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Old 09-23-2015, 12:51 PM   #8
lbb
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
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Re: Ethics in Aikido

Quote:
Alister Gillies wrote: View Post
If duplicity, dishonesty and misrepresentation is acceptable behaviour and not egregious in your estimation, fine. But I don't see what is unclear about it.
Well, certain aspects of it are definitely ambiguous, based on the information that you are able to divulge. So I'm sure you'll understand if it doesn't seem quite so black and white to us.

My own first thought, when I read the title and started reading your post, was somewhat like Demetrio's -- this is gonna be something pretty nasty, like sexual harassment or sexual misconduct. My second thought was that even egregious(!) offenses like that are a lot harder to deal with than us armchair generals think they'll be. For example, I know some (many? most) aikido organizations have sexual harassment policies. But if you were harassed, or you witnessed an incident of harassment, or you heard about it, would you know what to do, and would you be able to do it? Would you be able to simply act? Think carefully before you answer, and try to imagine yourself in the situation. Do you think you would act immediately? Do you think it would be easy?

So there's a gap, or at least a lag, between a policy (which is where you have to start) and what actually happens -- even in a matter where the degree of moral ambiguity is a lot less than the (subject to interpretation) expression of disrespect towards a shihan or the organization. It took a long time for modern societies to develop our current understandings of sexual harassment and why it's wrong, and there's still resistance to that idea. There are still people not on board. How much further are we away from developing some kind of universal standard of "respect" and being able to enforce it?

I'm not dismissing your issues. I am suggesting that if you want even the smallest organization to come up with consensus definitions of "ethics" for such relatively small matters, you've got an uphill sled ahead of you. Frankly, there are more pressing matters of ethics where we're still not there yet.
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