I'm Liz Rose. I'm the textile conservator at the British Library. This little volume is a small volume of Psalms of Confession. The quality of the embroidery is absolutely superb. For me, looking at it, it must have taken hours and hours and hours. It's a great privilege to work with these items and in a way you've got to learn not to be scared of them. You've got to make friends with them before you can actually work with them. This little book would have originally had four ribbons and they were used to close the volumes. So on this book I would never replace the ribbon, despite the fact that it's quite degraded. So what I'm doing is I'm encasing the degraded ribbon in a nylon net that I have dyed to match the colour of the ribbon. We're doing this kind of work because this whole collection belongs to the nation and we have to keep the items within that collection in the best condition possible. So we're hopefully slowing down any deterioration. It's a very hard job for us because we have approximately 170 million items. I've made a frame and I'm just going to stretch the nylon net across the frame so that when I surface clean the embroidered book I won't have the net lying on the surface of the book.  Let's have a go. I'm doing this just to remove any surface dust off the top of the volume. I've got a secondary layer of net here which will, if anything does come off the embroidery, it will be caught in the secondary layer of the net. You can make a huge difference to some items that are very degraded and you are saving them for posterity and you are saving them or enabling them to survive longer so that other people can look at them, learn from them, research them. The work is so enjoyable, it's very motivating. You never know what you're going to do. Days are always different and you never quite know from year to year what items you're going to be asked to work on. It's very diverse.


Welcome back. This is the second lecture in the cycle, The Prophets of Narcissism. It is intended for the psychology track of SIAPS, the Outreach Programme, Center for International Advanced and Professional Studies. This is not meant for Southern Federal University. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and of course, your professor of psychology. So today we are going to discuss Louis Althusser. The first video had dealt with an American thinker, Christopher Lash, who was in every possible way the intellectual father of Jordan Peterson. And today we are going to discuss Louis Althusser.  And yes, he ended up in a mental asylum exactly like Friedrich Nietzsche. It seems that we derive a lot of wisdom from totally crazy people, which bodes well for me. Anyhow, Louis Althusser is mentioned twice in the Encyclopedia Britannica. And both cases, as someone's teacher, there could be no greater omission and oversight. For two important decades, the 1960s and the 1970s, Louis Althusser was the eye at the core, at the center of all the important cultural debates and storms. Althusser fathered quite a few of these currents in modern intellectual history. And this newly found obscurity forces me to summarize Althusser's work before I suggest a few minor modifications to it, with all due lack of modesty. Well, let's start with reviewing his work. Althusser says that society consists of what he calls practices, economic practice, political practice, ideological practice. And Althusser defines practice as any process of transformation of a determinate product affected by a determinate human labor using determinate means of production. Pretty straightforward. So the economic practice, the historically specific mode of production, transforms raw materials to finished products using human labor and means of production all organized within defined webs of interrelations, known as factories in many cases. The political practice does the same. It uses social relations as the raw material. And finally, ideology is the transformation of the way that a subject relates to his real life conditions of existence. This is Althusser rejects the mechanistic worldview replete with bases and superstructures. It's a rejection in effect of the Marxist theorization of ideology. And it's pretty ironic that he's considered to be a post-Marxist or a kind of extension of Marxism. He rejects Marxism. It's a rejection of the Hegelian fascist social totality. It's a dynamic, revealing, modern day way of thinking and model of existence. So in Althusser's intellectual world, the very existence and reproduction of the social base, not merely its expression, all these are dependent upon the social superstructure. The superstructure is relatively autonomous. And ideology has a central part of it. Althusser is arguably one of the two or three most important thinkers about ideology. The economic structure is determinant. But another structure could be dominant, depending on the historical conjunction. Determination, now called over-determination, I'll discuss it again. Determination specifies the form of economic production upon which the dominant practice depends and rests. Let's put it otherwise. The economic is determinant, not because the practices of the social formation, political practices, ideological practices, are the social formations expressive epiphenomenon. It is determinant because it determines which of these practices, which of these expressions, becomes dominant. In other words, the economic side, the economic practice is the arbiter, arbitrates, mediates, decides, channels, both the practice of society and its expression. And in this sense, of course, it is in some ways a continuation of Marx. But it is also a continuation of Adam Smith. It's not unique to Marx or to Hegel. Next thing that Althusser says is that people relate to the conditions of existence through the practice of ideology. They filter reality through ideology. Contradictions are smoothed over. Real problems are offered false, though seemingly true, solutions. And so ideology has a realistic dimension and a dimension of representations like myths, concepts, ideas, images. There is harsh conflicting reality and there is the way that we represent reality to ourselves and to other people via ideology. To achieve the above, ideology must not be seen to her. It must be perceived as infallible, error free. And it must never remain speechless. Ideology must have something to say about everything. Ideology therefore confronts and poses to itself only questions it can answer, only answerable questions and decidable statements. Ideology therefore limits the space of discourse to realms of life, issues, topics, conundrums, dilemmas that it can offer an answer to. And this answer is ipso facto deemed error free by definition, always true and correct. This way ideology remains confined to a fabulous legendary contradiction free domain. It's a fable and it ignores all other questions. It ignores them all together. And Althouza introduced the concept of the problematic. As he puts it, the problematic is the objective internal reference, the system of questions commanding the answers given. Problematic is the question, set of questions that ideology poses to itself. It determines which problems, the problematic determines which problems, which questions and answers are part of the game. And which should be blacklisted and never as much as mentioned. It is a structure of theory, ideology, framework and the repertoire of discourses which ultimately yield a text or a practice. And all the rest is excluded. The problematic therefore becomes clear within the ideology. It becomes clear that what is omitted, what is excluded, what is ignored, what is repressed and denied and suppressed is of no less importance than what is included in any text, in any discourse, in any debate, in any explanation, hermeneutic, exegetic principle. So what we don't hear being discussed is as important as we hear being, as what we hear. The problematic of a text relates to its historical context, what Althouza calls moment, by incorporating both inclusions as well as omissions, presences as much as absences. The problematic of the text fosters the generation of answers to posed questions and of defective answers to excluded questions. As you are beginning to see it has a lot to do with narcissism. Narcissism is an absence in ideology and has its own problematic set of allowed questions, the permitted discourse. According to Althouza, the task of scientific, for example Marxist discourse, of Althouserian critical practice, the task of this is to deconstruct the problematic, to read through, between the lines, to see through the ideology and evidence the real conditions of existence. And this is what he calls symptomatic readings, or symptomatic reading of two texts. Whenever you're confronted with a text, with an ideology, with propaganda, with a speech, with a piece of advertising, with a message, there's a hidden one. Each text has a hidden text. And in order to get to reality, to evince what's really happening, existence, you must be, you must have access to both texts. And you must read them in a specific way, what Althouza called symptomatic reading, and possibly deconstruction. There are similarities. So he says that symptomatic reading of the two texts divulges the undivalged event in the text that it reads. So when you read the text symptomatically, you suddenly discover things that are not mentioned in the text. And in the same movement, relates to it a different text, present as a necessary absence in the first. So when you read, when you're confronted with a message, a speech act, a statement, an appeal, or day-to-day conversation, you must read it symptomatically. You must ask yourself, what's missing? What are the parts that are missing from the text? And then when you do this, you discover a different text. And that different text is a necessary absence. It's exactly like, let's say, figure and background. The background defines the figure. It's very critical, although the background is absence. It's the absence of the figure. But it's still very critical to the figure. Contrast. Marx's reading, for example, of Adam Smith presupposes the existence of two texts, the measurement of the first against the second. But what distinguishes this new reading from the old is the fact that in the new type of reading, the second text is articulated with elapses in the first text. Marx measures the problematic contained in the paradox of an answer which does not correspond to any questions posed. Althusser is contrasting the manifest text with the latent text, which is a result of the elapses. Distortions, silences, absences, repressions, denials in the manifest text. The latent text is the diary of the struggle of the unposed questions to be posed, to be answered, to be considered. These repressed speech acts, these repressed topics and questions, they want to erupt, they want to explode. That's a fight between the true self and the false self in the narcissist. The false self is the manifest text. The true self is the latent text. Ideology, says Althusser, is a practice with lived and material dimensions. It has costumes, rituals, behavior patterns, ways of thinking. The state employs ideological apparatuses, ISAs, to reproduce ideology through practices and through productions. So the state uses organized religion, the education system, the family, organized politics, the media, the industries of culture. Althusser would have abhorred Jordan Peterson's message. He would have considered him a witting or unwitting tool of this Orwellian world. All ideologies, says Althusser, has the function, which defines it, of constructing concrete individuals as subjects. Subjects to art. The answer, according to Althusser, subject to the material practices of the ideology. So the ideology takes people and converts them into homo economicus, for example, into consumers. And this, the creation of the subjects, is done by the acts of hailing or, as Althusser called it, interpolation.  Hey you, come over here. That's interpolation. These are acts of attracting attention, hailing. Forcing individuals to generate meaning, interpretation. Forcing them, coercing them to participate in the practice, economic practice and the social practice. These theoretical tools were widely used to analyze, for example, the advertising and the cinema industries. So the ideology of consumption, which is undeniably the most material of all practices. It uses advertising to transform individuals into subjects, into consumers. It uses advertising to interpolate individuals, to hail them, to call them. The advertisements attract attention. They force people to introduce meaning into the text and as a result to consume. The most famous example is the use of people like you buy this or that in advertisements. The reader or the viewer is interpolated both as an individual, people like you. And as a member of a group, people like you. The individual occupies the empty imaginary space of the you in the ad. This is, it's like chair work in therapy. This is ideological misrecognition. First, many others misrecognize themselves as that you, an impossibility in the real world. And secondly, the misrecognize you exists only in the advertisement because it was created by the advertisement. It has no real world correlate. It's a piece of fiction.  They impose on you a narrative, a text which is not you. And you're struggling to find meaning in this. And when you're struggling to find meaning in this, you're collude. You conspire with the text to subjugate you, to force you to practice in a certain way. This is gaslighting in effect. If you want to apply it to narcissism and psychopathy, it's confabulation. It's gaslighting. The reader of viewer of the ad is transformed into the subject of and is subjected to the material practice of the ideology, consumption for example. There's no denying that Althusser was heavily influenced by Marx. The dominant mode of production in his days and even more so today was capitalism. The implied criticism of the material dimensions of ideological practices should be taken with more than a grain of salt. Interpolated by the ideology of Marxism himself, Althusser generalized on his personal experience and described ideologies as infallible, omnipotent, ever successful. Ideologies to Althusser were impeccably functioning machines, which can always be relied upon to reproduce subjects with all the habits and thought patterns required by the dominant mode of production. That of course is manifestly untrue, especially after 1989 when we saw all systems crumbling, all ideologies crumbling actually since the 1940s. When Nazism crumbled, fascism crumbled, communism crumbled. If anything, ideologies are the least successful ways of interpolating people. Religion was much more successful. And this is where Althusser fails. Trapped by dogmatism and more than a touch of paranoia, he neglects to treat two important questions. His problematic, maybe, didn't allow. I mean, the questions were excluded by his own problematic because, ironically, his problematic, his theory, his work, it's a text. It's also an ideology. It also omits, represses, denies, ignores certain questions. So the first question is, what do ideologies look for? Why do they engage in their practice? What is the ultimate goal of ideologies? The second question is, what happens in a pluralistic, diverse environment, rich in competing ideologies? Althusser stipulates the existence of two texts, manifest and hidden or latent. The hidden texts coexist with the open or manifest texts, very much as a black figure defines the white background. The background is also a figure. And it is only arbitrarily the result of historical conditioning that we bestow a preferred status upon the figure, not the background. The latent texts can be extracted from the manifest texts by listening to the absences, the lapses and the silences in the manifest text itself. But what dictates these laws of extraction? How do we know that the latent texts that we expose is the right latent texts? Surely there must exist a procedure of comparison, authentication and verification of the latent texts, or is it a free-form? If it is a free-form, we could all come with competing latent texts, because the universe of what's left out of an ideology is infinite. A comparison of the resulting latent texts to the manifest texts from which it was extracted would be futile, because it would be recursive, self-referential. This is not even a process of iteration, it is tautological. There must exist a third master text, a privileged text, historically invariant, reliable, unequivocal, unambiguous, indifferent to interpretation frameworks, universally accessible, atemporal, non-spatial third texts, which of course incorporates all possible texts, the manifest and all the latent texts. The third text is complete in the sense that it includes both the manifest and the latent, as I just said. Actually it should include all the possible texts, it should function as a complete library. The historical moment will determine which of these texts will be manifest and which will be latent, according to the needs of the mode of production and the various practices. I agree with that. Not all these texts will be conscious and accessible to the individual, but such a third text would embody and dictate the rules of comparison between the manifest text itself and the complete text, so as to derive the latent texts. Only through a comparison between a partial text and a complete text can the deficiencies of the partial text be exposed, it makes its tense to reason. A comparison between partial texts, the latent and the manifest, will yield no absolute or certain results. And a comparison between the text and itself, as Althusser suggests to do, is absolutely meaningless, it is tautology. And this third text, what is it? It's the human psyche, it's psychology or if you wish personality. We constantly compare texts, texts that we come across, visual texts, I don't know, YouTube videos, written texts, other texts, behaviors around us, people around us are texts. Our workplace is a form of text. Text is simply how things are organized to make meaning, to generate meaning. So we constantly compare the texts that we come across to this third text, a copy of which we all carry with us and it's called being human. We are unaware of most of the texts incorporated in this master text of ours. We are unaware of what it means to be human in the fullest sense of the word. A lot of it is obscured by resistances, defense mechanisms, traumas, dissociation, etc. When we are faced with a manifest text which is new to us, we first download the rules of comparison, the rules of engagement from our master text, from inside our heads. We sift through the manifest text. We compare it to our own complete master text, our psychology, our personality, and see which parts are missing. And these constitutes our idiosyncratic latent text. The manifest text is universal, the latent text is individual. Individual, idiosyncratic, unique to each and every one of us. The manifest text serves as a trigger, which brings to our consciousness appropriate and relevant portions of our own third complete text. It also generates the latent text that is unique to us and inside us. If this sounds familiar, it's because it's a pattern of confronting the manifest text and comparing it with our master text and storing the results, latent text and manifest text that are brought to consciousness. This pattern, I repeat, confronting the manifest text, comparing the manifest text to our psychology, which is the master text, the third text, and then storing the results of the comparison, the latent text generated and the manifest text, and both of them are now in consciousness. This is used by Mother Nature itself. Take, for example, DNA. DNA is a master third text. DNA includes all the genetic biological texts. And Jung said it includes also collective unconscious, whatever that means. So the DNA includes all the genetic biological texts ever written. Some of these texts become manifest. We are at the manifest texts. Most of these texts actually remains latent. So a tiny minority of our genetic material is expressed. The rest is latent, hidden. Only stimuli in the environment can provoke the third text, the DNA, to generate its own, hitherto latent other texts and make them manifest. And the same applies, of course, to computer applications. Use a tiny minority of the functions of your software. The rest is latent, but you can trigger it. The third text, therefore, has an invariant nature. It includes all possible texts. And yet it is changeable by interacting with manifest texts. This contradiction is only apparent, though. The third text does not change. Only different parts of it are brought to our awareness as a result of the interaction with the manifest texts. So there's an ever-calatoscopic, ever-shifting river-like flux in our third text, in the complete text, where parts of it emerge into consciousness and become the manifest texts. Then they are submerged and become unconscious or shadow. Then they emerge again and submerge and emerge. There's a constant vortex, constant whirlpool, constant flow. And so the third text as a totality never changes. It's immutable. But which parts of it are manifest and which parts of it are latent? This is determined by us and our environment, especially our environment. And awareness is the lens, the projector, the flashlight, the torch, which identifies the manifest texts. That is an excellent definition of consciousness. We can also safely say that one does not need to be an altruiscerian critic or engage in scientific discourse to deconstruct a problematic. Every reader of texts, of any text. Whenever you come across a text, a text would be another person, remember? Whenever you come across a text, you immediately and always deconstruct the text. The very act of reading, watching, talking, having sex, loving, these acts involve comparison with the third text which you are and inevitably lead to the generation of latent texts or your unique latent text. And this is precisely why some interpolations actually fail. Ideologies are not fail proof as altruiser wanted to convince us. Many interpolations fail. The subject deconstructs every message even if he is not trained in critical practice. Even if he doesn't know how to do symptomatic reading, he still does. It's reflexive, it's instinctual. The subject is interpolated or fails to be interpolated depending on what latent message, what latent text was generated through his comparison of the manifest text with his own third text. Every person is a third text and the third text has an engine, embedded engine, probably from birth, what can't maybe be called categories. I don't know, analytical categories, I'm not sure. But there is an engine in the third text which every single person is. And this engine is slightly paranoid, slightly hyper vigilant, slightly suspicious and tries to read between the lines of every manifest text. So we generate latent text automatically, instinctually, because the third text includes all possible texts. The subject is given to numerous competing interpolations offered by many ideologies, mostly at odds with each other. The subject is in an environment of competing interpolations, especially in this day and age of information class. The failure of one interpolation normally means the success of another interpolation. Someone else, some other manifest text whose interpolation is based on the latent text generated in comparison process. So when you confront a text, a manifest text, you use your own third text to generate a latent text. And if there's a match, you're interpolated. And sometimes you have a manifest text of your own, or you have a latent text generated by another text. I mean, there are numerous possibilities here. So I wouldn't be so linear, like manifest text, interpolation, action. I don't think it's true. I think there are several other stages in manifest text, attempted interpolation. Third text in the recipient, in the subject, the psychology of the subject. A generation of a latent text, comparison of the latent text to the manifest text. And then if there's a match, interpolation works. If not, then the subject exposes himself or herself to another interpolation, another ideology. There's a competition going on. The failure of one interpolation normally means the success of another interpolation whose interpolation is based on the latent text generated in the comparison process. Or on a manifest text of its own, or on a latent text generated by another text. You see how many possibilities there are. There are competing ideologies even in the most severe authoritarian regimes, even in Nazi Germany. Sometimes the states use these mechanisms within the same social formations. And these mechanisms offer competing ideologies.  You have the bureaucracy and they all compete because they all give you an ideology. Ideology is a way to organize your access to reality, your perception. And to assume that interpolations are offered to the potential subjects successively and not in parallel. This is not true. It defies experience. It's counterfactual. It simplifies the thought system, simplifies the theory, but it's nonsense. We are exposed daily to hundreds of competing ideologies, many of them with latent text actually. They don't even come with manifest text. Clarifying that how, though, does not shed light on the why. Advertising leads to the interpolation of the subject to effect the material practice of consumption. Put it more simply, there is money here. There's money involved. So, you know, we understand this. We advertise to interpolate you to buy my product. I get this, but other ideologies propagated through organized religions, for example. Why do they do what they do? The output of organized religion is prayer and a lot of money in the case of the Catholic Church, for example. So is this the reason? Could this be the material practice that they're looking for? I don't know. Prayer? Seriously? Money, prayer, the variability to interpolate? Are they representations of power over other human beings? Is it all about power ultimately? Are we all power crazy? The business concern, the church, the political party, the family, the media, the cultural industries. Are they all looking for the same thing? Influence, power, might? Is this the only explanation of why we interpolate? Absurdly interpolation is used to secure one paramount thing, the ability to interpolate. So interpolation is circular. We interpolate so that we have the power to interpolate. Behind every material practice there's a psychological practice, very much as the third text. Your own personality stands behind every text, latent and manifest. The media could be different, especially social media. There's money involved, there's spiritual prowess, physical brutality, there's subtle messages, there's influence. But everyone, even individuals in their private lives, everyone is looking to hail and to interpolate other people, to manipulate them, to succumb to material practices. Social media is the greatest proof of this. When we were given the choice, when we were given the opportunity, when we were provided the technology, we all started to produce texts, manifest texts. And we all tried to interpolate people, to give us likes, to buy our products. A short-sighted view would say that the businessman interpolates in order to make money, but the important question is what ever for? What drives ideologies to establish material practices and to interpolate people to participate in these material practices, to become subjects? Ultimately, the will to power. Adler, Adlerian view, the will to power. Frankl would have disagreed, he would have said it's the will to meaning. Freud would have disagreed, he would have said the will to pleasure. But meaning gives us power, at the very least over ourselves. And pleasure is a manifestation of power, a derivative of power. The wish to be able to interpolate is critical. It is the cyclical nature of Althusser's teachings. Ideologies interpolate in order to be able to interpolate. And then they become ideologies. It is this dogmatic approach. Ideologies never fail. I think these are the reasons that his brilliant observations were doomed to oblivion. They simply have nothing to do with reality. And so, in Althusser's writings, Marx's determination remains as over-determination. This is a structured articulation of a number of contradictions and determinations between the practices. This is very reminiscent of Freud's dream theory and of the concept of superposition in quantum mechanics. The third text is not like the human psyche, it is the human psyche. The third text is the complete text. It produces a latent text by interacting with the manifest texts. There are as many third texts as there are sentient intelligent beings. The completeness of the third text is only in relation to the individual who's psyche it is. And so there can be no universal third text, no reality out there. We have 7.7 billion third texts and they're all equally valid, but valid for one individual. This is known in philosophy as the intersubjectivity problem. It puts in grave doubt the very possibility for empathy. My solution essentially is solipsistic, we all live in bubbles of meaning. Our problematics are idiosyncratic and really non-communicable, hermetic. There's no universal or global master text, so we can never communicate truthfully or access the mind of another person. Each individual has his or her own master text, and this master text inevitably reflects his or her cultural, social values, histories, preferences, traumas, you name it. Even dissociated material is relevant to you, it's a part of the latent text. Ideologies are complex, all-pervasive, all-encompassing narratives. The main role of ideologies is to reconcile and smooth over the gaps between observed reality and constructed reality. Ideologies use numerous mechanisms to help us to collude in the suppression of ugly and uncomfortable truths or questions that cannot be answered. Cognitive dissonance is often employed. Ideology teaches the interpolated individual to reject as undesirable that which he or she cannot have or cannot understand. Even if you secretly want to possess something, even if you want to understand but you can't, you will reject it. You will reject it as bad, as evil. Delusions are induced. What you see with your own eyes, ideology tells you, is not real, is not true.  Delayed gratification is exalted. Sacrifices in this world. They are rewarded in the hereafter or later in your own life. And this is where both Lach and Althusser seamlessly merge into intellectual trends in the 21st century. Okay, this was the second lecture in the cycle, the prophets of narcissism. Stay tuned for the third, which will be coming next year. Have a Happy New Year, all of you, despite having listened to this lecture. And we'll see each other hopefully in the flesh sometime next year. Vaccine permitting and Althusser willing.


The Pike County Animal Shelter will be hosting a pet adoption fair Friday, September 1st at the South Williamson Mall from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The fair will feature dogs, puppies, cats, and kittens already for their forever family. We want to promote the shelter in the area. There's a lot of people move in and out of the area so new people will know where we're at and what we do. Also promote some of the older dogs because the older dogs kind of sometimes get overlooked. A lot of people want puppies and little kittens so basically we're just you know trying to get our name out there and get people into work. When my baby was born it was magical and as she grew having a hospital close to home with advanced healthcare and specialized physicians being there along the journey was important and along that journey many special doctors touched our lives and then one day my baby became a woman and a mother herself. Pikeville Medical Center caring for every moment in life. The fair will also feature discounted adoption fees at just $12.50 for dogs and $10 for cats. Shelter animals can be great just like anything that is rescued it doesn't matter if it's a cat, a dog, horse, hamster, anything that is rescued appreciates the love and care and they just tend to fall in love with the person who takes care of them and feeds them and they really need that because the shelter is wonderful but it's not one-on-one attention all day every day. For more information go to Pike County Animal Shelter on Facebook reporting for mountaintop news I'm Brianna Robinson


So with the next Tokyo Olympics, Karate is set to be event for the very first time. Now, there seems to be divide amongst the martial arts community. Many people are concerned that the future of Karate will become watered down and lose its integrity as a result of becoming a sport. And many people do feel this already happened with Judo in Taekwondo. So today's question is, should Karate be a sport? If you enjoy our content, we please ask that you do consider supporting this channel. By supporting us, you are helping us devote more time and resources to doing better and bigger topics such as more interviews and art history topics and maybe eventually some travel. And there's a lot of places we'd like to go with this content and make this community bigger, but we can only do that with your help. So if you do want to support us, you can do it in two primary ways. One, you can support us on Patreon by going to our Patreon account, which we have a link below in the description. And there you can sign up for three different tiers of memberships. And each membership has different perks. Some of the perks include exclusive member episodes, behind-the-scenes photos and videos, on-set announcements, in seminars, and a lot of different things that we'd like to throw out to you guys as a thank you. Now if Patreon is not quite your speed, you can support us right here on YouTube itself. So if you look down below at the subscribe button, you'll see a button that says join. If you click on that, you'll get a bunch of information on what your support goes to, the different levels we have available, and the perks that we give back as a thank you. So thank you everyone who supports this channel, who's gotten us to this point. We look forward to your contribution and welcoming you to our family. Now one of the main features of our memberships is that we feel a lot of questions from our members. And very often those questions become episodes in themselves. And that's with today's topic. One of our members, Renee Martinez, asks, What do you think about martial arts getting the spot in the Olympics, like judo, taekwondo, or more recently karate? Do you see this as a positive thing or as a negative? There's a lot of debate over whether a martial art that gets transformed into a sport loses its soul. Now Renee's not the first person to ask this question. We actually see this topic come up a lot. So I thought it was a good time to maybe address it. Now this topic really seems to be heated this year because originally set for this year, the 2020 Olympics, now pushed next year because of the pandemic, the Tokyo Olympics is featuring karate as a sport for the first time. And this has caused a little bit of a divide. I've seen a lot of reactions from people being really excited to see it represented, to others being disappointed that, uh, just like some of the other sports, we're going to see a watering down and degradation of the art. So the first thing I would like to do is expand this discussion beyond just the scope of the Olympics. We've got a lot of different tournaments and competitions out there across multiple sports. So we're going to talk about sports, martial arts as a whole, because a lot of people seem to have a stigma towards, um, the value of an art being lost when it's put into a sport context. There's also a misconception I like to break here and I see this comment a lot. And the assumption is that once a martial art goes towards a sport route, it loses its ability to become an effective self-defense art. And I don't really think that's true because most of the time people making those remarks are very pro UC and MMA, which by definition is a sport. You know, first, second, third priority of those arts are sports. Boxing is a sport. Muay Thai is a sport. Wrestling is a sport. Does that mean they can't be used to fight in real life? Of course not. They're very effective arts. So I want to remove that element that just because something's a sport, totally negates it for self-defense because I think we need to look at a finer, in the finer context on an art by art and a case by case basis. And the number one thing that I think differs sport martial arts to real life self-defense martial arts are the rules in place. You know, every competition's got some sort of rules. Boxing. Boxing, first of all, I will advocate is a very effective fighting style, great for self-defense, great skills, but boxing as a sport has a lot of restrictions. For example, you can't elbow your opponent and you can't use any hand strike you want. So there are rules. MMA and the cage fighting has rules. BJJ has rules. Karate competitions in the Olympics have rules. Whenever there's a sport in play, there are rules. And those rules are always gone when it comes to a real life situation. And that ties into the statement I hear a lot. Oh, it'll never work because it doesn't work in the ring. Now, on the surface level, that might seem like a good qualifying statement, but I think there's some context at play here. The ring and the octagon are a specific sport. So say for example, take a baseball player, a high level baseball player, and you drop him in a football game. Things are going to do very well? No, of course not. And it kind of works the same for martial arts. Mixed martial arts in the UFC are mixed martial arts. It's not individual arts against each other. It is mixed well-rounded athletes. So of course, if you take a karate guy and you drop him in the ring, he's not going to do very well. But if you take a boxer and put him in a judo match, they're likely not going to do well either. Or put a BJJ guy only in the ring where he has no other striking arts. He's not going to do well. So I think that it's very important to look at the context there that it's not an art versus an art. It's mixed arts versus mixed arts that comes out to the individual. And I don't really want to spend any more on this episode trying to justify mixed martial arts versus traditional martial arts because we've already done that in the previous episode. And you can find a link to that one in the description below. People who want to see full hardcore, full contact submission, knockout martial arts watch UFC. But there's still something to be said about Ushu competitions and point-spiring competitions, even kata competitions. They might not be your thing, but they still take a lot of time. They take incredible skill. And they're still impressive to watch if you appreciate that kind of thing. And they each have their own specific skill sets. It's like how we feel here when it comes to athletic sports.  He can't even pitch. That might be true in that context. But guess what? Take your bottom tier major league baseball player and try to play a game against him. He might not do so well in the majors, but he's going to smoke you in the mound. And the worst athlete is still way levels above the average person. And it's the same thing with martial arts. Even though you might not like a kata, you might not like what they're doing. Their athleticism and a dedication is still more than the average person has put in. And I think that does deserve some modicum of respect. Let's talk about the purity of an art. So in the case of, say, taekwondo and karate, does it lose something becoming a sport? Does it lose its soul? I think the key is understanding that all martial arts systems are not just one single component. So most traditional schools have a well-rounded curriculum of self-defense. You got your basic strikes and techniques. You've got your katas and bunkai that goes along with it. You might have some spirituality and philosophical aspects with it. That's a whole overall well-rounded curriculum. So if you're at a school that teaches only one particular aspect, say they're only focusing on kata for competition and they're only doing point sparring, if they ignore everything else, then you're not learning the complete art. You are learning a sport. That school's focus is competition. It is a sport. You're not learning self-defense or full-rounded system. And I think it's incredibly important to know the distinction between the two types of schools. The kind that have a full curriculum that happened to like to compete or the school where their sole purpose is to compete. Let's look at taekwondo as an example because this one comes up a lot and it is one of the more popular sport martial arts. Historically speaking, taekwondo is a self-defense art and you will find schools that teach a full, robust system. You know, they'll teach their strikes. They'll teach their self-defense techniques. They'll teach their forms. They'll teach their sparring. And sometimes they even mix in hapkido or other arts in there to make it more of a well-rounded fighting system. But then you have your schools, your taekwondo schools that are only competition-based. And you will see that they spar differently. I've sparred people from both. And I find that the schools that are more geared just towards competition, well, they're more bouncy. They tend to keep their hands out and they're looking for that quick strike, that quick point to get in and get out. Versus a school that takes it more seriously as a fighting art, they have different stances and their timing is different. And I've fought a lot of guys who set up certain ways and then they'll explode at you and come in with a combination. It's a very different experience because they've come from, you know, each of them have come from two of those different schools. The schools that are well-rounded, systems meant to be a fighting school and others that are just for competition. There is a difference. Now let's look at kata again, because a lot of tournaments, especially karate tournaments, will have kata-informed divisions. And if you're a school that focuses only on kata, does not mean you're getting the actual curriculum or educated version of kata. You might be learning it in a way that looks good or ignores the bunkai in terms of other technical details that judges might be looking for. Or I have seen forms that don't even have bunkai for them. They don't really mean anything necessarily, other than just a little cool and be in the dazzle of a crowd. That is not the same as a school that's going to teach you a kata that has underlying principles for your system. Because that's not always pretty. That's a teaching tool versus something for demonstration. Again, very similar topic, but depending on the school comes from, they can be applied very, very differently. And I don't think it has to be said that there's a huge difference between point sparring and continuous sparring. And the tactics are different. With point sparring, it's all about getting in there, get that one hit, get in, get out, get your point, reset. Continuous sparring is not like that. You have to have more strategy to it. Just because you get hit or you get hit or you hit them doesn't mean the match is over. Oftentimes it goes towards knockout if it's a full-contact knockdown karate or sometimes points are racked up as you go. So you can't just stop at one hit. You have to keep going. They're two different animals. But I think they do teach two different valuable skills because people who are really, really good at point sparring, they have the ability to see an opening and sharpen their techniques and often very, very quickly can get in there and get out. That's very effective in terms of setting up combinations if you've developed that. And if continuous sparring, of course, teaches you how to take some hits and keep on going, it's about the endurance. So my suggestion is actually if you want to become a well-rounded fighter, do both. You know, do continuous sparring but maybe do some drills of point sparring so you can get some of those entries and mix them together, see what kind of combinations you can come up with. I personally think that the Olympics showcasing karate is a positive thing. And I hope it's something that continues on further from here and that more arts eventually get added only because of a few different reasons. One, you're now exposing arts to a wider range of audience who might not know what, you know, what the capabilities of the arts even are. And who knows? You might inspire somebody to look into a martial art for whatever reason, whether it be self-defense or competition. So the inspiration is there. Two, it gives martial artists a platform to compete in something they're good at and represent their country. There's a lot of pride to go along with that and I think that's fantastic. And three, at the Olympic level these are still athletes. You know, they have to be in good health in good shape but put in an immense amount of work and sharpen the skills. They have to be at the top of their game and to put yourself through that kind of regimen I think only improves your character and improves your goals and I think it sets a great example. So I do believe that seeing Olympic versions of karate are a wonderful, wonderful thing. And I want to highlight that word, Olympic versions. Just because a sport version of a martial art exists does not mean that traditional schools automatically go away. You know, traditional martial arts and the full curriculum school and a sporting school, they can still coexist together. So one does not negate the other. It just opens up another avenue for people to enjoy. But let's also be fair. Just because someone's skill sets is prime for sports does not mean they're not going to be able to use those skill sets to defend themselves at least in some capacity.  But guess what? If a real situation occurs and they get their hand on the pipe or a stick or something, does that not give them an insane advantage over someone who's not trained in that? You know, basics work. You know, a front kick or a side kick delivered to somebody's body can break ribs. A jab cross combination that connects can knock someone out. A very well placed Taekwondo kick could end a fight. These are all basic concepts and if they are delivered accurately, yes, they will work. Most likely. It all comes down to the methodology of how they're taught and timing and application. And it really doesn't matter what martial art that you learn, whether it be for sport or for self-defense. The only way you're going to get that timing and make those basics work is practice, practice, practice and practice with somebody who's actively trying to hit you back. You need that resistance training then and only then will you know a technique is good. Sports or self-defense, it's irrelevant. So anyway, that's just my long-winded way of saying that just because a martial art is used in a sporting event doesn't mean it's not effective in real life. It comes down to knowing the difference and know your goals. Bottom line is know what you want out of a martial art. If you are looking for self-defense and you go to a school that's all about competition, chances are you're not going to be fulfilled by that. You're not going to get the education you want. And vice versa, if you're looking for competition and that's what you want to go train and ring and the school focuses on cotton and they focus on philosophy, you might not be happy with that either. So know your goals and make sure that your goals align with the school that you're looking at. So to answer Renee's question, does an art lose its soul by becoming a sport? No, because arts don't have souls. A martial art, and I mean any given martial art, is nothing more than a framework of manuals, curriculum, techniques, concepts, principles, theories. The soul comes from the actual practitioners who put in literal blood, sweat, and tears into their training. A curriculum is just the body. You're the one that gives it its life. So I would love to hear from all of you out there. I know on a topic like this, we're bound to be divided, but I think that's great for a constructive discussion. I do please ask that you all be civil with each other. So the question is, do you feel that karate being the Olympics helps or hurts the art? Or are there any arts that you would like seen brought into the Olympics or another competitive level? Let us know what your thoughts are. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next week.


Hello and welcome to today's edition of Frightfully Forgotten's Trash or Treasure Today we have a Patreon request If you want a movie reviewed by us You can join us on Patreon The link is below Stanley Surik wants us to cover 1990's Mirror Mirror But what are we drinking?  Instantly she doesn't want this mirror to go Nope, the mirror stays She goes to school And of course With the way she looks Instantly she starts getting mocked By all of the fancy hoity-toity kids Charlene She's running for school president And she's got some Mighty fine assets in her benefit too Right?  Can't you put it somewhere else Besides on the cutting board? Does it bother you?  She starts to get more and more attracted to it Touching it Yeah, getting all weird And one night she has A weird dream with her dead father That appears from the mirror And he kinda gets closer to her And he's like, why are you Torturing me like this?   They're pretty well defined, they're pretty well rounded And the movie takes its time to flesh Everything else, right? And you kind of ride along with the characters As it's going And they're all pretty memorable characters too Like, you know, I've only seen the movie the one time And I can remember all the characters Exactly what they look like What their traits are Good characters Yvonne Decarlo is great Karen Black is great The weird neurotic posh mom Rainbow Harvest is as good as Megan The Goth recluse It's casted really well That's right, yeah And the fact that it takes place Mostly within the high school realm It's relatable too, right? Because obviously those characters Really do exist in real life Yeah, we've all been through high school Exactly what she was going through I didn't have any powers That was given to me by Amir But I know the torment you went I think everybody wants Those kinds of powers though, right? At some point in their life Especially school, it's a tough time And then somebody's making fun of you And you can't really do anything about it You'd love to have those powers To just, it's like, you know what?  And in the grand scheme of the school It's nothing, do you not have the power But I like how it kind of goes into that Like, for a kid That's everything, that's your whole existence At that moment in time And Megan's character arc is really good in this too That's a really good piece of treasure How she's like, starts here And on a record, but then she ends up here She may be a dark looking person To look at, but really she isn't But she becomes that in the end It almost seems like the mirror Is a metaphor for something For her transformative Time The mirror kind of mirrors That, almost The effects for this movie, for what they are Are actually pretty good The demon hands I like the demon hands coming out of the mirror The mirror bleeding, there's a great Scenar of the mirrors bleeding And Megan's like, kind of getting sexual With it again, it's a cool scene It's like something out of a 90's Music video, right? The effects of course go hand in hand The kills, right? And the kills are really good In this movie too, like when that girl Gets all steamed up Like in the showers It's a neat scene because it's all Steamed, hear her screaming You know what's happening without really Seeing it, and then when you see the aftermath And she's peeling skin It's like, aw man Still see a steam?   But I thought the movie was kind of original enough And I liked the characters enough And I kind of knew what they were going for Just enough to kind of like Okay, this is a little gem I hate to be shallow like this But a hot goff chick in a movie That's gonna help the cause a little bit If I would have seen this movie Like earlier, like in the 90s I would have had the biggest Crush on Rainbow Harvest, man I would have been like pictures on the walls And shit, I totally got a craft vibe From this, in the craft The goff kids, and it's the goff kid Who gets special powers That can make Bad things happen to the kids Who are tormenting them And then even like the showdown at the end With her and her best friend Meers the craft a lot I wouldn't be surprised if they were inspired Or bored from this movie a little bit Probably, yeah probably Well there's a bit of Carrie I didn't feel as much Carrie as Jennifer, I felt more Jennifer From this actually And I think maybe this movie Bored from that, right? And there's also Beetlejuice vibe in there, of course There's also Prince of Darkness vibe In there with the beer, arms coming From the mirror, like you can't help but Think of Prince of Darkness when you see a hand Coming through a mirror like, come on It definitely rides The fine line I think Between trash or treasure It had just enough for me to tip me over that edge Yeah, see and I was the other way Like it just is not enough And it's probably just enough To go either way So again, split decision Yup So let us know what you think about Mirror Mirror 1990 I'm sure For a lot of people it has a bit of nostalgia For us it doesn't It's coming in fresh It never played on TV, not that I knew of Not in Kanata Kanata so Let us know what you guys think and until next time Keep drinking