Hanna B

This has been said already, I think. So it's the same thing all over again, just from the mouth of yet another individual.

The way I see it, aikido as a derivative of old Japanese jujutsu - and those are plenty. Pretty much all techniques you can find in aikido, and certainly all principles used, can also be found elsewhere in other derivatives of old Japanese jujutsu, many of them also in historically completely unrelated lines of martial arts.

The "no conflict" thing, "harmony" and what have you not. I think you will have plenty of people talking like this in old arts, where people have spent many years practising. After a certain amount of time I guess the "being able to win over others" gets boring, and you need more sophisticated goals. It's a gendai budo thing also, probably. Once you don't need the stuff in some kind of reality and you do the art for the art itself you will have other goals with training.

Morihei Ueshiba probably was a very unique individual, more so than the rest of us. But that also applies to some founders of other arts.

The only thing truly unique about aikido probably is the amount of people talking about non-confrontation etc regarding their training but then, not all aikidoists do this talking.

You didn't ask me what I used to think, but I'll answer that one anyhow. I used to think that aikido was somehow a more developed martial art, because of the not seeking aggression etc. I say people in the dojo who had karate background, judo background etc. and thought that they did that less developed things first, then they went for higher goals - maybe that is the logical development? Little did I know then that the flow of students in the other direction, from aikido to other arts, is of roughly the same size