Quote:
Mary Malmros wrote:
Yannis, you're indulging in pointless ranting generalizations. As I said before, this is no basis for a discussion. If you know some way of forcing every human being on earth to be scrupulously honest, by all means, produce it. If you know some method of training every human being on earth to recognize deception, by all means, tell us. But you don't.
You sound to me like someone who came to aikido with stars in his eyes after watching too many bad martial arts movies, ready to drink any koolade offered to you -- and if none is offered, you simply make your own. I have seen more than a few students like this. You know what happens to them? They come in the door with their agenda, and they refuse to accept anything that does not conform to their silly fantasy. I have seen the most honest, scrupulous senseis you can imagine try to disabuse these individuals of their foolishness. The truth falls on deaf ears; these people are willfully self-deceived. Eventually they realize they got it all wrong, and then they blame the world, or the art, or anyone or anything but themselves. And then they become soapboxing crusaders like you who rant around the internet screaming, "IT'S ALL LIES!"
So, bullshit exists, and perhaps your bullshit meter is broken or needs recalibration. But to project your issues onto all aikido students is silly. Not everybody abandons common sense when they walk into an aikido dojo, and not everybody is foolishly dazzled by rank in a system that they've never heard of.
If you want to call out frauds, by all means do so, but have the courage and the integrity to get specific and name names. Your pointless generalized ranting about "there are teachers out there" is just absurd and a complete waste of time.
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This is such a mess of an answer and so far from what I am, what I do and what my experiences were that I don't know were to...begin.
All your assumptions about me are completely in the wrong direction and show a superficial reading of my posts and a lot of...fantasy. I was never fond of martial arts movies, I am a kind of a, let's say "specialist" of some sort in cinema and music because that happens to be my job. I am a classic cinema fan (even silent era) and generally I know a good movie when I see one whether I like it or not.
I had no bad dojo experiences if you read my posts it will be made clear. I chose aikido because I wanted to learn a martial art and I stayed with my teacher for so many years because he is the best I have ever seen at least for me. He never tried to impress me with rank or recognition but that doesn't mean that he is not officially recognized. On the contrary he is, but he is not enthusiastic about that ranking system and my years with him have proven to me that it's his technique and knowledge that make him special for me at least!
So, don't get rude and personally insult me with a huge hypothetical assumption about me based in complete lack of knowledge about me and my life. I didn't use any personal insults, I never said that everybody is a fraud. I merely said that in a system were people can hold a rank that many times does not reflect their actual skills, we cannot advice a student to choose a dojo based on such criteria. Even the simple fact that people that hold the same rank obviously do not possess the same technical ability should make us think twice what in fact recognition and affiliation reflects. We can't keep on playing the game of "whose daddy is bigger than whose" because it's childish! We need to get closer to the essence of things...