The Art of War in 7 Chartsã¢ââ by Kathy Gilsinan
The Art of War in 7 Charts
A new version of the millennia-sometime classic—with Venn diagrams
The Art of War may be 1 of the about adjustable books of the past 2 millennia. There's an Fine art of War for small businesses. There's an Art of War for dating. There'southward even an Fine art of State of war for librarians.
According to Jessica Hagy, author of the newest version, The Art of War Visualized, the book has spawned so many interpretations because it tin can exist read as non really existence about war at all. "Information technology's nigh artistic trouble-solving," Hagy told me. Hagy, who doodles the quasi-mathematical logic of human foibles on the popular blog Indexed, found 3 copies of Sunday Tzu's classic among college textbooks and Tom Clancy novels while cleaning out her basement last twelvemonth, and she saw in its brusk verses the kind of logic she likes to draw, as in this contempo instance from Indexed:
"It was so much less hypermasculine and bloodthirsty and vicious than you think it is, and it's very thoughtful," Hagy said of The Art of War. "Nearly the start read through I actually saw that war was just a metaphor for hassles and problems and bug that people face in every calibration of life from really petty, stupid things to really large, world-changing, 'Should we invade this country?' sorts of questions," Hagy said.
Indeed, one under-appreciated feature of The Fine art of War is how much of it is devoted to avoiding actual fighting. "Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy'southward resistance without fighting," Dominicus Tzu wrote. As well: "[T]he expert leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field." He likewise explained why this is: "When yous engage in bodily fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will exist damped."
Or in Hagy's updated interpretation: "Quit the awful job, or leave the dysfunctional relationship, or don't sit in traffic, go around information technology. That avoidance idea is applicative in so many means." Option your battles, every bit the cliche has information technology—which, at to the lowest degree the way I interpret it, is better phrased equally "decline nearly all of the battles."
Hither are a few examples of what that looks like in Hagy's charts and graphs, accompanied past Sun Tzu's verses.
"Sun Tzu said:
The art of state of war is of vital importance to the state.
Information technology is a matter of life and death, a route either to safety or to ruin.
Hence it is a subject field of inquiry which can on no account be neglected."
"When you engage in bodily fighting, if victory is long in coming, and then men's weapons will grow tiresome and their ardor volition exist dampened.
If you lay siege to a boondocks, yous will exhaust your strength.
Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State volition not be equal to the strain."
"In war, let your great object exist victory, non lengthy campaigns.
Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people's fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall exist in peace or in peril."
"Thus the highest grade of generalship is to cramp the enemy's plans; the adjacent best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to assault the enemy's ground forces in the field; and the worst policy of all is to congregate walled cities.
The dominion is, not to congregate walled cities if it tin can possibly be avoided."
"At that place is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
It is just 1 who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of state of war who tin can thoroughly understand the profitable way of conveying it on."
"The general, unable to control his irritation, volition launch his men to the set on like swarming rats, with the result that ane-third of his men are slain, while the town nevertheless remains untaken.
Such are the disastrous furnishings of a siege."
"Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself confronting defeat, only cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.
Hence the proverb: One may know how to conquer without being able to practise it."
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/03/the-art-of-war-in-7-charts/387292/
0 Response to "The Art of War in 7 Chartsã¢ââ by Kathy Gilsinan"
Enregistrer un commentaire