Luffy D. Monkey
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Please don't read this yet 🙏.
Luffy's gomu gomu no mi was created because Oda was too lazy to move out of his seat to get something, he said that it would be amazing if his arm could stretch freely.
Luffy hasn't killed anyone yet.
Hawkeye quoted that, what makes Luffy so dangerous is his ability to ally himself with people in seconds.
not idolatrize
I ain't going to drink is to mistake a representation of something with that thing that is representing. So in this case I don't want to I don't trade Luffy or anything that's happening here because they are representations of something and that is the thing I look up to.
And that is very important for one reason mostly which is that maybe not baby most likely I'm not understanding the thing that Luffy is representing fully. Maybe I only understand half of it maybe I have some wrong ideas of how Luffy is representing or is failing to a percent that thing that is supposed to be representing. So if I were to get on a trade Luffy which is what I am understanding but I am able to comprehend of that thing that is higher that would mean that I may fall pray to my own interpretation then I wouldn't be able to rise above that.
So first of all, Luffy is not the ideal or the thing that is trying to represent, Luffy is a representation of that, and there are many other ways of representing it, because it this is a very big thing and a very fundamental thing. But secondly I don't want to even convince you that what I see when I look at the feet yes the most accurate or the full representation of that thing that we want to learn from. It's most likely a partial understanding. Hopefully not totally wrong. And that's actually the main reason for me doing this. I'm hoping to think about this idea as I am forced to present them to you and me and evaluated by you.
Archetype
The wise fool, or the wisdom of the fool, is a form of literary paradox in which through a narrative a character recognized as a fool comes to be seen as a beholder of wisdom.[2] A recognizable trope found in stories and artworks from antiquity to the twenty-first century, the wisdom of the fool often captures what Intellectualism fails to illuminate of a thing's meaning or significance; thus, the wise fool is often associated with the wisdom found through blind faith, reckless desire, hopeless romance, and wild abandon, but also tradition without understanding, and folk wisdom. In turn, the wise fool is often opposed to learned or elite knowledge.
Awe
Let me tell you something about who you are. As a human being, there's obviously things that you don't know you are, things that you have not decided. The same way that you did not decide how many hands you would have, or where your eyes would be - very important things about you are just because you are a human, which is the result of an evolutionary process.
And here's something interesting about you that may be new to you. And it's not trivial. This is very important. Have you ever experienced awe? Awe like a feeling that is very strong, overwhelming even. It's not like other emotions, is quite something. Some people feel this when they are secretly in love with someone and they interact with them in an intimate way. Some people experiment this through art, or music. Or even a magical landscape, seeing the horizon and the ray of sun illuminating a mountain.
Have you ever seen a cat, they way they go when they encounter a dog and they do an aggressive pzz noise and get all tense and their hair grows? Imagina what's happening there.
That's awe. That brain and body circuits that activate in a cat when they are in that situation, is the same circuits that activate when you encounter a magical landscape, your crush or revolutionary art. Isn't that crazy? When I learnt that, it was really new information. I did not know that. I really did not know. Awe, the experience of awe, was sort of a mystery that I didn't understand - and I really didn't think much about it. But when I heard that about cats, it was definitely not in line with what I had tough.
And it took me forever to understand why this is the case. Which means to understand what is awe. And at the same time, it's about understanding the reason why we feel awe: how is it useful or how did it get there? And this is the answer: you know... No, your body knows something that is very wise. And that is the fact that the most terrible things are the things that offer the highest opportunities.
Here's an example: at your work there are layoffs, they are firing people. This is chaos, this is danger, it's a predator, a dragon. So you feel afraid. But at the same time, it's really the best moment to make a huge career leap: maybe they are firing the person above you whose job you want, and this is an opportunity for you to take it. I'm going to give you a weird example, that you may understand better: imagine that you are one of your ancestors, hunting in the jungle. Suddenly a beast appears. Okay, that's literally a predator, it's chaos, a dragon. You feel fear, anxiety. It can kill you. It can eat you. But wait, you can also eat it. So there is risk, but there is a reward. But think about this: if the beast happens to go for your friends, and you save them, that changes your life forever. You are another person. You become a hero. Those people will be indebted to you forever, very grateful, which is useful. But your very self with be actualized with the great idea that you are capable of doing that, you are the hero.
And that's what reality is like: the most dangerous things are the ones that present the largest opportunities. And rationally you don't know this. Actually, your rationality opposes this: things have to be good or bad, that's math, that's a formula. Your mind wants to thing in binary: the layoffs are bad, the beast is dangerous. But your body is smarter that your mind, in this case. Your mind says: this is dangerous. But your body know better, you feel something different: you feel a thrill. Your hair lifts, your hair in you arm lifts up, like in cats when they go "whhssgghskksss". You may get butterflies. You also feel fear. But it's not just danger and your body knows it.
And I've you've been in love, you know this exactly. Because when you are knowing that person and you have a crush, when you interact with them is crazy in your body. When you and that person are alone in a room for the first time, maybe the rest of the people left, maybe you are taking a but, maybe in an elevator. What's happening there? Your rationality would stay: this person can be the worst thing that happens to me, or the best regards thing that happens to me. But no. Your body is wiser. You feel like that person may be either nothing, or the best and the worst thing that ever happened to you at the same time. And that's really a very accurate description of what a romance is.
So we feel awe, you don't have to understanding, is embodied wisdom: you know, without knowing, that the danger has opportunity and the opportunity has danger. And that's why thrill is anxiety and fun at the same time. What made me think about this is something Luffy does all the time.
Honesty
Luffy is honest in a way that's even stupid. This is not a conjecture of mine, even himself right after saying a truth immediately regrets it. It's like he doesn't think enough and secrets and truths slip all the time. But that's not what happens. And I'm going to explain what's happening. Why Luffy constantly makes the mistake of slipping trutha and secrets, even to the enemy.
The answer to that question is the same answer to this question: what is the danger of lying? Beyond the moral blablablah about why lying is bad and whatever, that you have all heard, there is something deeply dangerous about lying.
This is the danger: in your mind there is not a referee. In your mind there is no policeman, or government, or teacher... there is nothing except what you create. That's your mind, it's a very very flexible thing. And there are no permanent truths. There are no maps, no compasses. There's not a static landscape: there's the mounting, there's the river... no man, your brain is very very maleable by yourself.
And that's the thing. Your mind is very maleable by yourself, and no one can fix it, not even check it. Only you can check it, only you can supervise it, and you decide everything: what's what, what's north and what's south. So this is dangerous. Because you need to know that north is north and that south is south, and there is no one to really help you in this process.
Fortunately, we are not terrible at figuring out what's what. We have experiences with reality, and we adapt to those experiences, therefore adapt to reality. But if you lie, every time you lie, you are creating a fake reality that you are adapting too. You are faking an experience, and learning from that fake experience, and you are adding noise to your dataset, you are bending the compass.
And that's the real danger of lying. You may distort your view of life, and before you know it you are lost. You may lose connection to your deep motivations. If you fake what you want, you may forget what you really want, or distort what you want in a way that's detrimental. If you fake who you are, you are going to distort your vision about yourself and lose grip on what you are doing, where you want to go.
And that's why Luffy does not lie. It's not because it's morally wrong. He's a pirate! The thing is that he is very connected with who he is and what he wants, he's always on that mode, he's using the compass, using the map inside himself, so laying requires him to change the mode. He has to switch the whole way in which he operates, disconnect from reality and manipulate reality with distortion.
We know that lying requires to think, it's for smart people. Kids have to learn to lie, it's not easy. So you may thing that Luffy is lacking brains. But I don't think it's that, because fighting and using haki requires brain as well. He fails at lying not because he is stupid, but because he is in a mental mode that is not compatible with lying, and it requires him to change modes.
But he's in that mode because he is the captain, he has to have the north right, the goals must be clear and the path straight. He can't afford to not be connected to reality. He must be deeply connected with reality.
There is something inside you that helps you make the decisions that actually help you best. And that thing is not like your hand, or your hair; is not something that you can see, or remove or add. But it's there. I personally feel it very often, when I have to do something I don't agree with, or something I don't like - there's something that lets me know: nope, don't do that, you don't want to do that. And the other way around too, something that instantly tells me: yes, that's right, that's the thing you have to do.
So this thing, whatever it is, it's there, but we know very little about how it works. If it gets broken, we don't know how to fix it. We can't even tell if it's broken. It's a tricky thing.
My sense so far, is that it's something that works like a muscle. If you use it a lot, it becomes stronger. If you listen to this thing, and then act accordingly, it gets stronger and works better and better. And most likely it happens the other way around too: if you don't listen to it, or you don't act it our, it gets weaker. Like if it was a voice you keeping ignoring, it can get thiner and thiner. And could it get to the point where you no longer hear it? That's a fear I have. I am truly afraid of this happening to me. And if there are people who currently live in that state, I don't know what to say, it's difficult, I'm sorry for you, truly, I don't desire that not even to my worlst enemy.
So I think that's why Luffy is like that with being honest. It's a muscle, much likes his other muscles, that's so strong that it works all the time. And sometimes it gets him in trouble: but it's actually what makes him the most fit to be the captain.