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Carl Thompson wrote:
Happy New Year Chris (or even "Ake Ome")
My home country, the one I'm living in and plenty others all seem to get by with symbolic monarchs.
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True of course, but the functional point here is the "symbolic" part. Nobody (except some of the uyoku fringe groups) beleive them to be "actual" monarchs.
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Carl Thompson wrote:
I'm afraid I totally disagree with this. Respect should be a default position. Showing respect is something one should try to do all the time without any "earning" needing to be done in advance from the recipients, be they family members, strangers, hereditary symbolic leaders, religions, cultures, organisations, the environment or whatever. They can lose that respect through their actions, but you give them all an equal chance on contact and even when they lose it, the "showing respect" part isn't just for them, but for everyone else too. The innocent bystander does not deserve to be dragged into one's disrespect for someone who transgressed. It's all a delicate balance between oneself, other people and the rest of the world.
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In the abstract of showing respect for all people - sure, I can agree with that. However, my point stands - I don't believe in automatic entitlement due to genetic heritage. I have no problem with automatically respecting the descendents of whoever or whatever, but that changes when they start asking to be sent or paid large sums of money. In that case the bar gets higher.
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Carl Thompson wrote:
I can't agree with this either. The Aikikai are better off sticking to their status as a legal foundation for propagating the art.
It's simply not true that you can't stay in business for long if you don't provide good service or value. You can and plenty do! Okay, we all have different ideas of what might be "good", but business is competition with winners and losers. Winning doesn't mean you did the best job. It might mean your virtual slave workforce is based in an "economic processing zone" making an ordinary product for a pittance that you mark up to ridiculous levels because your main outlay is on advertising and getting celebs to model it to impressionable youths. It might mean you run a Mcdojo that... well, you get the picture..
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I never said that they shouldn't stick with their status as a legal foundation for propogating the art, I don't know where you got that. The rest of your comments don't seem relevant to my point, which was in response to a statement that the Aikikai should be run as a business. I was pointing out that businesses are subject to normal market forces, and need to recognize that fact.
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Carl Thompson wrote:
I agree that it has to change with the times. There are some complicated issues. Liking or disliking different cultural practices (including Iemoto) is one, but I don't think it is the main one. In many countries it's not that unusual to have a hereditary symbolic figure, even for organisations as big as national governments. Having it for martial arts, the tea ceremony etc in Japan culture isn't such a big deal.
You talked about Osensei's "massive lack" of interest in organisations, even though his actions clearly show someone who took an active role in them. From village councilman to head of the martial arts groups such as the Budo Senyokai, throughout his life the founder was a supportive member of numerous organisations. Throughout his life he also gave and accepted accreditation in the form of teaching licenses and dan ranks, including from the hereditary head of a whole country (the Japanese Emperor). What would the founder have wanted?
Regards
Carl
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Those were organizations he joined, but that's quite different from being active in forming your own organization for Aikido, which he never did. I think the historical record is clear that he showed a "massive lack" of interest in that respect (that's actually a direct quote from Shoji Nishio, by the way, who was so worried about the lack of interest that he went out and started organizing Aikikai groups on his own).
At best, he sat back and let Kisshomaru do the lifting.
Best,
Chris