In ancient Greece, an idiot was simply a private citizen, someone who held no office in the administration of the city or the state. In other words, an entirely ordinary person.
Only later did the term gradually expand in meaning, coming to describe not only the common man but also those who lacked education.
It was in Latin culture, however, that the word came to identify the illiterate. From that point on, idiocy and ignorance began to overlap, eventually arriving at the meaning we give them today. Nowadays, idiotic behaviour is understood as a series of senseless actions carried out without reason -fundamentally, foolish actions.
So, is Aikido idiotic?
Absolutely. (And this is where relatives, friends, and acquaintances who have never understood why anyone would choose to spend an evening sweating on a tatami after a day’s work will begin to celebrate).
But there’s an important distinction.
Aikido -in fact, every martial discipline- is idiotic in the original sense of the word: it is a practice open to everyone. It is not elitist, nor reserved for a particular category of people.
Indeed, anyone who teaches children quickly discovers that the depth of its principles, the clarity of its lines, and the immediacy of its techniques become all the more evident the simpler the practitioners are.
It is a simplicity that childhood -both in age and in spirit- naturally encourages, guiding practitioners toward an authentic understanding of what they are doing.
Educational paths are almost always designed to help people move from knowing less to understanding more.
Yet, in trying to become -or at least appear- less ignorant, human beings sometimes go too far. We produce endless amounts of data, research, information, books, and methods, responding to life’s complexity with even more complexity.
The Martial Arts world is no exception: syllabi, variations, endless technique lists, increasingly elaborate terminology, and languages that ought to clarify -yet instead become jargon understood only by insiders.
If simplicity has an opposite, it is not complexity.
It is fragmentation.
A discipline such as Aikido therefore risks becoming idiotic in the modern sense when it turns into an unstructured collection of movements and words -a confusing and fragmented assortment that ultimately becomes just another source of complexity in the lives of those who approach it.
The simplicity Aikido embodies draws its strength from pointing toward a path that develops the capacity to choose.
People who know how to choose, who organise their lives and actions around clear values, are simple people. They navigate the complex and often turbulent seas of existence with clarity and purpose.
And perhaps this is the second -and greater- risk of Aikido becoming idiotic in the modern sense.
The simplicity it points toward does not require stripping life down to the bare essentials, nor the kind of radicalism that can resemble a form of monastic withdrawal. What it requires is the capacity for concentration -for integration.
It asks us to reconnect our experiences, both inside and outside the Dojo, to the principles we practice, so that it is the practitioner’s life that becomes richer and fuller, rather than the practice itself.
It is a path that recognises both the importance and the inherent limits of training. Without training, we cannot learn how to embody the principles. Yet, training alone cannot fully answer the deeper, non-technical questions that run through our lives.
Disclaimer: Picture by DS Stories from Pexels