Loyalty and devotion lead to bravery. Bravery leads to self-sacrifice. The spirit of self-sacrifice creates trust in the power of love.
Morihei Ueshiba, The Art of Peace
Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul…? Are you not ashamed of this? …And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is the command of God…; and I believe that to this day no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul…. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed…. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, …either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.
Socrates, Apology
Building a community requires that we sacrifice to some degree our own interests and privileges in order to make room for others’ interests and privileges. Giving up our privilege, making things harder for ourselves so they can be easier for others, is an easy thing to recommend but a hard thing to actually do. We see this in the moment of Socrates’s trial: Athens is slipping rapidly from democracy into tyranny, and the philosopher’s teachings about self-sacrifice and citizenship are viewed by his accusers as an impediment to their seizing the lion’s share of the polis’s money, power, and privilege for themselves.
We can only have community if we value it more than our individual privilege; on the flip side, we can only sacrifice our individual privilege if we trust that we will gain something of greater value in return. For both O-Sensei and Socrates, this greater value was love–love of truth, beauty, and the sacred being we call humanity.
When we practice aikido, we sacrifice many individual privileges–time, money, the privilege of doing only what feels good, the right to act independently of others, to make ourselves comfortable, to never be criticized. To build community with others, especially others not like ourselves, we must sacrifice exactly these same things. But what we gain in return are precious things we could never achieve on our own: harmony, belonging, love.
The Rookery 