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Old 10-26-2011, 01:22 PM   #106
mathewjgano
 
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Dojo: Tsubaki Kannagara Jinja Aikidojo; Himeji Shodokan Dojo
Location: Renton
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Re: Aikido in a street situation

Quote:
Mary Malmros wrote: View Post
No, it really can't. To be relevant, by definition, it must relate to something, and the "something" hasn't been defined. That's what's wrong with this whole nonsense thread. If you fail to define your terms, it isn't a conversation, it's the Tower of Babel.
But doesn't that exist in most conversations to some degree? Most people don't set about a conversation with thoroughy defined terms. In particular, aren't all hypothetical topics like this? This doesn't mean the conversation is irrelevant, or that people can't still have commonality to their definitions. People make statements and other people ask questions to arrive at some relative degree of common definition.
When people talk about the street in the context of martial arts, some degee of definition is easy to arrive at. They're talking about effectiveness with attacks someone is likely to encounter when attacked. The problem comes when people don't ask questions to learn what definitions people have established in their minds...among other, more personality-based issues.
As far as I can tell, at any rate. Just because something isn't well-defined, doesn't make it necessarily useless, in my opinion.

Gambarimashyo!
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