Nick Simpson

Well:

'Out of curriosity, what makes these people arrogant? Is it because they have made a value judgement about another person with little or no direct information at hand? '

In my opinion yes. But thats just my opinion. Maybe it just makes them ill informed and/or stupid. What I think really makes them arrogant is that they think they have the right to question what someone else is doing/has done with their budo/training/art/whatever. To base it on what they have seen portrayed in a movie is just the icing on the cake.

' What is "relatively new" ? 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? When does a person no longer qualify as "relatively new"? Is it their rank? At what rank would they then be entitled to an opinion without it being "arrogant"? '

I used the term relatively new because it is a loose term. There is no exact definition. You have people who have trained all their life saying they are begginners. You have people training for 6 months who think they are masters. Whatever. When I say relatively new to aikido, I mean about a few months. It seems that the majority of these statements about the moral integrety of steven Seagal are made by people who have been studying for a few months. I base this on what I have heard and seen. It doesnt make it the absolute.

As for what rank they would be entitled to having an opinion without being arrogant. well, I never mentioned rank in relation to opinions. The fact that anybody can be arrogant, regardless of rank, a sixth dan can be just as arrogant as a sixth kyu, if not more. So it's a moot point. Grades are held by just people, afterall. 'Rank does not eqaul good human beings' etc etc.

'At the same time, I do kind of wonder what affect anything Steven Seagal does or doesn't do could have on our own lives or our own aikido. He's just one man, one teacher (at least in the past), and we each have our own teachers, and our own lives. On a guess, I'd say there's plenty of "bad behavior" out there to go around, some of it my own. I don't even have to look for a teacher to find that... '

Right on. I just get really bored with people making statements like this. Cant they use the search function and just add their musings to one of the many seagal threads?