1 April 2004: Our Good Friend the Woo

"I've got a woo in my ear." - Cogito, 1987

Yoko and Geminica both had quotes by Cogito (a.k.a. Tito, a.ka. P) in their journal entries for today, and I just had to get in on the action.

 

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I recently had occasion to write to Old Cutter John and say:

I urge you to adopt a trick that I use frequently - recycling my better writings from discussion boards, email lists, and private correspondences, and reprinting them in my own journal where everyone who's interested in my writing will be able to easily find them. Sometimes (most notably in my recent "Other Conversations" entry), I've reprinted conversations, or pieces thereof, more or less verbatim - but just as often, I extract my own bits from the conversation and doctor them so that they stand on their own, sometimes with an explanation of the conversational context (as in my "Judgment" rant), and sometimes without one (as in the "On Finding Sane Lovers" essay).

Salvaging all those bits of writing and rounding them up where they're easy to find might not seem worth the effort to you, but that's useful information that I'd love to be able to direct people to more easily. And think of your fans!

("You've gotta get an album out, you owe it to the people...")

 

And by reprinting it, I'm practicing what I preach.

And here's more of the same: bits of stuff I've written elsewhere recently...

An exchange with Argus, after he finally got around to having a look at this journal and discovering my "Resolution" post:

Argus: Jeez, I never knew you posted our email resolution exchange to your journal. (Does that make me a horrible person?) That's so cool.

 

Me: I wasn't about to leave our fans hanging. Especially because within twelve hours of the original "Horrible Person" post, I got several emails and two face-to-face conversations from various readers, offering their opinions of my approach and their predictions as to your response.

As my habit of posting both sides of personal correspondences online without warning becomes widely known among my friends, it will be interesting to see how it changes the nature of what people write to me. At the very least, it's likely to encourage a lot more proofreading.

 

Argus: I was psyched that I came off looking so good. I'm like the fucking king of humility.

Screw you, you bastard - I'm the king of humility.

From my contributions to a Tribe.net discussion on "Books that Changed Your Life":

Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising changed my life when I read it in my late teens. On a recent re-reading, I found that some of it now seemed insipid, dated, and naive, but about 75% of it was still pure dynamite.

Samuel Delany's Dhalgren changed my life because it was the first book I ever encountered in which the protagonist's thought processes and perception of reality bore any resemblance to my own.

 

An exchange between me and Saizai, in the LiveJournal Aikido Community discussion group:

Saizai [posting to entire community, not to me specifically]: Given the personal choice and no pressure either way, would you prefer to wear colored belts denoting sub-dan rank, or only white until black belt? What reasons on either side? Comments?

(This specifically is *not* a "what does your dojo do" question, it's a "what would you most prefer to do" question.)

 

Me: Given the personal choice, I would do whatever best served the harmony of the dojo. Most of the time, in a good dojo, this would mean going with the stated preference of the instructor, however politely and mildly that preference was expressed.

If my sense of what served the harmony of the dojo was at odds with the preference of the instructor, and conversation with the instructor did not resolve the conflict for me, I would pray to God for guidance.

If my preference was at odds with the preference of the instructor, and I couldn't clearly articulate a very sound reason why my preference better served the harmony of the dojo than did the preference of my instructor, I would be suspicious of my own motives, and I would pray to God to bring peace to my discordant spirit and to grant me humility.

 

Saizai: *chuckle* Good answer. Question for you specifically: what are your reasons for using colored belts in your dojo, especially in light of your preference against hierarchy?

 

Me: My dojo is high-traffic: new people join very frequently, visitors pop in, and students move out of town and then come back to visit periodically, or move out of town for a few years and then move back. The colored belts allow anyone who knows our belt system (which is simple, and is on the sheet of paper handed out to all newbies) to immediately have some general idea of the level of their partner. This serves the harmony of the dojo. It will be even more useful when there are more Aikido Shusekai dojos, and Shusekai students and instructors visit other Shusekai dojos.

In other words, the belt color is there because it is the most efficient way to communicate information that frequently needs to be communicated. There are other ways to communicate the information: a quick discussion, or just starting to train and getting a feel for it - but the colored belt system is more efficient, since it communicates the information instantly, silently, and from across the room.

If I had a very low-traffic dojo - for instance if I lived in a rural commune and only taught the people who lived there, then I wouldn't bother with colored belts. To an aikidoka, it should never be a question of "What is the one right way to do it?" - it should always be a question of "What is the way that will be most conducive to grace and harmony in the present time and place, under the present conditions, for this particular group of people?"

As to my preference against hierarchy: The students in my dojo do not use belt color as the basis for an oppressive hierarchal pecking order, because they're good aikidoka, and good aikidoka don't behave that way. By the same token, if they were a bunch of fascists instead of good aikidoka, then eliminating belt color wouldn't deter them from establishing an oppressive hierarchal pecking order - they'd find some way to do it, just as convicts and junior high school students manage to do it even if they're all forced to dress identically.

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"Has it ever occurred to you that I might be right about something?"

- Cogito, 1989