Chairman Fagerlund´s reply on Zeth´s article "A paradoxical Future Search"

This reply was originally posted as article commentaries. We have put the whole text in one article for your convienience.

Dear Zeth

I'm glad to hear you will go to Jönköping. Here are some brief answers to your questions.

Dojo no kokoro --the heart of the club is a concept developed in the mid 90-ies resulting in a text adopted by the annual meeting of 1996. In it the aikido section tried to raise some questions for the next couple of years. It was used for several years as a guideline for many dojos as well as the aikido section when annual working plans was adopted. It is now time to upgrade it -- hence the "2.0" on the cover.

We tried to address the paradox in our invitation. As I see it there is a kind of paradox in the nature of an organization like our Federation. The dojos are members of the federation, not the members of the dojos. While the aim of the dojo is to aid the members to develop in aikido, the aim of the federation is to aid the dojos. Hence the motto Dojo no Kokoro.

A dojo is like a church both a place -- building -- and an organization consisting of its members. A dojo is not the personal property of an individual teacher. All the members are the "owners" of a dojo. This is something we try to develop within the federation.

At our annual meetings we decide what to do the present year. Some activities may continue into the following year, but in general we do not decide for more than one year a time. In the aikido section we feel a need to once again look a bit further.

The decision to hold a future conference was proposed by the board late 2003 and decided by the annual meeting 2004. This information was sent to the dojos by letter and e-mail and was also announced on the web-page. The date was set and reported to all dojos early April 2004 by e-mail and on the web-page.

At that time no other seminar was announced the same date. I personally browsed several homepages -- including Riai -- and found nothing that date. In my e-mail to the dojos I specifically asked everybody to refrain from planning any activities that date.

We cannot order member dojos to come to the annual meeting or the future conference. Neither can we order anyone to not arrange a seminar a specific date. All we can do -- and this is what we did -- is to try to make the annual meeting and the future conference as interesting as possible and ask kindly to not arrange anything that will occupy persons that can contribute.

Many dojos refrains from their democratic right to participate in the annual meeting, in person or by proxy. I respect that. I also respect if someone decides to teach at a seminar instead of participating in the future conference they have been informed to be held the same date. Hopefully some one else can represent that dojo.

The purpose and the aim of the conference is well explained in the folder. There we also wrote that the texts to discuss will be sent in late October or early November. The decision to hold the conference was made in March. The date was set in April. The practical information was sent in early September.

Best regards

Jöran Fagerlund

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