And to be clear again:
My point is that all of the qualifiers; to one degree or another implies that
1. Either they were weird driven men, who's strange personalities aided some sort of twisted focus in order to acquire their skills.
2. Or they were nice young chaps, who's purusit of these skills made them acquire weird and strange personalities.
Tr
No where, any where do we see mention that maybe these skills-provide neither of the above, and have also produced wonderful balanced people.
No where any where do we see mention of the people who have these skills to what ever degree, not fitting a profile of weird strange people, but rather are professional business people with familes and friends, who are warm and caring people.
I would be so bold to point out that no one..who actually has something approaching these skills, would agree with this idea that you must be crazy to attain them.
When reading your post Jon, it leaves one with the impression that ....of course they would have to be "not normal"...because, well, after all normal people don't have the skills!
I will stand on a prediction; Within ten years, lets review this thread. People are going to have to explain how thousands of normal people ended up with these skills-to one degree or another.
It is this work, the true nature of it...that has created budo giants for eons...and the vast majority of budo people simply didn't have access to it or refused to do the work. And that was all it was.
Dan