Greg Leake emails: Hi Luke,
I think everybody experiences this phenomenon to some degree. Some people are very brave and just have occasional moments of weakness.
When it gets to the stage that you write about, it’s a little over the top.
You have done a lot to try to address different foibles that you perceive in yourself. However, most of these 10 step courses and psychotherapy are various cerebral methods that are designed to try and confront various ills. Naturally, the Alexander Technique is physiological, and so you might not be able to place it in the same category as confronting sexual addiction and what-have-you.
If you really want to change your central nervous system’s response to the whole of life in a hugely transformative way, learn to box.
When I was teaching, my favorite students were intellectual young men who had confronted life by intellectualizing and verbal acuity.
I enjoyed watching them become bolder and more confrontational until finally they were the most assured ones in the room. Sometimes I would have to get them to tone it down a little. They had gone from passive resistance to aggressive resistance in a period of time without the necessary monitors built in to keep them from popping someone in the snoot. I taught them to do that, too.
In boxing you don’t fight air (like some katas in martial arts). You have to physically meet the challenge of your opponent, and there is no time-out for trying to diminish you opponent’s ego through verbalization. You literally re-train your central nervous system’s response to stimuli.
In World War II they taught naval aviators to box. Why? Here the guy is strapped into a small cockpit with scarcely any ability to move, let alone box.
Boxing trained the airmen to fight. To fight back even with their heads reeling. Not simply to fly the plane, but to fight using the plane.
Some of the most psychologically healthy men I have met were professional fighters. No anxieties, no fears, no fanciful projections about the future. They left it all in the ring.
Naturally, there are other venues to pursue — ultimate fighting, wrestling, etc. I prefer boxing; I have a fondness for it, and I could go on at length about why I favor boxing over some of the other full-contact combat sports. So it it possible that some of these other vehicles could be suitable, but for a variety of reasons I think boxing is pretty good. I have been pressured by intimidating people, both socially and through physical threats. But when you know you can throw a knock-out punch with either hand, those threats are often minimized.
By the way, I thought your answer to your Jewish friend about philosophy and Christianity was good. Life automatically poses philosophical questions, and so having a philosophical context in religion is not particularly a bad thing. However, there are some Christian groups that are regrettably still very fundamentalist in their approach. Some I know will refuse to admit the existence of anything that is not found in the Bible. I mentioned to someone yesterday that Thomas Merton said you could not find the word ‘cat’ in the Bible. So does this mean cats do not exist? I would suggest that those followers of Christ could expand their perspective a little.
Rabbs, if you’re out there reading this, although I sort of disagree with you on a lot of issues, for some reason I kind of miss your presence, and I hope you are doing well. I always enjoyed Torah Talks and I certainly don’t mind throwing a guy a few bucks occasionally when he is down and out. However, you guys are just too old for me to take on as dependents. Best of luck anyway.
