Quote:
Lee Salzman wrote:
And if someone comes along who is better than Morihei Ueshiba? Who is better than his teacher? Who is better than your current teacher(s)? Does that make all those other people suddenly wrong, and the new guy alone right? What if the new guy can show you how wrong you are in some contexts, but not others? Does that mean now he is just wrong? Saying things are right and wrong does not make something objective, it makes it self-defeatingly subjective because no one will agree with you. You need a benchmark to measure performance, that allows people to determine for themselves if something is failing them and needs improvement in some way, otherwise it is just online dick measuring.
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"Better" and "different" are two separate things. More than one of Ueshiba's direct students said that it seemed as if he were doing something completely different than they were - and they were right on target.
If you have a specific goal - "Aiki", for example, then some things are just going to be wrong, once you set political correctness and universal self-esteem aside.
If you have a non-specific goal - that whatever anybody does that makes them happy is fine, for example, than maybe it's a little different.
A major problem is that Ueshiba, as concerns Aiki, was doing something extremely specific, but in modern Aikido it has become a non-specific sense of general self-fulfillment.
Best,
Chris