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Reflections on the Impact and Importance of International and Global Education
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Musings on Japanese and Ryukyu Budo
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There is a growing tendency in contemporary discourse—particularly among younger cohorts—to position artificial intelligence as an environmental threat of singular urgency. Claims that “AI is destroying the planet” or that a single query consumes “a bottle of water” circulate widely, often repeated with moral conviction but little evidential grounding. While such claims are not entirely without basis, their current form reflects something more troubling: a collapse of proportional and causal thinking in the face of complex technological systems. Artificial intelligence does have environmental implications. That is not in dispute. What is at issue is the manner in which those implications are being interpreted, exaggerated, and, in some cases, misapplied. The problem is not simply misinformation, but the erosion of the intellectual habits required to evaluate it. Infrastructural continuity: AI did not arrive in a vacuum Artificial intelligence does not represent a rupture in technological history. It is an intensification of an already expansive digital infrastructure. Long before the emergence of generative AI, global systems of cloud computing, streaming media, algorithmic search, and e-commerce were dependent upon large-scale data centres operating continuously across the globe. As the International Energy Agency (IEA, 2024) reports, data centres consumed approximately 415 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity annually—around 1.5% of total global demand—prior to the widespread adoption of generative AI systems. This is not a marginal figure. It indicates that the environmental footprint of digital infrastructure was already both real and substantial. To suggest, therefore, that artificial intelligence has introduced environmental strain where none previously existed is historically and analytically untenable. Acceleration without invention What artificial intelligence does introduce is not a new category of environmental impact, but an intensification of an existing one. The same IEA projections indicate that electricity demand from data centres may more than double by 2030, with AI workloads constituting a significant proportion of that growth. Parallel analysis from the Brookings Institution (2024) estimates that AI-related computational demand is increasing at approximately 30% annually, positioning it as a primary driver of incremental energy consumption within the sector. The distinction here is critical. Artificial intelligence has not created the environmental burden associated with digital infrastructure; it is accelerating it. To conflate these two claims is to substitute rhetorical force for analytical clarity. Scale, systems, and the fallacy of the individual act A persistent feature of public discourse is the tendency to locate environmental responsibility in individual behaviour. In the case of AI, this manifests in the assertion that a single user query constitutes a meaningful ecological harm. This is a category error. Environmental impact in digital systems is structural rather than episodic. A single interaction is negligible; the cumulative effect of billions of interactions, supported by energy-intensive infrastructure, is not. This distinction is neither novel nor controversial. It underpins analysis across environmental science, from plastic pollution to transport emissions. Research emerging from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT News, 2025) notes that while generative AI processes can be more energy-intensive than conventional web queries, their significance arises only when considered at scale. The fixation on individual use, therefore, obscures the very phenomenon it seeks to explain. The degradation of research into rhetoric: the “water per query” claim Few examples better illustrate this collapse than the now-ubiquitous claim that each AI query consumes “a bottle of water.” This assertion stems from a 2023 study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside (Li et al.), which examined the water footprint of AI systems, including both direct cooling requirements and indirect water use associated with electricity generation. The study itself is careful, conditional, and explicitly concerned with variability. Water usage is shown to depend on geographical location, cooling technologies, energy sources, and temporal demand. It offers aggregate, system-level estimates, not fixed per-interaction costs. The popular formulation of this research, however, strips away these conditions and presents a contingent estimate as a universal constant. This is not simplification; it is distortion. It represents the transformation of empirical research into a moralised slogan—one that is easily repeated, but analytically empty. When faulty reasoning becomes ethically consequential: AI and Female Genital Mutilation The consequences of this degraded reasoning extend beyond environmental discourse. In some educational contexts, students have begun to assert that artificial intelligence is linked to practices such as FGM. Such claims are not merely incorrect; they are indicative of a deeper epistemological failure. FGM is a centuries-old human practice, rooted in complex configurations of social normativity, gender regulation, and cultural continuity. It predates modern technological systems entirely. To suggest that AI “contributes” to such a practice is to collapse fundamental distinctions between cause, correlation, and communicative medium. At most, digital technologies—including AI—may facilitate the dissemination of information about FGM, whether in the form of advocacy, education, or, indeed, misinformation. But dissemination is not causation. To conflate the two is to abandon the basic criteria by which claims are evaluated. More troubling still is the ethical implication. By attaching a serious human rights issue to an unrelated technological narrative, such claims risk trivialising the practice itself. They convert a historically and culturally embedded phenomenon into a rhetorical device, thereby obscuring both its origins and its ongoing realities. This is the point at which poor reasoning ceases to be merely inaccurate and becomes actively irresponsible. Relative scale and the problem of misplaced emphasis Even under conditions of accelerated growth, data centres are projected to account for less than 3% of global electricity demand by 2030 (IEA, 2024). This situates them within the broader environmental landscape without elevating them to a position of primary causality. Sectors such as transportation, heavy industry, and agriculture continue to exert far greater influence on global emissions. This observation does not license complacency. It does, however, demand proportionality. To isolate artificial intelligence as a primary environmental antagonist is to misrepresent the distribution of impact and to misdirect analytical attention. Why is this collapse in reasoning occurring The persistence of these claims is not accidental. It is structurally produced. Contemporary information ecosystems reward:
The result is a form of reasoning in which:
The emerging AI divide A further dimension, frequently overlooked in moral critiques of AI, concerns inequality of access. As UNESCO (2024) has noted, disparities in access to digital tools and AI literacy risk producing a new form of structural inequality—an “AI divide.” In educational settings, this divide is already observable. Students with access to devices, connectivity, and guided instruction develop competencies that others do not. In such a context, the wholesale rejection of AI on moral grounds does not mitigate inequality; it reinforces it. The ethical question, therefore, is not whether AI should be used. That question has already been answered in practice. The more pressing issue is whether access to its benefits, and the knowledge required to use it effectively, will be equitably distributed. Conclusion: the restoration of analytical discipline The environmental impact of artificial intelligence is real. It is measurable, increasing, and worthy of serious consideration. It is also neither singular nor unprecedented. It must be understood as part of a broader technological system whose scale predates AI and whose growth is now being accelerated by it. More concerning than the technology itself is the manner in which it is being discussed. When conditional research findings are transformed into absolute claims, when communicative proximity is mistaken for causal relationship, and when moral urgency substitutes for evidential reasoning, the result is not informed debate but epistemic confusion. If students are unable to distinguish between evidence, mechanism, and scale, they will not merely misunderstand artificial intelligence. They will lack the intellectual tools needed to evaluate any complex claim presented to them. And that is a far more serious problem than AI itself. 人工知能（AI）が「環境を破壊している」という言説は広がっているが、その多くは証拠の単純化や誤解に基づいている。AIは突然現れた技術ではなく、既存のデータセンターやクラウド基盤の延長線上にある。確かにAIは電力需要を加速させているが、それは新たな問題の創出ではなく、既存システムの拡大である。個々のAI利用（例えば一回の検索）が環境に大きな影響を与えるという考えは誤りであり、問題は大規模な利用とインフラ全体にある。また、「一回の利用で水一本分消費する」といった主張は、条件付き研究を過度に単純化したものである。さらに、AIとFemale Genital Mutilationを結びつけるような議論は、因果関係の混同であり、深刻な人権問題を矮小化する危険がある。本質的な課題は、AIそのものではなく、証拠・仕組み・規模を区別できない思考の崩壊にある。教育においては、こうした複雑な問題を正しく評価する分析力の育成こそが求められている。 Beyond the “Paint by Numbers”: Reading Ní Chuilleanáin’s Translation through a Foucauldian Lens22/4/2026
 There comes a point in teaching Leaving Certificate English where the familiar approach begins to feel insufficient. The structure is reliable — theme, imagery, quotation, explanation — but with certain poems, particularly those of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, that linear, “paint by numbers” method begins to falter. Translation is one such poem.
On first encounter, it resists clarity. Students describe it as “jagged,” “hard to follow,” even “unfinished.” And they are right — but not in the way they think. The difficulty is not a flaw in the poem; it is the poem’s method. At that moment, I found myself needing to step outside the standard exam framework and return to my own academic grounding — specifically, the work of Michel Foucault. What Foucault offers is not a set of answers, but a way of seeing: that identity is not simply expressed, but produced; that institutions do not merely contain individuals, but shape what can be known, said, and even thought about them. In this light, Translation becomes far more than a difficult poem about a particular historical moment. It becomes an exploration of how people are rendered visible — or invisible — within systems of power. The poem opens in what appears to be a recognisable institutional setting — a laundry, a place of labour, routine, and control. Under a traditional reading, this might lead quickly to historical contextualisation. But a Foucauldian perspective reframes the space: this is not merely a location, but a disciplinary environment, one that produces silence, uniformity, and compliance. The women within it are not simply present; they are constituted as subjects within its structures. From this silence, a voice begins to emerge — “sharp as an infant’s cry.” It is a striking image, not because it clarifies meaning, but because it disrupts it. The voice is raw, immediate, and impossible to ignore, yet it is not fully formed. It lacks the coherence we expect of language. Here, Foucault’s insight becomes useful: the voice exists, but the system has already shaped the conditions under which it can be heard. What we are witnessing is not full expression, but partial emergence. This partiality deepens in the poem’s treatment of language itself. The phrase “washed clean of idiom” is particularly revealing. Idiom carries culture, identity, and nuance — to be stripped of it is to be stripped of self. The speaker is left with a “temporary name,” an identity imposed rather than chosen. In Foucauldian terms, this is language functioning not as expression, but as classification. The individual is no longer a speaker, but a subject defined by the system. The physical environment reinforces this process. In one of the poem’s most unsettling images, the labour of washing becomes corrosive rather than cleansing: “rotten teeth of soap” and “every grasp seemed melted.” The body itself becomes a site of control, worn down by repetition and exhaustion. What should purify instead erodes. Foucault describes such processes as the production of “docile bodies” — individuals shaped and subdued through routine, discipline, and labour. Ní Chuilleanáin renders this not as theory, but as lived experience. As the poem moves forward, the imagery shifts beneath the surface. The women become “ridges under the veil, shifting” — barely visible, concealed, and unsettled. This is where the reading becomes almost archaeological. The past is not presented clearly; it must be inferred from traces, fragments, disturbances in the surface. Foucault’s “archaeology of knowledge” speaks to this: truth is not directly accessible, but must be reconstructed from what remains. The women are present, but not fully recoverable. By the time we reach the poem’s closing movement — “I rise and forget” — we might expect resolution. There is, after all, a rising, a return. But Ní Chuilleanáin denies us closure. The act of rising is paired with forgetting. Identity is not restored; it is altered, incomplete. Even the act of recovery is shaped by the structures that erased it in the first place. This is where the poem reveals its full complexity. It is not simply about giving voice to the silenced. It is about showing how that voice can never be fully recovered, because it has been shaped, constrained, and partially erased by the very systems we are trying to understand. For students, this can be a difficult shift. The Leaving Certificate often rewards clarity, structure, and resolution. Yet here is a poem that offers none of these easily. The challenge, then, is not to simplify the poem to fit the exam, but to help students articulate why it resists simplification. In practical terms, this means moving away from asking, “What is the poem about?” and towards asking, “Why can’t we fully understand it?” It means recognising that the poem’s fragmentation mirrors the fragmentation of identity it depicts. It means allowing students to sit with uncertainty, and then guiding them to express that uncertainty clearly and coherently. Ultimately, stepping outside the linear approach was not a departure from exam preparation, but a deepening of it. By drawing on a Foucauldian framework — even implicitly — students can move from description to analysis, from surface meaning to conceptual understanding. And perhaps most importantly, they come to see that some poems are not puzzles to be solved, but experiences to be interpreted — where meaning is not given, but constructed, and never fully complete. ✍️ 日本語要約（約700文字）このブログでは、エイレーン・ニ・フーリハーンの詩「Translation」を教える際に、従来の「型にはめた」読解方法では不十分であることを論じている。代わりにフーコー的視点を取り入れることで、この詩が単に意味を伝えるのではなく、いかにして権力や制度が個人の声やアイデンティティ、さらには「知り得ること」そのものを形作り、制限しているのかを明らかにしていると捉えることができる。詩の断片的で曖昧な構造は、沈黙させられた存在の不完全で不安定な回復を反映しており、むしろその「わかりにくさ」こそが本質である。したがって、生徒には詩を単純化して理解するのではなく、その曖昧さと向き合い、それを言語化する力を養うことが求められる。これは試験対策としても有効であり、表面的な要約から一歩進んだ概念的理解へと導くものである。 What has unsettled me most on returning to Ireland is not culture in the conventional sense—language, food, or social custom—but something more structural: the experience of systems that do not reliably complete what they begin.
I have found myself, more than once, sending a third or fourth follow-up email—not to accelerate a process, but simply to confirm that it still exists. That, in essence, is the shift. It is not delay that unsettles, but uncertainty. Having spent several decades working in Japan, I had become accustomed to a different relationship between system and outcome. Japanese administrative structures are often dense, highly procedural, and at times slow. Yet within that density, there exists an expectation of completion. Tasks move—perhaps not quickly or always flexibly—but they tend to move towards an endpoint. The system, for all its weight, is rarely inert. One learns to be patient, but not doubtful. Returning to Ireland, I have found myself confronting a different pattern. Processes stall; communication lapses occur; timelines extend in ways that are difficult to predict. What I am responding to is not simply delay, but a more fundamental ambiguity: whether the system itself will follow through without sustained intervention. In practice, this often requires the individual—teacher, applicant, client—to assume responsibility for maintaining momentum. The system functions, but at times only because one continues to push it forward. 1. Completion, Flexibility, and Systemic Trade-offs It would, however, be reductive to frame this as a straightforward contrast between an efficient Japan and an inefficient Ireland. Japanese systems, while reliable in terms of completion, can be notably rigid. When a situation falls outside established parameters, the system may not adapt; it may simply cease to function effectively. Completion, in such cases, is contingent upon conformity. The system works—provided one fits within it. Ireland, by contrast, appears to operate with a greater degree of informality and flexibility. Processes may be more open to adjustment, but this openness can come at the cost of consistency. Completion is possible, but not always assured. There is space for discretion, but also room for drift. A similar tension may be observed in Canada. From both prior professional experience and ongoing conversations with family and colleagues, there is a sense of systems that continue to function, but often only just - marked by variability and, at times, an increasing inwardness. What emerges, then, is not a hierarchy of effectiveness but a spectrum of systems negotiating the balance between reliability and adaptability. Most clearly, for Canada, or should I say Ontario, the system operates on the apparent practice of 'out of sight - out of mind'. 2. Systems and Cultural Dynamics: A Theoretical Frame What becomes interesting, however, is how this looks when viewed through a systems lens. The issue is not the presence or absence of bureaucracy, but the mode of its enactment. Here, Max Weber's work remains instructive. Weber’s conception of bureaucracy as a rational, rule-bound system oriented towards predictability and efficiency helps explain the strength of Japanese administrative culture: a high degree of procedural rationality aligned with completion. At the same time, cultural frameworks such as those associated with Geert Hofstede offer further insight. Japan’s relatively higher orientation towards uncertainty avoidance and structured processes contrasts with more flexible, less tightly standardised approaches evident in Ireland and, increasingly, Canada. These are not deficiencies, but expressions of differing cultural logics regarding authority, time, and responsibility. In this sense, what appears as inefficiency in one context may in fact be a by-product of valuing adaptability over procedural closure. Conversely, what appears to be efficiency may conceal rigidity that limits responsiveness when conditions shift. 3. Reflexivity and the Limits of Expectation The more difficult question, however, is whether the issue lies entirely in the systems I encounter, or partly in the expectations I bring. Having worked for so long within environments where completion was assumed, I find myself reading inconsistency as failure. Yet this may also reflect a narrowing of my own tolerance for variability. What I interpret as inconsistency may, in part, be a different balance between formal obligation and informal practice. Ireland’s administrative culture, while at times uneven, may also allow for forms of responsiveness and human discretion that more rigid systems struggle to accommodate. The absence of guaranteed completion may, paradoxically, be tied to human flexibility. Autoethnographic perspectives remind us that experience is not neutral. It is shaped by professional habitus and deeply embedded assumptions about what constitutes effective practice. The discomfort, therefore, lies not only in the systems encountered but in the misalignment between expectation and context. Conclusion: Systems as Cultural Expressions What I am encountering, then, is not inefficiency alone, but a different relationship to completion itself. Some systems prioritise reliability, even at the cost of flexibility. Others privilege adaptability, even at the cost of consistency. Neither is inherently superior; both are cultural expressions, enacted through organisational practice and individual behaviour. Reverse culture shock, in this sense, is not about returning “home” but about encountering the limits of one’s own assumptions. It is in that space—between expectation and experience—that understanding begins—not only of systems, but of oneself within them. And perhaps that is the more productive question to carry forward: not why systems fail to complete, but how different systems understand what completion requires—and what they are willing to sacrifice to achieve it. 本稿は、日本で長年働いた後にアイルランドへ帰国した筆者が経験した「逆カルチャーショック」を、制度と文化の観点から考察するものである。特に注目するのは、業務や手続きが「完了すること」への期待の違いである。日本では手続きは複雑で時間がかかる場合も多いが、最終的には確実に完了するという前提がある。一方、アイルランドでは柔軟性や裁量の余地がある反面、手続きが途中で停滞したり、完了が保証されない状況が見られる。カナダにも同様の傾向が部分的に認められる。本稿では、Max Weberの官僚制理論やGeert Hofstedeの文化次元論を参照しつつ、制度の運用様式の違いを分析する。同時に、こうした違和感が筆者自身の期待や経験に由来する可能性についても省察する。最終的に、制度とは文化の表現であり、「完了」に対する考え方の違いが、各社会の価値観を反映していることを示す。  Bibliographic Entry
Roe, Augustus John. Myths, Legends, Archetypes and Stereotypes in Martial Arts. YMAA Publishing, 2023. Personal Reflection Augustus John Roe's Myths, Legends, Archetypes and Stereotypes in Martial Arts intervenes in a persistent yet insufficiently examined problem within martial arts practice: the misrecognition of myth as history. In doing so, the article makes a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary field of martial arts studies, while also drawing implicitly on key insights from sociology and historiography. Its central claim—that much of what practitioners inherit as "tradition" is mediated through oral transmission, narrative embellishment, and modern reconstruction—demands serious consideration from both scholars and practitioners. Roe begins by situating the widespread civilian practice of martial arts as a relatively recent historical development, emerging not from a continuous need for combat but from periods of relative peace and stability. This framing challenges the assumption of direct continuity between premodern fighting systems and contemporary practice. In this respect, Roe's argument aligns with the revisionist work of Paul Bowman, who has demonstrated that "martial arts" as a coherent category is itself a modern cultural construction rather than an unbroken inheritance. The article then distinguishes between myth and legend as modes of transmission. In conditions of low literacy and informal instruction, martial knowledge was frequently preserved through oral storytelling, rendering it susceptible to exaggeration, reinterpretation, and symbolic embellishment. Figures such as Zhang Sanfeng or Bodhidharma, therefore, operate less as historically verifiable individuals and more as narrative constructs that encode ethical, spiritual, and technical principles. Roe is careful not to dismiss these narratives outright; rather, he recognises their pedagogical function within martial cultures. From a sociological perspective, this positions martial arts traditions as systems of collective meaning-making. In terms consistent with Émile Durkheim, such narratives function as "collective representations," sustaining shared values and group cohesion. More precisely, they operate as socially constructed systems of legitimation, shaping what is accepted as authentic, authoritative, or valuable within a given community. Myth, in this sense, is not simply falsehood but a mechanism through which meaning is organised and transmitted. Roe develops this further through the concept of archetypes, drawing on Carl Jung's framework. The recurring figures of the hero, the mentor, and the creator emerge not only in fictional narratives but also in the retrospective construction of martial arts founders and masters. Over time, these archetypes harden into stereotypes, influencing how practitioners perceive legitimacy. The preference for instructors who conform to preconceived images of mastery illustrates how narrative forms can produce subtle yet pervasive exclusion within martial arts communities. Historically, the article reinforces the now well-established view that martial arts traditions are dynamic rather than static. The twentieth-century globalisation of martial arts—through military exchange, cinema, and popular culture—did not merely disseminate existing systems but also actively reshaped them, both in the West and in Asia. This complicates any appeal to authenticity grounded solely in lineage or antiquity, and instead points towards a more contingent and constructed understanding of tradition. The significance of Roe's argument becomes particularly evident when considered through the lens of Shu–Ha–Ri (守破離) within Budo (武道). Properly understood, Shu (守) is not passive imitation but disciplined preservation—something rendered impossible when the tradition itself is misrecognised. What Roe ultimately exposes is that many practitioners attempt Ha (破) and Ri (離) without ever having meaningfully achieved Shu. If the foundational stage is built upon unexamined myth, stereotype, or retrospective invention, then subsequent attempts to "break" or "transcend" risk perpetuating distortion rather than achieving mastery. In this respect, the article offers both a critique and a corrective. It does not call for the rejection of myth—indeed, it recognises its enduring pedagogical and cultural value—but rather for its proper contextualisation. Tradition must be understood as a layered construct in which symbolic narratives and historical realities coexist but are not interchangeable. While Roe's analysis is persuasive, the article would benefit from a more sustained engagement with non-East Asian traditions, where similar processes of myth-making and narrative construction are equally evident. Such an expansion would further strengthen the claim that these dynamics are not culturally specific but structurally inherent to the transmission of embodied practices. The implications for the field are clear. There is a need for continued interdisciplinary research that bridges martial arts studies with sociology, anthropology, and critical historiography. At the level of practice, instructors bear responsibility for how knowledge is framed and transmitted, ensuring that myth is presented as symbolic rather than empirical truth. For practitioners, the task is one of intellectual discipline: to engage with tradition critically, without either naïve acceptance or dismissive rejection. The task, therefore, is not to abandon tradition, but to interrogate it—rigorously, historically, and without illusion. Only then can movement from Shu to Ha to Ri represent genuine development rather than the repetition of inherited misrecognition. This review is dedicated to Miyase Sensei (先生), whose teaching—only now partially understood—continues to inform my practice and reminds me that what is given is not always immediately recognised. 本稿は、Augustus John Roe の論文を検討し、武道（武道）における伝統理解の問題を論じる。著者は、武術の「伝統」が神話・伝説・語りの再構成によって形成されてきたことを指摘する。これらは文化的意味や倫理を伝える一方で、ステレオタイプや誤認を生み出す側面も持つ。本稿はこれを守破離（守破離）の観点から再考し、真の修行はまず「守」における批判的理解を前提とするべきであると主張する。伝統を無批判に継承するのではなく、歴史的・社会的文脈の中で再検討する必要がある。 |
James M. HatchInternational Educator who happens to be passionate about Chito Ryu Karate. Born in Ireland, educated in Canada, matured in Japan Archives
April 2026
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