Bruce Lee — Top Dog and Underdog
How Break Free From The Two Rascals And Finally Become Yourself
Martial artist Bruce Lee was amazingly disciplined and trained himself to accomplish incredible feats. He was an avid reader with a keen interest in philosophy, and, indeed, a philosopher in his own right. Lee thought the proper goal of any study could be self-knowledge, and said he pursued martial arts as a path to self-knowledge, the ultimate goal. Quite the striver himself, Bruce Lee wrestled philosophically with perfectionism. Bruce Lee posits two opposing forces, rascals that are clown-like in their incompetence, competing to rule within us, playing a game, he says, of self-torture.
Bruce Lee’s Top Dog
One is the top dog. The top dog is confident and assertive to a fault. The top dog is not always right, but the top dog is always righteous. The top dog is an authoritarian who attempts to rule through threats. “If you do not do (something the top dog recommends) you will not…” Here you can fill the blank with some truly catastrophic consequence — you will not be loved by your fellow man, you will not be loved by a vengeful god, you will die. The top dog thinks a lot about what you “should” do and provides coercive arguments in support of his “shoulds.”
Bruce Lee’s Underdog
The underdog is not assertive, but instead is manipulative. The underdog is the crybaby, apologetic and wheedling. The underdog has no power. The underdog, Bruce Lee says, is like Mickey Mouse, while the top dog is more like “super mouse” (…by which we guess Bruce Lee may have meant “Mighty Mouse.” Given his many other accomplishments, we will forgive him his lapse in cartoon analogy rigor.)
The underdog says “Look, I try my best. Look, I try again and again. I can’t help it if I fail. I have such good intentions!” The underdog is more psychologically sophisticated the primitive top dog. In this way, the underdog deflects the top dog’s attempt to control.
Perfectionism Is Torture
The top dog seems like the more noble and trustworthy of these two characters, so we tend to assume the top dog is right. But the top dog is actually often an unreasonable perfectionist, and as we have seen in our article on satisficers vs optimizers, too much perfection can be a real problem. According to Lee, this being our innate tendency, “If you are cursed with perfectionism, you are absolutely sunk.” This comes, mind you, from on the most disciplined, rigorous, striving people the world has ever know, a man who pushed himself to accomplish truly heroic feats.
The perfectionist top dog sets up an impossible ideal that you cannot attain. Driving you forward wearing the mask of “self improvement” the top dog castigates and nags, torturing you with your supposed inadequacy. Trying to reach those unattainable goals can lead you to a nervous breakdown. That is the underdog rebelling in a kind of sit down strike. Bruce Lee concluded that any attempt at self improvement would be fraught the antics of these two jokers, hence we cannot deliberately improve ourselves or others, a surprising conclusion from one so accomplished. What could he have meant?
Self-Actualization vs Self-Image Actualization
He said “Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like” [emphasis ours]. They pursue some idea they have of what they should be like “rather than actualizing themselves.” Bruce Lee calls striving for an idea of what you should be like “self-image actualization.” “Most people live only for their image,” Lee wrote.
According to Lee, some people have a void where their sense of self should be. They have not bothered to ask or discover who they are, because they care caught up in a pretense, preoccupied with projecting some unexamined idea of who they think they should be.
Referring to this play acting, Lee says “This again is the curse of the ideal. The curse is you should not be what you are.” Jean Paul Sartre explores a similar idea with his concept of ‘bad faith.’ For Lee, as for Sartre, responding to socially generated ideas of who you should be by pretending was unnatural and unhealthy. Every externally generated idea of what you “should” do or be constrains you, perhaps even more so if you internalize it, and mistakenly believe it is part of who you are.
How To Free Yourself From The Two Rascals
Lee wanted us to be free from social constraints and pre-conceptions, goals and expectations created by society, free to respond in the moment. He explained “There is only one thing that should control the situation. If you understand the situation, and let the situation you are in control your actions, then you learn how to cope with life.”
What did he mean? If you are not overwhelmingly concerned with your play acting at who you should be, you can be aware of your real situation and determine your course of action in “the now.” He elaborates, you do not drive according to a program, you drive a different speed if you are tired or if it is raining, and the same type of tailoring your response occurs in combat, depending on conditions. Preconceptions of who we should be and how we should do things may render us oblivious to our real current situation in the present moment.
“The less confident we are in ourselves, the less we are in touch with ourselves and the world, the more we want to control,” Lee wrote. When we believe we must assert some identity our top dog has conceived of, we will strut about, imagining our projected image in the mirror of our minds, disconnected from our true self and from others, and indeed, from the present moment. When we are comfortable in our own skin, when we do not seek to construct a false façade to match some social expectations, then we can be connected to the present moment and act as our authentic selves.
Bruce Lee concluded his notes in capitals:
“NOW = EXPERIENCE = AWARENESS = REALITY”
So, to free yourself from the two rascals, don’t listen to the top dog telling you who you should be or the underdog telling you it is too hard. Just be present and aware. Be yourself, not who you think you should be, and connect to the moment and the people around you and act based on that connection.
Explore The Art of the Good Life With Rascal
Join us as we continue on our conceptual journey to the heart of the art of the good life. You can follow our articles here on Medium if you have an account, or simply bookmark our Medium page or follow us on Facebook.
For more on the subject of perfectionism, check out our article on satisficers vs maximizers. We’ve also got practical articles covering how you can use Bitcoin for luxury traveland private islands you can explore in Asia. We will tell you how you can add years to your life in our article on the benefits of yoga. We also consider some more abstract topics, like John Maynard Keynes thoughts on the art of life, or non-being and its place at the root of luxury, or the conceptual art color the blackest black, Vantablack. We elaborated on the fascinating “invisible” MCT watch made with Vantablack and the extremely rare Rolex Deep Sea Challenge watch. If you are a gourmet, you might want to check out these fine dining restaurants in Bali that could be contenders for a Michelin star. Enjoy!
