Comparison: Mist Opportunities

The Art of War, Chapter 7.2.5-15 You keep only your armor and hurry after the enemy.

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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The lines discussed here are the second stanza of Section Two of Chapter 7 of The Art of War. The general topic of this chapter is Armed Conflict. The focus of this stanza is the illusive opportunities we pursue in attempting to win using destructive efforts.

Competition is a comparison. These comparisons occur within our minds as we decide what choices to make. Sun Tzu teaches that people’s choices determine our own success or failure. Their comparisons of us with others decide who they choose to support or oppose. We can win such comparisons either by building up our own positions or tearing down those of others. In this stanza, he addresses the simplistic view of “winning” as defeating enemies and bringing others below us.

A Story of Conflict

In this stanza, Sun Tzu tells us a story about seeking to catch an enemy in order to beat them in a fight. This story is about the strategic mistakes we make at each step when we are motivated by this goal.

Our first instinct is to see those to whom we are compared as enemies, instead of those like us who are also trying to improve their positions in life. Because we see them as enemies, we focus on their competitive efforts and forces—military armies, sales forces, marketing programs, or simply their supporters within our shared organizations or social groups. Since they are enemies in our minds, our goal is defeating their men, winning their sales, attracting their potential customers, or disparaging them to their supporters. To achieve this, we attempt to use our own competitive resources against them. This is the story that Sun Tzu tells in this stanza.

• In the indented sections below from The Art of War, we summarize each Chinese character with a single English word shown in < > brackets. The line of Chinese is followed by an English sentence version.

<Straight> <make> <roll> <armor> <and> <yet> <hurry>
You keep only your armor and hurry after the enemy.

When seeking conflict, we accumulate our resources and move against an enemy a direct confrontation. Since the essence of war is speed, we seek to quickly attack our opponent’s weaknesses. However, by fielding a larger force, we have automatically slowed ourselves down. Smaller forces are inherently quicker than larger ones.

<Day> <night> <not> <manage>
You avoid stopping day or night.

Resources used for defense do not need to move. Attacking others requires movement. Too many of us are so eager for conflict—often out of our own fear of being attacked—that we lose sleep worrying about it, preparing for it, or searching for conflict opportunities. This expends our limited resources on false opportunities.

<Multiple> <way> <unite> <march>
You use many roads at the same time.

Instead of looking for the best short move into an opening that might secure us a reward, we explore every path that might give us an opening against our perceived enemy. We do not focus on our position and what might improve it in the minds of those around us. Instead, we go to any lengths to attack our perceived enemy.

<Hundred> <miles> <and> <yet> <conflict> <advantage>
You go hundreds of miles to fight for an advantage.

Motivated by enmity, we do not use our position as the centerpiece of how we are compared. Instead, we are willing to go very far out of our way to make trouble for our perceived opponents. This generates fights over actions that are distant from our legitimate concerns.