Art of War once Moore by Sander R.B.E. Beals (android e book reader TXT) 📕

What exactly is our extent of free will? Do we do others' bidding until their demands impinge on our own comfort zone? Or do we take our free will to its extreme, until others adjust us to play along or succumb? Most of us are probably somewhere in between. We do what we can do, and whether it is about service to others or service to self is mostly non-essential. After all, you can't take away people's right to be assholes! Besides, try and define an asshole: just a guy or gal thinking differently about things than you do....

There is something weird about free will: there is always more of it! And I don't mean you always have room to make up your own mind, but that the more you allow others to make up theirs, the more you find that your world will mold itself according to your free will. Well, that figures of course: if you get what you give, then allowing others their free will choices will in a similar fashion allow you yours, and the results that spring from them!

Funny thing is, I'm adjusting myself as I go along writing this. Most of us are. Every line written makes me realize that concepts I kept as self-evident somehow imply other aspects of reality also need an adjusted view. But it is quite comforting to know that if you don't happen to know just in which direction to adjust yourself, there is always another fish that does know which way to go. And it doesn't necessarily have to be bigger!

At first sight, this should be the last chapter of the book, since the end of War determines whether you won, lost, or just got out with you virginity or other essential attributes unscathed. But victory is no outcome! Victory is a mindset that will allow you to reach it, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that tempts and teases you, but at the same time hovers just out of reach. Still though, Will Smith's hangup in Independence Day made it unmistakeably clear: If you go out to have a go at Victory, you need to be packing cigars!

Now I'm not quite partial to cigars, wouldn't even light one myself if my nocturnal state depended on it like in the case of president Clinton, but I do get the point: only those convinced they can win, do actually have a shot at winning. And if you try to give examples of those who didn't have that idea going in, but won anyway, there is only one possible conclusion: they developed the feeling as the battle progressed, and got the better of their opponents. Now that is no wartime condition, but one which happens to exist all the time...

But in normal life we call them visionaries: guys or gals who have an appallingly clear view of their ideas and plans, which is seemingly only adjusted in minor ways by the people around them. I realize that we've just tackled it, but I'll mention it here nevertheless: the movie 'the Adjustment Bureau' was interesting enough to deserve an entire chapter in this book. But back to the visionaries: in some ways we all are, but our beliefs about destiny, fate and free will influence our belief in ourselves and those around us. And that last one is a bummer, because we have no idea how many there are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and their intentions towards us. And with the tones of Steppenwolf's Born to be Wild from Spielberg's Fandango, we tackle the age old view of the world thing: is it good or bad, with or against us? If it is good, then Sun Tzu never needed to write the Art of War, except for those who didn't agree to that idea. And if out there was bad, then I guess we'd have a problem of an entirely different type....

Given the Cosmos is infinite, what would be happening if 'out there' was against us? Well son, that is a War you just can't win: Infinity out there, and you considering yourself finite means that the enemy has infinite resources. And given the age we think we are, that would mean the enemy would have wiped us out long ago! The one conclusion would then be, that out there is positive towards us, or at least neutral. And that means that we at least have a fighting chance, no matter if we choose to resist or not. Heck, what did I say just now? Resist a force that is positive or neutral towards me? Heck no, it's just that I am not always clear on what it is that is desired of me. If anything is, that is......

But even though this chapter is called the Victory Cigar, we cannot forgo all the other ways in which the War might end, or better yet, never even start. And that's what was supposed to never even start: the text and the diagram I had here earlier. I wrote it and figured it done, but my subconscious (and with it the Cosmos) wouldn't let me publish this without clearing it up. So when I went for groceries, She gave me a real heads up: the moment I saw a license plate saying 'PZ – SL – 32', almost immediately followed by a sticker for the OPEN32 clothing store here in Holland, I knew the game was afoot! So I finished watching 'Three O'Clock High' for the needed inspiration, and then switched to 'the World is Not Enough' as my synchronistic drip feed. Now I knew it had to do with the book, page 32 to be more precise. And that's where we are now, although I cannot assure you that number won't change due to further rewrites....

And now for something completely different: no, not the larch, but a diagram which types the various kinds of beings. I had just one interaction there, but why buy just part 7 of Harry Potter when you can have all at twice the price? While James Bond set his sights on the illustrious Elektra King, I came to a true gem of a SevenSphere. No, that is just my satisfaction with the result speaking, not my expectation of your appreciation....

Hmm, the first threesome soon became the Worrier, the Warrior and the Wisher. Is it any accident that three W's are also the base label of the World Wide Web? Next was the Solver, because I've always considered myself one, although I see (Oops) now that we all may be mixes of the various types subconsciously, with one type being conscious. After that, the Seeker and the Seer weren't that hard to find.

I figure the various figures are intuitive enough to make most of us see them for what they are. Still though, to be on the safe side I'll give them one-liners to make the details clearer:

Worriers basically see problems, and lament them, as opposed to Seers.

Warriors see problems or opportunities, and fight to tackle either one.

Wisher are like Buddhists, never worry but trust the Cosmos.

Seekers see something missing, and go to find it. Case in point: Lara Croft.

Seers see neutrally, and think it is their task to tell about it.

Solvers act like solvents: take Complexity, and reduce it to its elementary Simplicity.

Now I already said we may very well be all six types subconsciously, but chose to display a certain type consciously. Just like some actors always play a certain type of character, so do we in our normal lives. But, our choice is not restricted to those six types, but we can just take any position within the six to be us. Reasoned like this, an Uomo Universalis would choose to be in the center sphere, the complete mix of all six!

Would it be advisable to also describe the interactions between the various types? Surely, with everyone being able to pick their position as arbitrary points inside the six type hexagon, you can see how the number of interactions between the parties would quickly explode into an infinity of possible connections, along with the corresponding complexity. But then again, why bother? Many a soap (pun intended) and just as many other television series of any persuasion already deal with these interactions. I guess with me just having laid out the essentials, you will look upon them quite differently.

But still, a graph and a few lines on behavior wouldn't look like a flag on a mud barge, as we say in Holland. Again, Punisher and Rewarder were easy enough, because they basically are positive and negative feedbacks as we see them in our parenting books. Funny to see how the Bond film I'm playing has just arrived at the point where the bad guy who survived a bullet in the brain (for now) tells his girlfriend he feels nothing. To which she responds by holding some ice cubes to his injured hand, and asking him if he feels that. Isn't that what behavior is all about? Trying to get others to feel anything?

And even though behavior types Recorder and Player are opposites, they are in no way the opposites you find on your DVD player. Recorders basically turn observations into information, whether it is fact or fiction. The fictional ones have a bit more of the players in them, but if they were real players, they'd just see life as a game, with no strings attached.

Which of course leaves the Posers and the Relayers. Posers basically worry about what others will think of them, sometimes even regardless of what they think of themselves. And the Relayers simply care more about their offspring and related future, than about the here and Now.

End of rewrite, back to the original script:

By then I'd had enough, and decided to just go with a duo of Hell raisers in a double bill chilled to perfection: Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in Men in Black I & II. That would be a nice switch from the gray suits of the adjusters I met yesterday!

And that did it! I didn't think about this text until Jay told his apprentice to push the red button, in order for them to traverse the tunnel safely. His remark about staying relaxed instead of tensing up made me realize that was just what I'd been doing these last 77 minutes.

The next significant moment for me was when part two was on, and Jay tried to get Kay away from the Truro post office, and back into active duty. As the cherry on the unveiling of the office crew, Jay yanks open the lid of the mail sorter, this huge copier-like contraption that shoots envelopes at the sorting bin on the wall. In it, a sort of mini-office, with yet another alien. And then it hit me: it has nothing to do with the Art of War, but then a lot of stuff in this book doesn't. It has to do with the Nature of Reality, or at least the way I am experiencing it. That may be totally different from what you are seeing, but this is relevant to what I wrote before...

Any information you observe can be used in any way you see fit. In this case my mind went into the grand dream that permeates my existence: the alien inside the sorter had decorated his 'office' with two slogans, of which 'Can't Stop the Girl' was the one to catch me first. Heck, she may not have arrive at 11-11-11, but that didn't mean I'd be able to stop her from arriving any day soon! But then as I tried to capture a clear screen shot of that sign without the alien's arms obscuring the shot, the second sign helped me complete it: “You are the Key!”

And with that, my night ended in sleep, because enough of it would have to precede my cycling to the station tomorrow, in order to get to work in a half decent state of wakefulness...