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I am a firm beleiver in avoiding areas were conflict florishes. I don't go into dangerous parts of the city if I don't have to. I try to keep a calm deamenor in the face of a verbal attack. I also know that conflict is enevitable. There are places though that people come to, work, or learn such as schools and libraries where conflict that does occur has to be dealt with. Whether by yourself or by the people responsible for the place of work, or learning.
What if one or two of those places that you go to find knowledge are rife with people who thrive on conflict but are left unchecked. This year I have experienced far too many times this phenomona. The latest incident was seeing a highly respected Aikido Sensei (Kensho Furuya) stop posting his knowledge on the web forum because of people who seem to thrive on aggrevating others for whatever reason. How does one deal with these people. I as a reader now have lost a legitimat source of good information on Aikido just because of the bad enery Furuya sensei was forced to constantly deflect.
IMO confrontational behavior, such as that which caused Furuya senseis departure, is what we as Aikidoka are supposed to be training to control. Too many of us think that the idea of controling this behaviour is only controlling the others behavior, but it's not. It's mostly training to control our own. Until we as Aikidoka understand this we will never learn from our training, and we will continue to chase away the people that would teach us the most.
If you don't what to learn from someone who is more knowledgable then don't listen. but most of all don't ruin it for those of us who do want to learn by chasing the teachers away.
That's my journal rant. I highly doubt the trolls on this forum will learn from this, or even care, but I've said my piece.
12-14-2003 03:55 AM 