Scrawls of the Ulfhednar

From my living room

A sunday afternoon spent in my living room

The open windows let in the chill winter air

as it rustles the branches and leaves

and the gulls cry to eachother from the rooftops.

There is not a great deal to see

a rough stone wall, some hardy plants and a back road

but with the windows open

I can hear a fairer world than appears to my eyes.

The whispering breeze in evergreen boughs

teasing at the edges of my mind

rising to creuschendo

and dying back again in moments

Birds flit and warble to and fro

amongst the trash of our city

pausing now and again within my sight

and moments later I wonder if they were ever there at all

A cat lounges on the stones

gallant and proud despite the frigidity

apart from the world is he

ruminating over some important subject

Climbing the mortar vines grow

prising away stones

engulfing petty edifices

renewing in greens and browns

Pushing through the tarmac

tough grasses puncture

and rupture the toxic carpet

cracks seem to spread like veins

Old walls

Older than the humans they protect

are slowly crumbling

I see the sprouts thrusting from their rubble

Roots trace wounds

beneath deep foundations

through rock and stone and steel

slowly wearing through

Whistling and rustling sound their war cries

aggressing with bark and thorn

Tearing down and flourishing amongst

the petty hubris of the builders

Maybe many Sunday afternoons beyond now

there will be no living room

but maybe the space my living room was

On Memory Loss and Amnesia.

Between three and five years ago I experienced an accident that caused me to forget my own name, where I was or who I was. The only thing I remembered for around six hours was my girlfriend and her name, and by the time I was seen in the emergency department I had recovered and had no physical symptoms and no psychological symptoms that a doctor who had never met me before could discern.

My unhappy girlfriend and I took a taxi back to where we had been staying at around four or five in the morning after being discharged as healthy. The taxi driver had no idea where we were going and extremely poor English, leading to my angrily stopping the car in response to my girlfriend’s increasing panic and stepping out into a random village in the English midlands. Eventually with police help we managed to get back to where we were meant to be, but looking back on it now my actions in the taxi were utterly out of character for me.

Before the accident I was a timid, unfit, socially needy boy of 18 who was missing teeth from being beaten half to death whilst throwing no punches back. Following the accident I managed to physically stop a car and sort out a situation that I would never have got through in my previous mindset. I’m unsure whether this view is a product of my being largely unable to remember my mindset before the accident, but I maintain that a drastic personality change occurred with the head injury. Shortly later my relationship of around 2 years broke down aggressively and I had to evacuate myself from possibly the hairiest situation I had ever been in. I know this because it is integral to my character. What I remember from that time is a flash of trying to get my laptop to work, downloading channel 4 programs and podcasts with my neighbour’s internet, a cigarette burn, and the first time we both were sure when we said we didn’t love eachother anymore.

Most people would say that this is fairly normal, but they misunderstand. I cannot remember anything else from that time. I remember feeling unhappy and scared and worthless but I remember no events or emotions or specifics beyond those overarching themes – which may even be products of my own rationalisations.

Last week I had probably one of the greatest nights of my life with my brothers in manchester bars. Sure I drank a lot, but I remember so little that if someone told me it didn’t happen I’d assume it was a dream.

When I speak to my current girlfriend about past events, I’d say around 90% of the time she will listen patiently before informing me that it may be the tenth time I’ve told her and maybe the third time today.

I will say ‘I love you’ or ask her how she is eight times and never remember doing it.

And yet I doubt that I have memory loss. I don’t remember doing all these things so many times and so each time I’m recommended to get it checked out I get halfway before thinking ‘no, it’s just a dramatisation of an injury that was integral to my life, I’m being dramatic to make myself more interesting.’ And so I have never been checked out. The original hospital event doesn’t show up on my medical records and I have no physical evidence of the event except a plastic winner’s token which I keep in my wallet to this day as a reminder.

In 50 first dates or shutter island or the hundreds of other films depicting amnesia we see the amnesiac perpetually confused and scared about their situation, or blissfully unaware for the majority of the plot. I do not have this luxury and nor would I want it. I am often confused and I am often scared by my condition but the vague pointers I have around me (tokens, scribbles, social cues) help me recover myself to the point where most people have no idea I have a problem at all.

Last week I saw someone I’ve met more than five times in incredibly memorable experiences, and I had no idea who he was. It hurt him though he didn’t admit it and I felt terrible despite laughing it off. I apologised, explained I had amnesia – to which he said that I had told him before – and promptly left. When I saw him the next day he pretended not to know me, and so to save both our dignities I played along and it became far easier on both of us. I often wonder how many good friends I have forgotten who play along with my issues because it’s easier than explaining. I have even in the past had days or weeks spent under the impression that my partner was actually a live-in care worker or similar issues.

To dispel this I attempt to stick to rituals that I remember I have. I have photos of myself and my old dog, my friends, things I have done, and I have tokens from people that help me stay present. I have a carved totem, a dreadlock, a ring, a carved piece of antler, a leather band, a shaped piece of aluminium, a tag I stole from work, a key to something I can’t remember. These little tokens somehow keep my sense of self present, each of them mean something even if I can’t remember where they came from or why I have them. With this technique I stave off loss of self.

My fears of the future are in two halves equally possible. The first fear is that I shall be revealed for a fraud and that I am actually just a daydreaming loser who doesn’t care enough to remember people’s names. I will be shamed in myself as I see myself for what I am and my self understanding will be complete in line with my paranoia. The second fear is that my mind will continue to deteriorate, I will forget the names of my family and the pillars of my personality and eventually will descend into the formless nothing that I am caught in when I have a panic attack and lose my self. Of course it is possible that I shall merely continue as I am ad infinitum and nothing will change worth noting that I remember, but that is not nearly as interesting.

Whilst at a bar with friends several years ago I am told that whilst discussing sexual assault and the pervasive nature of unfriendly sexual experiences in my friends, I broke down, forgot who I am and who my friends were, and firmly believed it was 2014 and I was lost in Plymouth. Of course this was all false and after a short time I recovered myself, which I now have a good memory of the cold night and coming around with tears on my face. The episode itself I only know from my friends’ descriptions and is an object of both shame and curiosity, as clearly it indicates some link between memory issues and stress which I am not educated enough to understand.

I avoid doctors because if they cannot find evidence then it means that I am somehow faking this even to myself. Whether they are correct or not will not help me and will soon become vague impressions in the back of my mind regardless.

In Plato’s allegory of the cave we see the shadows of the objects cast on the wall, which I can equate to most people’s memory of events; vague but clear in their impression. I like to think of my memory as if those shadows were cast on a waterfall; ever shifting and unclear, but with sustained viewing perhaps details can be made out well enough to remember things worth remembering with help. Until then I am afloat in a black sea, windless and with no port to seek, merely picking up flotsam as it floats near.

I do not write this seeking pity or discussion or even understanding. I write this hopefully so that in future I can look at it and confirm whether I am maintaining the same mental clarity on the subject or if something has changed. I will publish it freely so that those curious enough to look can understand why I forget their face or why I don’t know what I’m doing a lot of the time. Anyone with knowledge on the subject or comparable experience is welcome to send me messages so that we can both gain from the interaction.

I rewrote the same paragraph three times at one point in drafting this.

Much love

On Violence.

I am not a violent man.

I am also an incredibly violent man.

In nature violence is ubiquitous and essentially involved in any natural process. When I say violence in nature I do not mean simply the predator tearing into prey, I mean any action in which a state of stability is disrupted or a course of events is severed.

When an egg hatches and new life is born into the world the shell is shattered and fluids spill forth from the wound.

When sunlight warms an object the energy from billions of atoms tearing apart and reuniting is disrupting the unity and calmness of the material it heats.

When the waves lap the shore the entirity of all the water on earth is being yanked and thrown by the gargantuan mass of our moon.

All things in the universe are in their own way violent; be that through the overwhelming force of gravity, the viscera of metabolic interchanges or the metaphysical jerking within the mind of a single being. Violence is all around us and all actions are either an effort to enact violent change or lessen it.

Physical violence is in itself a beautiful metaphor for the cosmic sword dance we find ourselves intwined with. Ever we are blocking attempts on our lives by chance and fate, and ever we strike at god with our attempts to progress or change our lives or circumstance. We grapple and clinch the universe in struggles of art or struggles of health and we dominate and kill with our large strokes of metaphysical motion.

When I quit a job I am killing a version of me that stayed in that job. When I leave a partner I am murdering our children and their descendants. When I write a post I am gnawing at the sanity preserved by contentment and procrastination.

All these examples and poeticisms are enjoyable to partake in but are shadows cast by my meaning when writing this; that parallels between physical violence and metaphysical violence are essential to understand.

When I fight I do not seek to lightly irritate my opponent, I do not seek a draw or a happy reconciliation, and nor can I take back strikes given nor can apologies heal the wounds inflicted upon me. In life, as in fighting, decisiveness and commitment are paramount, for to half act leaves one in a limbo gaining all of the negatives of the course chosen and precious few of the positives if any at all. The beauty of real combat is that one can clearly see the effects of a strike if one is acclimatised to the sport; a luxury we rarely have in life.

When we are decisive in a fight we are committed to our actions, we dodge fully from blows, we strike with force and we bring to bear all of our skill and strength on our chosen opponent. Metaphysical violence is no different; when we are decisive and committed in our life and actions we find that the effects are full and our potency as an actor on our stage is displayed to our own mind; the wounds we inflict on the universe being those changes we wish to see.

A common adage is ‘strike first, strike hard’. The meaning of this phrase is that often the first agent to act decisively will – through their truth of action – most often attain the desired result. The sucker punch, the pre-emptive strike and the goading movements of intimidation are only effective if absolutely decisive and absolutely sure in their aims. We must be prepared to sucker punch our lives in order to inflict damage enough to be able to enact our will.

Another aspect of violence is mastery.

When I speak of mastery I speak of one’s ability to decide the course which their life will take. Earlier I spoke of metaphysical violence and the ability to extract from the universe the things we want via decisive movements, but now I speak of the literal.

A phrase is common in some circles; ‘violence is golden’. Never in my life have I heard something so absolutely true. The gold standard of any physical agent must essentially boil down to the most universally applicable skill, talent or ability they have, a skilled orator can act widely on the social level and gain through this, an open minded and intelligent person may be able to act on a level below this, as we see in sociopaths making moves below the cognitive radar of most people. At the very bottom of this we see a creature with claws and tusks and rippling muscle, coupled with the innate sense of danger.

Before words and before sociality and before cooperation there was blood. Once words fail, once social skill fails, once the raw instinct of our cooperative species fails there will still be, at the very bottom, blood.

Violence, threat and the ability to destroy will forever underpin the psyche of any intelligent creature with a physical body, and this is incredibly important. Any plan of any scale by any intelligence will always be foiled by application of violence one way or another, and because of this it is essential that any person seeking true power, respect or self sufficiency must be present on the plane of violence, or the foundations underpinning their ability will be unstable and unsafe.

No skill will ever matter as much as the ability to physically be violent. No person will ever receive true and total respect if they are not clearly capable of violence. Without violence, any other creature at any time always will have the option of applying their will to us through force of violence, and if we cannot resist it with our own we will be undone. No matter our intelligence or beauty or social standing or wealth, if we are unable to match the violence applied to us we are instantly overwhelmed.

Self mastery is the ability to decide the course of their life, and I would be willing to believe that precious few of us wish for their lives to be dictated by lesser men capable of greater violence.

When earlier I wrote that I am not a violent man, I meant that if you were to ask anyone who knows me if I was cruel or violent in a traditional abrahamic sense, they would reply that no, I am not cruel, I am not violent, I am friendly and calm.

When earlier I wrote that I am an incredibly violent man, I meant that if you asked someone if I had power over my life, they would reply that I have absolute power over my life.

Integral to my life is freedom. Integral to freedom is self mastery. Integral to self mastery is violence.

The ability to be violent is the ability to be free of other wills being forced upon you.

The ability to be violent is essential to freedom.

The Bike

Anyone who knows me will pretty reliably describe me as a biker - at least in style. Leather, jeans and heavy boots are the closest thing I know to style or fashion and frankly it’s suited my personality neatly enough that it functions the same way a nice suit or expensive shoes might show the personality and values of another person.

           Hard wearing, tough, long term. I hate the idea of spending money on something trivial or temporary, or things that will quickly break or become redundant. Even to this day avoiding perishable foods often to prevent the opportunity to ‘lose’ money.

           This week I was presented with an opportunity to buy a motorbike for a reasonable amount. It was a 124cc cruiser, the equivalent of ‘baby’s first bike’ for those not in the know.

           For a little context, I’ve always wanted a motorcycle. From riding my friends’ ones to passing my CBT and even stealing rides on my brother’s 125 when he wasn’t paying attention enough to realise I was jealous. The idea of such a small, inconspicuous method of transport is intoxicating. The symbolism of being utterly free, small enough to hide, fast and minimalist appealed to the hermetic pilgrim in me, and the associations with masculinity, violence and anarchy appealed to the edgy anarchist that has grown to be my ego. I right now can’t conceive of a positive life plan in the next year beyond having my own and just Going, because on that bike I am myself, free of all of the limitations I’ve had forced on me.

               I turned the bike down.

               I did the maths, and the result came up risky. I’d have been forced to work much harder than necessary to gain something that wouldn’t benefit me in a measurable amount beyond how it would fire my reward centres. So I turned down a very good opportunity because it appeared at the wrong time.

               I feel that we as humans so often seize at ‘golden opportunities’ regardless of their greater context, taking jobs we can’t do, buying things we can’t afford, leaping before we’ve looked. Caution is the mother of safety, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the journey I’ve been on, it’s that the trope of the wild roamer is grossly misrepresented.

               I’m freer than anyone else I know, my time is my own, my money largely comes from temporary injections I organise via temporary work or other fortuitous situations, and I live extremely frugally so I don’t have to be tied to a soul-sucking day job. A large part of this is cowardice; I find extended periods in one place/job/path suffocating and I know I can’t keep up the repetition unless I have an end point to strive toward or I go mad. But this freedom to attempt to embody the wild roamer doesn’t mean I’m free to do whatever I like whenever I like the way people expect. I often hear “oh, you’re free, why don’t you do X” and often the response is one based in self discipline or self preservation.

               When you have your life regimented by bills and work, you sacrifice your agency for a happy life. You can have your beer and your nice food and your tidy house and your life is regimented, checked and balanced for you by the benevolent powers that be. I prefer the opposite. In taking agency, in taking all of my time for my own and taking control of my life I also take on the responsibility of knowing I have to establish where I will sleep, what I will do, how I will seek goals the same way one might seek a promotion elsewhere. The act of forgoing this bike was an act of self discipline and self preservation; in assessing my finite resources and options, and deciding that since I have no safety from anyone but myself, taking the bike would put strain on my resources that might cause collapse if something tragic were to happen.

               Throughout our lives we will be presented by opportunities like my bike. Many will take the mortgage they can’t afford, spend too much getting to the job they’re too far from and generally leaping before they’ve looked because they know that their stable, domesticated life will pick up the slack if all goes poorly. I’d recommend anyone with the spiritual fortitude to be entirely self reliant sometimes attempt to live decentralised, without a safety net and without any guarantees of a place to live, a source of food or a home to hide in.

The eye of a wanderer sees everything in the world for its true value in hours lived free, and will make decisions that will make them more free. The eye of the worker will see everything in the world for its equally true value in hours lived in servitude, kept happy by golden lambs that hide ages of slavery.

On Self Discipline

               Self discipline in my life has been the single driving force behind me moving from being a depressed, unfit alcoholic into whatever I am now. A single spark of anger with myself being hungover on a midweek, chain smoking and skipping training bloomed into a fire within myself that has mercilessly forced me to self improve and become something more. Despite the amazing effect self discipline has had on me, I see it demonised and left for fanatics and celibates in the modern world. Why is this?

               My first assumption is that it is hard, unpleasant and we in our modern world are unused to it. The idea of waking up early or fasting for no reason other than to control yourself more intimately is met with confusion and rejection from the modern humans we live around. This is because they see no benefit to it, which is fair enough from their point of view. Any gain in their world is geared toward being more and more able to cater to impulse and indulgence. The rich are characterised by private jets, boating trips, good food and other acts of extravagance that forms the target aimed at by those buying into the modern rat race. To them self discipline without exact reason must seem like squandering the fruits of our labour, letting fruit rot on the vine.

               A second reason they may dislike the idea may be the connotations; Monks, nuns, martial artists, the Buddhists who self-immolated at Saigon. All images of moderation and calm, hardly conducive to the high speed, exciting world we live in now. The idea of sacrificing one’s own happiness for anything but family appears unwise to the modern man.

               Another reason; ‘I’ve just got no motivation lately man’. The modern view on self discipline is that it is synonymous or comes hand in hand with the modern Muse, Motivation. Motivation to the modern man appears to be some aethereal creature providing the beneficiary with limitless excitement and energy with which they can attack daily life. We see this in the office clerk dancing to music, the policeman dancing on shift, the barber laughing with their clients etc, motivation represents an intangible ‘good day’ feeling. Motivation makes life easy and flow, allows us to enjoy anything without issue and thereby grasp what we want without suffering. This boils down to motivation not being self discipline at all.

               Motivation may have the same result; increased productivity and lifestyle reward, but motivation is the willing love to progress. Self discipline comes into play when motivation is zero. When waking up in the morning is the most unpleasant realisation of the day, self discipline is the force that gets you to the gym. Motivation may come and go but self discipline is a skill learned through force and sacrifice. We all find it easy to do what needs to be done with fresh faced love for learning, but when the grind becomes painful and the terrain gets rocky self discipline is the friend that will keep you going.

               When all else fails, if you can still force your body through the motions, retreating even to feel like a driver in a vehicle made of meat, you will be experiencing the benefits of self discipline. Forcing ourselves to do the things we need to do can be the difference between breaking a diet or fasting, between having clean clothes or rotting in your own skin. For me self discipline has been the difference between being homeless by choice or by accident, and fixing the situation of vice versa. Self discipline is the ‘just one more step’ that gets you home after a disaster.

               Self discipline is something we all may think we have day to day, forcing our way through breakfast and coffee and work and to bed, enjoying none but on autopilot mostly. However there is a level beyond this that we should strive toward. In order to be fully secure in ourselves and have the best control of our life we can, we have to get to a point where we can be absolutely sure that no matter the trials ahead of us, we can grit our teeth, sing a mantra or a song and push through.

After all, happiness and her coy friends are liars and cheats. As soon as we settle down with one of the whores at their petition she shall leave us. Fights, darkness, pain, disability, sadness, loss, hate, hopelessness, loneliness are much surer friends and ones that we would do far better to trust to be there always and learn to live with them. Whilst pleasant emotions and experiences are intoxicating, they are necessarily temporary, and where they are not they soon become commonplace.

The pain and crushing hopelessness that real life’s trials can instil in us is common, and as Nietzsche said, this kind of nihilism isn’t only dangerous but cowardly also. Self discipline is our shield, behind which we can maintain our healthy bodies, agile minds and pure spirits through even the most taxing projectiles that the universe can throw at us. And too self discipline is our sword, with which we can advance to the enemy and cut down those causes of pain in much the same way.

If we can endure the pain of existence and still push onward, upward toward a noble bright goal and further our own perfection, then we are worthy. Many of our brothers and sisters will fall more than once into nihilism, into drugs and alcohol and poor health and anger and hate, but we must remind them of the warmth of sunlight, the purity of sweat and the fury of violence. Some people cannot be saved by us, and we must wait for the spark of sunlight to reignite the fire of their self discipline so they may rejoin us, renewed, but for those whose fires are waning and whose resolve is wavering we must remind them of the beauty of our way.

Heaven is the rush of a cold shower after a 6am run.

Bliss is an empty stomach after a day of fasting.

Indulgent is the feeling of rain on your face as you light weights.

Glorious is the first sentence of a book comprehended from the fog of ignorance.

Pure is the pleasure that comes of forcing ourselves to betterment through the clutches of those forces that would have us rest at mediocrity.

Vicarious; adjective, experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person.

"this catalogue brings vicarious pleasure in luxury living"

               Vicarious, to experience something through someone else. Second hand experience of a sort, originally referring to the act of the Christ in Christian mythos to mean ‘substitute’, and taken from our clergical term ‘vicar’ (a deputy replacing a higher clerk) and the latin ‘vic’, to mean change or turn.

               When you watch sports, you’re experiencing sports vicariously.

               When you watch porn, you’re experiencing sex vicariously.

               When you play violent games, you’re experiencing violence vicariously.

               All of these things characterised in their stimulation by being risky and difficult; in a word ‘scary’. We circumvent the terror of risk and gambles and real loss by substituting ourselves for some man or woman on a screen or in a stadium a thousand miles from us. Through their transcendence and ecstasy we exude some filtered form of their pleasure, from the howling hordes in pubs cheering each goal to the blank stare of a teenager at their phone to the false testosterone rush of a man experiencing the sorrow of the battle of Mogadishu. We’re perfectly safe, projecting our experience onto some abstract experience without context that we truly desire to experience but are kept from by whatever madness life has thrust upon us.

               People are addicted to vicar, addicted to the low risk regular hit of victory and achievement without the risk of getting there themselves. We’re surrounded by children addicted to games, unable to understand how to deal with loss or damage or pain. We as a culture are spoon fed little doses of dopamine by our surrounding screens, kept docile and contented by our alignments to sports teams, having violence bred out of us by easy, victimless killing and becoming apathetic and asexual whilst blowing our loads over a plastic icon from Hollywood. The idea of experiencing things directly and actively experiencing things that have risk or pain involved is being removed from us.

               If you need examples we need look no further than the domesticated middle class, glued to fifty inch televisions hooked up to the latest TV streaming so they can travel, to the latest games console to hone their self defence, and to pornhub so they can see their significant other. Their children grow up with sedentary and confused parents, learning morals through soap operas and comedy through the canned laughter of the latest sitcom. Obesity is everywhere, children are being prescribed therapists for trying to learn how to act in moral ways and violence is universally warded against and understood only as a taboo relegated to those ‘who must’.

               Slowly and systematically we as a culture or species are forgetting how to live in the real world.

               In the past those civilisations that once great and strong became fat and distended as the difficulty and required skill of their lives diminished slowly moved away from warrior thought and transcendent strife, toward appreciating pleasures of the flesh and vicious politics more than the values that made their tribe great in the first place. Other tribes, forced to harsh living by the ascendance of the now overfat culture would have been fighting for survival, hard times making the members strong and powerful individuals to carve out their paths amongst the unwanted land of the area. To these smaller, ruder tribes uncultured in fine wines and sedentary lifestyles we have seen even roman marble trodden under the sole of a coarsely made, but functional boot.

               To throw off the shackles of forced docility I predict will be the toughest part of any man returning to the path of his ancestors from this vast desert we have wandered into of late. For modern men to turn from the glossy covers and bright lights back to the forest and wood axe seems impossible, and yet many of us are characterised and admired purely for our forsaking of this vicarious life.

               No progress can be made in ourselves through the deeds of another. In order to improve ourselves, our standing, our bodies, our intelligence, our wisdom, our learning (I could go on) we must endure the risk and pain and strife ourselves. Without sacrifice to ourselves in the form of comfort, safety and happiness we cannot reap the rewards that we seek. It doesn’t take long in the winter to realise that watching your neighbour chop firewood does not heat our own homes.

               In the Havamal we see Odin hang himself from the tree of knowledge and pierce himself with his own spear in order to learn how to know the runes; representing the primordial truths. To many this may seem like nonsense, why would we stab ourselves to learn to read? But the symbolism is clear. Odin hangs himself from the tree, surrendering himself, removing his ego in his attempt to learn. He pierces himself with his own weapon, sacrificing himself. In the next part we see the verse ‘I trow I hung on that windy Tree, nine whole days and nights, stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin, myself to mine own self given, high on that Tree of which none hath heard, from what roots it rises to heaven.’ He has sacrificed himself to himself. He suffered for himself.

               He sacrificed, caused himself pain and hardship alone, refusing food and water, that he might learn more about the way the world works. When we learn we are and must do the same, we sacrifice our old understanding, our time and our old safety of assumption in order to learn greater truths beyond the frail and failing body of thought we had before. We must slay our own misconceptions, weaknesses, pains, by striking inward with the same weapons we solve outward problems.

               Through rejection of the vicarious and the hollow we can regain some of the nobility that we have lost in this age of mass nonsense.

               To quote from Paul Waggener; ‘We live in an age of constant distraction- the thousand lights of illusion that never turn off, all vying and competing for our attention, everything infinitely more convenient and “now” and pleasurable than everything else. Entertainment is a god of the modern world and so is Ease, sometimes called Luxury or Comfort – that insidious convenience of everything “on tap.”’

               The more I tear from these feeds and cables feeding my domesticated brain with the sludge of meaninglessness the more strength I find in my limbs to tear from the remaining connections. Each conduit of easy living and contentment I find truly to be chains upon their removal. Through hardship and self sacrifice we can -and should- become more. We can live real lives, experience the rush of a fight, experience the love of a beautiful woman, experience the triumph of understanding something previously nonsensical to you.

               Vicarious pleasure is a trap.

               We must reverse the conditioning of our brains to be satisfied with watching others take the prizes we truly wish for ourselves.

On ‘Choke Points’

 It occurred to me whilst in what I excuse for a garden enjoying the morning sun, that one of the most universally human phenomena that we encounter in our everyday lives is also one of the least articulated in my experience. We speak often of ‘bumps in the road’, ‘limiting factors’ or ‘areas of friction’ but never of the overarching genotype that these problems and concepts stem from. In my view this overarching edifice is best exemplified by the strategic term ‘choke point.

               A choke point in practical military terms is characterised by the meeting of two comparatively open areas - or areas in which sight and manoeuvres are unobstructed – by an area or passage that has myriad limiting factors that make those passing through the problem area significantly more vulnerable than they were in either of the positions approaching or leaving the area. No more perfect and significant of an example of this concept can be seen than the (in)famous stand of the Peloponnesians at Thermopylae in 480 BC; wherein a vastly inferior Greek force held against a much greater foe for an impressive amount of time using the choke points named Thermopylae; Hot Gates, before the enemy managed to circumvent this choke point and flank the defending forces.

               The way choke points work is to compress available active area into a much smaller space than is available elsewhere. In the case of Thermopylae this was between the Malian Gulf (a water hazard) and treacherous mountains. Much like how sand in an hourglass must pass a grain at a time through the smallest part of the passage, if soldiers wish to engage an enemy held up in a choke point they must approach as the choke point allows; typically in much smaller columns than would be ideal for an effective ancient field army. This means that defending forces can force equal or advantageous engagements by channelling larger forces into manageable numbers. This is particularly effective when we see enemy cavalry, whose strengths lay largely in manoeuvre and speed- made useless in limited space.

               We all know the story of Thermopylae so I’ll leave the example for now, but we can see here that the understanding of the nature of choke points is an essential part of a general officer or field marshal’s skills; that of analysing and using geography. This is also one of the oldest recorded virtues of a military leader, since we see extreme attention paid to geographical ability in Sun Tsu’s writings, which predate all military treatise that I’m aware of. (please correct me if this is wrong, I’d love more to read)

               My understanding and application of this knowledge to civilian life is essential to the way I make my own life more efficient. If we can apply this knowledge without feeling constrained by context I feel that a greater understanding of how time and effort can be applied will be revealed to us. Choke points are witnessed in areas of work and social ability frequently. They are characterised by a transition from ease and flow through difficulty into more ease and flow toward a goal. This would be easily exemplified by someone who doesn’t know the rules of a sport. The conversation could begin easily by talking about sport, with the aim of learning more about the other participants or advancing one’s respect socially via intelligent discussion of a mutual topic. The choke point may be characterised by a member being unsure of the rules of the sport discussed or preferring a different team to the other participants. Suddenly there is a block in the progress that requires address. Either the errant member can continue on a current course, ‘grinding through’ the friction at the choke, or he can retreat into open area by turning conversation away from this specific area, or he could advance through a different avenue. Grinding through would be synonymous with an extended attritional battle, in which the participant defends his ideas and forces through stubbornness a progression away from his resistance through to an easier conversation topic. This obviously would cause the others to view him as abrasive, would cause them to avoid that topic etc so obviously there is more to lose than gain by simply ham fisting your way through every choke point. Retreat obviously surrenders the goal in favour of avoiding loss or pyrrhic victory and is always an option unless the friction follows you, in the context of aggression from enemy forces (or a friend jibing about you not knowing what they’re talking about) but is clearly more intelligent than attempting to win via force of will. The final choice is almost always preferable; to attack not where the enemy is strong. To speak of something related, akin to marching with the same goal around a different route, to arrive at the same place. If I were faced with a choke point on golf I could use the relevant terrain of wrist and arm movement to attain the same goal as attempting to force through.

               Obviously this example assumes the person doesn’t want to just wait and learn instead of being active, but passiveness in war helps little and so I’m ignoring this aspect.

               We see choke points in at hand in work also. The pot washers who are limited by the time and capacity of a dishwasher may circumvent this choke point by forcing more dishes in at risk of loss, or may decide to wash by hand what the dishwasher cannot currently take etc. The examples of this aspect of human nature at work are myriad and banal but I’m sure that my point has been exemplified excessively by this point.

               So often I find myself pensive and dumbstruck, staring at a problem and willing the geography of this particular battlefield to reveal itself to me without probing to discover. I find this to be a great personal flaw and one I am remedying by writing as I do. This begs the question of course of what personality of strategist we arrive at ourselves. I know men who are every bit Rommel, The Desert Fox who would run his enemy ragged and avoid being caught in a choke point at any opportunity, instead they wait for the problems to become as easy to deal with as they will be, striking each problem as it reaches the depth of it’s trough rather than aiming for efficiency. I know also men who are General Zhukov; analysing problems and striking them with full force and pinpoint precision, focussed and awful in the way they identify goals and strike toward them with brilliant tenacity and explosive force.

               I find often that at my best, and my worst I am Hannibal Barca. I know my goals, vague though they are, and I know exactly where they are. My problem is the great walls of Roma and the men guarding them. I can and will blow through the lesser problems I’ve encountered dancing around aims, financial crises and homelessness all ambled through as though they affected me little. My truest flaw is analysis. The morbid fear of becoming not Hannibal but Pyrrhus, wasting myself attacking problem after problem that I am unable to face properly before succumbing to my own hubris. Of course we know Occam’s Razor and thus I will myself to bring my siege to bear and attempt the grinding work that will someday see me standing on the senate floor, but every barbed arrow flung at me from the walls reminds me of just how far I have to fall.

               Flowered analogy aside, I find the concept of Choke Points vital in understanding how best to tackle the strategy of how to take life to war, and I suspect that this topic of military strategy used to understand concepts in human life may arise again in future writings.

               Thank you for reading this ramble, expect more.