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Old 02-29-2016, 11:05 AM   #74
Erick Mead
 
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Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
Location: West Florida
Join Date: Jun 2005
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Re: Am I Really Practicing Budo?

Quote:
Jon Reading wrote: View Post
... All cultures with a military class solicit this promise because it is the way people feel comfortable allowing the military class to exist - the force will not be used against them. There was a reason why no army could enter Rome...
Yes. The reason was that the people and their tribunes (or, if you prefer -- the mob and their demagogues) did not like competition in the field of dealing out political violence. There is nothing moral about the issue, and everything political. Nor does the moral calculus invariably run in only one direction on that measure. This country was founded on a set of observations about this particular problem, in fact, because the threats to peaceable or decent living can come from either -- or both -- directions.

There was no lack of military in Roman Italy proper -- the Social War made that eminently clear. Crossing the Rubicon marked the entry into Italy, and military command in Italy was forbidden to all except the elected consuls. Governors, like G. Julius Caesar, only had command in the provinces outside Italy by delegation -- not by legal right.

It is not that the people must be made "comfortable" with the military class existing -- it is the measure of change in the balance of power between a small minority corps of professional forces and a broader, less well-trained but more numerous set of popular forces that will naturally exist unless actively and ruthlessly suppressed. Not so different from today, actually.

It is this precise division and balance in favor of popular forces in Japan that Nobunaga, Toyotomi and lastly Tokugawa exploited to end the Sengoku period and before ruthlessly bottling the genie back up again. In Rome, before the legions more fully professionalized (the Social War) the balance was in favor of the popular and tribal forces, who forced their citizenship. With the advent of the fully developed legionary system, and suppression of the tribal ally forces the balance shifted in favor of the professionals. In the Late empire the increasing reliance on provincial tribal levies reverted to the old ally system , and central control progressively broke down. In Japan, with firearms, the balance was in favor of the popular armies. The Edo retrenchment on firearms technology was precisely to restore the old balance of terror in favor of the professionals. Arguably, the advent of modern irregular war with garden store IED's, endemic cyber capabilities, and terror tactics has tilted the balance again in the Middle East-- back to the tribes -- and elsewhere as well, perhaps.

Budo cannot be placed outside of its context, historically and functionally, and if it is to have relevance it must find context.

Those trained to think WITH their bodies in situations of violence are those most disposed to lead others in such settings of active conflict. Such people form the nuclei around which coalesce BOTH professional forces serving the parties in power (or seeking it) -- AND of popular forces that may resist exercises of such power that offend them -- or begin to move to preemptively attack the forces that attempt it. Defects of budo on one side leads to tyranny. Defects on the other side leads to anarchy. Neither is desired, but the balance is hard to keep.

The result of these contests when they occur is never foreordained. But the seeding of more budo-disposed minds and bodies among the population inherently make the job of the professionals much harder in imposing results dictated by power, as opposed to those that the people will generally acquiesce in.

I have occupied both sides of the balance in my lifetime. Both sides are necessary to balance -- and budo is necessary in both... and the less balanced budo between the sides -- in my opinion -- the more likely there is to be war -- or its near substitutes.

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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