Arrogance and Aikido

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[Daniel Lloyd]

Please take no offense to this, it isn't meant to sound rude or offensive. Merely an observation of myself and my perceptions. In no way are they right or wrong - they are just there. The questions I'm asking will push buttons and I apologize - in no way am I taking stabs at Aikido, I love it as much as any other Aikidoka. :)

As I progressed through Aikido, through to my green belt, I felt more confident but also increasingly arrogant about the techniques I learnt and how - in a way - Aikido looks down upon other martial arts. Even before I reached my green belt I tried my best to be humble and modest - and have a fair and open mind. But only now through several mistakes, friends lost and other people's injuries, have I seen how arrogant and assuming I've become.

What I'm trying to say is - Does Aikido blur one's perception of reality and oneself through constant achievement? Or is it just the person who is to blame?

Is Aikido the truth (enlightenment without conflict) or just a fabricated reality that's been twisted and distorted from person to person?

*I tried to make it sound fair but still get my point across, my apologizes if I upset anyone, that wasn't my goal, nor shall it ever be my goal*

[TreyPrice]

"I felt more confident but also increasingly arrogant about the techniques I learnt and how - in a way - Aikido looks down upon other martial arts."

You have answered your own question. Its you. Aikido cannot be "arrogant" or "look down." I have studied other arts - I have seen a lot of people think "their" art is the best. Being arrogant is not exclusive of Aikido, nor is "looking down" on other arts.

You may want to back up and look at how you came to these thoughts and feelings. You have just begun you studies in Aikido - soon you may realize that you are engaged in a study of self (:do: ).

Doka for the day:

Don't be stupid.
Shut-up and train!

Train well!

[Marc Abrams]

Daniel:

I think that what you describe is a common part of an acculturation process, regardless of the subject matter. People have a tendency to become somewhat defensive and egotistical with something that they are in the process of personally identifying with. An important part of the Aikido process should be letting go of that ego attachment.

Good Luck,

Marc Abrams

[dps]

Do a reality check. Find a friend from another martial art and test your Aikido ability on them.

David

[Budd]

You are responsible for your own behavior, regardless of whether you study a martial art. That said, there are some dojo cultures that inculcate a "superiority complex". It borders on the ironic and absurd when said culture comes about without any kind of realistic pressure testing. It gets into downright abuse and cultism when the culture creates a "willfully subordinate" creature that both accepts any form of abuse while at the same time looking forward to the day when they can in turn inflict it on others.

[lbb]

I don't think it's quite as simple as "Aikido" making people arrogant or blurring their perceptions. "Aikido" doesn't believe, promote, look down on...people do that. The practice of aikido doesn't automatically create an attitude of arrogance, and yet I can't agree with Trey that it's all the individual. The attitude that this art is superior, that it represents "enlightenment without conflict", does not form in a vacuum. Rather, I think, it's a matter of a seed coming to rest in fertile soil. The seed is the idea that aikido is in and of itself superior to other martial arts, that it has solved the paradox of the non-violent fighting art where other martial arts have failed (or aren't even trying), and this seed originates in the statements of many aikido practitioners. The fertile soil is the individual's active wish to believe in and nurture the "seed", for reasons good (sure would be nice, wouldn't it?) and bad (simple ego gratification -- "look at me, I'm part of this enlightened thing").

Aikido hasn't solved the "peaceful martial art" paradox, nor IMO does it offer some kind of unambiguous formula through which an individual can solve it in his/her life. Arrogance lies in believing otherwise. For an individual, aikido may provide the context that allows them to reflect on the paradoix and make their own peace with it, but that's as far as it goes.

This is just part of the greater myth of the martial arts: that they help you attain "inner peace and tranquility", "self-respect", "respect for others", "self-discipline", "a more harmonious attitude", "confidence", and a host of other character virtues. These myths will never go away as long as dojos use them as bullet points on their brochures (and by the way, if you're wondering why they're in quotes, it's because I pulled them all from a quick google search...yeah, the myths are alive and well and actively being used to sell martial arts). In reality, very few dojos attempt to try and actively teach any of these skills and virtues, and it would be alarming if they did, because very few teachers are in any way qualified to teach them. In a well-run children's class, as part of the normal process of socialization, kids are going to learn some social skills such as appropriate boundaries and basic civility, and the structure of the class may help them to develop some ability to defer gratification and understand longer-term payoffs...but that is true of a host of other activities.

And adults? Adults who come to martial arts because they have a problem with their temper or with stress should probably look elsewhere first for answers: anger management classes, meditation classes, therapy, or simple common-sense lifestyle adjustments. If you're working too hard and eating the wrong foods and staying up late getting overstimulated playing computer games and kicking yourself awake in the morning with caffeine and hating your job and not cultivating healthy relationships with other people, a class won't help you -- the fix is right in front of you, and only you can do it. Senseis do not teach anger management, and despite the token "meditation" at the start of class, very few really know anything on the subject.

So...no, aikido doesn't make people arrogant, but it does have a problem of promoting some myths to an audience of willing believers. The truth is good enough, I say. No need to make up fairy tales.

[Rabih Shanshiry]

Do a reality check. Find a friend from another martial art and test your Aikido ability on them.

David

+1

Especially if they are good. A nice slice of humble pie should take care of your problem. :)

[crbateman]

You may be getting a touch of what many in MA's call "brown belt syndrome"... It happens when you've got a few years training under your belt, and you're getting complacent about the stuff you do every day coming easier to you than it used to. Many at this stage also display a compulsion to "teach" others, regardless of being asked. This "illness" often ends shortly after the light goes on, and one realizes he's only scratched the surface, training-wise...

You'll get over it, once you have admitted the problem to yourself, and resolve to just shut up and train...

[Amir Krause]

Daniel:

I think that what you describe is a common part of an acculturation process, regardless of the subject matter. People have a tendency to become somewhat defensive and egotistical with something that they are in the process of personally identifying with. An important part of the Aikido process should be letting go of that ego attachment.

Good Luck,

Marc Abrams

Exactly, this is a common human issue to all activities done with passion. You get to a point were you have some ability, and succeed in most of your endeavors, then you become sure you are at the top of the world and can do anything.
Amazingly, most who progress and evolve some more change their views and notice their own failures and limits.

A good teacher should calm you down, often it will take him time.

Amir

[SeiserL]

IMHO, arrogance comedsfrom ignorance.
Everything in the dojo is artificial.

[Rob Watson]

Self mastery and mastery of the self are the keys to progress. As you become more aware of flaws or weakness in yourself (however you define them) you now have more to work on and improve.

The folks who think they have it all figured out and are happy will never progress.

[C. David Henderson]

IThe truth is good enough, I say. No need to make up fairy tales.

Great post. Thanks.

[Conrad Gus]

I know what you mean, but in my experience, aikido is a very humbling art. There comes a time when you realize how incredibly deep and difficult is this art, and you wish you had just picked up something easy instead!

As my grandfather used to say, you get out of something what you put into it.

[Mark Peckett]

Dorothy Rowe the world-renowned psychologist and writer says a nice thing, to the effect that good people are more likely to become depressed.

I don't think you have anything to worry about, Daniel - someone who worries about being arrogant has got too much to worry about!

[Anjisan]

I don't think it's quite as simple as "Aikido" making people arrogant or blurring their perceptions. "Aikido" doesn't believe, promote, look down on...people do that. The practice of aikido doesn't automatically create an attitude of arrogance, and yet I can't agree with Trey that it's all the individual. The attitude that this art is superior, that it represents "enlightenment without conflict", does not form in a vacuum. Rather, I think, it's a matter of a seed coming to rest in fertile soil. The seed is the idea that aikido is in and of itself superior to other martial arts, that it has solved the paradox of the non-violent fighting art where other martial arts have failed (or aren't even trying), and this seed originates in the statements of many aikido practitioners. The fertile soil is the individual's active wish to believe in and nurture the "seed", for reasons good (sure would be nice, wouldn't it?) and bad (simple ego gratification -- "look at me, I'm part of this enlightened thing").

Aikido hasn't solved the "peaceful martial art" paradox, nor IMO does it offer some kind of unambiguous formula through which an individual can solve it in his/her life. Arrogance lies in believing otherwise. For an individual, aikido may provide the context that allows them to reflect on the paradoix and make their own peace with it, but that's as far as it goes.

This is just part of the greater myth of the martial arts: that they help you attain "inner peace and tranquility", "self-respect", "respect for others", "self-discipline", "a more harmonious attitude", "confidence", and a host of other character virtues. These myths will never go away as long as dojos use them as bullet points on their brochures (and by the way, if you're wondering why they're in quotes, it's because I pulled them all from a quick google search...yeah, the myths are alive and well and actively being used to sell martial arts). In reality, very few dojos attempt to try and actively teach any of these skills and virtues, and it would be alarming if they did, because very few teachers are in any way qualified to teach them. In a well-run children's class, as part of the normal process of socialization, kids are going to learn some social skills such as appropriate boundaries and basic civility, and the structure of the class may help them to develop some ability to defer gratification and understand longer-term payoffs...but that is true of a host of other activities.

And adults? Adults who come to martial arts because they have a problem with their temper or with stress should probably look elsewhere first for answers: anger management classes, meditation classes, therapy, or simple common-sense lifestyle adjustments. If you're working too hard and eating the wrong foods and staying up late getting overstimulated playing computer games and kicking yourself awake in the morning with caffeine and hating your job and not cultivating healthy relationships with other people, a class won't help you -- the fix is right in front of you, and only you can do it. Senseis do not teach anger management, and despite the token "meditation" at the start of class, very few really know anything on the subject.

So...no, aikido doesn't make people arrogant, but it does have a problem of promoting some myths to an audience of willing believers. The truth is good enough, I say. No need to make up fairy tales.

Yea..what Mary said. In my experience, training in other martial arts, the idea of "superior" martial art is not unique to aikido. However, perhaps the reasons are a little more so. To me, it seems that many of the other martial arts where this has arisen (BJJ/ MMA) for example, the efficiency and effectiveness is the basis for the arrogance where as in Aikido, it is the moral high ground that is claimed because we as Aikidoka are to "enlightened" to dirty ourselves with brutish fighting--yuck.

If only it were true that ability to see the futility of violence were enough to ensure that it will not reach out and touch you--that may be arrogance too.

[Buck]

[1]What I'm trying to say is - Does Aikido blur one's perception of reality and oneself through constant achievement? Or is it just the person who is to blame?

[2]Is Aikido the truth (enlightenment without conflict) or just a fabricated reality that's been twisted and distorted from person to person?



[1]Yes, imo all the above is correct for Aikido and every other martial art, religion, sport, MMA/BJJ and what have you. For reality find the worse gang territory, find the most notorious gang's crack house, or what have you, and try to enter without getting killed. Go to any part of the world where the people have to live with constant daily terror attacks be it drug war like parts of South America, or similar countries in Africa where genocides attempts are being made upon the people. Join the military, and go off to war. Anyone of these things are "reality" and any thing less is a fabrication, twisted and distorted. Aikido doesn't do this on a whole as much as other martial arts or martial sports. Because of it's tenet of non-violence. And if injuries occur (Aikido waza are capable of producing such results) during practice because someone feels superior that is outside of Aikido's tenets, and common respect.

[2] Aikido is a truth. Why? Because of the principles have been fused into wazas expressed as Aikido waza. Aikido is based and uses sound principles. How these principles are expressed is through the modification of combat techniques into techniques more acceptable to modern application and more compliant to societies rules of acceptable self-defense. The other element which is very abstract, coded, and forged form various different thought, philosophy, and experiences within the Japanese cultural of 50 or so years ago, also is a truth. Because the spiritual side was composed of combined or pooled established elements of the Japanese culture, simple example, Shinto, Budo, and the parent Aikido arts. Point being it wasn't creatively birthed from some one's imagination. It was put together from well established sources from someone who knew what they were doing. A someone, who had a purpose and vision with in the framework of the modern Japanese arts.

It is the person who is afflicted with the described conditions. That individual within him or herself either has a predisposition to such afflictions, seeking it out, or already fully engaged into the afflictions. Not everyone is afflicted by the described conditions presented. The twisting of reality, etc. is done internally on the part of the individual. Not to say there isn't a catalyst of these described conditions perpetuated by peers, group and leader pressure, presentation, or influence. But again it is the individual that buys into it, or not. And not every dojo is like that. Don't look at the art as a root cause, look at the people and the environment who are doing the developing and grooming of these conditions or not. Look at the individuals who buy into it, and seek if they are predisposition, and stuff to all that.

I hope this didn't come off unceremonious, this is something experienced by us humans and is manifested in so many different areas of our world. I am basically saying it is universal these conditions with all martial arts, or competitions between individuals or in groups. It is the individual's choice and not a result of the art. To get through it, I feel is to realize this, purge yourself of such conditions or predisposition to the conditions, cause when you do you will be much happier with what you do, and the truth will be evident. Hope this helps.

[Mikemac]

Many at this stage also display a compulsion to "teach" others, regardless of being asked. This "illness" often ends shortly after the light goes on, and one realizes he's only scratched the surface, training-wise...


Hahahahahaha! Even though I've been back into Aikido for a few months, I noticed this behavior right away with some brown belts. I just want to tell them to shut it. To be fair, they may ofer something helpful which I appreciate, but most of the time the ones I meet at seminars are plain annoying.

For instance, this one brown belt criticized me because when I got thrown, I stepped on someone's jo. I wanted to say, "True, I shouldn't have stepped on it, but also a student shouldn't leave their jo at the edge of the mat where someone could slip on it and break their neck!"

(Later I noticed they belonged to her.)

[ninjaqutie]

Hahahahahaha! Even though I've been back into Aikido for a few months, I noticed this behavior right away with some brown belts. I just want to tell them to shut it. To be fair, they may ofer something helpful which I appreciate, but most of the time the ones I meet at seminars are plain annoying.

For instance, this one brown belt criticized me because when I got thrown, I stepped on someone's jo. I wanted to say, "True, I shouldn't have stepped on it, but also a student shouldn't leave their jo at the edge of the mat where someone could slip on it and break their neck!"

(Later I noticed they belonged to her.)

Perhaps this uke should have been more aware where they were throwing you. (Especially if she didn't want you stepping on her jo) ;)

[Mike Sigman]

So...no, aikido doesn't make people arrogant, but it does have a problem of promoting some myths to an audience of willing believers. What Asian martial-art doesn't, in the large, seem to do just that? People in exotic uniforms, muttering exotic foreign words and phrases, authority figures, ritualized combat and ritualized formalities, and so on? Interestingly enough, the idea of the "Tao" (a "Do") is antithetical to all of the sheep-herd stuff like that, yet the sheep so often present the idea that they are "different from others". ;)

Mike "Hi! I'm a sensitive artist unlike you. Baa" Sigman

[Anjisan]

Hahahahahaha! Even though I've been back into Aikido for a few months, I noticed this behavior right away with some brown belts. I just want to tell them to shut it. To be fair, they may ofer something helpful which I appreciate, but most of the time the ones I meet at seminars are plain annoying.

For instance, this one brown belt criticized me because when I got thrown, I stepped on someone's jo. I wanted to say, "True, I shouldn't have stepped on it, but also a student shouldn't leave their jo at the edge of the mat where someone could slip on it and break their neck!"

(Later I noticed they belonged to her.)

I my opinion it is not the place of a brown belt to be spouting off about what you do as a Yudansha, :disgust: unless it is a safety issue.

[RED]

Some one once told me, "You are confident in your Aikido several years before you are competent in them."

[Janet Rosen]

Some one once told me, "You are confident in your Aikido several years before you are competent in them."

Heck almost 100% of car drivers think they are above average :-)

In May 2005, Katherine Derbyshire and I wrote a Mirror column about attitudes in aikido (http://www.aikiweb.com/columns/themirror/2005_05.html) that seems relevent to the OP's questions.

One section stands out to me:
In many dojos, representing the full range of styles and affiliations, newbies are told WE ARE SPECIAL. We are caring. We are nonaggressive. O Sensei was a genius, a wizard, a wonder, he reinvented the martial arts and we are the living legacy.

In any context, telling people that they are an elite sets up a strong potential for an "us vs. them" superiority attitude. Furthermore, being told that one is special tends to lead to less self-examination, rather than more. If simply studying aikido makes you a Good Person, then you don't actually need to do any of the heavy lifting needed for real self improvement. Research and direct experience have demonstrated these cause-and-effect phenomena in other settings, from families to workplaces to nations. Why are we surprised to see them in the aikido dojo?

[Andrew Macdonald]

to the OP

i think that anyone who has the ability to step back from oneself and notice that they are being arrogant has something to work with. I have met some truly arrogant people and they don;t see themselves as arrogant they see themselves as the best.

so what you want to do with your insight is completely up to you

as for aikido breeding arrogance. i think it can certainly give you a false sense of confidence because of the attacks that are mainly used in aikido, and also because many people in aikido don;t really know how to attack properly (not just the power of the attack but also using faints, counters etc.)

but above all this i have found in many martial arts that it is the teacher that can breed a lot of arrogance in his or her students

[aikishihan]

Only when you have mastered becoming a genuine student, will you have the foundation to becoming a "master' in your own right.

An example of genuine humility may well occur when you allow someone else to be the guide, if only for a little while.

Hey, maybe the word was "elegance", not arrogance.

In oneness,

[Mark Peckett]

Dorothy Rowe the world-renowned psychologist and writer says a nice thing, to the effect that good people are more likely to become depressed.

I don't think you have anything to worry about, Daniel - someone who worries about being arrogant has got too much to worry about!

I meant to say "hasn't got too much to worry about!" :)

[lbb]

What Asian martial-art doesn't, in the large, seem to do just that?

"Seem" is the key word here, Mike. I've trained in three other styles, and in none of them did I experience the belief among practitioners that their style had solved the paradox of the peaceful fighting art or that their style somehow had a completely different take on things than any other martial art.

[Walter Martindale]

Heck almost 100% of car drivers think they are above average :-)

(snip)



I've spread that message from time to time - "almost everyone in the heavy traffic situation is busy thinking that the driver in the other car is a dickhead." Usually, they're not. :D

[delliott]

Daniel,

I have been trying to study aikido on and off the mat. When I feel the seed of arrogance coming up in me, I don't water that seed anymore. Instead I look to my training.

Awase. Irimi. Tenken.

I'm not talking about applying these to another person, but to the entire situation. The big picture, as my Sensei always reminds me. Pay attention to the big picture. You know what? He is very correct.

Just my humble opinion.....

[delliott]

Daniel,

This may also be of use to you. Try and remember, what was it that brought you to aikido in the first place? What fascinated you about the art? Let me pass on this quote:

"Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment. "

O-Sensei