Aikido and the War on Terrorism
Submitted by M. D. McDonald
In the martial art of Aikido, an attacker’s directed energy is used against them to take them down, while an individual or society that remains balanced — remains protected in that balance. Some are concerned that the stands of preemptive war that have become so popular and vigorously supported in the United States since 9/11 and in Israel in recent days, make these societies particularly susceptible to enemies that can use our own imbalanced momentum against us. The U.S. and Israel now have no lack of enemies that would like to initiate, and would celebrate, our fall.
There is a concern that the “War on Terrorism” has such a blind momentum that a “patriot” can only follow in lock step — no longer able to live by the broader principles upon which our democracy was founded. Some practitioners of Aikido believe that a society which would label those that speak of moderation and regaining thoughtful balance as being “cowards” is entering a very dangerous phase in its political trajectory. If those that are exercising freedom of speech to suggest alternatives, especially those that have demonstrated their heroism, are further labelled as “traitors,” it may be wise to consider the possibility of significant danger ahead.
At a time when world opinion is now galvanizing against further atrocities catalyzed under the rubric of the war on terrorism, it may be wise for Americans and Israelis to recenter themselves. The underlying principles of Aikido would indicate that prudence would warrant a shift back to a more defendable and morally justified balance. It may be time to regain a broader situational awareness in a rapidly changing environment.
Perhaps, we should be considering the possibility that our recent string of counterproductive actions and reactions that have led to such destruction in Iraq and Lebanon may make us particularly susceptible to more devastating loss. If unwise actions remain unchecked by the broader principles of democracy and humanity, societies lost in their own martial aggression run the risk of becoming what they are fighting against.
Is this an appropriate time to consider the possibility that the concept of the “war on terrorism” may have become blindly counterproductive? Our enemies that stand balanced for the time being on the sidelines, are certainly hoping that we do not regain our balance. Otherwise, they may have to face us while we still have the strength, the will and the humanity to check their unilateral, imbalanced aggressions, when they decide to make their move.
2 comments Jock Gill | Empowerment, Politics
Mike,
For too long our economic dogma has refused to acknowledge the need to price limits and consequences. Further, our hard right political agenda insists that every individual must be accountable for solving all of their problems, none of which require any help from any other organization, much less the “government”. This approach neatly excuses any need to be our “brothers’ keepers”. Of course, this is a false premis, as is the noton that our economic actions have no limits and no consequences.
Aikido and the Biosphere is another possible essay that would usefully extend your analogy. Our strong dependence of energy from sequestered carbon “may have become blindly counterproductive”. In Roger’s terms “one could say that balance or a solid base requires a broad range of opinion in the community.” With the current monolythic ownership patterns of the “media”, resulting from unfettered turbo capitalism as is the current vogue, we are today deprived of the breadth and depth of conversation we require to rebalance our apporach to the destabilization of the biosphere.
With the rate of melting of the Greenland icecap now increased by a factor of 3X over its recent rates of just a few years ago, we appear to have very little time to rebalance our relationships to the realities of limits, consequences and the fact that there are very significant problems which we can not solve by ourselves alone. Indeed, if we are to have any chance of restabilizing the biosphere, we must learn how to practise globally collective actions to create maximum cooperative gain for the benefit of all humanity.
The state of the biosphere is the global conversation that matters the most. It alone offers a rare opportunity for engagement across social, religious, political, economic and geographic boundaries. If we fail to recognize and chose this opportunity, and instead continue to engage purely in military and terrorist conversations, or continue to insist in limiting all conversations to terms convenient for and supportive of only unregulated turbo capitalism, we are in for a very rough ride indeed. In fact, such 20th century conversations are rendered irrelevant if we allow the biosphere to reach a state that no longer supports what we have so long taken for granted.
Jock,
You are absolutely correct that the current dominant world view is maladapted to emerging 21st century conditions. We have known for over 30 years that our exponential growth in population, energy consumption, the fouling of global sinks are unsustainable. The World3 model and the work of the Epoch B group and other institutions focusing on carrying capacity issues have made it clear that we have to change our approaches. Yet, instead of addressing the changes, the majority has embraced lies and obfuscations by political leadership that are incapable of understanding let alone managing the necessary changes.
Thomas Jefferson understood that occasionally the people have to embrace an evolving form of governance. Our current leaders are only capable of managing short-term vested interests. And as they have oversimplified and militarized everything, the problems are just getting worse and more obvious. Instead of providing the leadership to face the massive challenges ahead as we face massive overextensions of global, regional, and local carrying capacities, the current powers that be (governmental and corporate) have mastered the art of sweeping the problems under the rug and turning the gaze of the public toward their next materialistic fantasy.
Yet, there are now a few billion people worldwide that are refugees from the Epoch A (Bigger is better, Win/Lose, Competitive) world order. They are at the effects of the current Epoch A worldview and are beginning to understand the consequences of the lies. They would like to have alternatives, but they have been choosing the known devils over the fear of facing the unknown. Or they have felt powerless to act differently.
We need to do better at demonstrating viable alternatives. We need to provide pragmatic solutions, while enabling people and their communities to benefit by adopting these solutions. Right now they are bemoaning the loss of their SUVs, rather than understanding the advantages of having more collaborative family lives and cooperative communities.
This is why I have been studying memetics. We have set up Resilience Networks that would act as an infrastructure for transformation. I look forward to talking with you about the emerging economic realities, when a growth economic past peak oil is no longer feasible. At that point, we may face substantial discontinuities, with a lot of human suffering involved. We need to be piloting viable alternatives now, because the transition may be costly.
Mike