their way to exactly such a world.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because if you understand it, communism can be a beautiful thing
Two Ks can know the same killer move, but they cannot both eat the same chunk of meat. Communism fails because commies try to apply it to the meat and not just the move.
This comment is much clearer than the article. Bravo
This isn’t really Communism because (a) no one is forced to give anything away, it’s all voluntary, and (b) unlike scarce material goods, knowledge does not diminish when shared with others. In fact, student questions often help to clarify the teacher’s knowledge.
E.g. a history teacher tells college students that the Haymarket Martyrs were convicted in a six-week show trial. A girl in the class then asked, “If the trial was a sham, what did they talk about for six weeks?” That motivated the teacher to dig up court records of the trial, from which he concluded that most of the defendants were probably guilty.
This post is helpful because it shows how any system can be messed up by the a-holes.
Nothing wrong with communal spirit. Acts 2:44. That said, communism is a godless philosophy that denies the ability to own property, denying man’s basic material and spiritual need. A martial arts instructor who couldnt own a gym or the tools of his trade would have a hard time. Communism treats humans as if they’re no different than chickens in a CAFO. Provide everything for them, but to do that you have to keep them in a cage and cut their beak off and shovel grain down their throats. Aren’t they fat and happy? So, no, communism isn’t great.
On the other hand, sociopaths have infested capitalism to the point where there is no point buying cheap electronics on trips to SE Asia b/c the stuff at Walmart is cheaper and of a similar (garbage) quality. Clothes are thin and ugly. Buying quality is beyond the budget of most (check the price of smartwool versus hanes). Depressing.
What is wanted is the benevolent rule of King Jesus. Accept no substitute. His kingdom come. Merry Christmas!
True.
More community than communism.
Nothing to add, except to say that this is a truly excellent post.
Joe Rogan was a real brownnose for Ronda Rousey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKqX7wCjQec
I’m sure he is just working his way around to giving her the spanking she deserves.
You should give a concrete defenition of communism, because you use it different ways in different contexts. You say that to share knowledge is communist, and on the other hand conflate that with “from each according his ability, to each according his need”. Sharing knowledge is not communist….thats just sharing, in some cases it is motivated by alutrism, in other cases it has other more selfish motivations.
I see the knowledge you work to acquire in a competitive field as value. After all you patent ideas which help you to win, and maintain trade secrets in capitalism for that reason.
Maybe I tried to drag people into a world of contradictions that they have to feel to really understand. As another example, there is a video out there of Joe’s instructor Eddie Bravo trying to show all his unique techniques to Rickson Gracie, who of course is a competitor whose family Eddie is in competition with. But Eddie doesn’t care about his win/loss record, be cares about the sport as a whole.
Someone once asked what’s wrong with communism, considering that the Christians in the Book of Acts sold everything and gave according to each’s need.
The answer? The Christians did it out of love and concern for one another, whereas Commies do it out of envy that others have more.
The relationship between parents and children is certainly more communistic than capitalistic. I like the idea of my family and close relatives living together, taking care of eachother. The problem comes when you introduce greedy asshole atheist strangers into your well oiled machine. Screw that.
I thought you were hacked or this was a joke from the headline, but you’re right. Every good family (or social group or club) is “communist” in that they all take care of each other. But then think if there’s a narcissist in that family, who will soak up all the love, good will, and support. Eventually there’s not enough to go around and the system collapses as everyone is so tired of the narcissist’s bullshit. Thankfully, most families don’t have a narcissist in them. Unfortunately, every nation has at least a few of them – and it doesn’t take many to screw it up.
A “communist” system would be great – if everyone involved were honest and good people. The bigger a group gets the harder this is to achieve, though, so any “communist” society of anything above maybe 10,000 people or so is very likely to collapse as the assholes ruin everything.
For the average citizen, communism doesn’t work above the level of nuclear family. The average mom and dad are unsung heroes, willingly sacrificing for their children. Communism only works at the level of a monastery because entry is selective. Monks must trade in the desire for worldly goods to concentrate on prayer and beer-making. Still, it’s a good idea to have an honest outsider keeping the books.
There’s nothing beautiful with communism if its implemented correctly. That is exactly the missed point of the past 200 years.
Its wrong in principle, not just in application.
Lovely theory. Wrong species.
It all goes back to when K-strategist Neanderthals took pity on starving, cold r-strategist Sapiens and accepted them into their groups.
Here’s why it isn’t communism, but is in fact free marketeerism.
Free riders don’t gain anything from Rogan explaining this. I don’t get anything from learning this. Why? I haven’t put in the work. I don’t know the foundational techniques that make this possible. I haven’t put in the time and effort in the gym and dojo building the muscle groups and muscle memory I would need to be effective on the ground.
(My training is more based on carrying heavy things to within a few hundred yards of the person I am in conflict with, using those heavy things about 150-300 yards away from them, and then carrying those heavy things back out. There’s a good amount of cross over in, thankfully.)
Communism is sending you and Rogan out to take down people I can’t take down. Taking them down myself is the opposite. Ben Carson can tell me everything there is about how a brain surgery is done, and I’m still going to need him to put his hands inside my wife’s skull if she needs that surgery. Investors tell the world exactly what they need to do to trade in the stock market all the time (the ultimate anti-communists) yet 99% of the population simply can’t do it.
Trade secrets are rare, and often worse for the person keeping is that the network effects of the free trade of information. A rising tide lifts all boats, and most people inherently understand that. At the end of the day, the free market and communism are both about skill and sweat, not knowledge.
But in that video, Rogan is sharing that with the very guys he will be rolling with at Eddie Bravo’s club later on, and who he may have to compete with a tournament, if he competes, so in a way the spirit is the same.
It is tough to explain, but you find minor tweaks and ways of perfecting stuff that make stuff work better all the time as you do things, and you get a great kick out of spreading them through the club, even though you will later have difficulty using those tweaks yourself, and you might even get caught with it by somebody you showed it too. It just strikes me how non-competitive that it, and how ironic it is it should happen in such a K-environment.
It is a weird abandonment of the competitive drive, which is rooted in a desire to see your buddies rise as high as they can, even if that is way higher than you will get. Which may be why commies don’t do it.
All you need do to see the opposite is step into a curved class in STEM academia, where everyone is screwing everyone else over, and nobody will help anybody, for fear their grade may be a little lower on the curve relatively. Ironically, in that environment the ones who least believe in helping others will be the most ardent rabbits.
But you are right about using others to take enemies down. That is really the difference I think we cue in on when sorting our psychologies.
Grading curves are a perverse incentive and essentially communist, putting an artifical limit on the grades where none exists in nature. A grading curve forces a loser. I would even hypothesize (but have no scientific support for) the notion that classes without grading curves produce better teaching outcomes, because students are encouraged to collaborate rather than compete.
Here’s how stupid and perverse grading curves are. If you put Einstein, Hawkings (the original) and Feynman, three of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, on a grading curve, you would be forced to flunk Feynman.
Agree completely.
“…So I think communism doesn’t fail every time because it is a flawed system itself. I think the commies are right, that it fails because the wrong communists implement it…”
This is exactly 100% correct. I notice several commenters don’t get what you’re saying. I think I do and agree. I used to argue with a Commie that the psychopaths will always rise to the top of any commie organization and terrorize everyone. Communism works great in small hunter gather size groups where everyone can keep track of everyone else and call them out if necessary. Some of the people in the group may get something of a much greater value than goods or money by sharing, respect and love. That’s their payment and it can be worth more than all the money in the world.
Exactly. Communism, as called for, is merely an attempt to exploit the most magnificent of K-instincts, and it is always called for by those who totally lack that complete love for their fellow K.