Daily Reflection 3.08.21
Mar. 8th, 2021 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthings Sun Tzu elaborates on the uses of secrecy in the following verses:
All these dicta can be boiled down into two:
Be where the Enemy is not.
Force the Enemy to be where you want him to be.
When we think about actual warfare, it's very easy to see how to apply these ideas, both in imaginary and in historical examples. Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North in 1863 was an attempt to force the Union to withdraw their armies from Virginia and defend Harrisburg and Philadelphia. It worked. Union armies followed Lee into Pennsylvania, where they met at Gettysburg. There, the tables were turned. On the third day of the battle, Lee ordered a massive infantry assault on the strongly defended Union position at Cemetery Ridge. This was Pickett's Charge, and its results are well known. The attackers were repulsed with heavy losses, and the North was victorious at Gettysburg.
Invading the North is a good idea; Pickett's Charge is not.
In ordinary life, this means that we will be more likely to succeed in any given task or goal if we can figure out beforehand where and how we are most likely to meet resistance, and avoiding this. To pick a fairly well known example, if you want a career in education, you will have a much easier time finding a job if you can teach Math or Chemistry than if all you can teach is English.
We've discussed this sort of thing before, though. What new ideas can we glean from this passage?
In relation to defensive warfare, Sun Tzu discusses "throwing something odd an unaccountable" in the Enemy's way. In a military setting, this can mean bluffs, tricks, or diversions. But what might it mean in daily life?
For many people, the conquest of their own souls means the overcoming of an addiction. Habitual and involuntary use of porn, alcohol, TV, social media, video games, caffeine, tobacco, gambling, shopping, sugar or hard drugs all stand between the individual and the "total conquest of his faculties and his future." Some people-- those with strongly trained wills-- are able to attack addictions head on, and simply choose to quit them. I knew someone who smoked every day until he was 40, decided to quit, and never had another cigarette. Most of us aren't like that, though. So what can we do?
Here's where the use of diversions comes in. For most people, an addictive behaviors are provoked by fairly specific and regular triggers. You might be used to having a cigarette after lunch, or with your morning coffee. If you want to stop smoking-- that's if, by the way; smoking may be the least fashionable of vices these days, but that doesn't mean it can't be your favorite one-- but as I said, if you want to stop smoking you're going to need to recognize these triggers. They're like forces of the enemy, overcoming your defenses and getting a cigarette into your mouth. Once you see them, though, you can do something about them. Sometimes, all it takes is to create a little time delay. If you feel a craving for a cigarette, don't fight it. Just tell yourself that you can have a cigarette if you still want one in 15 minutes. A lot of the time, you're going to find that you don't anymore. The triggering event has passed, and so has the craving that went with it.
Of course, you can simply pass your 15 minutes waiting for the moment when you're allowed your cigarette (or your cell phone, your whiskey or whatever it is). Do that and you're probably going to fail. Find something else to do instead, and-- this is critical-- make sure it's something you enjoy. Instead of smoking, spend 15 minutes playing the guitar, reading a book, walking in the woods or enjoying a really cool daydream. Once your time is up-- if you even notice it-- you'll probably find you'd rather keep doing whatever you're doing.
You may advance and be absolutely irresistible, if you make for the Enemy's weak points; you may retire and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapid than those of the Enemy.
If we wish to fight, the Enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need to do is to attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.
If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the Enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out upon the ground.
All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way. By discovering the Enemy's dispositions and remaining invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated, while the Enemy's must be divided.
If we wish to fight, the Enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need to do is to attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.
If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the Enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out upon the ground.
All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way. By discovering the Enemy's dispositions and remaining invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated, while the Enemy's must be divided.
All these dicta can be boiled down into two:
Be where the Enemy is not.
Force the Enemy to be where you want him to be.
When we think about actual warfare, it's very easy to see how to apply these ideas, both in imaginary and in historical examples. Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North in 1863 was an attempt to force the Union to withdraw their armies from Virginia and defend Harrisburg and Philadelphia. It worked. Union armies followed Lee into Pennsylvania, where they met at Gettysburg. There, the tables were turned. On the third day of the battle, Lee ordered a massive infantry assault on the strongly defended Union position at Cemetery Ridge. This was Pickett's Charge, and its results are well known. The attackers were repulsed with heavy losses, and the North was victorious at Gettysburg.
Invading the North is a good idea; Pickett's Charge is not.
In ordinary life, this means that we will be more likely to succeed in any given task or goal if we can figure out beforehand where and how we are most likely to meet resistance, and avoiding this. To pick a fairly well known example, if you want a career in education, you will have a much easier time finding a job if you can teach Math or Chemistry than if all you can teach is English.
We've discussed this sort of thing before, though. What new ideas can we glean from this passage?
In relation to defensive warfare, Sun Tzu discusses "throwing something odd an unaccountable" in the Enemy's way. In a military setting, this can mean bluffs, tricks, or diversions. But what might it mean in daily life?
For many people, the conquest of their own souls means the overcoming of an addiction. Habitual and involuntary use of porn, alcohol, TV, social media, video games, caffeine, tobacco, gambling, shopping, sugar or hard drugs all stand between the individual and the "total conquest of his faculties and his future." Some people-- those with strongly trained wills-- are able to attack addictions head on, and simply choose to quit them. I knew someone who smoked every day until he was 40, decided to quit, and never had another cigarette. Most of us aren't like that, though. So what can we do?
Here's where the use of diversions comes in. For most people, an addictive behaviors are provoked by fairly specific and regular triggers. You might be used to having a cigarette after lunch, or with your morning coffee. If you want to stop smoking-- that's if, by the way; smoking may be the least fashionable of vices these days, but that doesn't mean it can't be your favorite one-- but as I said, if you want to stop smoking you're going to need to recognize these triggers. They're like forces of the enemy, overcoming your defenses and getting a cigarette into your mouth. Once you see them, though, you can do something about them. Sometimes, all it takes is to create a little time delay. If you feel a craving for a cigarette, don't fight it. Just tell yourself that you can have a cigarette if you still want one in 15 minutes. A lot of the time, you're going to find that you don't anymore. The triggering event has passed, and so has the craving that went with it.
Of course, you can simply pass your 15 minutes waiting for the moment when you're allowed your cigarette (or your cell phone, your whiskey or whatever it is). Do that and you're probably going to fail. Find something else to do instead, and-- this is critical-- make sure it's something you enjoy. Instead of smoking, spend 15 minutes playing the guitar, reading a book, walking in the woods or enjoying a really cool daydream. Once your time is up-- if you even notice it-- you'll probably find you'd rather keep doing whatever you're doing.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-08 07:01 pm (UTC)If I may: it's an interesting thing with Lee's two invasions of the North which demonstrates an important military dynamic. In both Sharpsburg and Gettysburg when Lee invaded he more or less immediately lost his ability to effectively maneuver. In his famous battles in defense of Richmond, he and the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia were able to pull of really dazzling maneuvers that were simply beyond the capacity of McClellan or Hooker to handle. With tiny forces, a lot of deception, and a will cut of steel, he sent stronger forces into retreat. When he actually invaded the North well...he ran into all of the problems that Northerners had trying to invade the South. That is, he could hardly pull of the fast movements and routing counterattacks that make him so famous.
While Lee was no doubt an incomparable military genius, I think that he really was far more of a defensive genius than an offensive genius. I recently read Catton's book _Grant Takes Command_ which chronicles the last 18 months of the war, the portion people don't talk about much because the glory fades just as the bloodshed gets blown up to near WWI levels. It's an interesting thing to consider that Grant in his first major battle --- The Wilderness --- lost about the same number of men as Hooker did at Chancellorsville. The difference, of course, is that Hooker became as an aide de camp wrote "A whipped dog," whereas Grant grimly took the Army of the Potomac further south in a flanking movement to Spotsylvania.
I've found it helpful to contemplate the difference between Lee and Grant. Lee was the better general on technical grounds, but Grant clearly had the stronger will of the two. Lee never pulled off a Ft. Donelson, let alone a Vicksburg or a Battle of Chattanooga. The difference to my mind really illustrates the spooky and immense power that the will has. Before the war, Grant was, after all, a loser. And even during his rise, polite society found him baffling since he always looked like a nobody. When secretary of war Stanton met him for the first time, he at first confused Grant's doctor for Grant and shook the doctor's hand rather than the generals! And yet, the little, quiet man, who looked like no one in particular, and people could never find in a crowd, had the will that ultimately prevailed in the Civil War.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-08 07:23 pm (UTC)One of the things I've discovered since moving back to the east coast from California-- and after having spent the 7 years prior expanding my psychic awareness through daily magical practice-- is just how very different the different states *feel* here. I regularly travel from my home in central Maryland to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. There is a brief stretch of road that goes through Virginia itself. Each state feels different. You're in Virginia for all of five minutes, but you feel the presence of the Old Dominion in all its aristocratic glory, before you arrive in West Virginia.
Crossing the Mason-Dixon into PA is also very dramatic. Even as a child I noticed this-- we used to spend our summers in Maryland, and it always felt different from Pennsylvania. And you feel the difference the moment you cross the border, even though the climate, the geology, the ecosystem are identical. Currently Pennsylvania feels rather like a prison state, unfortunately, but that's a different subject. My point is that the older states have strong and well-defined identities. Every time I visit Gettysburg-- I'm fond of both the town and its battlefield-- I wonder how Lee could have made the decisions he did. I wonder if what I'm discussing here doesn't have something to do with it. In Virginia, Lee had the aid of the spirit of Virginia itself; in Pennsylvania, he was on hostile ground, not just physically but astrally.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-09 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-12 07:05 pm (UTC)I have been pondering fire and water, lately—will and detachment, you know?—and I think they both, quite rightly, have a "spooky and immense power." Both are indomitable, but they're indomitable in weirdly different ways. Here you have a Grant, there you have a Shichiri Kojun. (Or a Jeanne d'Arc? I need to reread her trials one of these days.) I suspect this is true of mastered air and earth, too, but these are harder concepts for me to integrate.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-13 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-09 03:43 pm (UTC)Lent starts next week, and I have some bad habits to break. I will keep this discussion in mind, and see if it helps.
Thanks for the timely post!
no subject
Date: 2021-03-12 07:31 pm (UTC)You often propose redirection as a solution to these kinds of problems and I've been skimming over a lot of those commentaries since I've always found it to be a poor tactic in those scenarios... but it occurs to me, it's an "airy" solution to the problem, right? Fire takes the initiative; air redirects; water redefines; earth is steadfast. So here I've been wondering if you're especially strong in air or something, since it appears your go-to method and it seems to me that you read it into the text (or, at least, emphasize it) in ways that I would not!
But today, pondering over it as it came up again I realize: my natal chart is devoid of air and, in fact, strong only in water. I naturally have a different preference of method. And perhaps you don't overemphasize this particular feature at all, but I am reading that into you because I'm deficient in it!
Anyway, that's the key to this passage in the text, isn't it? We all have our strong and weak points, our preferred methods and the methods that are surprising to us. If one doesn't make an effort to balance those out, then the "opposing generals" can predict them, and exploit them.