A true martial artist should be a student of combat. As stated in the Art of War by Sun Tzu, the result of being skilled in combat is that you will know peace. These principles apply to any type of competition between individuals and groups. Examples of types of combat include sports, war, infection by pathogens and the immune response, competition between businesses, and many more. I had to study combat itself so that I could describe the combat between Lucifer and God in the Angel Wars Series, the first book of which is now available on Amazon.
Statue of Sun Tzu from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enchoen27n3200.jpg
Principle 1 – Find A Way to Win
There is the old saying, “All is fair in love and war.” Of course, many types of combat have rules that must be adhered to, but combat is all about finding a way to win. Oftentimes it won’t be pretty, but no one cares if you only win the Superbowl by one point or the presidential election by one vote. Although many types of combat limit the ways to win (i.e., only by points) there are in fact numerous ways to score points. You could be offensive, defensive, etc. You could force your opponent to commit penalties. There are more specifics, of course, but this depends on the system being studied.
When a pathogen infects a host, the immune system has numerous methods of attack from antibodies to macrophages to killer T cells to memory cells. Each one of those has numerous modalities to destroy the pathogen. You don’t care how your body gets over the infection, only that it does. With the HIV virus, literally every stage of its life cycle is attacked, oftentimes with more than one method. There are Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (some that bind to RNA and some that introduce faulty DNA building blocks), enzymes that cut the HIV proteins, drugs that gum up the receptors it needs to enter cells, etc. Interested readers can see more here.
Maginot Line of fortification built by French. Germans went around through Belgium. From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0b/Maginot_Line_ln-en.PNG/800px-Maginot_Line_ln-en.PNG.
Principle 2 – Deception
Sun Tzu said “All war is deception.” This is particularly important when the forces are evenly matched. If an NFL team were to play an elementary school team, they won’t need to be deceptive as the pee wees will be unable to even tackle them. Master Cho of Cornell University said “It’s okay to be predictable as long as you are unstoppable.” However, many times deception is the key to victory. There are many forms that this can take. It can cause an enemy to put his strength in the wrong place or to spread himself too thin (as in the Maginot Line) or it can cause an enemy to let his guard down. One of my child students was sparring for the first time. When kicked, she fell down on the ground and cried that she was hurt. When the other person came over to see if she was okay, she jumped up and kicked her. When explaining the rules, I had not thought to say that this was not allowed.
Deception can cause an enemy to attack in a way that you are ready to counter. Deception can also take the form of leading the enemy to do something that would normally be safe. An example of this is when Admiral Yi led the Japanese fleet through a safe-looking straight that was actually treacherous to ships and full of barely submerged rocks. Another key point of deception is that by making deceptive motions, the enemy can become confused, overcautious, or take longer to make a decision. In many sports taking a split second longer to choose left or right can make the difference between a successful motion or not.
Statue of Sun Tzu from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enchoen27n3200.jpg
Principle 3 – Match Strengths Vs. Weaknesses
Which play does Payton Manning run? Whichever one the defense is open to. You might be the second best person at a certain part of the game in the entire world, but when you face the person who is better then you you have to change and go for something else. It is important to put your strengths against your opponent’s weaknesses, and take away their strengths. In Taekwondo your partner might have a great back kick, but it won’t be as helpful if you never attack the open side.
Principle 4 – Prepare the Target
In modern warfare, the first wave of attack is cruise missiles launched against infrastructure and anti-aircraft positions. These take out communications networks, power networks, and control networks. It is likely that future attacks will include cyberattacks against these defensive systems. These attacks prepare the target for airplane bombing campaigns against defensive positions, and ground troops come in last. This method of preparing the target minimizes the casualties of the attacking force and destroys the ability of the defenders to effectively counter-attack. In football this is as simple as sending a blocker ahead of the ball carrier. This plays a large role in grappling martial arts. When your opponent has the front mount, you can’t just roll over without trapping his arm and leg or you risk having him take your back. Before applying a choke from behind, you often have to lift your partner’s chin off his chest.
The disadvantage of preparing a target, of course, is that it telegraphs your intention to attack before the attack is completed. However, a great preparation will ensure that your attack will succeed despite your opponent knowing it is coming. Of course, in force vs. force combat (as opposed to individual vs. individual) you will have a good opportunity to be deceptive in your preparation of the target or you may have many possible targets to choose from. If you prepare all of them but only attack a subset, your opponent will not know your next move.
We see this in politics all the time. The effectiveness of a particular negative campaign ad depends on the public’s belief about a particular figure. For instance, Obama (and his surrogates) talked a lot about how Citizens United would cause billionaire Republicans to ‘buy’ the election. Thus, when ads from those groups came on, voters were likely to discount them. This is also an interesting case of deception, as Obama’s 527 groups were actually effective as defining Romney as too rich and out of touch. Obama’s groups ran their adds in the early summer, when Romney was already bruised from the primary battle and before he could spend most of the money he had raised (after the convention). In a more general sense, candidate A and his allies will repeatedly try to paint candidate B as a X on issue Y. Then, when candidate A runs ads that say “B is an X on Y!” the ads are significantly more effective than if they had been run without the preparation. This type of preparation might include reports from interest groups, op-ed pieces in major newspapers by allies, photo ops, leaked recordings (such as Romney’s 47% remark) and attempts to drive gaffes to virality on social media. In the case of Romney’s 47% remark, his gaffe cost him tremendously because he defined himself in the same way Obama was trying to define him.
I hope you enjoyed this post. See Part 2 (Coming Soon)
Recent Comments