It’s funny listening to the news, reading blogs and peoples news-feeds this past month or two, you would be absolutely convinced that everything in the world revolved around economics.
In the EU referendum, American and Australian elections, politicians have focused really on nothing else. This is all they care about, but is there something else? And what does this have to do with Jiu-Jitsu?
Well the problem is institutions that exist affect our lives, not just in the way they directly affect us, but they alter the very way we think and act. So the more we think economically about everything the more we move from being societies that live and utilize money to societies that are governed by money.
To put it another way ‘because we are always looking for a deal, have we lost the perspective to see the real value of a product?’
For example, students or parents selecting activities will often say something like for activity A, I get X amount of minutes, compared to activity B where I get Y amount of minutes, which may be a useful comparison if used as part of a wider context. All too often though this forms the core of their decision on where to go and what activity to do.
But surely the question should be what am I or my child in need of, what are the core values of each activity. What is the culture, community of each activity… these things are far more important than just the simple comparing and contrasting of simple gains and outlay.
My plea is that we start looking beyond economics and stop trying to gain greater amounts of things and start actually looking at what the things we do represent.
Neil Owen
#sexyjits