Comparing: Complementary Balancing

The Art of War 6:5.7-11

This article continues our project explaining each line of Sun Tzu’s work. The English and Chinese are from my award-winning translation, The Art of War and The Ancient Chinese Revealed. Start here for the book’s opening lines.

The next lines of the fifth Section of Chapter 6 of The Art of War focus on the dynamic balance between strength and weakness, which Sun Tzu describes as “emptiness” and “fullness.” In the original Chinese, Sun Tzu describes emptiness with the Chinese character for “scarcity” and fullness with the character meaning “crowd.” The terms can apply to people, money, time, or any other resource.

All competition is a comparison between alternatives. One of the most common strategic mistakes is thinking that we have to duplicate the strengths of others in order to be competitive. The race goes to the swiftest. To win, we must be the fastest. However, strategic competition in our daily lives are more complicated than most contests of a single skill. In improving our positions in people’s minds, we do not find opportunities duplicating the success of others. The opposite is true: we want to compared our strengths to the weaknesses. Our challenge is identifying opportunities to do this.

Strength draws our attention. We naturally focus on the strengths we see around us. We all promote our strengths, but we tend to hide our weaknesses. Often, however, we cannot see weaknesses, even our own. The challenge is seeing “emptiness” because there is nothing to see there. Aiming at emptiness is like aiming at a hidden target. In everyday competition, the hidden target is usually the unmet needs of others. In military and sports contests, on the other hand, the hidden target is the weaknesses of an opponent. In both cases, strengths are what we tend to see. We see the wealth of rich people, not where they are impoverished. We see the intelligence of bright people, not where they are stupid.

Using Complementary Opposites

• (In the quotations below, we summarize each Chinese character as a single English word shown in < > brackets. A sentence from my English translation follows.)

<Make> <prepared> <front> <then> <behind> <scarce>
If he reinforces his front lines, he depletes his rear.
<Prepare> <behind> <then> <front> <scarce>
If he reinforces his rear, he depletes his front.

One of the least intuitive aspects of Sun Tzu's system of Sun Tzu's strategy is what we call "complementary opposites." Every situation exists, not as a steady state, but as a temporary balance tension between opposing conditions.

The rest of this article is reserved for our paid subscribers. Become a free subscriber for weekly previews and one monthly free article. To get all weekly articles become a paid subscriber.