[pryce]

> One of the ideas behind Aikido is to not get in a fight in the first place.

I have heard many martial-arts instructors voice this same point. -EDIT: I do not know whether this may be emphasised more in Aikido- but it is hard to regard it as a serious argument when the amount of time spent on learning about this aspect, and practice of how to apply this aspect and the techniques to achieve it seems to be almost invariably a few minutes a year at most.

I had more practice 'de-escalating' tense situations on a 1-term clinical skills paper at medical school than in the 6 years I studied across two different martial arts (one Korean, the other Chinese). The medical school paper amounted to about 2 hrs on that subject that year - 1 theory, 1 practice.

[kaitai]

I did some aikido lessons for maybe 6 weeks (studied Shotokan for 8 years, but that was a while ago). The classes I did spent a lot of time on understanding the intentions of the opponent and trying to find a mutual solution, and a lot of time on mastering one's own emotions. It was some of the best training in "diplomacy" I've had, where by diplomacy I mean "the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions" (Churchill?).