A few Tuesdays ago, I felt the call to study the Art of War. Unbeknownst to me, Dreamwidth bloggers Violet Cabra and Read Old Things had already felt the same urge. As most of you can sense, there are some big changes happening in the astral plane right now. I believe that the urge to study Sun Tzu's Art of War is part of that. Though I cannot speak for my fellow Ecosophians, I believe I got the transmission from Ares himself or one of his messengers. I have prayed to Ares before to understand and begin to resolve issues in my personal karma.
Ares, at least as far as I can tell, controls the discharge and accumulation of the harshest forms of karma. He is a fair god: he gives us plenty of opportunities to deal with our karma outside of violence, but because we are human, it's unfortunately rare for us to discharge our karma via the higher road of being willing to face it and deal with it upfront. Instead, we tend to put it off, place blame, and make it someone else's problem until it comes flying back in our faces in the form of a war, a natural disaster, or a more personal form of misfortune.
This series will have an overarching theme about dealing with bad karma as it comes, preventing it wherever possible. I will be doing these posts in the place of the normal post that occurs Mondays or Wednesdays on the third Tuesday of each month until the book is complete. Like John Michael Greer's book club, I'll field new comments for the month of the post until the new post arrives.
Thanks for joining me in this discussion. I know I probably don't need to ask, but I have a no-profanity policy on all of my posts. Thanks for your understanding.
Sun Tzu opens the first chapter with:
"Warfare is the greatest affair of the State, the basis of life and death, the Way (Tao) to survival or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed."
Life Is A BattlefieldThis is to say that life itself is a constant war. We live on the material plane. It is NASTY here. The meat plane is a battlefield in every single way. Nevertheless, even in more subtle planes of imagination (astral) and the spirit, there are always forces fighting against others, pushing and pulling, struggling against limits presented by the Universe itself and of each other. That's just our world. What Sun Tzu is saying is that you have a choice: you can sit idly by and refuse to contemplate the Eternal Fight -- however, that way lies extinction.
Warfare is the greatest affair of the State can also be interpreted in the most direct sense. A country is made or broken by its attitude towards war. That's why the US's terminally frivolous, imperialistic, denialist approach to the occupation of other countries is breaking the US. Such a strategy can only work for so long: compare the revered soldiers of World War I and II to the reviled, disposable soldiers of Vietnam. Investment in previous failures has not been thoroughly pondered and analyzed enough for the US to sensibly back down from Empire and wars for cheaply available petroleum. The guilty parties who will be on the receiving end from the cavalcade of bad decisions in the form of mass karma include me, a person who drives a car every day as an act of continuing Sartrean bad faith.
Friends, Enemies, Frenemies
Denial of war does not make it any less real or pertinent. To analyze war, you must ask yourself: "Who is my enemy and why am I fighting them?"
For me, the enemy is my former friends and the people I grew up with who still dwell in the gilded cage of the upper middle class I fell from approximately a decade ago. They are in denial that they are racists who accuse people of lower classes (and these days, anyone who disagrees with them) of being racist so they can continue to believe in their own virtuousness. They are the mainstream media dog whistlers who co-sign shutdowns and riots that collapsed the world economy. They are the obedient, brainwashed maskturbators who decided nobody who worked in the arts was "essential" enough to continue to make an honest living.
My enemy is the clueless drug dealer in my neighborhood who could get me shot at any time because of the drugs he moves across competing drug-dealer's neighborhoods.
My enemy is the government official who wants to raise my taxes and take away my rights. My enemy is the Federal Reserve, a private bank that exists in order to enslave me and everyone I love.
My enemy is my former self, a person who put very bad patterns into play that I've had to back out of and make amends for in my current path towards being a better self.
Picking Your Battles
There are five types of questions that we are instructed to ask of ourselves and of our side before going into battle. Knowing the answers to these questions guarantees victory... and that's the catch. It would take a god to know all of the answers to the questions. Nevertheless, we are told to ask them, and there are five main aspects we should ask about.
The first question, "Who has the Tao?" relates to the specific world you occupy. Sun Tzu says that "the Tao causes people to be fully in accord with the ruler." This is the idea of going in the direction of the wind rather than against it. As much as American culture loves the trope of the fearless rebel who saves the Lost Ark from the Nazis with nary a scratch for his efforts, it's much easier to work with the nature of one's time and place in the world. The Tao is your overall environment, most of which you can do nothing about. As an example, I once threw everything I had at acquiring a live-work situation where I would teach lessons in a commercial space and live above the space in an apartment. Because of the anti-pragmatic spirit of the times and the particular part of the map where I have settled, suburban Chicagoland, this arrangement quickly proved to be impossible on my modest lower middle class budget. The zeitgeist of the times was against me six years ago when I tried to obtain grants from fast-talking development council grifters and real estate shady ladies in search of big commissions. My Lost Ark: the suburban arrangement "without a future" in the scathing words of James Howard Kunstler, was not to be recovered from the SS, at least not by me personally, at any rate. All's well that ends well: I live in a modest house that isn't ideal for hosting music lessons, though one day I may teach out of it yet out of necessity.
The Karate Kim
The second and third questions, those of generals, Heaven, and Earth, has to do with limits. Who is better at working with limits, you or your enemy? This question alludes to the art of choosing your battles wisely. When I was a child, I took karate classes in hopes of managing the inappropriate amount of anger I had towards other human beings despite my soft, plush suburban upbringing. Though karate helped me to be in peak physical condition as a youngster, it absolutely was not meant for me and I think it was more damaging than helpful. I went into my first tournament thinking that I could kick butt. I was paired to fight with a chunky girl of my own age who, at twice my physical size, beat me into the ground, causing me bruises and more anger than I started with. The limits of my anger were quickly realized: all bark and no bite, no trophy, no resolution until the novels I would write many, many years later in order to exorcise the demons of past lives.
Discipline, Political Correctness, and Slimebaggery
The fourth question, "Whose laws and orders are more thoroughly implemented?" is a question of discipline. A sloppy army, perchance one that lowers its physical requirement of pull-ups from 30 to 3 in order to appease the self-appointed tyrants of political gender correctness such as the US Marine Corp (they're lowering the requirements for men because women cannot physically measure up), will have no chance against the modern equivalent of Sparta. For us non-soldiers, we have to ask which path we're traveling -- the Left Hand Path, the Right Hand Path, or the Middle Way of bouncing around until we evolve at the glacial pace nature designed for us. The Left Hand Path hopes to cheat natural law, to gain ground by stomping others into the morass, to invoke the heady powers of sleaziness and degradation in a frenzy of self-lathering adulation. The Right Hand Path demands recognition of natural law and adherence to strict codes of live and let live; that is, no cheating and attempting to cajole others to force your own solipsistic will on the Universe. The Middle Way, the most common approach, is the bumbling Way of the Iceberg, reacting and not acting unless pressed upon pain of death. Arguably, the Chinese Communist Party, with its Left Hand Path wargames of international demoralization, mass enslavement, and other slimebaggery, is headed for history's dustbin of overwrought empires right along the US... eventually. In the short run, however, he with the most disciplined team wins, as can be proven at any kid's sports championship near you.
The Jewish Woman Who Was Like Donald Trump
When asking yourself "Whose forces are stronger?", it's another way of asking "What are my weaknesses?" This means we have to be honest about the shadows we are projecting, lest we end up going into battle with the enemy who is actually not the enemy but a shadow projection of our worst selves; a mirage. Of course I'm going to bring up the Left, those ardent love-haters of the projected Shadow. I once used to pal around with a vegan who loves to hate Donald Trump. She would be horrified of my analysis of how much she is like Donald Trump. Like him, she is extremely crass, American, and loud. Many of her so-called achievements have more to do with being born to wealthy parents than her own natural talents or hard work. Like Donald Trump, she is overweight and aging. She too likes to act as judge, jury, and executioner when someone says something she doesn't like, lashing out with vile ad hominems that have no place in civilized argument. No wonder she loves to obsess about Donald Trump -- what would she do without such a convenient straw man to target in place of working on herself?
When we ask ourselves, "Whose forces and troops are better trained?" This asks if we truly have allies in intimate places, and if so, are they prepared for what could be thrown at them for being associated with the likes of us? For instance, there is a whole crowd of people I do not envy, and that is the crowd of parents with young children. As someone who works with children, from my vantage point, there are few children escaping unscathed from the year plus of semi-school and mask theater we've all been forced to take sides in. The kids being raised by double-masking parents ought to be able to sue someday for irreparable damage due to child abuse. Such children, upon adulthood, will have been trained to fear life itself. I cannot see it ending well for them.
Good Business Practices
Lastly, there is the idea of clarity of punishment and reward. My husband has had quite a few jobs in the last dozen or so years. Most of them have featured the usual bumbling, inept business heads that make the American workplace an infamous cesspool of misery as portrayed in the film The Office. One place, however, had a great policy left over from its glory days of fair corporate practices, and that was of rewarding employees with good attendance with paid time off and punishing employees who showed up late without calling or otherwise notifying management with immediate termination. My husband, steadfast and punctual, racked up paid time off which he happily used to do projects around our house.
Sun Tzu all but guarantees our success if we take into account every factor mentioned above. Me? I don't think so, but thinking it through is worth a shot.
The Lies of War
His next advice to us concerns warfare as a Way (Tao) of deception. This is classic poker -- don't show anyone your cards. My mom is the classical embodiment of Midwestern Nice. This is because she actually is extremely nice, but it is also because Midwesterners are not raised to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Midwestern Nice is the ultimate poker face: you don't tell someone how you actually feel when they ask, "Hi, how are you?" That would be against the rules. You are supposed to say "Fine, how are you?" and suss out the undercurrents of what's really going on from their body language and subjects they do and do not cover.
A Point of Contention and of Agreement
Sun Tzu suggests creating disorder in one's enemy's forces in order to take them and perturb them when they are angry. Here is where I diverge from Sun Tzu. If you truly hate your enemy, and I truly hate mine, you will hate them enough to ignore them. You won't have time or interest in creating disorder in their forces because you'll be too busy creating a thrust block in order to push yourself far above them. I hate the maskturbators, but instead of trying to create disorder in their ranks by yelling at them in grocery stores, I go to the grocery stores that don't force me to diaper my face for luxury communism. I go around them.
Sun Tzu then suggests if they are rested, to force them to exert themselves. I agree here, and so does Donald Trump, who often used his Twitter feed or other publicity to force the Left to spend all of its energy in predictable outrage while he quietly passed laws or made deals that helped the lower and middle class workers of the US. As I predicted, Donald Trump now rules from the sidelines as the Left hangs itself with the rope it cheated to acquire.
In Conclusion
As for attacking when the other side's troops are unprepared, I think of my garden, which is much easier to till in the early spring than any other time of year. After the harsh March ice (we had a mini-snowstorm today, good times) and pounding April rains, the soil is just loose enough to get seeds in. Any later and I will be battling weeds, hardness, and dry Illinois clay. I "attack" before my enemies (really my frenemies, because I love weeds) get their foothold on my garden, and then I mulch so my plants of choice have a chance at becoming fully grown.
Sun Tzu then suggests we retire to the ancestral temple to determine whether or not we will be victorious... I think this is his way of saying Meditate On It!