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Old 11-10-2012, 10:47 PM   #91
David Orange
Dojo: Aozora Dojo
Location: Birmingham, AL
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,511
United_States
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Re: The Fear of Power

Quote:
Chris Hein wrote: View Post
David,
Your argument is really getting hard to understand.
Well, I'm sure it's getting clearer and clearer, but knowing your tendency to blind yourself to things that are right in front of you by kicking up clouds of dust inside your head, I'm not surprised that you're getting more confused.

Quote:
Chris Hein wrote: View Post
So, you believe that people who train with modern firearms are not more physically powerful, in a fight, then someone with something they learned in Aikido, even the super Aikido you know about?
Maybe. Maybe not. If they have trained only in firearms and not at all in h2h fighting, then no, they are not more physically powerful than someone trained in even fairly weak aikido. They only become powerful when they have their weapons in their hands. As long as it's in the holster (especially if the holster is not on their person), they remain as weak as their physical training. But even if they can get the weapon out, a skilled aikidoka has a chance to relieve them of the weapon before they can use it. I actually began my martial arts training at age nine with a manual on arresting techniques from the FBI Academy, which my father had attended the previous year. He brought home all these manuals, including the one on arresting techniques and another called Police Training Disarming Methods, which I'm looking at right now. It opens with this statement: "When a gun is drawn, anything can happen. It isn't necessarily the formidable weapon it may appear to be. Everything depends on who is holding the gun - and who is standing in front of it."

Remember, this is what the FBI was teaching its agents in 1963. In fact, this book is dated 1955--the year I was born. It is filled with page after page of methods of taking live weapons out of the hands of criminals. In the yoseikan hombu, with Mochizuki Sensei, we trained on taking rifles from attackers, including rifles with bayonets (jukendo), which was one of Ueshiba's favorite studies.

So what do you think?

In case you're still uncertain, Mochizuki Sensei relates a time when he was in China after WWII. Because of his work in Mongolia during the war, he had become a target for Mao Tse Tung and was once accosted by a man with a pistol. Now this was a wartime incident. The man was trying to force him to accompany him to another location and he pushed Sensei with the barrel of the pistol. Sensei grabbed the pistol and went to the floor, taking the other man down with him. He took the pistol and shot the man he'd taken it from. Then someone from outside the building began firing into it with a rifle. Sensei found a rifle nearby and returned fire, then escaped on horseback. This is a true wartime incident from a master of aikido. So you tell me what advantage the gun presented the man who faced the unarmed aikido master.

Quote:
Chris Hein wrote: View Post
In China's boxer rebellion I think we already saw what happens to expert martial artists, many of whom I would assume had what you call "IP" when they face men trained with firearms.
That was not aikido, pal.

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Chris Hein wrote: View Post
It's not wrong for politicians to have social power, I never said it was wrong, you did.
You'll have to quote that one. I'm not saying that any kind of power is wrong in itself. It's all in how you use it. We have to have police and they have to be strong, but they can misuse it. We've had Presidents who made grave misuse of our military and of their social power. Some politicians misuse their social power by refusing to do their constitutional duties--by doing nothing.

Quote:
Chris Hein wrote: View Post
But I am saying, that if you're interested in social power, you should work on being a politician and not an Aikidoka.
Well, again, this just shows how little you really understand aikido. Your approach to aikido really explains to me that wall hanging you have in your dojo (the one reading 'michi'). It's so poorly done, I'm amazed that you would display it. The Chinese and Japanese both revere calligraphy and believe that the quality of the brushwork directly expresses the development of one's martial as well as personal development. That's why the saying "bun bu ichi" or "literary and sword are one".

Mochizuki Sensei was a firm believer that budoka are ultimately social educators. We are charged from ancient generations with the responsibility to pass on the superior values they held, to present examples of them in our actions and in our words. And much of the essence of this was to never work against nature. We don't train to replace our natural nature, but to cultivate and refine the best there is in it. So it's not a question of whether I seek social power: it's a question of how responsibly I use the social power that was entrusted to me. And part of that means to stand up to the "aikido community" when they show how little they recall these ancient values, how lightly they take the responsibility to understand and pass on those values.

Quote:
Chris Hein wrote: View Post
I find that it would be far more likely that people training in Aikido might come to Aikido thinking that they are looking for power, when in fact they are trying to discover something else. That is why they choose an avenue of study that might seem powerful, yet really isn't.
Maybe you're thinking of the people who come to your school?

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Chris Hein wrote: View Post
The good one's who stick around, figure out that they were never looking for power in the first place, they evolve, and hopefully add to the Aikido community.
The good ones don't stick around. They go and find the good teachers, who understand aikido.

Quote:
Chris Hein wrote: View Post
If your art is global power, I think you've chosen unwisely. Not because power is wrong, not because I am scared of it, or fear it. Simply because there are better ways to get it.
Well...you think that because you have such a shallow experience of the real art. That's understandable.

Quote:
Chris Hein wrote: View Post
I think I can see where the rest of this conversation is going...
Yeah...as long as you remain in the conversation, I'm concerned that it can't get far at all--not very deep, anyway.

Best to you.

David

"That which has no substance can enter where there is no room."
Lao Tzu

"Eternity forever!"

www.esotericorange.com
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