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Old 04-23-2010, 07:45 PM   #55
lbb
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
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Re: Aikido For Dummies: Desperation, period.

Quote:
Alberto Italiano wrote: View Post
Fighting without fighting is no fighting at all.
And, once engaged, you're engaged. It's not a matter of throwing a lucky sankyo on a drunkard and then rushing to tell your friends over and over again. It's a matter of delaing with a competent engagement deliberately and violently, vehemently intent on mauling you badly, suddenly, repeatedly.
If a martial art forgets that's its goal, it has missed the only earthly criterion that can tell: your spirit now dominates matter.
But this is the problem, Alberto -- aikido was created decades ago by a man who is now dead, and whose ideas and concepts have come to us in forms that are rarely unambiguous. It isn't at all clear that "fighting" was the goal of O-Sensei's martial art, at all -- get ten aikidoka together, and you'll have twelve opinions on that one. And, even if you were to accept that as unquestioned, there's still the rather large issue of the right method to get there -- whether you should start with the most realistic possible applications on day one, or develop other things first.

So who gets to say what the "goal" of aikido is? The one who shouts the loudest and bullies the most effectively? The one who drops names and pulls rank the best? Or maybe, given that we were not handed some kind of unambiguous "this is the goal of aikido" document, in which all terminology is quite clear, we need to grant ourselves and each other a certain leeway in figuring out what that goal is. And let's not forget, "aikido" doesn't have a goal. "Aikido" has no body, no will, no brain -- it does not act on itself. The people, dojos and organizations that are part of it may all have goals...but it strikes me as futile to try and establish what the "goal" of aikido is, and pointless to try and arm-twist others into accepting your goals as theirs.
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