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Old 06-03-2005, 09:17 PM   #95
CNYMike
Dojo: Aikido of Central New York
Location: Cortland, NY
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 1,005
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Re: Culture of Martial Mediocrity?

Quote:
Larry Camejo wrote:
Is it that we have in fact set things up already so that the martial foundations of the art will be one day degraded into nothingness by indirectly encouraging those who teach the art in a manner that lacks martial lustre and moreso encourage others to abandon the martial core of the art (physical and non-physical) for the sake of "healing the world" and "uniting mankind"? Imho the healing of mankind cannot be achieved through denial.

Or am I merely being delusional?"

Comments are welcome.
LC

Delusional? No. Worrying too much? More likely.

IIRC, some posters way back in the thread accused Aikido of being "insular." I don't know how fair that is, given that being truly insular there wouldn't be any cross training, and I'm pretty sure people in the groups I've been with do things like Judo, Kendo, etc. But maybe if Aikido is "insular" to an extant, one symptom of that could be that Aikidoka are the art's (and their own) harshest critics, flagulating the art, each other, and maybe for all I know, themselves for inadequacies, failings, and the dire consequences of not addressing them. Because I've returned to Aikido after 16 years of doing other things, some of which I'm still doing, and I'm not the least bit worried about the issues you're raising. I'm more worried about making progress on my forward ukemi than anything else!

It's interesting that I go from Kali and Serak, where Guro Andy has emphasized his role as preserving these systems, and expressed his reluctance to change anything in Kali unless he sees Guro Dan Inosanto do it; and I come to Aikiweb where the tone seems to be, We have to change this, that, and the other thing, and we're doing this wrong and that wrong, and there are so many bad delusional people and it's all falling apart and everyone who came before us except Tomiki was wrong. Huh?

Maybe O Sensei's rule about practicing in a "vibrant, joyful" manner should be the first rule of practice instead of the third one. That, or our society as a whole drinks too much coffee. It's one thing to have legitmate concerns; it's another to freak out over nothing.

Here is what I, as a Kali person think of Aikido people:

YOU'RE FINE! Now, could you not land on my foot next time?

Just my 2p.

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