Daily Reflection 2.15.21

 Today, a somewhat difficult passage from Sun Tzu:

To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.

Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, "Well done!"

To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.

What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage. 

So we have, on the one hand, to be able to win in spite of insurmountable odds; and, on the other hand, to win so effortlessly that no one would look on and cheer our victory. 

Think about the plot of the Rocky movies. If you're unfamiliar, in every single case, it goes like this: Rocky sets out to win a fight against an unbeatable opponent. He trains and trains and struggles within himself while '80s workout music plays. Then the big fight comes. After a grueling battle, Rocky eeks out a win in the fifteenth round. The crowd bursts into wild applause as Rocky staggers to his corner. 

This is exactly the opposite of what Sun Tzu wants for us. Our victories should appear effortless. A single punch and the opponent goes down; the crowd is left wondering why they paid $100 a ticket for a 30 second fight.

And so we're left with a question: How can we, on the one hand, struggle and win against seemingly impossible odds, while, on the other hand, seem to do so effortlessly?

This will be the third time I've used the following example, but I keep coming back to it because it really seems important. 

In the 1960s, Archbishop Fulton Sheen denounced the hippies, Beat writer Jack Kerouac denounced the hippies, and the only effect was to strengthen the hippies.

In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the early punk movement denounced the hippies, and the hippies were overthrown. 

Moreover, the punks didn't come out and give televised rants against hippie immorality (as Archbishop Sheen did) or debate hippies on the Ed Sullivan show (as Kerouac did). They didn't need to. They sneered at the hippies and dismissed them with a contemptuous flick of their wrist. In a promotional video for the Clash from the early '80s, Joe Strummer barks, "From now on, anyone who takes a drug is a hippie. And hippies can shove off." There's no debate necessary, no discussion, just a curled lip and a snort of contempt. Hippie is out, punk is in, and that's the way of things.

The so-called "Woke" movement in American political culture is the worst thing that has happened in my lifetime, and there is nothing that I would like more than to see it destroyed, ruined, and utterly purged from our public discourse so that scarcely a memory of it remains. I imagine that I feel about it roughly how Fulton Sheen felt about the hippies. It's stunningly, breathtakingly immoral, and built on a foundation of logic so fallacious a two-year old should be able to see through it. And yet we see it sweeping through every major institution in American life. To illustrate the point, I just deleted a paragraph detailing the power of the Black Lives Matter movement, out of concern that any public criticism of that organization could lead to this blog being taken down. 

They must be beaten. But how? The situation seems impossible; the odds insurmountable. 

And that's how you know that it's doable.

I'm going to go out on a limb by making a prediction. Within 10 years, the "Woke" movement will have as much cultural power as the Christian Ladies for Decency did in the middle of the 1970s. By 10 years after that, it will be as hated as McCarthyism. 

How can we know this?

By observation-- today's Wokesterism is a cultural fad akin to prior authoritarian cultural movements. It will, therefore, share a similar lifespan. The key moment to watch for is the moment when it seems to be at the height of its power-- that is the moment when the reversal begins. Picture a yin-yang (taiji) symbol-- Yin begins when Yang is at its height, and vice versa. I'm not sure if we have already reached that point or not, but I think we're close. I can't currently interact with any major American institution without being treated to Black Lives Matter propaganda. That tells me it's either at or nearly at full saturation. Now is not the time for direct confrontation. Now is the time to prepare a replacement worldview; a punk rock to BLM's hippiedom. Soon Wokesterism will begin to fade and withdraw all on its own. And at hte right moment, it will be easy enough to dismiss it with a snort and a curled lip.