For Sun Tzu's The Art of War, I would pick it up, put it down, and read it here and there every few years. From time to time, I would come up with these great ideas – no, I would come up with earth shattering epiphanies – only to be crushed when my ultimate understanding had already been said so much better by someone else hundreds or thousands of years ago.
As I moved on to other studies, I started to notice similarities between many thinkers – Brian Tracey, Dale Carnegie, John Boyd, Og Mandino, Peter Lynch, Herbert Spenser, etc. I even started to notice that even these thinkers overlapped and trampled each other. For example, William of Ockam simply popularized The Razor, but thinkers from Ptolemy and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus had versions of the same concept, before William did. And, Sun Tzu wasn’t the first to divine the content in the The Art of War, however his distillation and presentation of the material popularized it, as he made it digestible in a meaningful way. So, it’s not so much the album version but the remix that moves the crowd.
At the risk of oversimplifying the text as I’ve warned above, remember this concept from The Art of War, as I believe it to be the Essence of the thing:
The Supreme Art of War is to Subdue the Enemy WITHOUT Fighting.
Some find it surprising that a book dedicated to War would have as its core principal the avoidance of it at all costs. I do not. Every wise fighter, boxer, or martial artist I have personally known has advocated the same. When I trained I fought hard, so I would have the confidence and discipline to not put myself in a position where I had to fight unnecessarily. I would much rather negotiate, reason, bargain, accommodate, reconcile, or placate, if possible.
This bridging of the gap between Zero Conflict and Full Conflict is extremely effective when engaging in Asymmetric Warfare. Asymmetric Warfare is when the power, strength, resources, capability, ability, tactics, or commitment of combatants are significantly disparate. Effective asymmetric tactics are often less about inflicting damage and more about eliciting a predicted response whose manifestation can be exploited to maintain tracking towards satisfying an objective or completing a goal – Quiet Weapons for Silent Wars. However, once Full Conflict is unavoidable, it is prudent to be in a position mentally, physically, emotionally, and materially to completely annihilate whatever stands between you and the objective. Systems Engineers, we will study these teachings in depth, in future articles. Thanks.
--Charles