Comparing: The True Strength

The Art of War 6:7.10-15 Take a position where you can triumph using superior numbers.

This post continues our project explaining each stanza 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.

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This article examines the last six lines of the second stanza of Section Seven of Chapter 6 of The Art of War. The general topic of this chapter is emptiness and fullness and how weakness and strength flow from then. These lines discuss how we arrange our strengths and weaknesses in a given competitive situation.

• In the section below, we summarize each Chinese character in a single English word shown in < > brackets.

Strategic positions have two basic components. In Chinese characters, these two components are described as their <place> and their <form>. <Place” is the “category” of comparison. <Form> is how the “elements” matchup in that category in a specific comparison. These ideas are introduced earlier in this chapter. The<place> consists of different mental ladders on which we rank alternatives. Those categories exist to help us with the specific decisions we must make. These forms can become the various strengths and weaknesses of a given position.

Relativity

Strength is always relative, coming from the imbalance in a comparison. In a given contest, our strengths flow from a competitor’s weaknesses. Before any contest, we work to arrange the best matchups against the alternatives. We emphasize the importance of areas in which we are strong and others are weak. We do not attack opponents directly, just highlight the relative importance of various places that should be compared.

<Follow> <form> <and> <yet> <arrange> <victory> <to> <crowd>
Take a position where you can triumph using superior numbers.

The Chinese character that means<crowd> is what is translated in this chapter as “fullness,” The fullest <form>side of a position when different competitors or alternatives are balanced against each other. Strength is always relative, coming from the imbalance in a comparison. In a given contest, our strength flows from a competitor’s weakness. These matchups must be arranged before the contest identifying the weak areas of weak competitors.

This teaches us the rules to the game at hand. Consider the rules of “rock, paper, scissors” (Rochambeau). Rock always beats scissors. Scissors always beats paper. Paper always beats rock (see diagram above). The size of the rock and the thickness of the paper doesn’t matter very much. What matters is having the right form. If an opponent is good in rock, we want to match them against our paper. Against paper, we want to play scissors. What is strong depends only upon the comparison. Competition is comparison.

To do this, we must know the form or combinations of forms that we are opposing. This is the first meaning of <follow> <form>. We follow the positions of others to avoid those who are stronger in some key categories than we are, and seek those who are weaker. This is the first way we <arrange> <victory>. These strengths are usually drawn from several different categories of potential comparison.

Another way we <follow><form> is to track their evolution . For example, the game rock-paper-scissors only works for a two person contest. In the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, contests were among three people. The game evolved, adding lizard and spock hand gestures (see image above and how much it resembles Sun Tzu’s diagrams. In this game, if one player is good in rock and good in scissors, we want to play spock. One thing that makes real life competition different from the games in game theory is that we can all invent new moves.

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