My black holes

I may not have mentioned in the past, but I have little black holes in my cognition. Areas where a normal person would understand a specific topic are totally blank within me and I am left confounded as to how in the hell someone could possibly conceive of such a thing.

Here are a few of those black spots, that for the life of me I cannot wrap my head around. The instances where i try, my brain explodes and goes walking around on its own two legs:

Violence

Violence, for example ultimate fighting/cage fighting. I mean really who thought that this was a good idea? How can people watch it or participate in it? While I am a pacifist and don’t believe that violence is ever the answer I can understand that at times it happens. But to encourage violence to cause injury for no reason but enjoyment? I simply cannot understand this.

I know many a soldier and trust me, they don’t relish violence. They would much rather avoid it if they can. They do their job, they serve their mates and their country but they don’t have a blood thirst. Martial Arts too avoids conflict as much as possible. Combat training is used as a path to controlling the base desires of the body and even the greatest of military minds SunTzu said that he who goes to battle has already lost. Fighting for the sake of fighting? I can’t see the fun or even glory in fighting for nothing. No disrespect to the fighters… I just don’t understand them

‘Earning’ respect

I have had some discussions recently with friends about respect. I find it an interesting topic of conversation. There seems to be a consensus that respect can be earned by deeds. That the actions of a person can, somehow, be tallied up, judged. The result indicating whether or not others should respecting them. What the? Are we really serious? Do we mean to say that an outsider can arbitrarily perceive and judge another by their deeds and then decide not to respect them? Again, I have difficulty understanding this. Who do we think we are?

Every human being is deserving of respect. Full stop. Respect is a function of respecting others and as such is an extension of character not deeds. We do what we have to do, no body has the right to judge us or disrespect us. And if they try they only succeed in disrespecting themselves.

Abusing the body

I will admit up front that I am not the most physical person. I would much rather exercise my mental, emotional or spiritual self than the body. But I am getting better. Fueling the body, exercising the body, pushing the body all seem relatively valid to me. But pushing the body beyond rational limits? All I can say is ‘why?’ By all means push through the pain barrier, find your physical limits if you must, but once you’ve found them, it doesn’t make sense to me to push the body beyond its clear signals to ‘Stop!’ to the point that you risk damaging it.