I have had the pleasure of working out with Ledyard Sensei in a few seminars now. His thinking is a perfect mix of keeping his eye on the traditions and towards the future. I like his ideas. I bumped into this article on Aikiweb. I wrote him asking permission to reproduce it here.
The "Death" of the Traditional Organization by George Ledyard
I
have lately had the pleasure of attending and participating in a number
of so-called Aikido "Bridge" Seminars. These are events which cross
over stylistic and organizational boundaries allowing teachers of very
diverse backgrounds, who might otherwise never have encountered each
other, to share their Aikido experience with any willing student,
regardless of level, style or affiliation.
Last year, at one of these events at which I was honored to be invited
to participate, I sat after hours with a room full of teachers whose
collective Aikido experience was more than three hundred years between
us and had the realization that this was really the future, that we were
participating in the death of the traditional organization as we have
know them.
Back when the first Japanese teachers arrived on our shores there was no
structure for the transmission of our art. These Aikido pioneers
created any number of organizations designed to provide that structure.
The original function of these organizations was to a) support the
teacher(s) at the top of the organization's "pyramid" and to b) provide a
structured access for large numbers of folks from within the fast
growing Aikido community to their teachers in a way that promoted some
sort of uniformity and quality control over the end product.
It became apparent, almost immediately, that the one organization, one
country model propagated by the Aikikai Hombu Dojo wasn't going to
work... As different organizations and styles back in Japan developed,
so they were started here. After the death of the Aikido Founder,
organizations developed reflecting each of these new directions taken by
these teachers who felt compelled to strike out on their own. Since
many of these "branches" off the original tree were actually "breaks",
there was a political element that was always there, with various
teachers competing via their organizations for students and influence.
Somewhere along the line, I think things went awry. It became more about
supporting a given teacher than it was about the Aikido or the training
of the members. I really believe that we have reached the point at
which many of not most of the large organizations have actually become
the limiting factor in the development of their members. When the Aiki
Expos happened ten years ago, a set of events which I personally think
will be looked at by future Aikido historians as pivotal moments in
American Aikido, there were major organizations which simply chose to
ignore the events and actively discouraged their students from
attending. One famous Japanese Shihan actually did attend but told his
students not to attend any other teacher's classes, which not only was
totally out of sync with the spirit of the event itself but indicated an
arrogance that I really had no time for, personally.
Over the years, as our organizations have grown, each has developed a
core group of seniors, now 6th and 7th Dans whose "access" to the larger
community was largely through their own organization by way of seminar
invitations and appearances with other seniors at the large camps held
by the organization. Since the Shihan in charge of thee organizations
controlled who was put forward, they were able to maintain "control"
politically be granting or denying "access". If you toed the line, you
were put up front, if you didn't you found yourself out in the cold.
One friend of mine was a hugely successful teacher, prominent within his
organization. He traveled frequently all over doing seminars,
appearing at the various events held by the organization. When he broke
with his teacher, it all went away. The folks that had previously been
enthusiastic supporters, now stopped inviting him. He ended up having
very little interaction with the whole Aikido community until just
recently.
Another good friend, prominent in another organization, one that
considers itself to be representative of a certain teacher's "style",
started to work with a broader range of teachers than was available from
within the organization. This person's Aikido started to make a real
jump. But when this teacher taught at an organization event, the teacher
was informed that they were not to teach that new stuff at their event.
Their event was to teach the specific style and they simply did not
want to know about anything else.
What I see, is that at some point, it became more about personalities
than the art. What is the point of making a fetish out of the "style" of
some particular teacher, now actually passed on, as if that style had
some intrinsic value in and of itself as opposed to simply being an
approach to training for students to develop themselves, which was the
purpose of the art in the first place.
When an organization is more about power, influence, money, or anything
else that isn't first and foremost about the transmission of the art, it
has outlived any usefulness it might have had. It become a detriment
rather than a benefit to the training of the members, especially the
most seniors teachers, who find themselves limiting their exposure,
having to hide their own advances in approach to not offend some person
at the top who controls their access to the members and their hopes of
future promotion etc.
In the age of the internet and globalization, this is simply not a
maintainable model any more. We have American home-grown teachers who
have forty to fifty years in the art now. Increasingly thee teachers are
no longer willing to stay in line. They don't wish to limit their
Aikido so as not to threaten their teacher, they refuse to allow their
teachers to dictate who they associate with or call their friends.
Increasingly they are starting their own organizations and are actively
trying not to duplicate the dysfunctions of the ones they came from
originally.
Simultaneous with all this, out steps a Japanese teacher who refuses on
some level to act Japanese. He starts inviting people from outside his
organization to teach at the organizations major events. After a number
of years doing this he expands the concept... he has his students, who
are now international in scope, to organize so-called "Bridge" Seminars
to which a variety of teachers from different organizations and styles
are invited to co-teach. This is so un-Japanese as to be quite shocking.
Yet the idea is so powerful that it not only expands and grows but is
taken up by others who use the same model to create their own events.
The teachers who participate in these events get to share their Aikido
with other folks who have different approaches. This generation of
teachers understands that there is a synergy to this approach that has
the potential to lift then as teachers and the whole practitioner
community beyond anything they'd attain under the old model. The
exchange of ideas, the exposure to new approaches, the mutual respect
that comes from watching one's peers be the professionals they were
trained to be, all of this is incredibly powerful stuff.
As the old guard passes away, as the founders of these large
organizations either fade away or lose their influence, things will be
changing. The community of practitioners will be looking for another
generation of leaders. I really believe that the next time around, they
are going to insist on teachers who actually are trying to get better
themselves. These teachers will have to have both the ability and the
confidence to back it up that they won't be threatened by other teachers
or by other approaches. The folks in the pipeline, the future teachers
of this art will not be willing to accept the kind of self serving
controls and limitations that has been the norm in many organizations.
Their awareness of what is out there will be greater than any
generation's before. They will simply not be willing to accept a teacher
who becomes the limiting factor in their training.
One can already see it happening. It's right there before our eyes.
Teachers are developing friendships totally outside what had been their
traditional range of exposure. These teachers are more inclined to form
their support networks based on respect for skills and character rather
than simply because some dysfunctional individual has been a student of
the same, often dysfunctional teacher as he or she has had. When the old
Shihan have passed on, I don't see organizational identity having much
sway at all. I think the teachers who have managed to establish their
reputations in their own right will naturally rise to the top and the
ones that have simply coasted on their association with some famous
teacher will be totally marginalized. No one is going to care who their
teacher was when that teacher is gone. And the folks who have the
character and the ability to be leaders will all know each other. It's
starting now and will only continue.
The next generation of leaders will not be imposed from outside. They
won't have their status granted from on high. Rather, it will be the
community as a whole which decides who it invests in and who it doesn't.
Reputations will be built on the mutual respect of one's peers for what
one has achieved, not because one had the ability to hang tough for
decades with some difficult teacher in exchange for some authority which
could be withdrawn any moment.
I see a time, which is already starting now, when teachers will have
their own small organizations, really designed to facilitate the
"transmission" of the art. There will be far more fluidity to these
entities with other teachers who have their own small organization going
back and forth teaching at each others events. The future leaders of
Aikido will be networking like crazy with the folks they respect and
simply ignoring the ones they don't. It will be highly de-centralized
and nowhere near as hierarchical as our traditional organizations have
been. And success will be based on the ability of the folks at the top
to deliver the goods to the folks on the bottom. No one will put up with
us just because we trained with the Aikido Founder because none of us
did. Authority will be earned, not conferred. And I think the folks who
do have "the goods" so to speak, will have the freedom and the
inclination to work together to make something greater than has
previously existed.
I have to say that I feel both excited and honored to be a teacher at
this time... change is in the air and so far my experience of the
possible future has me more optimistic than at any time I can remember. I
have been making amazing new friends and renewing friendships that had
been neglected. I see much that was stultified and stale simply passing
away before my eyes and new and creative ways of doing things replacing
them. I see signs that the next generation of folks will be willing to
support each other in ways that they either never did in the past or
simply couldn't.
Change is coming and it will be happening at a speed that many will find
challenging. But it's coming anyway so folks can either go with the
flow or even actively embrace it and help it come. The folks who resist
the changes coming will simply fade away, no one will care. At least
that's my take on it...
