Art of War once Moore, Sander R.B.E. Beals [leveled readers TXT] 📗

Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards... Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.

Sun Tzu , Art of War

Again, the invisible forces did it: whether it was the Cosmos helping me out, or me manifesting a little help from myself, I cannot yet say with any certainty. But working like any normal day I retired for lunch around noon, and spent my time taking two cans of flavored yoghurt for a walk. No War there, except for that one between the thrashers and the cleaners: They dump it in the street, and guys like me pick up the occasional piece of garbage to dump it in a waste bin further down our route. Not because we hate the trash, we've gone past that. It's more that we love to see it in the waste bin rather than in the street.

As I returned, I noticed that I had been doodling on my notebook, concerning my most fanatical of obsessions, knowledge of Life and any and all things connected to it. I decided to use the remainder of my lunch break to formalize the doodle into a regular SevenSphere as it was introduced in Infinity plus One, a contraption that seems to have taken up a central position in my work. Just like my third book (free at moorelife.nl) is loaded with them, it looked like this one was going to be started off by one, if you can believe the completely outlandish synchronicities that led me here. Anyway, as it turned out, I'd jotted down 'Stand' where the image on the right has 'Wait'. But the stand made me think of the X-Men: the Last Stand, and then of the Art of War, which I haven't fully read yet, but always figured to be not only a work on the Art of War, but also a masterpiece of philosophy. I pondered the fact it was originally written in Chinese, and then I saw Red: apart from a brilliant piece of music by Rush, I meant of course the red sphere of Action, at the top of the symbol. Looks like I need to spring into action myself.

From the top onwards, I noticed the starting capitals of the words I'd jotted down, in order: A R T O F W A R. True, I'd just replaced 'Stand' with 'Wait', but that was not because of a letter problem. Instead, when it comes to Being, Waiting would be a more neutral stance as opposed to the Stand that I had there first. It is more a neutral waiting what the other party will do next, rather than telling them you will draw the line here!

And thus, a new book was born, especially since my Indian twin Sangeeta loved the idea of me doing an encore of Sun Tzu's work, with the emphasis on all areas outside the Arena of War. She'd looked at my third book and found it too dense, too difficult. True, I knew that when I wrote it, because it is my centerpiece, aimed at the human subconscious. If you comprehend it, great! But if you don't, just read whatever feels OK, and let your subconscious absorb it. Sooner or later, a lot of that stuff will surface again.....

Here, Now..... Sander R.B.E. Beals

It was a couple of days ago when I wrote the foreword to this book, after which I kinda set my intuition simmering on a low fire. I know from experience that I write from life, not thinking up things but instead having them well up whenever there's a feeling of “Yes, this is it!” Because then there was that strong sync tonight, which turned out to be a movie that I didn't think I had....

I'd had my brother-in-law's DVD collection in the same rack as mine when he was living here. When he moved out again, I'd gone through the lot, meaning to return to him every one of his discs, which by far is a more violent selection than mine. Hey, I'm no peace brother, but if I have a movie that has violence in it, it's bound to be either SciFi, or at least something where the special effects take the cake, or the 'bad guys' eventually gets what's coming to them. De-Ja Vu was one of those, which today came right before my next choice of favorite poison...

Fingering the backs of the boxes, my eyes scanned the sideways texts. Mission Impossible was great, but way too high on my “been there, seen that way too often” list. Star Trek was a similar one, but then my mind's eye hit “the Tournament”. Perfect! Not only an unseen, but the perfect theme for the next chapter of my book! I put it on the 32 inch side screen of OctoPussy, and started viewing.

Yes, the Art of War presumes Competition. But when I heard of Sun Tzu's masterpiece, I sort of also got the impression that apart from a strategical masterpiece, it was also a work of art in the more philosophical meaning. And competition is just one facet of life. Now I used to say I hate competition, but lately even that is being watered down. I don't really 'hate' competition, it's just not my glass o' Scotch! (which I usually also don't drink)

But there are sides even to competition. Just watching Mission Impossible star Luther make a fiery finale of the guy that had him tied to a bar stool, and clipped off his trigger finger with a cigar snipper, I realized that there are those who want to win, but then tend to embellish their actions just because they want to flaunt their superiority in their opponents face. Poor guy, he never knew what hit him as the 'helpless' victim sprayed him in the face with his last request: a mouthful of Scotch, just as he was about to light his victory cigar!

Why do I prefer not to take competition as a favorite activity? Well, even though like android Andrew in Bicentennial Man, I could have said “For the sake of harmony, one is programmed not to tell”, but of course I am in the writing craft. Fortunately I can reveal the crux of the whole thing without revealing the person(s) it was about: I used to play darts. But among the competitors, there was one who would be called a sour loser. If he lost, then his mood would drop faster than a brick in a vacuum. He and I were about evenly matched, which normally would have been a feast of tournament, the way I figure competition should be: You win one, you lose one, and then it's time for a beer. Well, I have never really cared for beer ever since the first one had me throwing up for no reason, although winning back then was still on my mind. But then there was this opponent who completely took the fun out of winning. Hey, I'm no show-off like the guy that our friend Luther torched just now, but if the guy I beat makes the victory party all about him losing, and then takes it out on those that had nothing to do with the game, I tend to get pissed off. Back then, I thought about it long and hard, and decided that in fact, my strategy could be only One: become a master at losing!

Yep, couldn't avoid the game because that would trigger a foul mood anyway, and I couldn't win because of the same setback. So, for the sake of Harmony, One programmed Oneself not to win......

And it paid off: although I had to take care not to make the difference in scores too obvious, it was a very doable strategy: I honed my skills at making every throw count, but just that much less that no one would notice I'd have to actually foil a hit every now and then in order to stay below the radar, as restaurant chef Adam Sandler called it in Spanglish: “Three and a quarter stars would be perfect!”

Is it a strategy that is only sparingly used? I doubt it: during my college years, while discussing the possible outcomes of the English exam, I think it was the English teacher who told me the following urban legend. He and I needed not worry about that outcome, him being the guy who created it, and me being the star English student of his class. But that maybe was just why he told me the story:

“It was a number of years ago, that a student managed to score zero out of a hundred for this test. Since it was highly improbable that he was that unlucky to guess every single question wrong, I called him into my office, to try and make an impossible situation into something I could comprehend. It turned out, that he had a girlfriend in a lower class, and his imminent completion of the education would have sent him to the next part of his course, out of her reach.”

I didn't quite get it, because the reference to a girlfriend didn't register back then in my situation, so throwing the exam was furthest from my mind. But now I see it was merely input for this book, to make clear that motive is a strong force in the formation of strategy. Where Sun Tzu mainly talked about war, and thus about winning, there are many circumstances where one may want to lose, for whatever reason. But his quote about water does indicate seeking the way of least resistance, regardless of your aim.

But still, though I'd become a master at losing where darts were concerned, I still enjoyed a fair bit of competition against opponents that were less inclined to mess things up if they lost: computer games. But even there, the tendency became clear. Sure, Wolfenstein was fun for a while, even though Einstein still remained my favorite, but Unreal Tournament played during lunch hour against my colleagues around the turn of the Millennium added a far more real zing to it. Being a self-observer however, I had to admit to myself that the absolutely favorite game on my disks was TIM, also known as the Incredible Machine....

Why TIM? I didn't really think about it at the time, but now (facing the moment of writing) I have to: TIM was all about Strategy, but much less about Competition. There was no time constraint, no way you could actually lose. You either found a solution to the puzzle that was presented to you, or you gave up. The only