It’s Not Going As Bad as You Might Think

Even if “there are many enemies…”

Following the algorithm of the scientific method is not the only valid and effective way to figure out how things consistently work.  For example, the Japanese swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645), produced a brief philosophical training manual¹ for his fencing students that distilled his 50+ years of practical experience of surviving physical conflict with other humans.  This student manual, a sequence of brief observations and advice, conveyed what he determined to be true by constant study and reflection on his own life-and-death practice of his profession.  Subsequent readers of Musashi, including those engaged in the less immediately mortal conflicts of business and politics, have found his observations very useful in successfully resolving their problems with others.

Here is a pertinent example:

Apropos of this Musashi passage: human level-headedness, and reality-based competence and action, are the universally effective antidotes to their human opposites. In fact, this level-headness and reality-based competence and action are, to borrow from Musashi’s vernacular, the same as understanding the principles of strategy and knowing how to beat the enemy.  So, by examining an opponent individual or group, and determining whether they are level-headed, and whether they act with reality-based competence, you can determine whether or not they are actually a fearful, pheasant-like robber trapped in a house and therefore subject to arrest — or worthy of anxious circumspection.

However, judging by the still-continuing lamenting, harping, and blame-casting seen in current Internet traffic re:  The Great COVID19 SNAFU, this basic truth governing the conduct of human life seems to be unrealized and/or forgotten by many.  Rather than indulging in anxious and fearful whinging about a now past and already successfully-addressed attack, reflect instead – for an example -- that Musashi’s ‘hawks’ indeed did all right with ‘The COVID’ and its many mishandlers. The same now also seems to be true with regard to the equally difficult problem of reaching a reliable determination of the actual nature of the 2020 US presidential election,² and in the US anyway, the problem of centralized/institutionalized censorship.

From http://www.providenceraptors.com/2010/11/08/red-tail-in-burnside-park/

With regard to the importance of not stopping to whine and carp, but immediately moving on to handling the foremost newest attack, Musashi remarks:

So, once one human conflict (or an “issue”) has been successfully decided, it is – according to Musashi’s experience -- time to move on to dealing with the next most closely pressing problem and not stop to dwell overlong on an already successfully-decided human conflict.  There are, after all, many enemies.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Five_Rings All Musashi quotations here are from the English translation carried out by Victor Harris (1974).  Harris’s superior English translation is now only available in hardback.  See https://www.amazon.com/Book-Five-Rings-Strategy-Samurai/dp/1788883217/ref=sr_1_6. The Kindle and paperback versions on this Amazon page were not translated by Harris. 

2. https://rumble.com/v13v4sv-2000-mules.html Those currently unable — for cause — to afford ‘admission’ to D’Souza’s work might want to go to https://123series.ru/movie/2000-mules-60zo0/1-full instead. On the same general subject, see:

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