Reading "The Art of War"

A bit of background: Sun Tzu was supposedly a general of King Ho Lu of the state of Wu in the late sixth century B.C. The first independent reference to Sun Tzu, however, does not appear until 122 B.C., so it's unclear to what extent the author is apocryphal. According to legend, Sun Tzu earned Ho Lu's admiration by training his concubines to drill in perfect formation; he had to cut off the head of the chief concubine when she refused to take his orders seriously. This doesn't present the guy in a terribly positive light.

"The Art of War" consists of 13 chapters. Some are of the general philosophical kind that one could imagine treating as life lessons or business strategems: "Laying Plans," for example, or "Weak Points and Strong." Others are rather more specific -- "The Use of Spies" is probably applicable to business life, but not so useful for, say, freelance writers; the chapter "Attack by Fire" will prove unhelpful to most readers, unless perhaps they are planning a large barbecue. (One helpful reminder: Stand on the windward side, not the leeward.)

Another off-putting factor in the book is its somewhat arbitrary numerological bent, which seems to be common to a lot of Chinese philosophy. A year ago, I took several lessons with a Vietnamese doctor who has become an expert in her country's traditional medicine, which is largely based on Chinese philosophy, and one of the things that seemed odd was that everything appeared to be based on the number "five." There are five organs, five colors, five elements, and so on and so forth. The various diseases are diagnosed by superimposing all these five-pointed systems on each other and drawing little lines between them. It ends up looking like something produced by a Wiccan with a spirograph.

Anyway, early on in the first chapter, "Laying Plans," it turns out that the art of war is governed by, you guessed it, "five constant factors." These are 1) the Moral Law; 2) Heaven; 3) Earth; 4) the Commander; and 5) Method and Discipline. But under exegesis, the five constant factors start to seem kind of interesting. The Moral Law, for example, is important because it "causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler." You wouldn't expect to find such a bottom-up attitude toward political hegemony in an ancient Chinese text. And then these five constant factors lead Sun Tzu to the following table of points to consider before entering battle:

13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued
     with the Moral Law?

   (2) Which of the two generals has most ability?

   (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven
     and Earth?

   (4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced?

   (5) Which army is stronger?

   (6) On which side are officers and men more highly
      trained?

   (7) In which army is there the greater constancy
     both in reward and punishment?

14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat.

This was where I, as a freelance journalist, started to get interested. Particularly in the parts about "discipline" being "rigorously enforced," about personnel being "highly trained," and about "constancy both in reward and punishment." I, it must be admitted, am utterly unable to enforce discipline, whether on myself or on anyone who has ever had the misfortune to work for me. I currently have one employee, a terrific young woman named Trang, who translates for me and does her best to organize my chaotic schedule and budget, and I am utterly failing her by not maintaining any semblance of rigor in our joint enterprise. Perhaps, I thought, if I myself had a greater "constancy both in reward and punishment"?

As the book went on, I started to find more and more material that seemed personally applicable to my style of strategic planning and management, or lack of same. "Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought," writes Sun Tzu. "The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand." Yes, I thought -- what ever happened to my plan, laid out at the beginning of the year, to sketch out project plans for each article I planned to write, with necessary interviews, outlines and dates? Why don't I make more calculations? "There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare." Sure, this is something our president ought to have considered before invading Iraq, but it's a lesson for me too -- why do I take so long to finish simple pieces? Who do I think benefits from all those hours of unnecessary fiddling with sentence order and diction?

Next page: How would I transform myself into a journalistic warrior?