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Old 05-29-2012, 11:52 AM   #164
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
United_States
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Re: Spiritual and i/p

Quote:
Conrad Gustafson wrote: View Post
Hugh,

I completely agree with you. Anyone can go to a seminar and judge for themselves. It's not at all like having to travel to the south pole!

In my case, I don't have any teachers or personal acquaintances that have come back from a Dan Harden seminar to say IHTBF. I'm not saying that the whole thing is untrue, I'm just saying that until this happens, I'm not going to prioritize a Dan Harden seminar over other opportunities (holidays with my family, for example).

So far, all I have seen is people making claims on the Internet, and a relatively small number of people jumping on to back up those claims. I know that IHTBF, but if there were some videos of the training or whatever I might be less skeptical.

I am also aware that once a person has made a commitment (travelling to a seminar, training for X number of hours), one becomes invested and is less likely to be critical of it because of the loss of the initial investment that would occur by rejecting it. Take Scientology, for example. If someone invests their life savings and decades of commitment to the "religion", it makes it very difficult for them to think critically about it. There are lots of Scientologists on Internet forums who claim that Scientology is "The Truth" (ring any bells here?), but that doesn't inspire me to run out and join up in order to prove or disprove this for myself.

The whole Dan Harden / IP phenomenon could be one of three things:
  1. exactly what they say it is
  2. a group of martial artists who have convinced themselves that they have found the one true way when in fact they have found one way out of many (even if it is a very good way)
  3. complete BS
I haven't seen anything to convince me one way or the other, but I think there is a high enough chance of #2 (or maybe #3) that I'm not willing to invest a whole bunch of time, $$ and effort to find out.

Maybe one day my situation will change. I'm not ruling out the possibility.

Conrad
Hi Conrad
I take no offense to critical analysis when it is applied.
Unfortunately it is almost never applied.

Here you leave out critical pieces.
a. This isn't the Dan show. It would be more incredulous, even ridiculous, were we discussing some "method" I found or as you put it "rediscovered. That is not the case. Others teach this-though they are rare and although Ueshiba discussed it, people didn't even know what he meant or how to translate material that you can have found in any number of internal Chinese sources. Hence, the lack of real education of Ueshiba's students and biographers remains self-evident.
b. To wit; you left out "what" it is...because you and the vast majority don't know, and of those that know some things, they don't know how to train it or really use it.
c. Any reasonable person would accept the fact that thousands are going out to meet me and others training and teaching this. Indeed, it becomes incredulous as a counter argument to avoid the seriously experienced people opting to train this way.
d. Total B.S. can then...only apply If you want to call 14 Shihan 6 6th Dans and a host of Go dans, who have trained for decades....deluded idiots susceptible to B.S. and not being able to differentiate. Thats seems rather desparate and dismissive to me as a counter.

On the whole, credibility needs to win over emotion, prejudice, bitterness and anger, so we can all see certain truths or at least highly probable answers. At this point "total bullshit" as a possibility and counter protrays either total ignorance of the narrative thus far, or a willing denial of some pretty obvious facts, that this work is larger, older and more established than any single individual.
People have hired contractors and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trusting them with a project with less word of mouth recommendations than has been shown here.
Cheers
Dan

Last edited by DH : 05-29-2012 at 12:05 PM.