The Art of War is all about Storytelling (Laying Plans)

Today we discuss Sun Tzu's The Art of War. 


I've been meaning to post this for a year now and darn it, I'm going to do it.

I maintain that The Art of War is one of the greatest storytelling textbooks of all time.
I will attempt to illustrate how throughout this series by drawing on how it relates to the author of the piece, the characters, and the plot.

It begins:

The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or ruin. Hence, it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. 

It actually begins:

Sun Tzu said:  The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or ruin. Hence, it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. 

But, that sounds creepy and just a little formal.
It's like saying Miles Boucher says...

Point being, Sun Tzu says that the art of war is of vital importance and can on no account be neglected.
Why?
He illuminates (later on) that war is the last tool of diplomacy.
Meaning if diplomacy has failed us, war is the only recourse.
But, the converse is also true: diplomacy should never fail, there should always be the option to be diplomatic.
Therefore, the greatest of nations/utopias would be those without the need for war.

However, life is rarely so benevolent.
Things happen.
Bad rulers rise.
And diplomacy does fail.
To what must we turn in times of turmoil?
Simply war.
Since it is the last resort, it must be studied in ever greater detail (according to Sun Tzu).
Why?

Because diplomacy has failed.
If it had succeeded there would be no need of war.
Therefore, diplomacy will not save you in the future.
Your nation's skill in war must be the saving factor from annihilation.
Therefore, study.
And attend.

The Art of War:

Sun Tzu gifts us five "heads" to determine who wins the field:
Conditions when obtaining the field:

1.  The Moral Law
2. Heaven
3. Earth
4. The Commander
5. Method and Discipline

He then defines each: 

The Moral Law unites the people under their ruler and means that they will lay down their lives for her, believing them to be in the right. 

By Heaven, he means night and day, cold and heat, time and seasons.

Earth comprises distances, great and small, danger and security, open ground and narrow passes, the chances of life and death.

The Commander stands for virtue, wisdom, sincerity, benevolence. 

Method and discipline are to be understood as the marshaling of the army into its proper subdivisions, graduation of ranks to officers, maintenance of roads, supplies, and funds. 

Once these are outlined he goes on to say:

These five heads should be familiar to every general. She who knows them shall be victorious, she who knows them not will fail. 

So now, we have our conditions for victory and failure. 

Familiarity with the five heads.

He even provides a useful list of questions to ask when entering a battlefield:

1. Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral Law?
2. Which of the two generals has the most ability?
3. With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?
4. On which side is the discipline most rigorously enforced?
5. Which army is stronger?
6. On which side are the officers and men more highly trained?
7. In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment?

By these, Sun Tzu is able to forecast who shall win any encounter.

A Case Study: The Bat

The Batman is one of my go to protagonists.

Why?

Because he fights like a damn diplomat.

Meaning, he uses everything at his disposal in order to have an edge.

And why?

Because on any given Tuesday he might run up against this: 

That my friends is our god. 

Slash Superman.

Same difference.

Point being he is on a murderous rampage and what are you going to do?

If you're Batman, you are going to win.

And how? 

Well you can bet your last dollar that he has read the Art of War. 

Because Batman comes with the full accompaniment:

1. Batman has the Moral Law. He seeks Justice, not Revenge (The Killing Joke).
2. Batman has the single greatest mind on planet earth. He is without doubt the general with the most ability 
3. Advantages would lie with almost any other adversary that Batman faces. Superman definitely has the power of Heaven and Earth. However, Batman lays plans to his advantage: Gotham is his playground and he makes sure to always have the upper hand (The Court of Owls where he identifies the type of stone that constructs their secret base and uses it to create an explosive to escape in the waterways)
4. Batman is the most disciplined. (The Batman Files illustrate his daily training regimen, which is fierce)
5. Which army is the strongest? Probably the other guy. Damn you Supes. But, through carefully laid plans, Batman again becomes the strongest by weakening his foe (In Batman: Hush, Batman says that you never go to Metropolis (home of Superman) without preparing for him and pulls out a ring made of kryptonite (Superman's greatest weakness, able to kill him in some stories))
6. Batman is more highly trained (Batman Files again)
7. Batman is a good guy, meaning that he rewards and doles out punishment on a pretty consistent basis. You don't see him slamming Robin into a wall for acting like a hero on a daily basis (Batman: Hush)

In every single category Batman, by laying plans and reaping the advantages of his calculations is able to overcome any adversary, no matter the difficulty.

That is why I always bet on the Batman.

And judging from this list: Sun Tzu would too. 

Sun Tzu goes on to say: 

All warfare is based on deception.

• When able to attack, we must seem unable
• When using our forces, we must seem inactive
• When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away
• When far away, we must make her believe we are near
• Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder and crush her
• If she is secure at all points, be prepared for her. If she is in superior strength, evade her
• If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate her. Pretend to be weak, that she may grow arrogant
• If she is taking her ease, give her no rest. If her forces are united, separate them
• Attack her where she is unprepared, appear where you are not expected

Another Case Study: Bilbo in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit

How to use this advice as an author?

Consider your protagonist an enemy. 

Just do it.

It can even be someone you like.

Like Bilbo.

Screw it.
Make Bilbo a badass girl.

Yeah.

Someone you can love.

Now, who is Bilbo?

She is:

• Affluent
• Homeowner
• Busybody
• Fussy

In a word: SECURE.

So what do you do with someone just bursting with potential?

Well, as an author, you have to do awful things to them.

So Bilbo is affluent? Take away her money and make her a traveler.

Bilbo is a homeowner? Take away her home.

Bilbo likes her creature comforts like a hanky? Take away the hanky, give her the hardship of the road.

And that is just the bare essentials.

The comfort level stuff.

Bilbo is attacked by spiders, goblins, orcs, giant bears, elves, dark things in the night, etc.

How did Tolkien manage to make such a compelling story?

By attacking Bilbo at every turn. 

By managing her expectations.

Bilbo & Co. are lost in Mirkwood.

So, they send Bilbo into the least comfortable place imaginable: 

Up a tree.

What is she up there to do?

See the edge of Mirkwood.

Except she doesn't:

"It was no good. Gaze as much as she might, she could see no end to the trees and the leaves in any direction. Her heart, that had been lightened by the sight of the sun and the feel of the wind, sank back into her toes: there was no food to go back to down below.

Bilbo is at her lowest point.

She is stuck up in a tree.

No food anywhere.

And no end in sight.

But, that is the key: "in sight. "

Tolkien confides in the reader: 

Actually, as I have told you, they were not far off the edge of the forest; and if Bilbo had had the sense to see it, the tree that she had climbed, though it was tall in itself, was standing near the bottom of a wide valley, so that from its top the trees seemed to swell up all round like the edges of a great bowl, and she could not expect to see how far the forest lasted. Still she did not see this, and she climbed down full of despair. She got to the bottom again at last, scratched, hot, and miserable, and she could not see anything in the gloom below when she got there. Her report soon made the others as miserable as she was. 

 Boom.
Tolkien is managing our expectations as well as our protagonist's.
For Bilbo will reach the edge of the forest of Mirkwood.
How do you know?
You were promised a Lonely Mountain and a Dragon.
Until those two story items are on the page, the story isn't over.
It is like watching a trailer for a film.
Until you see everything in that trailer, you know the characters will keep on going.

Now, we have been assured that they are very near the edge of the forest.
But, the characters are in the midst of despair.
Tolkien could have written ANYTHING.
Bilbo could have seen a giant sign that said EDGE OF MIRKWOOD and that would have been that.
Instead, Tolkien deceived poor Bilbo & Co.
By making Mirkwood seemingly endless, he was able to provoke Bilbo & Co. into seeking help from the elves (bad idea) and into a nest of spiders (really bad idea).

Sun Tzu says at the end of his first chapter:

Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! 

Batman always wins because he is well calculated.
Bilbo just manages to win by taking in enough calculations.
Writers don't write because they make no calculations at all and so lose out on all their wonderful story.
I hope that this quick foray encourages people to try writing and telling stories like they are waging war.
Try it!

Why Food Wars! is the Best of Us (The Greatest Story Ever Told)

Today we discuss this:

SHOKUGEKI NO SOMA

Otherwise known as: 

FOOD WARS!

Wherein Yukihira

wants to be the very best, like no one ever was. 

Yep, he's one of those.

Thing is, he is good1

But, unlike almost EVERY OTHER POST, this is not about the characters.

Which, Shokugeki has in abundance: 

Instead, let us discuss the JOY that is Food Wars!

And I mean that literally.

See, back in the day, someone very dear to me watched cooking shows constantly. 

Iron Chef & Iron Chef America & Gordan Ramsay. 

I didn't really understand what their obsession was with the genre. 

Until I sat down and started watching with them.

It was incredible!

See, even though they are competing against one another, they are still rooting for one another. 

Everyone is making delicious food.

So they aren't trying to do a pirouette or pummel their opponent into submission.

Instead, they are creating a sensory experience to be enjoyed by, not only their judges, but by their opponents as well.

That is a pretty big shift in the competition world.

So Food Wars! is essentially the anime version of Iron Chef.

However, there are a few exceptions.

For one there is plot, meaning a story. 

So the characters, usually Yukihira are thrown into wild, often melodramatic/cartoonish situations.

E.g. a real estate shark is moving in on their turf, she threatens to close down the place.

Yukihira responds with a wager. 

They'll leave the spot tenantless so they don't even need to buy it off them if she doesn't eat every last scrap of his meal.

Having spoiled all of his choice meat already, the real estate shark accepts the wager.

Let's see what happens next.

(Explicit: The show also contains plot: urban dictionary-the revelation of the naked human form for gratuitous or fan-based service, synonyms: fanservice, ecchi)

She loses the bet.

In the BEST way.

As do her muscled security guards. 

There is a beautiful equality to it.

Keep in mind, these are the mortal enemies of protagonist's little diner. 

Everyone despises one another.

But, they all come together over a wager and quite literally share a meal to determine the victor.

And the result? 

Good guys win, bad guys lose, but everyone and I mean EVERYONE had a good time.

It is the best of us. 

It is the most brilliant idea ever.

The resulting conflict is always competitive.

The solutions always stem from a fusion of tradition and innovation.

This is hands down:

better than Aaron Sorkin.

better than Joss Whedon.

It is pure joy, wrapped inside a compelling story, and a cooking show all at once.

I don't know what else I can say about it, but watch it.

Oh.

And:

Bon appetit.

How Earnest Hemingway Taught me to Live (And other tall tales)

Today, we discuss this guy:

(Ernest!)

Hemingway.
It's Hemingway.
How do you write like Hemingway?
And by that I mean it literally.
I don't have answers in this post.
This is me banging my head up against a wall.

See, Hemingway lived.
No questions asked.
My friend, who is a literal Spartan (every sense--yes, 300) idolizes this man.
And for good reason.
He fought in a world war as an ambulance medic.
Was at the storming of Normandy.
He chronologued the other as a journalist.
Was at the liberation of Paris.
Married and divorced four times.
Turned all the women into literature.
Wrote reams of material as a novelist, journalist, & short story writer.
Got injured in TWO SUCCESSIVE PLANE CRASHES IN THE AFRICA.
Got the Nobel Prize in Literature for his efforts.
As well as the Pulitzer.

This guy.
He is a legend.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
For a full reading of his biography, check out here.
For a close reading of his pseudo-biography, just read his books.

So how did he do it?
I have been trying to live like Hemingway.
Maybe not literally, but figuratively.
Consistently, the professional writers that I meet are lonely people.
Nanowrimo for writers is like Pokemon Go for depressives.
It just gets people out of the door to do what they love.

The problem with writing:

Is that it is enjoyable.
People who write or are creative genuinely enjoy it.
But, it is work.
But, most of the work is invisible or private.
Meaning, writers work

• inside their heads, 
• or in their notebooks
• or in their computers
• or on the Goggle machine

Nobody gets to see it until they publish.

AND once it is published:

• most of the books/audience is outside the realm of their experience.

Some nameless, faceless person downloads it off Amazon and reads it off their digital reader. Sure, the writer's salary is inflated, but the direct connection is with the book and not with the author.

The author doesn't get to see the well worn pages.

The author doesn't get to see someone cry and cradle their book late at night (I'm looking at you JK)

The author doesn't get to meet each and every single person.

(though they may be friends/family/acquaintances at conferences, and that is lovely. Sometimes the audience base becomes an extended family and that I think is beautiful and right and good)

At least in the performing arts, we get to meet our audience directly and immediately.

Our finished product is done for an audience that is physically there.

They pay before walking in the door and are present.

We can go up to them after and greet them.

Sure, it can be lonely, but those parties and meet and greets and student talk backs are great.

But, for anyone who doesn't perform...well...no wonder writers work at Starbucks and coffee shops.

They want to feel connected.

It can be incredibly isolating.

So Nanowrimo gets them out the door. 

But, what then?

So now, writers are writing out of doors. 

What else do they do?

To be honest, many of the professional writers I have met so far, that is about it.

They write.

For many it is a livelihood that takes up 10-14 hours of their day.

That leaves little enough time for 

1. exercise
2. family
3. cooking
4. cleaning
5. adventure
6. life

Most travel, but it is to conferences where they promote and sell their books.

They meet other authors in the area.

They work and collaborate together. 

On writing.

All of this sounds fantastic, but what about life?

What about adventure?

What about Hemingway's wars and the dames and the adventures (hunting in Africa)?

They are conspicuously absent. 

And that is not to say everyone has to hunt down wild game in Africa to be happy or as great a writer as Hemingway.

But, I am finding adventure to be incredibly enlivening in my life.

Every day I try to go somewhere new, try a food or restaurant I've never been, see new sights, go on adventures.

It takes up an exhausting amount of my day.

And when I come home at the end of it, I go to bed early and wake up late (10pm-8am).

Why?

Because I'm tuckered out (as Mum would say).

So where/how do I do it all?

How can I have adventure and make art and live with friends/family and eat my cake?

The answer according to Hemingway is pretty bleak:

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

That was at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Which, he couldn't attend.
He was still recovering from a plane crash (or two).
According to Hemingway, loneliness is the key to great art.
Staring into the abyss is what I call it.
Facing eternity is what Hemingway calls it.

"She does her work alone and good writers become worse ones as they shed their loneliness." (to paraphrase Hemingway...words I never thought I would say)

With all due respect to Hemingway, I think that that is bullshit.
There has got to be a way to balance the adventurous life with art and companions.
Even if you have to drag your comrades around the world while writing/dictating to a tape recorder (if those still exist) there has got to be a way.
I am committed to living by my own personal legend and that is my criteria for a successful life:

1. Adventure
2. Art/arting
3. Company along the road

If you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to do that besides "just doing it" (I'm working on that part), please leave your thoughts and comments here.
I love and adore each and every one of you.
I hope you're happy.

Postmodern Magic for a Skeptical Atheist (How Grant Morrison taught me Design)

Today let us discuss "magic".
Or rather this:

Meet Grant Morrison.
He is a wizard.

(Self-proclaimed).

In this talk about counter culture and sigil magic, Grant Morrison discusses how to become a practicing magician.
What does that mean?

The Abduction

Grant Morrison was abducted by aliens at Kathmandu.
And why?
Because Grant Morrison went to Kathmandu to be abducted by aliens.
He describes them as

Formless, morphing, blobs of shifting chrome that think.

And in this encounter (after taking him to Alpha Centauri) they describe to him how the universe works. And they say:

Tell the world what is going on.

So that is what Grant Morrison does.

What the aliens said.

The "same bullshit":

• The universe we live in is set to grow "larvae" (hint, we are the larvae)
• Beyond space and time are our actual selves (a higher dimensional existence)
• Each of us is a section through time
• Our body is a process: from when we were born to when we die
• We look like a giant centipede (starting at birth and moving through time until we die)

The Hand

If you pass your hand through a layer of water and call it time, you see four distinct circles that are part of a larger whole. That is what we are: discrete intersection through time that are part of a larger process. 

 How Is This Magic?

Well, the aliens apparently exist in a sea of pure information outside of spacetime and create their own reality.

They are able to influence it.

How?

According to Grant Morrison with words.

How to Magic:

1. Write down a desire (making sure it is physically possible inside of our material universe)
2. Take out the vowels
3. Take out the repeated consonants
4. Reduce it down to an image

That is it. 

Why/how does it work?

To go into how it works, we need to appreciate a little history of magic and how it became the occult.

This talk is not only about the occult &sigil magic.

Grant Morrison is also discussing counter culture.

Counter culture has been around since the French Revolution when the youth culture would wear costumes to mock the outfits of the wealthy.

What we have here is an original case of hipsters.

This idea of counter culture proved important during the French Revolution

This garment is called the sans culottes:

Literally: without breeches.

Because the peasant class could not afford to wear breeches, which were not a working class uniform.

The Sans-Culottes were also a political movement, a radical militarization of the peasantry that overthrew the French aristocracy leading to the beheading of the royal family.

Fabric, due to its design, leading to political action, leading to war.

So now we have this idea of counter culture and its importance/influence. 

What about magic?

Magic used to be pretty common place.

In Egypt:

In Greece:

In Rome:

So what happened?

According to Grant Morrison it had something to do with the Industrial Era.

This caught my attention.

He explains a little bit in detail, but think about that. 

Think of how to create a sigil:

reducing a desire down to just a few lines to create a symbol to convey meaning to change the world (meaning the minds of those who view it.)

Keeping that in mind we get: 

 McDonald's

 Nike

adidas.

The modern, contemporary, culture is wholly consumed with images, with sigils, with symbols that convey meaning and change or influence the culture accordingly.

And in that moment I started rethinking what we mean when we say magic.

The Legend of McDonald's

Have you ever heard the trivia about the McDonald's logo?

It was chosen to be harmless, caring, inviting, and nourishing. 

Keep that in mind as we go.

Now, if you follow any logo, it simplifies through time, similar to the rules for sigil magic until we get: 

This: 

And this is the part that freaks me out.

The "M" is meant to symbolize a mother's breasts.

And I didn't get it for years until I realized that I was looking up at them.

So from my perspective as audience, I am looking up at a pair of breasts, something that I haven't done since I was a child.

Therefore, when I look at the logo, unconscious association is meant to pair with that experience to convey: harmless, caring, inviting, and nourishing.

Just like a mother's breasts.

Grant Morrison contends it works because we exist in a sea of information that exists outside of spacetime that we can only experience through mind-altering drugs.

I don't know about all of that.

But!

There seems to be something there when you realize that all of our corporate overlords follow these rules.

Arguably, they are just good rules for design:

This is a wonderful TED talk about design.

So the laws of design are similar/the same as practicing magic.

Why?

Because of a revolutionary idea.

Design is a form of magic.

And all that magic is is a form of design.