When I first heard and read about the Bujinkan martial arts back in the late 80’s and when I started training in the early 90’s, you could always hear someone talking about or writing about “intelligence gathering.”
This was a reference to the ancient ninjutsu aspects of espionage. The essence of which is gathering intelligence in order to create an effective strategy to accomplish whatever your army’s goal happened to be.
It seems that “intelligence gathering” is becoming a dying art among the Bujinkan practitioners in America in more ways than one.
Part of good intelligence gathering is passing along accurate intelligence. That means doing research, checking facts, etc. It means passing along the facts regardless of whether or not you like the facts. Whether or not it supports your political, religious, or philosophical stance.
If you’re on Facebook at all, you probably get at least one or two politically motivated meme posters on your news feed per day. Most have to do with Republican vs. Democrat. Or something to do with gun control, reproductive rights, gay marriage, welfare, etc. They often quote politicians or celebrities. Morgan Freeman said…the Dalai Lama said…call 112 to reach Highway Patrol…the list goes on and on.
About 70% of the meme posters that cross my news feed are inaccurate. They’ve been re-shared based on a knee jerk emotional response which is based on personal feelings about a particular issue. Few of these memes have anything to do with facts. (I also get a lot of false Amber Alerts on my news feed. I would guess that only 10-20% of the Amber Alerts are legitimate.)
The bad part…most of these re-shared meme posts come from Bujinkan practitioners. Inaccurate intelligence coming from “intelligence gatherers.” You’re falling for the kyo of kyojitsu! And that’s supposed to be what we are really good at!
Mind you, I am not trying to sway your opinion to the left or right of any issue. That’s your business. All I ask is that you exercise some intelligence and effort and try to get to the truth of an issue. If you are on side A of an issue, and then spread inaccurate intelligence about side B, you make your own side look bad. If your audience sees through your inaccurate intelligence, you’ve just lost your credibility with that person as well as potentially lost an ally to your cause. Let the truth be your ally!
In the old days of the ninja, and in our modern military times, inaccurate intelligence could get people killed. Double check your intel.
Do you want your way, or do you want the truth?