YouSaid · the spoken record

John Clarke

lines on the record: 177
first: 2020-12-06
most recent: 2020-12-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That person is a compliment to your life and helping you do your thing. And in your own way, you're helping them to achieve whatever their goals are also. It's uncommon that you have two people under the same roof striving to be unbelievably excellent in one small area. It's not impossible, but it's uncommon. Like relationships have to be like binary systems, like two stars, like the gravitational pull is what keeps you together and circling around one another, right? And, you know. One is bigger than the other and they'll fuckuate and, you know, the stars will get bigger and they'll get smaller and they'll contract based on positioning and, you know.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the wrong girl. The wrong girl, the right girl is a gangster. The right girl says, oh, you have practiced tonight. I'll leave you a sandwich and some milk so that you can, you know, outside the door. Let me know when you're done or you have some like free time. The right girl compliments that. She's not an impediment in any way. Even if what you want to do is be with her so much that you're putting the drums down or you're putting the bass down or you're picking up the pizza or you're not going to training like. That girl, without even telling you why she's making decisions, is making decisions to help you achieve your goal. Now, that might sound like some sort of like chauvinistic king of the castle type shit, like where everyone should cater to you. But the fact of the matter is”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my first two thoughts are number one, fuck convention. What is convention? It's like some laid out path, some linear progression of the way your life is supposed to go, like, you know, that someone can draw a picture of at the end. That shit's, first of all, it's just boring and whatever. And it's, I don't want to say that it's cowardly because it isn't cowardly, but for someone who's not conventional to not be non-conventional is cowardly, to get sucked into the convention. That's first. Second of all, I believe that scene in the diner in that movie where he tells her, you're in my way because I'm going to want to be with you or you're going to want me to be going out to dinner with you. And I know I should be practicing or I know I should be training. And ultimately, I'm going to feel bad about not being with you by training or I'm going to skip the training to be with you. And neither one is right. The whole thing that they don't mention in that is...”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who says it's stupid? If you're going all in on it, you don't think it's stupid. Someone else might think it's stupid, but I mean who really cares?”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way that I was living my life because when I was trying to be a big time fighter or like when I was just training all the time, tons of relationships dissolved themselves naturally, some not so naturally. Some people get it, some people don't get it, some people hate you. You missed tons of other opportunities. And I think that's kind of what that quote means to me. It's about sacrifice. It's about You're giving up what you want now for what you want more.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That quote to me is about mostly about sacrifice. It's about to achieve anything great or anything beautiful or to triumph. You have to have sacrificed so many things to get there unless you're the most unbelievably genetically gifted person in the world and greatness is just falls upon you. It's just raining from the sky. I think On your path to greatness, on your path to success and triumph, you leave a lot of carnage in your wake, personal relationships, other goals, things that you didn't pursue, you know, other unfulfilled dreams. And you kind of have to sell a lot of that out in order to be really the. At the peak of your field or what you want to be, I know that that's happened in my life. I mean, there's tons and tons of relationships that, you know, couldn't survive.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, but in those people, it changes their character. It changes who they are because they become emboldened and now they've got this like mythical cyber mob behind them.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What they do now, they spend most of their time fundraising, they're not worried about anything. Sorry to interrupt you, but I was going to say that you can see there's a fuel like the more attention and the higher regard you're held in in your community and the more sycophants like continue to blow smoke up your ass, the more it changes the way you present yourself. And you can see it in every walk of life. I mean, Jiu-Jitsu is a tiny, tiny little section of the world, but you see it in the Jiu-Jitsu community when someone all of a sudden starts a social media page or whatever and they get a bunch of people like basically like, you know, cyberfilating them on their Instagram page, they changed.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're working to keep a job. They're not working to improve the lives of the constituents, which is different long, long time ago, like a lot of politicians, like those were like part-time jobs, and they were, they held all their posts out west. They were ranchers by day and sheriff by night, whatever the case might be. But now such a cushy path for the rest of your life that the goal is to just be a politician, not do the things that you think a politician is supposed to do. That's a problem”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the time you get to the final destination, the Oval Office, all you're doing is paying back the favors that got you there and you never get to serve the people you're supposed to serve. Your primary focus is on your office and not on the people that you're supposed to be helping. I think that that's a humongous problem. And like we could talk all about campaign finance reform and the two-party system. But at the end of the day, the people who are running for political posts”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really liked Dan, especially a year, year and a half ago. He seemed very level-headed. It's clear to me now that as he panders more and more to the right, it's because he's setting himself up for a presidential run. It's clear that that's happening. And he just doesn't seem like the same authentic ideals-oriented guy that he did a year and a half ago. Now, I could be wrong on that. It could be way off. But I think that you can take someone as honest as you want to. When you start them on that path to the presidency, you become so unbelievably beholden to so many people and entities along the way.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're basically, a lot of people compare us to the Kennedys. My guess with the politicians is that, and you can see it now as we're becoming more cognizant as people to the political process. I think the process corrupts people. And I think that I don't know the ins and outs of it. I've listened to people who are far more educated on it than me. And I'm unprepared to cite any of their points. Think you can see it a little bit in Dan Crenshaw. Can I say this?”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first, I'd like to say that I don't know if you know this, but I come from a bit of a political dynasty myself. I was on the student government several times in high school, and my dad won the runoff in a special election in Bradenton Beach, Florida. I think there's like 700 people there.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He couldn't be further away from my political ideals, but also like there's an obvious authenticity to his passion for what he's saying that is not present in other candidates. And you could see it. all these people that have been in politics forever like from all the way back when hillary was a lawyer in the 70s there's a couple of shots of her in the courtroom in the 70s though she's looking all right she's got those big glasses on Kind of a little bit of a nerdy babe back in the day.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You want someone in a position of political power to change their mind because they realize that there might be a better way, not because they realize that by changing their mind, they're going to get a new demographic to vote for them. That's a person who can't separate their position from their people they're supposed to be helping.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you can start to work with that instead. And it's a tough thing because I'm a stubborn fuck and it's very difficult for me. It was historically to say I was wrong about this one or I messed this one up or I wish I could have that one back”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. You get so sick of defending the same thing over and over and over and you start to think about it. And it's like, well, I would really like to evolve my thought process here. And when you're constantly defending one point, it's difficult to let other ideas in. You discount the possibility that you can have your mind change when you're constantly on the defense. You have to have a crack in the front line in order to let a new idea come in and possibly flourish. And maybe the new idea doesn't even prove your current belief system to be wrong, but maybe it's like the water to a seed and it grows and now it's something even bigger and better.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just like when someone makes a statement about something Really get to the core issue, they say if you ask why five times Make a statement well, why is that? And you answer that, well, why? And you phrase the whys differently, obviously, but then you get to the core. They say five times you can get to the core of the issue. And that's a challenging thing. But I find later in life, it's so liberating for me to be confident enough to be like, man, was I fucking way off the mark on this and have my mind changed”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As opposed to being like, no, I got to die with this. I got to die with this. It's really liberal. There are definitely our ideas you want to die on that hill and no one's ever going to change your mind. But it's really liberating to be confident enough to say, change my mind. I'm lucky enough to have some smart motherfuckers around me who can tell me, listen, you're being a total dipshit. Like let's rethink this. Or like I have one friend who does the five whys all the time and he loves backing me into a corner.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can't really cite a specific thing except that understanding that the principles that you have at different points in your life can change and it's okay to change them without being a total pussy and being bullied by other people into thinking what you thought was wrong. If you come to these conclusions of your own volition and you decide to change them, that's great. And it can be really It can be really liberating. It's really liberating to have an idea that you hold so true to your Your core belief system. And then to actually have someone change your mind for you and be okay with it.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think especially like what you're talking about there. Have you ever seen the movie The Town? There's a great line in the movie where one of the main characters walks into his friend's house and he says, I need your help. We're going to go hurt some people, and you can never ask me about it again. And the friend looks up and he says, Whose car are we taking? Like, that is the type of person you need in your life. And the people, like, there are people that will walk through that door and say that to you and you drop everything you're doing. And then there's people that walk through your door and you're like, you know what? I got a hot pocket in the micro. I'm a little bit tied up right now, but I'd love to help you out, but, you know, I don't want to do that. And you don't have that deep connection with those people.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that is a consideration. So I guess it's the principle there than that you do for your friends what you think they would do for you. Is that the underlying principle? Or do you just have a blind loyalty to people in your life for different reasons? I got people that are not on my inner circle that I probably wouldn't help change a tire at two in the morning if they're on the highway, but if they called me and said, hey, we got to bury the body. I might show up for that. It's just these weird different connections you have.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And I think it's a weird thing too because you think right away like, okay, it must be a group of people that are the closest to you. That's who you're first thinking of, right? But obviously for like my best friend, I would do it no question about it. But I've got other people that are close to me that. Are close to me in other ways, and I probably wouldn't do that only because I don't think they do it for me”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think you're right, and I think you have to have some sort of core framework of principles and beliefs that you operate on. And I think when I was, what I was referencing is a little bit different, but to speak to your point, you need a framework of core principles on which you can then base a lot of your other decisions. Like I believe these three things to be true, whatever they are. And that will help inform other decisions you make in your life. As far as how you treat your friends, I've got probably three friends that if they call me right now and said, let's bury the body. Sorry, Alex, I got to go. There are other people in my life that if they said, hey, we've got to go bury the body. I would say, who is this? So, I think it depends on the relationship.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a big problem is people don't really even know what their principles are anymore. Social media and just the way that we live nowadays where we're separated from the human contact like this, like we're not, you're not contacting people in a community anymore. You're not whether you're religious or not, like you're not congregating at a church. You're not part of a parish like you would be like in, you know, down south. You're not part of that community anymore. And so. It's difficult to figure out what your principles and values are because you're constantly jumping from one bucket to the next online. And you don't get a lot of like direct reasonable feedback from people. You just get dipshit feedback like, oh, you don't believe this, well, you're a jerk.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on who depends on you. If you have a family and young kids and stuff like that, I think your obligation is primarily to them. And therefore, surrender has to be something that you consider in that moment in time so that you can take care of those people. If you're a man alone and you've got like all these principles and all this other stuff and you just don't, you're not down with what Jengis Khan is doing and what he's selling. Yeah, try and escape. Do your thing and just know that, you know, what weights on the other side of that for you potentially. But I think if there's someone else out there that depends on you, your obligation should be to them.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have a choice. You can come with us or you can run. And, you know, he gave them an option to join his Legion of Fighters, who he took very good care of. You know, he was the first military leader to pay his soldiers, families when they died. And he did that based on the booty that they got when they raided a village. He took that money. He took his share, and they divided that up amongst the soldiers and then the soldiers' families. I think he also is credited with First, like horseback mail routes or something like that, right? Isn't he the godfather of the modern postal system or something like that?”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's always difficult to look at a historical figure and their actions of their time through a modern day lens because it's very, it's easy for us to kind of you know, impugn their achievements and the things that they did and say, oh, well, you know, what he did was wrong. Well, of course, that can be true, but a lot of times we don't actually have any real good context or concept of the times they were living in and what really was deemed wrong and what really wasn't. We're looking at it through a very cushy modern lens. That being said, from what I've read about Genghis Khan, yeah, he was a violent dude, but also he gave you an option when he got to a village, he said, look.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I can't emulate those because I lack the physical ability to do that. Whereas I at least have a chance to emulate some of the people who do it through grit and through outworking people.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a subjective thing based on what skills you perceive yourself to have. I'm never, I've never been a slick, super athletic, dexterous competitor in anything. And I've always been more of a, I've got to outwork you, I've got to outgrind you. I got to outmean you. And so because I've lived that, I tend to see the beauty in that more because I have a perceptual awareness that I don't have for the people who have the luxury of being very slick and athletic and using beautiful technique. Now that said, there's a phenomenal little video the other day I sent to a friend of a compilation of foot sweeps by Lyota Machida in MMA. And they're so beautiful and they're so awesome. And it's not that I don't have an appreciation for those.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, there are other wrestlers that will never be able to pull that off, and therefore they have to pursue other ways to defeat someone. And maybe it is the Dan Gable breaking a man's spirit by outworking him type thing, which is beautiful in its own way, but we tend to self-select the ways in which we're able to be successful and then kind of take a deep dive into that.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“George Saint Pierre George Saint Pierre is a tremendous athlete, and he considers himself to be a martial artist first. He's trying to win an athletic competition. Like Nick Diaz is trying to bust your ass. Right. There's a different approach to it. And yes, they've had different results at the highest level of competition, but it's difficult to attribute the difference in results just to their approach to the sport because they're different human beings with different abilities and different physical attributes. The Saitv brothers have that luxury of being able to talk about the beauty of a perfectly timed slide by.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think in the context of combat sports, I think there's a difference between an athlete winning a contest under a certain set of rules and a fighter winning a fight under those exact same rules. There's a different approach to it. And I don't think one is any better than the other. Like in MMA, I think a great example would be.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's joy in that. You could get in an MMA fight and you could take someone down and you could mount them. And all that feels great. But when you start raining down the punches on their face from mount and like dropping elbows and stuff, like there's another level of satisfaction there. And it's tough to describe. And I don't think that it's everyone is made for it. When I was, I think when I was a senior in high school, my wrestling coach said, look, you've got to stop with all this crazy aggressive wrestling. Like they try to turn me into a technician. And it did work to a degree. And it was a humongous shift for me in terms of success. But it wasn't the same level of enjoyment out of it. Like, I mean, I got disqualified from New England because my coach said, crossface and I crossface. And he said harder. And I basically wound up and blasted a kid in the face. And his nose got, you know, busted everywhere.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when I was a wrestler in high school, I lost so many matches because of overaggressiveness. Like, you know, I would pick the top position and let you stand just so that I could do a mat return. And I wasn't trying to return you to the mat. I was actually trying to like drive you through the mat and through the ground. It gave me joy to do that. Like it wasn't like I was trying to, you know, just return you to the mat so that I could pin you. That what you just talked about, like the dominating another person, I used to look at that as you've got someone who in theory is equally trained and equally skilled as you are and you're you're absolutely out there totally dominating them”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't speak for a lot of people. And I think that was a brutally honest statement by him. And I think it's something that even if a lot of people feel it, they're not that comfortable admitting it or saying it. But I think there's great joy in landing a flush right hand on someone's jaw and then watching them crumble. You don't even feel it. You ever play baseball as a kid? You can hit a base hit off the end of the bat and it will sting your hands because of the way that you hit it. You can hit a home run and you won't feel anything and it'll just feel so good in your hands. And that's, I think that one of the joys of physical contact when you do it the right way, and that goes for all physical contact. When you do it the right way, the physical pleasure you can derive from it and the mental pleasure, it's unparalleled.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An athlete really wants to score the points. A fighter really wants to incapacitate you and put you in a position where they can do their own bidding. And the result in a Jujutsu match might just still be two points, but the motivations are very, very different.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It returns, but I've learned better how to manifest it in competition in terms of like the effects that that type of emotion has on you physically in the middle of a competition. So I've better learned how to utilize that energy. But I think another side effect of this is like having a gym where you're a bigger guy and you're the head instructor, you can't be as mean and violent as you once were because you're also now trying to run a business. And you spend so long, so many years trying not to be mean and soften your technique a little bit that that all of a sudden just becomes who you are. And I don't necessarily like that. So I've been trying to reclaim that a little bit on the mat. But I think in competition. There has to be”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're having a picnic. I think their dialectical tensions in everyone, these like opposing forces that are constantly pulling at you and at different points in your life, like it's sliding scale. And I think that it's certainly when I was a younger person, there was a lot more manifestation of the violence and a lot less of the kindness people who were not as close to me probably saw more of the violent side and only the very close people to me saw like what would pass for the kind side and now that's sliding in the other direction and I worry actually sometimes that there could be a situation where I need that old version of me and he's getting further and further away and I can't call him up if I need him and that that concerns me to a certain degree”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a combination of factors. One is like the timeliness of his career and like the age I was when he came to prominence, the raw, brutal violence and the raw brutal honesty when he speaks. I think it's easy for people to hear him or see his life and cast him aside as some simianesque like just Cretan scourge on society. But when you hear him speak, like this is not a guy who's unintelligent. This is a guy who knows himself better than probably most of us know ourselves. It's disarming and, you know, that's a humongous part of my admiration for him.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're busting your ass and you're a newt at something and you're brand new, but you're working really hard and you have a series of like moderate successes in that, like that's the guy I want to champion because that persistence and that grit over time, those successes will no longer be moderate. They'll be huge. But the person who's having moderate success by doing nothing, chances are they'll never learn to put that work in and the successes will never grow.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It, I don't think it necessarily is certainly you're wrong. And when I say Instagram, I don't want to impugn a bunch of strangers, but I have a gym with a lot of members. And I can tell you that the number of years I've been in the gym, when someone comes to me and says, this is my goal, I don't tell them yes or no in general, but I know. I can tell by the way they say it to me, I can thin slice it. I've seen the look on people's faces. And when people start to like say they want to do X, Y, and Z, I know right off the bat. This person's either going to put an effort in or they're not going to put an effort in. So to me, it's about the effort behind that.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You playing with a little dream that you're nurturing and you're trying to take that little flame and you're trying to create a roaring blaze with it? Or are you playing with the idea of it behind that there's no substance?”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, you signed up, but you're not really vulnerable because you didn't run. You didn't do this. You didn't do all the things you were supposed to do. The person who... eliminates every possible excuse and then steps on the mat and gets their ass kicked in the first round. I have so much more respect for that person than the person who does nothing and maybe unnatural ability wins a couple of matches and then writes on Facebook on how I lost to the eventual champion. That's worth zero. That's worth zero. And in that process, what did you learn about yourself? You learned about yourself that you've got a natural level of aptitude for whatever this activity is that you're doing, but you didn't actually learn how to maximize it through training and through dedication and through all these other things. I'm an incredibly interested novice musician. I love, I like to play bass, but I don't put that on anything. And, you know, I stink at it. I would really love to be sick at it. I'm currently not. But I'm not running around talking about entering, you know, any of those other.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you know how easy it is for you to put your name on something and pay the registration fee and walk in there? That's not the hard part. That's the easiest part. I don't care if you lose your first match, but I respect the person who signs up for the tournament, registers for the tournament, goes on a diet, loses weight the right way, trains their ass off, and does the things properly, and then goes on the mat. The person who simply signs their name on the registration form and jumps on the mat. If they haven't done these other things, they actually have nothing to lose. Because what they've done is they've stepped onto the mat in the ring, in the cage with a bucket full of excuses.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's accomplishments, it's ribbons, it's things like that. And it's not that those things don't mean anything to me. And the fact that I haven't in some arenas is something that I want to change, which is we can talk about that in a second. But I think that there's a difference between the very eager noob of whatever it is they're doing who does the thing so that they can Signal they do the thing that's a person I have less respect for. So we know each other primarily through jujitsu. Look at a jiu-jitsu tournament. There's this idea that people espouse online. I respect anyone with the guts to get on the mat and put it on the line and sign up for a tournament. That is the biggest load of shit I have ever heard.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me first clarify. I want to be clear about what you mean when you say a level of competence. Now, I've never won a world championship. I've never, you know, there are plenty of things in my life where I've not achieved what most people would consider to be the penultimate level of success. Now, that's a concept.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not Yeah. So let me go back first and address the Instagram point, which I think there's a difference between people whose Instagram is intrinsically tied to their profession and they have to put a specific profile out there. And I think in general. People who truthfully are their businesses tied to their Instagram profile, I want to exclude them. I think that most people, Instagram is how they want to be seen. And it's not always congruent with who you are. But I think there is a level of dishonesty there. Like, this is how I want people to see me. I'm going to put all this stuff in my Instagram bio, but. That's really not me. And when you do that, I think it's a little disingenuous. And you're right. There's not, you're never really going to marry those two things together. And it gets tough.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be honest, I think that a lot of people that train in a martial art Contemporary society, I don't consider them all martial artists. I think just because you train a martial art does not mean you're a martial artist. There are so many people that use martial arts as a form of exercise and like this little piece of self-concept. They use martial arts as a tagline in their Instagram bio. And it's really a form of exercise. It's something they do. It's not something they are. And I think there's a big difference there.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your job is being a soldier. On any given day, you might not come home. So I think that you have to start your day by thinking deeply about how you've lived to that point and the people that are living in and around you and how you've treated them. And I think that probably is what started the marriage of being kind of like a philosophical martial artist. You've got to really like on a daily basis take stock of what's going on around you and inside you because we all suffer with this kind of idea if today's my last day did I do it right and we don't really do it so much nowadays because we're so comfortable but if we're being marched out to war every day I think you'd see people live a little bit differently You know, and you treat the people around you a little bit differently.”
2020-12-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #143 – John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source