A year of self-quarantining
and likely continued caution into the foreseeable future has left many to their
own devices regarding leisure, study, training and other like enterprises that
are commonly thought of as being group-dependent, or hands-on tutor necessary.
We would all agree
that group dynamics are mighty useful for anything from tennis-doubles to wrestling
practice.
But, we would also
likely agree that many a tennis champion past, present, and future has a ready
repertoire of solo drills within his or her grasp that allow them to continually
hone their game.
The handball player
has wall-return practice, the range-bereft shooter has dozens upon dozens of
dry-fire drills, the striker has everything from bags to mirrors to, well, his own
shadow.
Quarantined or not the
player, shooter or combatant that requires the presence of others to sharpen
the saw is at a deficit in comparison with the individual who will train with
and/or without good fellows to share time with.
The auto-didact who
sees no training partner as no true loss is fertile with creative ideas and the
self-discipline to carry on lockdown or no.
[To be clear,
training partners are always a plus—provided they are like-minded well-paced workers.
I’m sure we all can think of some past partners who were a deficit to progress
and solo would have been the wiser course of action.]
Today’s sermon merely tests
the idea that “others are a must.”
The true test of
auto-didacticism is how self-instructive one can be.
That is, how much progress
can be made without the firm hand of the tutor to impart the lineal pearls of wisdom
that can only be attained via “The master’s lips to the student’s eager ear.”
The Tale
of The Lost City
In Homer’s The Iliad
we have the tale of the Trojan War, and, as one would expect, the city of Troy
plays a large part in this heroic epic.
For centuries scholars
considered the city of Troy a confabulation or a metaphorical representation of
many cities.
To the German
merchant, Heinrich Schliemann, Troy was a reality.
Schliemann became entranced
with the tale of Troy and decided to use his fortune to search for the city.
Scholars and contemporary
archaeologists scoffed at his wrong-headedness. They considered Schliemann an
untutored dilettante with no formal training let alone the good sense to correctly
read and interpret metaphorical texts. Sinking money into something as complex
as an archaeological dig was the height of folly.
Schliemann was an
untutored auto-didact, not merely in archeology, but also in foreign languages.
Despite having never attended a single foreign language class or having access
to a “self-teaching” Rosetta Stone course he mastered a dozen languages.
Here’s historian Will
Durant on Schliemann.
“In his
travels as a merchant he had made it a practice to learn the language of each
country he traded with, and to write in that language the current pages of his
diary. By this method he learned English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese,
Italian, Russian, Swedish, Polish, and Arabic. Now he went to Greece, studied
the language as a living speech, and was soon able to read both ancient and
modern Greek as fluently as German.” Will Durant, The Life of Greece, pp. 24-25
Here's Schliemann
himself on his auto-didactical method.
“In order to
acquire quickly the Greek vocabulary, I procured a modern Greek translation of Paul
et Virginie, and read it through, comparing every word with its equivalent
in the French original. When I had finished that task I knew at least one half
the Greek words the book contained; and after repeating the operation I knew
them all, or nearly so, without having lost a single minute by being obliged to
use a dictionary…Of my Greek grammar I learned only the declensions and the
verbs, and never lost my precious time in studying its rules; for as I saw that
boys, for after being troubled and tormented for eight years and more in school
with the tedious rules of grammar, can nevertheless none of them write a letter
in ancient Greek without making hundreds of atrocious blunders, I thought the
method pursued by the schoolmasters must be altogether wrong…I learned ancient
Greek as I would have learned a living language.”
So, an un-tutored
maven of languages learned without a tutor and, apparently, improved upon the current
teaching method.
Intriguing.
BTW-He proved correct and
the archeologists wrong with his successful dig.
“OK, Mark, that’s a
good story but that was an intellectual endeavor; isn’t it way harder to learn
a physical skill without a qualified one at your shoulder?”
The Author Enjoying a Bit of Auto-Didacticism
How Not to
Drown
In kayaking [sea and
river] there is a counterintuitive skill called the Eskimo Roll.
[The Eskimo Roll is
actually a catch-all term for many 360-degree righting tactics.]
In precis, if the
kayak inverts leaving you with head underwater, using the right chain of
tactics you will pop back to upright saving your life without ever exiting the
craft.
Leave one chain of the
rolling tactic out, hedge a link in the chain, or misunderstand a link and you
are left in the precarious position of being head underwater, upside down in a
pitching sea or roiling river.
For anyone who has performed
an Eskimo Roll or attempted to learn to hit the skill properly, we can vouch
that it is no easy feat.
It is counter-intuitive,
a bit anxiety inducing, and a wee bit dangerous if you don’t train wisely.
For something as proprioceptively
acute as this skill, surely more physically involved than learning a dozen
languages, a teacher is a wise and necessary investment, right?
1927
Although Eskimo
Rolling and all of its spinning cousins are a staple of many weekend whitewater
kayaker’s repertoire, prior to 1927 there is no recorded instance of a
non-native performing this complex skill.
Prior to 1927 one must
have had the good fortune to be born into a tribe or society where such skills
were valued and necessary for survival.
So, what changed in
1927?
Austrian, Hans
Pawlata, become entranced by reading of the technique in the writings of polar
explorers. He set himself upon learning how to do it.
Did he do so by
seeking out a native teacher?
Nope.
Did he YouTube it?
In 1927? Nah.
So, how did he do it?
He simply read and researched
deeply, particularly the works of Knud Rasmussen, Fridof Nansen, and Fredrik Johansen—which
to be clear are not instructional manuals—they are tales of exploration with
only vague details on the tactic observed provided.
From there, our
intrepid Austrian took it to the river and worked, worked, worked until he cracked
the code of what he read on the page.
His method is remarkably
similar to Schliemann’s approach to a “dead” or “lost’ skill making it into a “living
language.”
If such ability is available
to one, it is available to all. We are wise to use Schliemann’s and Pawlata’s
examples as beacons to our own solo work.
We never have to
assume that no or limited access to training partners, state-of-the-art gear,
certified instruction is what is holding us back.
It seems the best instructors
are keen minds, boatloads of self-discipline, contempt for beaten paths, and
pure OD grit and will to follow the passion.
To all in lockdown, or
simply with limited access to training partners, and guiding hands—rest assured
you can still make astonishing strides all by your lonesome.
[For more such historical
training maunderings, explore this here blog.
For
unearthed nuggets of combative history from tactics to drills to “Hit the
river and do it for yourself” see our RAW/Black Box Program.]
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