Reversal is the Direction of the Dao

This is the biggest idea around. I have written several rants about it here before. I deal with it in the last chapter of my new book. It seems completely original. Please let me know if you are aware of anyone else talking about this.

One of the major characteristics of internal martial arts is reversing. It is a type of non-progressive learning. The way it works is that you learn something, you get good at something, and then instead of progressing to the next step or integrating that experience into a previously learned practice, instead, you reverse the practice. You do the reversal. You do the opposite. Sometimes the opposite would be better described as an inversion, backwards, or flipped.

Structuring knowledge around opposites may be the most natural thing in the world. Because learning in some primordial sense is taking the wrong path, retracing your steps and then taking a different path. It is, “Oops I failed at that, I’ll try the reverse next time.” In a competitive martial arts sense, reversing is knowing what the other person is doing so well that you can do it backwards. And not just any backwards, the backwards the creates the illusion in your opponent’s mind that everything is going fine, until it isn’t.

The world of commerce is mainly based on imitating what works. If someone else is doing it, do what they are doing. Combine other people’s successes to create a new success. But commerce is evolutionary because it dies. I dies all the time. It is always failing, even when it is successful, the successes are full of failures which have been overcome. In the commercial realm reversing or doing things backwards, flipped or inverted is pretty common. It is perhaps only a variation of imitation. By the way, this expanded definition of imitation is called mimetic desire, to learn more about that read Rene Girard.

Western education since the industrial revolution has been based on progressive pedagogy and curriculum. I mean this in the structural sense, basic information is laid out as the building blocks of more complex and advanced knowhow. In this model a hierarchy of knowledge is constructed. That’s one of the reasons we have such unequal eduction systems, they are set up as contests. Progressive contests of homogenization.

This type of knowledge organization works well for building things or for repairing well understood technologies. It also works extremely well for operational procedures.

In the world of machines, however, self-taught people learn by taking things apart and putting them back together again. This is called reverse engineering, it used to be called tinkering. It is also a characteristic of inventors.

If you want to take notice of how generous and goodnatured people are, start watching ‘how to’ videos. These so called “knack” videos are full of people who want to help solve problems and encourage creativity.

But I caution the world. It looks like we are creating unlimited opportunities for self-teaching, but are we? There are two problems.

The first is that progressive procedural knowhow will solve one problem but fails to communicate the kind of problem solving skills which are characteristic of immersive environments. For example, I fixed both my home gas heater and my electric clothes dryer using videos I found online. Now because I fixed two objects which are somewhat related, I learned that they both have three different types of heat sensors. And that heat sensors are a type of fuse designed to shut down your machines. But because this knowledge came to me through procedural videos, I still do not know how to repair either of these machines in general, much less how I might build one. That’s the first problem and it applies equally to martial arts and healing, by the way.

The second problem is true for all self-learning, it does not come with a badge or a certificate. To be an expert at something you need to be able to convince people that you are an expert. That skill may not overlap with the knowledge base itself.

What are the other possibilities? One way to do things is to create two or more progressive tracks for the same thing, but organized in different progressions. This encourages learners to learn by thinking outside of the track they are in, and by comparing tracks rather than thinking ahead (the compulsion to ‘get it right’) or passively waiting for the next lesson.

I know about this approach because I accidentally did it for myself by what I am now calling Cross-cultural Training, that is, training similar things but from different cultures. My readers know that I intensively studied dance, drumming, and martial arts from several different cultures simultaneously. Often found myself reverse engineering simply because the process gave me a bigger view of what was there.

For example, whole body unity is a pre-requisite for many African dances, whereas in Chinese martial arts it is something that comes only from years of practice.

In the Asian cultures where I have studied, knowledge is sometimes presented as a perfect model. This is an exquisite method for transmitting precise knowledge which remains unchanged across generations. In this method, a master work is presented to the beginning student to copy and copy and copy until they can replicated it flawlessly. This also allows for secret knowledge to go untransmitted, which is either a feature or a bug depending on your point of view. This is very common in martial arts, but my favorite example is from tabla drumming. My teacher, who is world class, taught us a composition he plays as a solo in concert. It required enormous amounts of memorization. I can play that master composition, but it is still too advanced for me, I sound better playing simpler stuff. But it does give the student an eagle eye view. They can see all the layers of knowledge intertwined into an exquisite whole.

The ‘perfect model’ style of teaching weeds out the untalented, and those who are talented but lack discipline. These two tasks are less important in egalitarian cultures like our own, but are crucial in cultures where who-your-father-is determines what type of knowhow you are allowed or encouraged to acquire.