The Tao of good government - TheMadCentrist.com

[Mad Mike]

Over the years, a few of you may have noticed that I can be rather passionate about my opinions, sometimes to a fault. Often my passion gets the best of me in debates and results in bad behavior which I almost always regret. In self examination, I have found that one source of my behavior is the frustration of trying to win each debate on an individual basis on a forum where even the most keen observations from the best minds slip into the void of past threads to be replaced by the next debate, making each new debate subconsciously more important to "win". It's a cycle that quite frankly as worn me out. My new goal is to speak my mind, voice my opinion and move on.

But lets face it, I have one hell of an ego and I believe I have something important to say, so simply cutting back on posting leaves a void that I needed to fill. So it is that TheMadCentrist.com was born.

I hope you will do me the honor of checking out the site and posting a comment if you feel the urge. Comments are set for review for now until I can get a grip on the problem of spam but I promise that well written contrary views will be accepted.

With that I give you my manifesto:

The Tao of good government.

In 1967 a young Chinese immigrant revolutionized the world of martial arts and changed the world when he determined that the formal style of Gung Fu he had learned and taught was too rigid to adapt to the fluid dynamics of real world fighting. The man’s name was Bruce Lee, and he named the style he created “Jeet Kun Do” or “the way of the intercepting fist”. It was a name he later came to regret because it implied a specific method to what he conceived as a “style of no style”.

Lee had correctly concluded that the fixed responses of traditional martial arts could not foresee all possible threats and could be easily countered once you knew how your opponent would react to any given situation. He concluded that the fluid and unpredictable nature of combat required and equally fluid approach to fighting. Lee famously said:

“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”

As applied to martial arts, fixed patterns can be seen as the use of a specific stance, block, punch or kick in response to a given action by an opponent. It’s important to understand that the specific technique of existing martial arts were not “wrong”. They often worked quite well when used in response to known or expected techniques by an opponent. They were simply limited. Lee’s solution was to adapt any technique from any style to his own. His only requirement was that the technique work. From boxing to Taekwondo. From Gung Fu to wrestling. Lee saw that each had it’s place in the real world chaos of combat. This may seem like common sense today, but at the time it was considered blasphemy by many practitioners of traditional martial arts.

So what does all of this have to do with good government? I’m sure many of you intuitively know. But for those who’s political leanings border on religious fever for their chosen political party, let me explain.

There is no more direct test of one’s own knowledge and ability than to face a skilled opponent in one on one combat. If you have a weakness or flaw, your opponent *will* find it and use it against you. Often with painful results. Through combat, Lee proved that the open mind, willing to adapt to any method regardless of source will almost always win vs an inflexible system.

The point being that the art of governing a large, complex, modern society is far more complex than the direct nature of hand to hand combat. And if fixed responses to the challenge of relatively simple combat have been proven inferior to the fluid nature of a “style of no style”, what chance does any single rigid ideology have of meeting the myriad of challenges that a society faces?

Virtually all ideologies contain some useful knowledge which can and should be used to address societies problems when and where appropriate. With this understanding, strict adherence to any one ideology is in effect willful ignorance that encourages conflict over cooperation. Taking a lesson from Bruce Lee, what is needed is an ideology of no ideology.

It is long past time that we start treating politics as a science rather than a religion. We must adapt to each new challenge that society faces by matching the dynamic nature of each challenge with a dynamic and flexible approach to finding solutions. Or as Bruce Lee said:

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”