ryback

Well, this is a bit related to some of my posts in other threads and I know that Mary and I already disagree on that one, which is healthy by the way, people agreeing all the time would make a really boring planet...

I am not really fond of organizations, affiliations and official recognitions, not that I consider them "bad" but it's not my cup of tea...
The reason behind that is that most times can be misleading and can send people on a ranking promotion and affiliation hunting and sometimes on their way to that they miss...Aikido understanding and technical skill.

But there is also another reason even more related in this specific thread... Most times organizations help divide people into camps, rather than unite them under a common art, Aikido. If Aikido is the art of harmony (and technically it is) there surely is no harmony in this. Even the mere fact that organization's ranks are not recognized by another it's problematic and shows that I am probably right when I feel that something is terribly wrong in this system...
If someone has spent 25 years in a, let's say, Saito lineage dojo and he is holding a specific rank, he may be asked to abandon his recognition and start as a beginner in a, let's say again, Shioda lineage dojo. Yet both Saito and Shioda were o'sensei's students, so every lineage leads back to him (not to mention the ones that preceded him back in the Aikijutsu days, we can't ignore any link of the chain).

In conclusion, I just feel that all this..."aikido politics" have nothing to do with the true spirit of the warrior and furthermore they make matters worse because people are focusing their effort and concentration on hunting down diplomas and papers instead of the effectiveness of their technique and that, in my opinion is leading to a decay, a fade out of the art...