Daily Reflection 4.13.21

[readoldthings]

Sun Tzu continues to give us advice about terrain:

When in difficult country, do not encamp. In country where high roads intersect, join hands with your allies. Do not linger in dangerously isolated positions. In hemmed in positions, you must resort to stratagem. In a desperate position, you must fight. 

If you remember, way, way back in Chapter 1 we discussed terrain as a component of "Earth." For our purposes, terrain includes all those locations-- whether actual physical locations, mental locations, cultural locations, digital locations, astral locations or spiritual locations-- in which we must act to achieve any particular goal. 

The essence of the advice here is: Don't set yourself up for failure. If you have a problem with internet pornography, arrange your day so that you're not spending all your time alone with a computer-- that's the definition of a dangerously isolated position, for you. If you find yourself in that kind of position, don't encamp-- that is, find something else to do, don't just hang out. 

Joining hands with your allies is useful advice for anyone, provided that it's possible. Addicts very often find that it's much easier to get over their addiction if they join forces with others. This is true for addicts of every kind-- which includes many, perhaps most of us-- not just substance abusers. Alcoholics are better off at AA meetings than barrooms; home shopping addicts would often be better off getting together with their friends at a park than spending time on Etsy or Amazon.

Set yourself up for success, and you will succeed.

Comments

[kimberlysteele]

I think it was William Blake who said "you become what you behold". Or there is the old saying "sleep with dogs and you will wake up with fleas". When I saw all of my (now ex) vegan friends becoming obsessed with hatred of Donald Trump, I warned them that by stewing in hatred, they would become both hateful and hated themselves. They never figured it out, so I blocked them and/or cut them out of my life.

[readoldthings]

Yes, that's it exactly. The last few years have been the clearest confirmation of the aphorism "What you contemplate, you imitate" that I could imagine. You have a group of people obsessed with Nazis, whose ideology gradually morphs into authoritarian racialized socialism, enforced by street violence perpetrated by black clad mobs, with heavy doses of "blood and soil" (or "cultural appropriation" as it's spelled these days-- i.e., only those people who live in the same region and are genetically related to the originator of any given cultural good have the right to it).

Of course, that's also a very good reason to not pay too much attention to the SJWs...

[kimberlysteele]

Their karma is beginning to roll back in their direction. It's not pretty right now. I'm glad I divorced myself from the lot of them, body and soul, long before this came home to roost.