Ep111 - Jim Duane

Mixed Mental Arts: The Two Paths to Power: Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

In this next installment in our journey to mastery of Mixed Mental Arts, Bryan and Hunter take a look at the primary method by which culture is transmitted from generation to generation: blind copying. Although, in everyday speech we often talk about power is if it's one thing, scientists distinguish between two forms of power: dominance and prestige. Dominance encourages submission and prestige encourages people to copy people. It's the difference between a bully and a role model. However, as spiderman learned, with great power comes great responsibility and savvy dictators and social media personalities can highjack people's prestige systems to get us to either follow their leadership blindly or to buy whatever product they want. The latter is something that really bothers Bryan. So we talk it out. We really air out all of those feelings. Does Bryan cry? Or does he break something seemingly unbreakable? When you're an actor as versatile as Bryan "Brando" Callen you're never quite sure what choice will come out. You can be sure that it will be Oscar worthy.

This is a dual release with Thaddeus Russell on the Unregistered Podcast. Thad has been on Mixed Mental Arts three times, and we can’t get enough of him. They talk about life, fathers, history, boxing, and what it means to be a man. Go to http://www.thaddeusrussell.com/ for more great podcasts, and give Renegade University a try. You won’t be disappointed (though you may be pissed off and confused.)

Thanks to a suggestion by @ElliotBlair_ on Twitter, Mixed Mental Arts is introducing something new and very exciting. We will now be awarding belts. First up, the white belt which is already live at mixedmentalarts.club. Except, that's not how The Kid rolls. The Kid gets excited and wants to talk about the difference between being a rationalist and an intuitionist…which is definitely green belt-level material. Fortunately, any Mixed Mental Artists knows how to be like water. As Master Bruce Lee said, “You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” And so, Hunter flows like water into whatever direction the Kid takes the conversation and then channels that energy into breaking down what it means to be an intuitionist. It means accepting your elephant. After hundreds of years of science, we have a pretty good model of how the brain works and that model suggests the brain is like a rider and an elephant. As a child, your elephant is trained by the culture around you to behave in certain ways. As an adult, it is your job to become aware of your elephant, to recognize what it is doing and to retrain it to act in more constructive ways. That is what Mixed Martial Arts or tennis or education is about. It's using your reflective system (your rider) to slow things down enough that you can get your intuitive system (your elephant) behaving in the most productive way possible. And that is not something that any of us have truly mastered in all areas of life which is why we're going to go ahead and say that there are no black belts in Mixed Mental Arts. Maybe though…you will be the first. Featured Links WEBSITE: mixedmentalarts.club TWITTER: twitter.com/mixedmentalarts FACEBOOK: facebook.com/mixedmentalarts INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/mixedmentalarts/?hl=en