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Daily Reflection 3.16.21
Mar. 16th, 2021 03:06 pmSun Tzu continues:
It's tempting to repeat the points I've been making over the last couple of months at this point. Know your enemy and know yourself, attack where the enemy is weak, the most important battle is within, and so on. Today, though, I'm going to assume that if you've been following along, you already know all that.
How do we turn the devious into the direct, and how do we turn misfortune into gain?
Here are two very different examples which, I believe, together illustrate the point.
***
In June of 2014, 1500 members of the Islamic State organization attacked the city of Mosul, in Northern Iraq. Mosul was defended by 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and another 30,000 police. Despite being vastly outnumbered, the Islamic State forces took the city within 4 days.
A question was raised here recently: Do I always favor an indirect approach to situations? No, not at all. I followed the news of the Islamic State's offensive closely at the time, and their extraordinary success has always stuck with me. We've discussed Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg and the fictional battle of Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings as examples of frontal assaults not working. Well, the Battle of Mosul is an example of how a frontal assault on a vastly superior force can work very well indeed.
In order to understand its relevance, we need to remember two things:
First, while Sun Tzu has repeatedly enjoined us to attack the enemy's weak points, he has also counseled us, "When strong, feign weakness; when weak, feign strength."
Second, there are different types of strength. Physically, the Iraqi Army was much stronger than the Islamic State; but the latter was clearly possessed of strength of will, and spiritual strength. Regarding the latter, "spiritual" doesn't always mean "good." It just means "nonphysical." Whatever desert demon the IS forces were worshipping under the name of "Allah" clearly gave them the strength to overcome their enemies. (You can tell it was a demon by the way it received human sacrifices and abandoned its worshipers to American and Russian bombs and special forces.)
In addition to "If weak, feign strength," then, we should add, "If physically weak, seek spiritual strength."
***
The second example is personal.
Now, the trouble with using personal examples is that, unless it's an example of failure, it can sound like bragging. So I want to be clear that that's not what I intend here; I've made more mistakes than I can count in my life. But the following is not one of them.
It's now one year since the Covid lockdowns began. Like a lot of people, I lost my job, and my wife did too. We both worked in a field that requires direct contact with other human beings and that was deemed "non-essential" by those whose job it is to determine these things.
At the time we lived in a very expensive city in California. Neither of us is from there and we never really adapted; we wanted to move back to the East Coast.
So we decided to take advantage of the situation. In April-- or was it May? Can you remember that long ago time?-- of 2020, we received our government stimulus checks. Between both of us we could have covered a single month's rent in California. Instead, we decided to give our landlord 30 days notice and use the money to rent an RV. We packed our kids and cats into the RV and spent 2 weeks driving across the country. Now we live on the East Coast, as we intended. We pay significantly less rent for much more space; we're closer to our families; and we're able to experience all 4 seasons, instead of just one unending summer. Life is much better, according to our standards-- but it couldn't have happened if not for the disaster of the Covid lockdown.
Every misfortune can be turned into a gain, if we have the will to look for the opportunity and the courage to pursue it. This includes the ultimate misfortunes, our own deaths and the deaths of those we love. It's not that, as people will sometimes (and rather obnoxiously) say, "Something good comes from everything." It's that, if we are willing, we can find the good in anything. As my favorite passage from Epictetus has it, even at the very last, we can choose not to die screaming, or full of fear, or cursing God. Even the worst catastrophes can be sources of inner strength, if we're willing to accept it as such.
After that [that is, after harmonizing the elements of the army], comes tactical maneuvering, than which there is nothing more difficult. The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into direct, and misfortune into gain.
It's tempting to repeat the points I've been making over the last couple of months at this point. Know your enemy and know yourself, attack where the enemy is weak, the most important battle is within, and so on. Today, though, I'm going to assume that if you've been following along, you already know all that.
How do we turn the devious into the direct, and how do we turn misfortune into gain?
Here are two very different examples which, I believe, together illustrate the point.
***
In June of 2014, 1500 members of the Islamic State organization attacked the city of Mosul, in Northern Iraq. Mosul was defended by 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and another 30,000 police. Despite being vastly outnumbered, the Islamic State forces took the city within 4 days.
A question was raised here recently: Do I always favor an indirect approach to situations? No, not at all. I followed the news of the Islamic State's offensive closely at the time, and their extraordinary success has always stuck with me. We've discussed Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg and the fictional battle of Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings as examples of frontal assaults not working. Well, the Battle of Mosul is an example of how a frontal assault on a vastly superior force can work very well indeed.
In order to understand its relevance, we need to remember two things:
First, while Sun Tzu has repeatedly enjoined us to attack the enemy's weak points, he has also counseled us, "When strong, feign weakness; when weak, feign strength."
Second, there are different types of strength. Physically, the Iraqi Army was much stronger than the Islamic State; but the latter was clearly possessed of strength of will, and spiritual strength. Regarding the latter, "spiritual" doesn't always mean "good." It just means "nonphysical." Whatever desert demon the IS forces were worshipping under the name of "Allah" clearly gave them the strength to overcome their enemies. (You can tell it was a demon by the way it received human sacrifices and abandoned its worshipers to American and Russian bombs and special forces.)
In addition to "If weak, feign strength," then, we should add, "If physically weak, seek spiritual strength."
***
The second example is personal.
Now, the trouble with using personal examples is that, unless it's an example of failure, it can sound like bragging. So I want to be clear that that's not what I intend here; I've made more mistakes than I can count in my life. But the following is not one of them.
It's now one year since the Covid lockdowns began. Like a lot of people, I lost my job, and my wife did too. We both worked in a field that requires direct contact with other human beings and that was deemed "non-essential" by those whose job it is to determine these things.
At the time we lived in a very expensive city in California. Neither of us is from there and we never really adapted; we wanted to move back to the East Coast.
So we decided to take advantage of the situation. In April-- or was it May? Can you remember that long ago time?-- of 2020, we received our government stimulus checks. Between both of us we could have covered a single month's rent in California. Instead, we decided to give our landlord 30 days notice and use the money to rent an RV. We packed our kids and cats into the RV and spent 2 weeks driving across the country. Now we live on the East Coast, as we intended. We pay significantly less rent for much more space; we're closer to our families; and we're able to experience all 4 seasons, instead of just one unending summer. Life is much better, according to our standards-- but it couldn't have happened if not for the disaster of the Covid lockdown.
Every misfortune can be turned into a gain, if we have the will to look for the opportunity and the courage to pursue it. This includes the ultimate misfortunes, our own deaths and the deaths of those we love. It's not that, as people will sometimes (and rather obnoxiously) say, "Something good comes from everything." It's that, if we are willing, we can find the good in anything. As my favorite passage from Epictetus has it, even at the very last, we can choose not to die screaming, or full of fear, or cursing God. Even the worst catastrophes can be sources of inner strength, if we're willing to accept it as such.
