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Old 03-22-2013, 09:21 AM   #30
Keith Larman
Dojo: AIA, Los Angeles, CA
Location: California
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 1,604
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Re: Aikido Predator Mindset

Quote:
Jaredd Wilson wrote: View Post
In "Meditations on Violence" by Rory Miller (a very sobering book by the way, and well worth the read), he describes the most important mental feature in a survival situation is having a Predator Mindset. The Predator Mindset is an all-out aggressive do what I need to survive mindset. Sort of turn the mental tables on an attacker, make them defensive. I agree with this in principle, but how does this fit into aikido? Can you have "aggressive aikido" and still call it aikido? Does it become aikijutsu then?

I'd appreciate any thoughts on this. I've been wrestling with this for a couple days now, and would like to have other aikidouka (or aikidoist if you've read the other thread) weigh in.
While I truly dislike the term predator for the reasons others have already expressed, there is something about how one "does one's thing" during certain types of confrontations (as in a full blown "we're fighting for our safety/lives now" scenario). It's been a while since I read the referenced work, but my take on it wasn't that one becomes a predator or all out aggressive, but a recognition of the concepts brought out with vastly more clarity by Colonel John Boyd with his notion of the OODA loop in combat. Be it flying a jet or coming to blows with an empty handed attacker.

Wikipedia has a superficial but relatively useful section on the topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

Back to the shadows for me.

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