A brief introduction to the Art of War
The Foundation of samurai and ninja ways easily applied to modern conflicts.
It is only one who is familiar with the evils of war who can find a profitable way of carrying it out.- Sun Tzu
The Art of War is the premier treatise on warfare and the foundation of Eastern, and modern military thought, however, is helpful for far more than that. While some of its passages are somewhat specific to the type of warfare conducted at the time, the vast majority of it remains relevant across a wide array of disciplines. Essentially, in any situation where you and a group of people are collaborating in opposition to other groups of people, especially over a series of encounters, the Art of War becomes immensely relevant. Some modern, non-military contexts that you can easily apply the Art of War are Sports, Business, Law, and Argumentation. You can also use these principles to gain an advantage in competitive video games, or even when dealing with a dispute with an unreasonable neighbor.
We all come into conflict with people in our lives, but the Art of War is clear that you shouldn’t go about life in a war-like manner unless necessary. War is costly after all. In a military setting, you’re paying those costs with lives, resources, and damaged infrastructure. In you’re personal life it costs relationships, emotional wellbeing, time, and energy. The stakes may be less severe but the fact remains. All-out war is best avoided if at all reasonable. Sun Tzu says:
To conquer and kill in all of you’re battles is not the supreme art of war, supreme excelence is to break enemy resistance without hostile action. - Sun Tzu
He prefaces this by explaining that if you exhaust your country's resources waging war on your enemy, then not only have you depleted your own resources you have also exhausted the resources of your newly acquired conquest, thus leaving you open for an attack by a third party. Thus, the Art of War advocates that you aim first to defeat enemy plans before they mobilize resistance against you and out-maneuver them politically. If this is impossible, then from a position of total defense, you should aim to bait them into moving, in that movement, there will almost certainly be weaknesses you can exploit. A rapid and easy victory is the goal, attacking where least expected and hitting the least defended area to overtake the enemy.
The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat is within our own hands but the key to defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy the enemy himself. -Sun Tzu
You can be certain you won’t lose, provided you are also certain you have made no mistakes, (easier said than done) but you can never be completely certain you will defeat the enemy, as they need to give you that opportunity, even if only after some prodding. Sun Tzu also describes the ideal war as being one where you:
make excellent political alliances
perfect political moves
defeat enemy armies without hostile action
Finally, taking the enemy cities without losing a single soldier and without any casualties.
The idea is that if you can shut them down at every turn, you can avoid a prolonged fight through superior tactics and minimal force. Of course, to do this successfully you need excellent knowledge of yourself and your opponent.
Knowledge of strategy, your forces, and your enemy is the surest path to victory. At this point if you knew nothing else about the Art of War coming into this, you almost certainly knew Sun Tzu’s quote “If you know yourself and you know your enemy you need not fear the outcome of a thousand battles’ but few go deeper into how you build that knowledge, to begin with. That’s where the five constant factors come into play.
The FIve constant factors are:
Moral law
Heavin
Earth
The commander
Organization
I know that doesn’t sound super sexy, but these are the important factors in any conflict. If you understand these you will know where you stand in relation to your enemy and already have a huge advantage over them. This is the foundation of all planning and the backbone of the Art of War. Everything else in The Art of War builds off of and elaborates on these factors, and how to understand, measure, and plan in accordance with them.
Moral law refers to the codes of conduct you impose on your men. How they treat each other and how well they work together. In a somewhat more isolated situation, it involves your own character and reputation. The standards you set for yourself. Are you known for causing problems in your work or do people know that they can come to you for emotional support without needing to worry about you using it against them? This also takes into account how congruent your actions are in relation to your goals and your own mental health.
Likewise, look at your competitor, Who do they have a grudge within the office? How do they treat their friends or coworkers? Do they blame others for their misdeeds? All of this factors into how well you can form alliances, keep people on your side, and if necessary exploit the weaknesses in the relationships of your opponent. No one is truly an island and we all interact with several networks of people that can be seen as on your team, antagonistic to your team, as well as third parties. People who aren’t involved with whatever conflict you're dealing with that may choose to side for or against you in the future.
The factors of heaven refer to time, weather, and overall timing. On the battlefield, you would want to know which way the wind was blowing so you knew if it was safe to use fire, as well as to use the cover of rain to move troops undetected, as well as things like positioning your army so the sun was in the eyes of the enemy, in addition to many, many more factors.
In social life, it means to understand that people will make more harsh judgments and decisions before lunch than they will after lunch when their full and recharged. It’s knowing that your boss is likely to prioritize your requests at the beginning of the day before they’ve decided on what to do for the day. It’s knowing that your coworker is more likely to act impulsively at the end of a day packed full of hard decisions.
Earth is with regards to location. In a military operation, you need to know the terrain which areas are dangerous, open, protected, difficult, and advantageous. Planning troop movements and staging the battlefield is still critical in military operations today, and the person who chooses where to fight has a distinct advantage. Our social and modern terrains can be taken to mean an esoteric landscape in a psychological sense but I think it’s far more useful here to think about the literal locations where things happen. Your boss’s office vs by the water cooler. In your front yard vs at the neighborhood barbeque.
Your house vs a public restaurant. all of which will change the kinds of encounters you ought to have, the approach you take, and their responses to it. Additionally, his points on terrain can have metaphorical worth for the conversation itself. For example, in The Art of War Sun Tzu talks about how you should avoid totally surrounding the enemy, leaving no escape. The enemy will fight much harder if they don’t have the option to retreat. Far better to let them retreat and gain victory that way. Similarly, in arguments you want to avoid leaving no reasonable alternative that allows someone to spare their pride.
If accepting your argument means excepting they’re an idiot they will fight much harder than if all it means is that there was a miscommunication or that they were reasonable but uninformed. This topic is large enough to be deserving of a dedicated post in the near future but for now try to think about the situation you’re in, both in, both the literal environment as well as the socio-cultural one, and devise strategies to take advantage of that terrain.
If the enemy General is easily roused to anger, irritate him.
The commander is one of the more direct factors and is exactly as it sounds. Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your opponent/ opposing leader, allows you to plan to avoid your own shortcomings and capitalize on your strengths, all while attacking your enemy’s weaknesses. In military applications, you want to know what angers them, what they value, and what they’re scared to lose. Then you know what to attack, what to avoid, and what to do if you need them to attack in such a way that opens them up for a counterattack. In arguments, it’s useful to know exactly what your arguing and understand the finer points of the issue, but also to understand your opponent’s argument better than they know it.
If you can’t do advanced preparation to understand their arguments you will need to rely more heavily on questions and gathering the facts, but even with research it’s important to ask them questions and let them explain their argument how they understand it as they may not ascribe to every point people who hold their position on the issue does. They may have different reasons for their beliefs, new arguments you haven’t heard, nuance that explains their point better, or some glaring errors others didn’t make. In business, it’s useful to understand who your competition manager is and how they think. What’s their track record? Do they have a predictable strategy? All of this gives you the ability to predict outcomes with reasonable accuracy.
The organization is all about systems and protocols. In a military setting understanding how the leader motivates his men, how they provide rewards and punishments, and how well they paid were some things that the general could use to plan some underhanded tactics such as offering pow’s more money than their army to defect to the other side, or sow discord among the men if they are being treated unfairly. Additionally making sure your systems are strong makes it more difficult for the enemy to do the same to you.
Additionally how you train your men, their military formations, and general strategies are all invaluable for military planning. In business, the tactics are much the same. In solo operations building systems to keep you motivated, organized, and well-trained is still deeply important. The organization is scaled from a single individual to an entire business, army, or country.
If you understand these points on strategy and reflect on how you can start implementing some of these principles in your own life, you’ll have a distinct advantage in intell that will help you develop plans and out-compete whoever you're going up against, rather it’s a dictator, hedge fund manager, boss or neighbor. Or anyone else who didn’t take the time to understand strategy. There’s so much more to cover on the Art of War that will need to be covered at a later date but this should be enough information to get you all started on the path.
If you would like to start studying the Art of War for yourself I would highly recommend The Ultimate Art of War by Anthony Cummins. That’s the main source for this post and it does an excellent job comparing the major translations and commentators, breaking down the Art of War piece by piece in a really easy-to-understand way. It’s designed in such a way as to be really easy to study from and I really can’t recommend it highly enough. I have been using a memory palace to memorize information from The Art of War. A project I will be writing about shortly. Finally, if you want me to go into some personal stories where I’ve either used The Art of War in my own life as well as situations where I’ve advised people to do the same, leave a comment or respond to the email letting me know.