Aikido is one of the weirdest martial arts going. It was developed by Morihei Ueshiba (a master of several other forms of martial arts including jiu-jitsu, ken-jutsu, and karate) as a kind of synthesis of martial arts, philosophy and religion. Ueshiba's "take" on what was wrong with the existing martial arts is that they all required the defender to react to an attack by "striking back," thus lowering the defender to the same level of the attacker. Philo- sophically he didn't like this, so he invented what he thought was a better way.
Aikido is a purely defensive art. In it, you use your attacker's own energy to allow him "to throw himself." But nothing happens if he doesn't attack. A "match" between two Aikido masters would probably devolve into the two of them staring at each other for several minutes, and then laughing and going out for tea, because neither "threw the first punch." :-) It occurs to me that Fairfield Life is very non- Aikido-like. There are a few posters here who IMO seem to pretty much *live* for the "punching back," so much so that they invent attacks where none were ever made, just so they *can* "punch back" and "get" the person they think has attacked them, or something they believe in or hold to be true. It also occurs to me that many of these same people do this because -- quite frankly -- They Don't Have Anything Else To Say. They're stuck in a kind of "reactive rut," waiting for someone -- anyone -- to say something that they can disagree with, or blast the other poster for saying. They use the "punching back" as a "cover" to hide the fact that they just aren't interesting or intelligent or creative enough to think of anything to say that *isn't* "punching back." So what would happen if the person they "punch back at" the most -- just as an experiment -- laid low for a little while and didn't make any posts specifically criticizing TM, Maharishi, or them? WOULD they be able to think of anything to say? Or would they continue to hammer away at the "attacker," even though he had become an "attacker in absentia?"
