Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person’s behaviour [as in what we are doing], and beliefs [as in what we think we are doing], are out of alignment and do not complement each other.
ANALOGIES, COGNITIVE DISSONANCE, AND MAKE BELIEVE.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been trying to finish the post I began with 3 bags of cement.
A post about power production, power transfer and power release.
A post prompted by the quest to develop more power, and how to hit harder.
I have made numerous videos that while we were in the process of making them appeared to clearly cover all of the bases, but on playback failed miserably.
Why is that?
Because what we are trying to show cannot be seen.
What we think we are doing, especially in training, is not what is happening when we do it, and whats more, again in training, what we tell ourselves we are trying to do frequently cannot even be done.
This creates the condition known as Cognitive Dissonance,
Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person’s behaviour [as in what we are doing], and beliefs [as in what we think we are doing], are out of alignment and do not complement each other.
Something we are aware of, but perhaps underplay, is the fact that the world we think we live in is not the real world.
It is a construct created by our Brain and populated by things that we created in the first place.
Not exactly Blue Pill – Red Pill, but not too far removed either.
Because of this everything makes sense no matter how fanciful or strange it may be.
This is very much part of the human condition and we all fall for it.
A perfect example is the way we use analogies to try to explain complex training ideas.
A personal favourite of mine is the “Coat hanger and the overcoat analogy’.
Our head and shoulders are like a coat hanger hanging on the back of a door, high and steady, and our body is like an overcoat hanging from that coat hanger.
Or better yet the Anchor that hangs from our Butt.
These analogies are very useful to initially grasp a difficult concept but they are a million miles away from any kind of reality.
My head is not a coat hanger, my body is not an overcoat and happily there is no anchor hanging out of my butt.
Yet I still use them and you guys understand them.
These analogies, like all analogies, are so far away from the truth they are as good as ‘Make Believe”.
Because we do not have the words, or do not have the correct components we use analogies made from IDEAs we do have to approximate what it is we are trying to say.
Analogies say to us “It is something like this”.
What analolies do not say however is “But in reality it is nothing like this’.
I am not proposing that we do not use analogies.
Analogies are great tools to make that initial connection to an abstract idea, but if we hope to progress past the abstract toward something we can use we need to translate, transpose and explain the analogy with real science.
But before we can apply scientific thought we must remove all of the make believe.
Our idea of how energy flows through the body like water flowing through a hose is just an analogy,
A very useful and powerful analogy but it is not correct.
Something that is believed even argued about in many Martial Arts is the IDEA that we move our centre, or move from our centre [the counter argument] ,in fact the very IDEA that we have a centre is another analogy.
A very useful and powerful analogy but it is not correct.
Analogies serve a vital function that allows us to climb onto the first rung of the ladder of understanding, but to progress onto a deeper level of understanding we must defer to the widely accepted science, and align with the laws that govern our universe.
We do not need to dig deep, just high school level physics.
The fundamental classical mechanics, that involve forces acting on matter, using the laws of motion and gravitation, throw in a touch of Thermodynamics and finish with a pinch of general relativity, just the bit that treats gravitational fields as equivalent to acceleration.
Even if we think that we have forgotten these lessons our Brain has not, we all know this stuff inside out for the simple reason that it is how we experience the world around us, we live it every day.
A final word.
If for any reason you do not agree with what I am saying here, which is your right as an individual human being, and I would not exactly blame you for it especially as I have disagreed with myself on many occasions, realise that it is not me you disagree with, you disagree with the LAWS, not theories, the LAWS that govern our Universe.
As a non-believer in Established Science, you qualify for free, immediate and lifetime membership to both the “Flat Earth Society” and the “Richard Cranium” Collective.
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Wing Chun Sydney, Australia 