Thread by @ThyConsigliori

John Minford, #SunTzu 6: 37 "Military dispositions take form like water. Water shuns the high and hastens to the low. War shuns the strong and attacks the weak."

Bully. Only a bully attacks the weak. War is evil. It is the domain of bullies. War is morally wrong. The strong should protect the weak, never attack them. The weak must be protected, never attacked. War is bad. Protecting the weak is good.

And everything I wrote above is true. But it needs the following qualifier that Master Sun could NEVER have imagined might be required. Weak friends, we protect. Weak enemies, we attack. He's so clear on friends and enemies that it boggles his mind we might not be.

We wait. Are you an enemy, we ask? Are you going to attack? Okay. Bring it. Then, we analyze - in the temple - your strengths and weaknesses, and our own in contrast. You're weak here? Aha! That's where we attack. You say bully. I say victorious general.

If we had the ability to resurrect Master Sun, and have him speak to us today, he'd likely say exactly what he said in verse 1: 1. "War is a grave affair of state; it is a place of life and death, a road to survival and extinction, a matter to be pondered carefully."

So, what exactly is the state? In ancient China there was a basic layout of a village. Nine plots. Eight surrounding a common. In the commons, a well. This village is what the enemy will attack. Without protection, the village is weak. The weakest of all.

If we fail to win our war, the village will be decimated by the invading forces. War is real. Combat matters. Would you protect the weak? Protect the village. Would you do so? Attack the weak part of the invading army. Win at war. That is protection. That is honor.

Can you accept that war is natural? If you, like me, can accept survival of the fittest, we know that the fittest buck gets the doe. How does she know who to accept? She accepts the outcome of their combat. War is natural. Who controls the water pond? War is natural.

If you wish to understand the world, to understand what is natural, study water. The flow of water is, and bar none, the ultimate basis of wisdom in ancient China. If we have but a single failure of wisdom in the West - we don't, we have many! - it is the failure to study water.

It's complex. There's the ocean. There's the sun. Its ray beat down upon over 70% of earth's exterior. The water evaporates. It rises to the heavens. How is that shunning the high? Ha! It's not. Well, except it isn't water rising, it's water vapor. Big difference.

Where water vapor rises, water itself falls. It forms around dust particles in clouds and when heavy enough, it falls out of the clouds as rain. It is actual water, not water vapor, that falls. From the heavens first, and then, rolling, rolling, rolling, down and down.

Mountain top first, hilltop second, the rain hits the high spots. It shuns them. Instantly rolls downward more and more until...it finds a stream, and the stream flows downward into a river. It shuns the high and hastens to the low. Stay with that. Feel it. Take it in.

Master Sun never talks about gravity by using that term. We assume gravity, as if we knew what it was. We don't. It's discoverer, Isaac Newton, had no idea what it was. He simply knew the math. The math called for a force, he named it gravity. It was and still remains magical.

You don't have to go check textbooks. Ask yourself. How does the center of the Earth reach up and hold the Moon's center, so the Moon keeps rotating around the Earth? How, exactly? You will just say gravity and stop thinking. Uh huh. But what exactly is gravity?

Science offers many theories, all worthy. But, science coughs and splutters, aheming, when forced to define it, precisely. Sure, we can see the outcomes. No, we still have no idea what, precisely, the force itself is. We have no graviton particles, no gravity rays, yet.

We won't discuss two oxygens and one hydrogen. Be honest. You have no idea what an atom actually is, any more than I do, let alone a molecule that joins three such things into a single thing, thing-a-ma-bob molecule, nor how molecules group up into...water.

But you do know you have to breathe, either through your nose or mouth, and if anybody stops you from doing that you die. Hey, water can do that. Drowning. Not good. Yet, you also know you have to drink...water. Water kills. Water gives life. Wow. Yin/Yang again.

As water shuns the high, war shuns the strong. An army is just like water. Admit it again, this breaks your brain as much as it breaks mine. I have to go again and again and again to see a little trickle of water rolling down a hill, and turn that into a victorious army.

Yet this is what Master Sun demands. Heed it we must. Heed it we will. No matter how much broken brain suffering we must endure. Victorious generals attack the weak, and shun the strong, exactly as water rolling downhill. Analysis. Go figure. You must discover strong and weak.

Flow away from the strong. Attack the weak. Your enemy's weak is never as weak as the village, the villages you are charged to protect. You are water. You flow. Yes, there is some strange, magical thing called gravity. Using it, not understanding it, you win.

Go figure.

147 verses completed, 275 to go.

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