on 03-Apr-2019 (Wed)

You cannot succeed at deception unless you can be many different people, wearing the mask that the day and the moment require. Make your face as malleable as the actor’s, work to conceal your intentions from others, practice luring people into traps. Playing with appearances and mastering arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.

If deception is the most potent weapon in your arsenal, then patience in all things is your crucial shield. Patience will protect you from making moronic blunders. Like mastering your emotions, patience is a skill—it does not come naturally. But nothing about power is natural; power is more godlike than anything in the natural world. And patience is the supreme virtue of the gods, who have nothing but time. Everything good will happen—the grass will grow again, if you give it time and see several steps into the future. Impatience, on the other hand, only makes you look weak. It is a principal impediment to power.

This game of constant duplicity most resembles the power dynamic that existed in the scheming world of the old aristocratic court. Throughout history, a court has always formed itself around the person in power—king, queen, emperor, leader. The courtiers who filled this court were in an especially delicate position: They had to serve their masters, but if they seemed to fawn, if they curried favor too obviously, the other courtiers around them would notice and would act against them. Attempts to win the master’s favor, then, had to be subtle. And even skilled courtiers capable of such subtlety still had to protect themselves from their fellow courtiers, who at all moments were scheming to push them aside.

It is not that we and our colleagues are ignoble creatures who fail to live up to ideals of peace and selflessness, but that we cannot help the way we are. We have aggressive impulses that are impossible to ignore or repress. In the past, individuals could expect a group—the state, an extended family, a company—to take care of them, but this is no longer the case, and in this uncaring world we have to think first and foremost of ourselves and our interests. What we need are not impossible and inhuman ideals of peace and cooperation to live up to, and the confusion that brings us, but rather practical knowledge on how to deal with conflict and the daily battles we face. And this knowledge is not about how to be more forceful in getting what we want or defending ourselves but rather how to be more rational and strategic when it comes to conflict, channeling our aggressive impulses instead of denying or repressing them. If there is an ideal to aim for, it should be that of the strategic warrior, the man or woman who manages difficult situations and people through deft and intelligent maneuver.

Many psychologists and sociologists have argued that it is through conflict that problems are often solved and real differences reconciled. Our successes and failures in life can be traced to how well or how badly we deal with the inevitable conflicts that confront us in society. The common ways that people deal with them—trying to avoid all conflict, getting emotional and lashing out, turning sly and manipulative—are all counterproductive in the long run, because they are not under conscious and rational control and often make the situation worse. Strategic warriors operate much differently. They think ahead toward their long-term goals, decide which fights to avoid and which are inevitable, know how to control and channel their emotions. When forced to fight, they do so with indirection and subtle maneuver, making their manipulations hard to trace. In this way they can maintain the peaceful exterior so cherished in these political times.

Today we have reached the ultimate point in the evolution of seduction. Now more than ever, force or brutality of any kind is discouraged. All areas of social life require the ability to persuade people in a way that does not offend or impose itself. Forms of seduction can be found everywhere, blending male and female strategies. Advertisements insinuate, the soft sell dominates. If we are to change people’s opinions—and affecting opinion is basic to seduction—we must act in subtle, subliminal ways. Today no political campaign can work without seduction. Since the era of John F. Kennedy, political figures are required to have a degree of charisma, a fascinating presence to keep their audience’s attention, which is half the battle. The film world and media create a galaxy of seductive stars and images. We are saturated in the seductive. But even if much has changed in degree and scope, the essence of seduction is constant: never be forceful or direct; instead, use pleasure as bait, playing on people’s emotions, stirring desire and confusion, inducing psychological surrender. In seduction as it is practiced today, the methods of Cleopatra still hold.

To have such power does not require a total transformation in your character or any kind of physical improvement in your looks. Seduction is a game of psychology, not beauty, and it is within the grasp of any person to become a master at the game. All that is required is that you look at the world differently, through the eyes of a seducer.

A seducer does not turn the power off and on—every social and personal interaction is seen as a potential seduction. There is never a moment to waste. This is so for several reasons. The power seducers have over a man or woman works in social environments because they have learned how to tone down the sexual element without getting rid of it. We may think we see through them, but they are so pleasant to be around anyway that it does not matter. Trying to divide your life into moments in which you seduce and others in which you hold back will only confuse and constrain you. Erotic desire and love lurk beneath the surface of almost every human encounter; better to give free rein to your skills than to try to use them only in the bedroom. (In fact, the seducer sees the world as his or her bedroom.) This attitude creates great seductive momentum, and with each seduction you gain experience and practice. One social or sexual seduction makes the next one easier, your confidence growing and making you more alluring. People are drawn to you in greater numbers as the seducer’s aura descends upon you.

Seducers have a warrior’s outlook on life. They see each person as a kind of walled castle to which they are laying siege. Seduction is a process of penetration: initially penetrating the target’s mind, their first point of defense. Once seducers have penetrated the mind, making the target fantasize about them, it is easy to lower resistance and create physical surrender. Seducers do not improvise; they do not leave this process to chance. Like any good general, they plan and strategize, aiming at the target’s particular weaknesses.

The main obstacle to becoming a seducer is this foolish prejudice we have of seeing love and romance as some kind of sacred, magical realm where things just fall into place, if they are meant to. This might seem romantic and quaint, but it is really just a cover for our laziness. What will seduce a person is the effort we expend on their behalf, showing how much we care, how much they are worth. Leaving things to chance is a recipe for disaster, and reveals that we do not take love and romance very seriously. It was the effort Casanova expended, the artfulness he applied to each affair that made him so devilishly seductive. Falling in love is a matter not of magic but of psychology. Once you understand your target’s psychology, and strategize to suit it, you will be better able to cast a “magical” spell. A seducer sees love not as sacred but as warfare, where all is fair.

Seducers are never self-absorbed. Their gaze is directed outward, not inward. When they meet someone their first move is to get inside that person’s skin, to see the world through their eyes. The reasons for this are several. First, self-absorption is a sign of insecurity; it is anti-seductive. Everyone has insecurities, but seducers manage to ignore them, finding therapy for moments of self-doubt by being absorbed in the world. This gives them a buoyant spirit—we want to be around them. Second, getting into someone’s skin, imagining what it is like to be them, helps the seducer gather valuable information, learn what makes that person tick, what will make them lose their ability to think straight and fall into a trap. Armed with such information, they can provide focused and individualized attention—a rare commodity in a world in which most people see us only from behind the screen of their own prejudices. Getting into the targets’ skin is the first important tactical move in the war of penetration.

Seducers see themselves as providers of pleasure, like bees that gather pollen from some flowers and deliver it to others. As children we mostly devoted

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In the seventeenth century came a great change: men grew interested in seduction as a way to overcome a young woman’s resistance to sex. History’s first great male seducers began to adopt the methods traditionally employed by women. They learned to dazzle with their appearance, to stimulate the imagination, to play the coquette. They also added a new, masculine element to the game: seductive language, for they had discovered a woman’s weakness for soft words.

These two forms of seduction—the feminine use of appearances and the masculine use of language—would often cross gender lines: Casanova would dazzle a woman with his clothes; Ninon de l’Enclos would charm a man with her words.

At the same time that men were developing their version of seduction, others began to adapt the art for social purposes. They learned the power to be gained by seducing their superiors and competitors through psychological games, soft words, a little coquetry.

In the nineteenth century another great change occurred: politicians like Napoleon consciously saw themselves as seducers, on a grand scale. These men depended on the art of seductive oratory, but they also mastered what had once been feminine strategies: staging vast spectacles, using theatrical devices, creating a charged physical presence.

All this, they learned, was the essence of charisma—and remains so today. By seducing the masses they could accumulate immense power without the use of force.

We are saturated in the seductive. But even if much has changed in degree and scope, the essence of seduction is constant: never be forceful or direct; instead, use pleasure as bait, playing on people’s emotions, stirring desire and confusion, inducing psychological surrender. In seduction as it is practiced today, the methods of Cleopatra still hold.

A seducer does not turn the power off and on—every social and personal interaction is seen as a potential seduction. There is never a moment to waste. This is so for several reasons. The power seducers have over a man or woman works in social environments because they have learned how to tone down the sexual element without getting rid of it. We may think we see through them, but they are so pleasant to be around anyway that it does not matter. Trying to divide your life into moments in which you seduce and others in which you hold back will only confuse and constrain you. Erotic desire and love lurk beneath the surface of almost every human encounter; better to give free rein to your skills than to try to use them only in the bedroom. (In fact, the seducer sees the world as his or her bedroom.) This attitude creates great seductive momentum, and with each seduction you gain experience and practice. One social or sexual seduction makes the next one easier, your confidence growing and making you more alluring. People are drawn to you in greater numbers as the seducer’s aura descends upon you.

Seducers have a warrior’s outlook on life. They see each person as a kind of walled castle to which they are laying siege. Seduction is a process of penetration: initially penetrating the target’s mind, their first point of defense. Once seducers have penetrated the mind, making the target fantasize about them, it is easy to lower resistance and create physical surrender. Seducers do not improvise; they do not leave this process to chance. Like any good general, they plan and strategize, aiming at the target’s particular weaknesses.

The main obstacle to becoming a seducer is this foolish prejudice we have of seeing love and romance as some kind of sacred, magical realm where things just fall into place, if they are meant to. This might seem romantic and quaint, but it is really just a cover for our laziness. What will seduce a person is the effort we expend on their behalf, showing how much we care, how much they are worth. Leaving things to chance is a recipe for disaster, and reveals that we do not take love and romance very seriously. It was the effort Casanova expended, the artfulness he applied to each affair that made him so devilishly seductive. Falling in love is a matter not of magic but of psychology. Once you understand your target’s psychology, and strategize to suit it, you will be better able to cast a “magical” spell. A seducer sees love not as sacred but as warfare, where all is fair.

Seducers are never self-absorbed. Their gaze is directed outward, not inward. When they meet someone their first move is to get inside that person’s skin, to see the world through their eyes. The reasons for this are several. First, self-absorption is a sign of insecurity; it is anti-seductive. Everyone has insecurities, but seducers manage to ignore them, finding therapy for moments of self-doubt by being absorbed in the world. This gives them a buoyant spirit—we want to be around them. Second, getting into someone’s skin, imagining what it is like to be them, helps the seducer gather valuable information, learn what makes that person tick, what will make them lose their ability to think straight and fall into a trap. Armed with such information, they can provide focused and individualized attention—a rare commodity in a world in which most people see us only from behind the screen of their own prejudices. Getting into the targets’ skin is the first important tactical move in the war of penetration.

Seducers see themselves as providers of pleasure, like bees that gather pollen from some flowers and deliver it to others. As children we mostly devoted our lives to play and pleasure. Adults often have feelings of being cut off from this paradise, of being weighed down by responsibilities. The seducer knows that people are waiting for pleasure—they never get enough of it from friends and lovers, and they cannot get it by themselves. A person who enters their lives offering adventure and romance cannot be resisted. Pleasure is a feeling of being taken past our limits, of being overwhelmed—by another person, by an experience. People are dying to be overwhelmed, to let go of their usual stubbornness. Sometimes their resistance to us is a way of saying, Please seduce me. Seducers know that the possibility of pleasure will make a person follow them, and the experience of it will make someone open up, weak to the touch. They also train themselves to be sensitive to pleasure, knowing that feeling pleasure themselves will make it that much easier for them to infect the people around them.

A seducer sees all of life as theater, everyone an actor. Most people feel they have constricted roles in life, which makes them unhappy. Seducers, on the other hand, can be anyone and can assume many roles. (The archetype here is the god Zeus, insatiable seducer of young maidens, whose main weapon was the ability to assume the form of whatever person or animal would most appeal to his victim.) Seducers take pleasure in performing and are not weighed down by their identity, or by some need to be themselves, or to be natural. This freedom of theirs, this fluidity in body and spirit, is what makes them attractive. What people lack in life is not more reality but illusion, fantasy, play. The clothes that seducers wear, the places they take you to, their words and actions, are slightly heightened—not overly theatrical but with a delightful edge of unreality, as if the two of you were living out a piece of fiction or were characters in a film. Seduction is a kind of theater in real life, the meeting of illusion and reality.

Finally, seducers are completely amoral in their approach to life. It is all a game, an arena for play. Knowing that the moralists, the crabbed repressed types who croak about the evils of the seducer, secretly envy their power, they do not concern themselves with other people’s opinions. They do not deal in moral judgments—nothing could be less seductive. Everything is pliant, fluid, like life itself. Seduction is a form of deception, but people want to be led astray, they yearn to be seduced. If they didn’t, seducers would not find so many willing victims. Get rid of any moralizing tendencies, adopt the seducer’s playful philosophy, and you will find the rest of the process easy and natural.

The Art of Seduction is designed to arm you with weapons of persuasion and charm, so that those around you will slowly lose their ability to resist without knowing how or why it has happened. It is an art of war for delicate times.

Every seduction has two elements that you must analyze and understand: first, yourself and what is seductive about you; and second, your target and the actions that will penetrate their defenses and create surrender. The two sides are equally important. If you strategize without paying attention to the parts of your character that draw people to you, you will be seen as a mechanical seducer, slimy and manipulative. If you rely on your seductive personality without paying attention to the other person, you will make terrible mistakes and limit your potential.

Consequently, The Art of Seduction is divided into two parts.

The first half, “The Seductive Character,” describes the nine types of seducer, plus the Anti-Seducer. Studying these types will make you aware of what is inherently seductive in your character, the basic building block of any seduction.

The second half, “The Seductive Process,” includes the twenty—four maneuvers and strategies that will instruct you on how to create a spell, break down people’s resistance, give movement and force to your seduction, and induce surrender in your target.

As a kind of bridge between the two parts, there is a chapter on the eighteen types of victims of a seduction—each of them missing something from their lives, each cradling an emptiness you can fill. Knowing what type you are dealing with will help you put into practice the ideas in both sections. Ignore any part of this book and you will be an incomplete seducer.

Finally, the spirit that will make you a consummate seducer is the spirit in which you should read this book. The French writer Denis Diderot once wrote, “I give my mind the liberty to follow the first wise or foolish idea that presents itself, just as in the avenue de Foy our dissolute youths follow close on the heels of some strumpet, then leave her to pursue another, attacking all of them and attaching themselves to none. My thoughts are my strumpets.” He meant that he let himself be seduced by ideas, following whichever one caught his fancy until a better one came along, his thoughts infused with a kind of sexual excitement. Once you enter these pages, do as Diderot advised: let yourself be lured by the stories and ideas, your mind open and your thoughts fluid. Slowly you will find yourself absorbing the poison through the skin and you will begin to see everything as a seduction, including the way you think and how you look at the world.

It’s easy enough to list your expenses in a spreadsheet, use =sum(A1:A20) to see how much you spent, and add a graph to compare your expenses. It’s also easy to use a spreadsheet to deeply analyze your numbers, assist in research, and automate your work—but it seems a lot more tricky.

Here’s the guide for you. We’ll take you from beginner to expert, show you how to get started with spreadsheets, create advanced spreadsheet-powered dashboard, use spreadsheets for more than numbers, build powerful macros to automate your work, and more. You’ll also find tutorials on Google Sheets’ unique features that are only possible in an online spreadsheet, like built-in forms and survey tools and add-ons that can pull in research from the web or send emails right from your spreadsheet.

This ideal of fighting rationally comes to us from organized warfare, where the art of strategy was invented and refined. In the beginning, war was not at all strategic. Battles between tribes were fought in a brutal manner, a kind of ritual of violence in which individuals could display their heroism. But as tribes expanded and evolved into states, it became all too apparent that war had too many hidden costs, that waging it blindly often led to exhaustion and self-destruction, even for the victor. Somehow wars had to be fought more rationally.

The word “strategy” comes from the ancient Greek word strategos, meaning literally “the leader of the army.” Strategy in this sense was the art of generalship, of commanding the entire war effort, deciding what formations to deploy, what terrain to fight on, what maneuvers to use to gain an edge. And as this knowledge progressed, military leaders discovered that the more they thought and planned ahead, the more possibilities they had for success. Novel strategies could allow them to defeat much larger armies, as Alexander the Great did in his victories over the Persians. In facing savvy opponents who were also using strategy, there developed an upward pressure: to gain an advantage, a general had to be even more strategic, more indirect and clever, than the other side. Over time the arts of generalship became steadily more sophisticated, as more strategies were invented.

Although the word “strategy” itself is Greek in origin, the concept appears in all cultures, in all periods. Solid principles on how to deal with the inevitable accidents of war, how to craft the ultimate plan, how to best organize the army—all of this can be found in war manuals from ancient China to modern Europe. The counterattack, the flanking or enveloping maneuver, and the arts of deception are common to the armies of Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and the Zulu king Shaka. As a whole, these principles and strategies indicate a kind of universal military wisdom, a set of adaptable patterns that can increase the chances for victory.

Perhaps the greatest strategist of them all was Sun-tzu, author of the ancient Chinese classic The Art of War. In his book, written probably the fourth century B.C., can be found traces of almost all the strategic patterns and principles later developed over the course of centuries. But what connects them, in fact what constitutes the art of war itself in Sun-tzu’s eyes, is the ideal of winning without bloodshed. By playing on the psychological weaknesses of the opponent, by maneuvering him into precarious positions, by inducing feelings of frustration and confusion, a strategist can get the other side to break down mentally before surrendering physically. In this way victory can be had at a much lower cost. And the state that wins wars with few lives lost and resources squandered is the state that can thrive over greater periods of time. Certainly most wars are not waged so rationally, but those campaigns in history that have followed this principle (Scipio Africanus in Spain, Napoleon at Ulm, T. E. Lawrence in the desert campaigns of World War I) stand out above the rest and serve as the ideal.

War is not some separate realm divorced from the rest of society. It is an eminently human arena, full of the best and the worst of our nature. War also reflects trends in society. The evolution toward more unconventional, dirtier strategies—guerrilla warfare, terrorism—mirrors a similar evolution in society, where almost anything goes. The strategies that succeed in war, whether conventional or unconventional, are based on timeless psychology, and great military failures have much to teach us about human stupidity and the limits of force in any arena. The strategic ideal in war—being supremely rational and emotionally balanced, striving to win with minimum bloodshed and loss of resources—has infinite application and relevance to our daily battles.

Inculcated with the values of our times, many will argue that organized war is inherently barbaric—a relic of man’s violent past and something to be overcome for good. To promote the arts of warfare in a social setting, they will say, is to stand in the way of progress and to encourage conflict and dissension. Isn’t there enough of that in the world? This argument is very seductive, but not at all reasonable. There will always be those in society and in the world at large who are more aggressive than we are, who find ways to get what they want, by hook or by crook. We must be vigilant and must know how to defend ourselves against such types. Civilized values are not furthered if we are forced to surrender to those who are crafty and strong. In fact, being pacifists in the face of such wolves is the source of endless tragedy.

Mahatma Gandhi, who elevated nonviolence into a great weapon for social change, had one simple goal later on in his life: to rid India of the British overlords who had crippled it for so many centuries. The British were clever rulers. Gandhi understood that if nonviolence were to work, it would have to be extremely strategic, demanding much thought and planning. He went so far as to call nonviolence a new way of waging war. To promote any value, even peace and pacifism, you must be willing to fight for it and to aim at results—not simply the good, warm feeling that expressing such ideas might bring you. The moment you aim for results, you are in the realm of strategy. War and strategy have an inexorable logic: if you want or desire anything, you must be ready and able to fight for it.

Others will argue that war and strategy are primarily matters that concern men, particularly those who are aggressive or among the power elite. The study of war and strategy, they will say, is a masculine, elitist, and repressive pursuit, a way for power to perpetuate itself. Such an argument is dangerous nonsense. In the beginning, strategy indeed belonged to a select few—a general, his staff, the king, a handful of courtiers. Soldiers were not taught strategy, for that would not have helped them on the battlefield. Besides, it was unwise to arm one’s soldiers with the kind of practical knowledge that could help them to organize a mutiny or rebellion. The era of colonialism took this principle further: the indigenous peoples of Europe’s colonies were conscripted into the Western armies and did much of the police work, but even those who rose to the upper echelons were rigorously kept ignorant of knowledge of strategy, which was considered far too dangerous for them to know. To maintain strategy and the arts of war as a branch of specialized knowledge is actually to play into the hands of the elites and repressive powers, who like to divide and conquer. If strategy is the art of getting results, of putting ideas into practice, then it should be spread far and wide, particularly among those who have been traditionally kept ignorant of it, including women. In the mythologies of almost all cultures, the great gods of war are women, including Athena of ancient Greece. A woman’s lack of interest in strategy and war is not biological but social and perhaps political.

Instead of resisting the pull of strategy and the virtues of rational warfare or imagining that it is beneath you, it is far better to confront its necessity. Mastering the art will only make your life more peaceful and productive in the long run, for you will know how to play the game and win without violence. Ignoring it will lead to a life of endless confusion and defeat.

The following are six fundamental ideals you should aim for in transforming yourself into a strategic warrior in daily life.

Look at things as they are, not as your emotions color them. In strategy you must see your emotional responses to events as a kind of disease that must be remedied. Fear will make you overestimate the enemy and act too defensively. Anger and impatience will draw you into rash actions that will cut off your options. Overconfidence, particularly as a result of success, will make you go too far. Love and affection will blind you to the treacherous maneuvers of those apparently on your side. Even the subtlest gradations of these emotions can color the way you look at events. The only remedy is to be aware that the pull of emotion is inevitable, to notice it when it is happening, and to compensate for it. When you have success, be extra wary. When you are angry, take no action. When you are fearful, know you are going to exaggerate the dangers you face. War demands the utmost in realism, seeing things as they are. The more you can limit or compensate for your emotional responses, the closer you will come to this ideal.

Judge people by their actions. The brilliance of warfare is that no amount of eloquence or talk can explain away a failure on the battlefield. A general has led his troops to defeat, lives have been wasted, and that is how history will judge him. You must strive to apply this ruthless standard in your daily life, judging people by the results of their actions, the deeds that can be seen and measured, the maneuvers they have used to gain power. What people say about themselves does not matter; people will say anything. Look at what they have done; deeds do not lie. You must also apply this logic to yourself. In looking back at a defeat, you must identify the things you could have done differently. It is your own bad strategies, not the unfair opponent, that are to blame for your failures. You are responsible for the good and bad in your life. As a corollary to this, look at everything other people do as a strategic maneuver, an attempt to gain victory. People who accuse you of being unfair, for example, who try to make you feel guilty, who talk about justice and morality, are trying to gain an advantage on the chessboard.

Depend on your own arms. In the search for success in life, people tend to rely on things that seem simple and easy or that have worked before. This could mean accumulating wealth, resources, a large number of allies, or the latest technology and the advantage it brings. This is being materialistic and mechanical. But true strategy is psychological—a matter of intelligence, not material force. Everything in life can be taken away from you and generally will be at some point. Your wealth vanishes, the latest gadgetry suddenly becomes passé, your allies desert you. But if your mind is armed with the art of war, there is no power that can take that away. In the middle of a crisis, your mind will find its way to the right solution. Having superior strategies at your fingertips will give your maneuvers irresistible force. As Sun-tzu says, “Being unconquerable lies with yourself.”

Worship Athena, not Ares. In the mythology of ancient Greece, the cleverest immortal of them all was the goddess Metis. To prevent her from outwitting and destroying him, Zeus married her, then swallowed her whole, hoping to incorporate her wisdom in the process. But Metis was pregnant with Zeus’s child, the goddess Athena, who was subsequently born from his forehead. As befitting her lineage, she was blessed with the craftiness of Metis and the warrior mentality of Zeus. She was deemed by the Greeks to be the goddess of strategic warfare, her favorite mortal and acolyte being the crafty Odysseus. Ares was the god of war in its direct and brutal form. The Greeks despised Ares and worshipped Athena, who always fought with the utmost intelligence and subtlety.

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The 33 Strategies of War is a distillation of the timeless wisdom contained in the lessons and principles of warfare. The book is designed to arm you with practical knowledge that will give you endless options and advantages in dealing with the elusive warriors that attack you in daily battle.

Each chapter is a strategy aimed at solving a particular problem that you will often encounter. Such problems include fighting with an unmotivated army behind you; wasting energy by battling on too many fronts; feeling overwhelmed by friction, the discrepancy between plans and reality; getting into situations you cannot get out of. You can read the chapters that apply to the particular problem of the moment. Better still, you can read all of the strategies, absorb them, allowing them to become part of your mental arsenal. Even when you are trying to avoid a war, not fight one, many of these strategies are worth knowing for defensive purposes and for making yourself aware of what the other side might be up to. In any event, they are not intended as doctrine or formulas to be repeated but as aids to judgment in the heat of battle, seeds that will take root in you and help you think for yourself, developing the latent strategist within.

The strategies themselves are culled from the writings and practices of the greatest generals in history (Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Shaka Zulu, William Techumseh Sherman, Erwin Rommel, Vo Nguyen Giap) as well as the greatest strategists (Sun-tzu, Miyamoto Musashi, Carl von Clausewitz, Ardant du Picq, T. E. Lawrence, Colonel John Boyd). They range from the basic strategies of classical warfare to the dirty, unconventional strategies of modern times. The book is divided into five parts: self-directed war (how to prepare your mind and spirit for battle); organizational war (how to structure and motivate your army); defensive war; offensive war; and unconventional (dirty) war. Each chapter is illustrated with historical examples, not only from warfare itself but from politics (Margaret Thatcher), culture (Alfred Hitchcock), sports (Muhammad Ali), business (John D. Rockefeller), showing the intimate connection between the military and the social. These strategies can be applied to struggles of every scale: organized warfare, business battles, the politics of a group, even personal relationships.

Finally, strategy is an art that requires not only a different way of thinking but an entirely different approach to life itself. Too often there is a chasm between our ideas and knowledge on the one hand and our actual experience on the other. We absorb trivia and information that takes up mental space but gets us nowhere. We read books that divert us but have little relevance to our daily lives. We have lofty ideas that we do not put into practice. We also have many rich experiences that we do not analyze enough, that do not inspire us with ideas, whose lessons we ignore. Strategy requires a constant contact between the two realms. It is practical knowledge of the highest form. Events in life mean nothing if you do not reflect on them in a deep way, and ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as you live it. In strategy all of life is a game that you are playing. This game is exciting but also requires deep and serious attention. The stakes are so high. What you know must translate into action, and action must translate into knowledge. In this way strategy becomes a lifelong challenge and the source of constant pleasure in surmounting difficulties and solving problems.

Desde hace 100 años ha surgido la necesidad de tener un elipsoide de referencia para todo el planeta. El elipsoide WGS–84 es muy empleado en la actualidad, pues es el utilizado por el sistema GPS

El geoide es la otra superficie de referencia, definida como la superficie tri- dimensional en cuyos puntos la atracción gravitatoria es constante. Se trata de una superficie equipotencial que resulta de suponer los océanos en reposo y a un nivel medio (el nivel es en realidad variable como consecuencia de las mareas, corrientes y otros fenómenos) y prolongar estos por debajo de la superficie terrestre. La particularidad del geoide reside en que en todos sus puntos la dirección de la gravedad es perpendicular a su superficie. El geoide no es, sin embargo, una superficie regular como el elipsoide, y presenta protuberancias y depresiones que lo diferencian, como puede observarse en la figura 3.2. La densidad de la Tierra no es constante en todos sus puntos, y ello da lugar a que el geoide sea una superficie irregular como consecuencia de las anomalías gravimétricas que dichas variaciones de densidad ocasionan. Lógicamente, el elipsoide, por su naturaleza más simple, no puede recoger toda la variabilidad del geoide, por lo que estas dos superficies presentan diferencias, cuyo máximo es generalmente del orden de ± 100 metros. Estas diferencias se conocen como alturas geoidales. Al igual que en el caso de los elipsoides, existen diversos geoides de referencia

Cuando se trabaja con un elipsoide general, este, como se ha dicho, se sitúa de tal modo que tanto la posición de su centro de gravedad como su plano ecuatorial coincidan con los terrestres. Por el contrario, cuando el elipsoide es local, estas propiedades no han de cumplirse necesariamente, y el elipsoide a solas resulta insuficiente ya que carecemos de información sobre su posicionamiento con respecto a la superficie terrestre. Surge así el concepto de datum, que es el conjunto formado por una superficie de referencia (el elipsoide) y un punto en el que «enlazar» este al geoide. Este punto se denomina punto astronómico fundamental (para su cálculo se emplean métodos astronómicos), o simplemente punto fundamental, y en él el elipsoide es tangente al geoide. La altura geoidal en este punto es, como cabe esperar, iguala cero. La vertical al geoide y al elipsoide son idénticas en el punto fundamental.Para un mismo elipsoide pueden utilizarse distintos puntos fundamentales, quedarán lugar a distintos datum y a distintas coordenadas para un mismo punto

Disponiendo de un modelo preciso para definir la forma de la Tierra, podemos establecer ya un sistema de codificar cada una de las posiciones sobre su superficie y asignar a estas las correspondientes coordenadas. Puesto que la superficie de referencia que consideramos es un elipsoide, lo más lógico es recurrir a los elementos de la geometría esférica y utilizar estos para definir el sistema de referencia. De ellos derivan los conceptos de latitud y longitud, empleados para establecer las coordenadas geográficas de un punto. No obstante, la geometría plana resulta mucho más intuitiva y práctica que la geometría esférica para realizar ciertas tareas, y a raíz de esto surgen las pro- yecciones cartográficas, que tratan de situar los elementos de la superficie del elipsoide sobre una superficie plana, y que son los que se emplean para la creación de cartografía. Al aplicar una proyección cartográfica, las coordenadas resultantes son ya coordenadas cartesianas

Las coordenadas geográficas resultan de gran utilidad, especialmente cuando se trabaja con grandes regiones. No obstante, no se trata de un sistema cartesiano, y tareas como la medición de áreas o distancias es mucho más complicada. Si bien la distancia entre dos paralelos es prácticamente constante (es decir, un grado de latitud equivale más o menos a una misma distancia en todos los puntos), la distancia entre dos meridianos no lo es, y varía entre unos 11,3 kilómetros en el Ecuador hasta los cero kilómetros en los polos, donde los meridianos convergen

El proceso de asignar una coordenada plana a cada punto de la superficie de la Tierra (que no es plana) se conoce como proyección cartográfica

Puede apreciarse igualmente en la figura que se producen distorsiones al realizar la proyección. Es decir, que ciertas propiedades no se reproducen con fidelidad al pasar puntos desde la superficie curva al plano. Por ejemplo, la distancia entre los puntos A y B no es igual a la existente entre los puntos a y b . Con independencia de las características propias de la proyección, siempre existen distorsiones. Esto es así debido a que la esfera, como se ha dicho, no es desarrollable, mientras que el plano sí lo es, y por ello en el paso de coordenadas de uno a otra han de aparecen inevitablemente alteraciones

Las proyecciones se clasifican según la superficie sobre la que se proyectan los puntos. En el esquema de la figura 3.5. el plano de proyección es ya de por sí.bidimensional. No obstante, puede realizarse la proyección sobre una superficie tridimensional, siempre que esta, a diferencia de la esfera, sí sea desarrollable. Es decir, que pueda «desenrollarse» y convertirse en un plano sin necesidad de doblarse o cortarse. Estas otras superficies pueden emplearse también para definir una proyección, de la misma forma que se hace con un plano. Las superficies más habituales son el cono y el cilindro (junto con, por supuesto, el plano), las cuales, situadas en una posición dada en relación al objeto a proyectar (esto es, la Tierra), definen un tipo dado de proyección. Distinguimos así los siguiente tipos de proyecciones: Cónicas . La superficie desarrollable es un cono (Figura 3.7), que se sitúa generalmente tangente o secante en dos paralelos a la superficie del elipsoide. En este último caso, la distorsión se minimiza en las áreas entre dichos paralelos, haciéndola útil para representar franjas que no abarquen una gran distancia en latitud, pero poco adecuada para representación de grandes áreas. Algunas de las proyecciones más conocidas de este grupo son la proyección cónica equiárea de Albers y la proyección conforme cónica de Lambert. Cilíndricas . La superficie desarrollable es un cilindro (Figura 3.6). Al pro- yectar, los meridianos se convierten en lineas paralelas, así como los paralelos, aunque la distancia entre estos últimos no es constante. En su concepción más simple, el cilindro se sitúa de forma tangente al ecuador (proyección normal o simple), aunque puede situarse secante y hacerlo a los meridianos (proyección transversa) o a otros puntos (proyección oblicua). La proyección de Mercator, la transversa de Mercator, la cilíndrica de Miller o la cilíndrica equiárea de Lambert son ejemplos relativamente comunes de este tipo de proyecciones. Planas o azimutales . La superficie desarrollable es directamente un plano. Según el esquema de la figura 3.5, tenemos distintos tipos en función de la posición del punto de fuga.

Otra forma distinta de clasificar las proyecciones es según las propiedades métricas que conserven. Toda proyección implica alguna distorsión (denominada anamorfosis), y según cómo sea esta y a qué propiedad métrica afecte o no, podemos definir los siguientes tipos de proyecciones: Equiárea . En este tipo de proyecciones se mantiene una escala constan- te. Es decir, la relación entre un área terrestre y el área proyectada es la misma

Conformes. Estas proyecciones mantienen la forma de los objetos, ya queno provocan distorsión de los ángulos. Los meridianos y los paralelos secortan en la proyección en ángulo recto, igual que sucede en la realidad. Suprincipal desventaja es que introducen una gran distorsión en el tamaño, yobjetos que aparecen proyectados con un tamaño mucho mayor que otrospueden ser en la realidad mucho menores que estos.

Equidistantes. En estas proyecciones se mantienen las distancias

una de las proyecciones más extendidas en todos los ámbitos es la proyección universal transversa de Mercator, la cual da lugar al sistema de coorde- nadas UTM. Este sistema, desarrollado por el ejército de los Estados Unidos, no es simplemente una proyección, sino que se trata de un sistema completo para cartogra- fiar la practica totalidad de la Tierra. Para ello, esta se divide en una serie de zonas rectangulares mediante una cuadricula y se aplica una proyección y unos parámetros geodésicos concretos a cada una de dichas zonas. Aunque en la actualidad se emplea un único elipsoide (WGS–84), originalmente este no era único para todas las zonas. Con el sistema UTM, las coordenadas de un punto no se expresan como coorde- nadas terrestres absolutas, sino mediante la zona correspondiente y las coordenadas relativas a la zona UTM en la que nos encontremos

Coordenadas UTM [Hay un total de 60 usos de longitud cada] uno de los cuales abarca una amplitud de 6 ◦ de longitud. El huso 1 se sitúa entre los 180 ◦ y 174 ◦ O, y la numeración avanza hacia el Este. En latitud, cada huso se divide en 20 zonas, que van desde los 80 ◦ S hasta los 84 ◦ N. Estas se codifican con letras desde la C a la X, no utilizándose las letras I y O por su similitud con los dígitos 1 y 0. Cada zona abarca 8 grados de longitud, excepto la X que se prolonga unos 4 grados adicionales. La figura 3.8 muestra un esquema de la cuadrícula UTM. Una zona UTM se localiza, por tanto, con un número y una letra, y es en función de la zona como posteriormente se dan las coordenadas que localizan un punto. Estas coordenadas se expresan en metros y expresan la distancia entre el punto y el origen de la zona UTM en concreto. El origen de la zona se sitúa en el punto de corte entre el meridiano central de la zona y el ecuador. Por ejemplo, para las zonas UTM en el huso 31, el cual va desde los 0 ◦ hasta los 6 ◦ , el origen se sitúa en el punto de corte entre el ecuador y el meridiano de 3 ◦ (Figura 3.9). Para evitar la aparición de números negativos, se considera que el origen no tiene una coordenada X de 0 metros, sino de 500000. Con ello se evita que las zonas al Este del meridiano central tengan coordenadas negativas, ya que ninguna zona tiene un ancho mayor de 1000000 metros (el ancho es máximo en las zonas cerca del ecuador, siendo de alrededor de 668 kilómetros). De igual modo, cuando se trabaja en el hemisferio sur (donde las coordenadas Y serían siempre negativas), se considera que el origen tiene una coordenada Y de 10000000 metros, lo cual hace que todas las coordenadas referidas a él sean positivas. Para las zonas polares no resulta adecuado emplear el sistema UTM

Conversión de coordenadas . Los sistemas de origen y destino comparten el mismo datum. Es una transformación exacta y se basa en la aplicación de formulas establecidas que relacionan ambos sistemas. Transformación de coordenadas . El datum es distinto en los sistemas de origen y destino. Las proyecciones cartográficas, vistas en un punto anterior, son una forma particular de conversión de coordenadas

Codificación de Sistemas de Referencia de Coordenadas:

Uno de los intentos más exitosos en este sentido es el desarrollado por el con- sorcio petrolífero European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG), el cual, consciente de la necesidad de disponer de información acerca de los distintos sistemas de coordenadas y de que esta información fuera de fácil acceso y manejo, ha elaborado un esquema de codificación específico

De hecho, e independientemente del tipo de proyección, la escala es comple- tamente cierta únicamente en determinadas partes del mapa. Cuando decimos que un mapa tiene una escala 1:50000, este valor, denominado Escala Numérica, se cumple con exactitud tan solo en algunos puntos o líneas. En otros puntos la escala varía. La relación entre la escala en esos puntos y la Escala Numérica se conoce como Factor de Escala.

resulta incorrecto como hemos visto ampliar el tamaño un mapa sin in- corporar más datos (esto es, sin variar consecuentemente la escala de análisis), puede resultar igualmente erróneo «encoger» ese mapa y mostrar la información geográfica a una escala muy distinta de la que corresponde a esos datos.

La generalización, por tanto, es un proceso que tiene como objetivo la pro- ducción de una imagen cartográfica legible y expresiva, reduciendo el contenido del mapa a aquello que sea posible y necesario representar. Para ello, se enfatiza aquello que resulta de importancia y se suprime lo que carece de ella

Operaciones de generalización Existen diversas operaciones que se emplean en el proceso de generalización. Algunas de las más relevantes son las siguientes [29]:

Simplificación Se trata de crear elementos más sencillos que sean más fáciles y rápidos de representar. Los elementos originales se sustituyen por estos más sencillos, de tal modo que se mantienen las características visuales principales pero las operaciones con los datos se optimizan.

Suavizado Se sustituyen formas angulosas por otras más suaves y de menor complejidad. Agregación . Un conjunto de varios objetos se sustituye por uno nuevo con un menor número. Por ejemplo, al representar una ciudad, no dibujar cada una de las casas, sino solo el contorno de cada manzana. La figura 3.10 muestra un ejemplo de esta técnica aplicado a elementos lineales, en particular carreteras.

Exageración En ocasiones, mantener el objeto a la escala que le corresponde haría que no se pudieran apreciar las características de este. En este caso, se exagera su tamaño para que pueda interpretarse con mayor facilidad y no perder información en la representación.

Desplazamiento Un objeto se representa en una posición distinta a la que le corresponde, con el fin de garantizar su visibilidad y obtener un resultado más claro.

Cuando el usuario introduce en el SIG una imagen de gran tamaño, este prepara varias versiones de esa imagen a distintas escalas de detalle, de forma que posteriormente pueda recurrir a la que sea más conveniente en cada caso en función de la escala de representación. Es decir, el SIG realiza la «gene- ralización» de esa imagen de forma automática, siendo necesario proporcionarle únicamente la imagen de mayor detalle.

De todos los subsistemas de SIG, el correspondiente a los datos es el pilar fundamental que pone en marcha los restantes. Los datos son el combustible que alimenta a los restantes subsistemas, y sin los cuales un SIG carece por completo de sentido y utilidad

Entendemos como dato al simple conjunto de valores o elementos que utiliza- mos para representar algo. Por ejemplo, el código 502132N es un dato. Este código por sí mismo no tiene un significado, y es necesario interpretarlo para que surja ese significado. Al realizar esa interpretación, el dato nos informa del significado que tiene, y es en ese momento cuando podemos emplearlo para algún fin y llevar a cabo operaciones sobre él que tengan sentido y resulten coherentes con el significado propio que contiene. El dato anterior podemos interpretarlo como si fuera una referencia geográfica, y cuyo significado sería entonces una latitud, en particular 50 ◦ 21 0 32 00 Norte. Si lo interpretamos como un código que hace referencia a un documento de identificación de una persona, la información que nos aporta es en ese caso completamente distin- ta. El dato sería el mismo, formado por seis dígitos y una letra, pero la información que da es diferente, ya que lo entendemos e interpretamos de manera distinta. La información es, por tanto, el resultado de un dato y una interpretación, y el trabajo con datos es en muchos casos un proceso enfocado a obtener de estos toda la información posible. Un dato puede esconder más información que la que a primera vista puede apreciarse, y es a través de la interpretación de los datos como se obtiene esta

omprender la información geográfica es vital para poder capturar dicha información e incorporarla a un SIG. En líneas generales, podemos dividir esta en dos componentes principales, cada una de los cuales tiene su implicación particular en los procesos posteriores de representación que más adelante veremos. Componente espacial Componente temática La componente espacial hace referencia a la posición dentro de un sistema de referencia establecido. Esta componente es la que hace que la información pueda calificarse como geográfica, ya que sin ella no se tiene una localización, y por tanto el marco geográfico no existe. La componente espacial responde a la pregunta ¿dónde? Por su parte, la componente temática responde a la pregunta ¿qué? y va inva- riablemente unida a la anterior. En la localización establecida por la componente espacial, tiene lugar algún proceso o aparece algún fenómeno dado. La naturaleza de dicho fenómeno y sus características particulares, quedan establecidas por la componente temática. Puede entenderse lo anterior como una variable fundamental (la componente temática), que se sirve, sin embargo, de una variable soporte (la componente espacial) para completar su significado.

Mientras que la componente espacial va a ser generalmente un valor numérico, pues son de esa naturaleza los sistemas de coordenadas que permiten expresar una posición concreta en referencia a un marco dado, la componente temática puede ser de distintos tipos: Numérica. A su vez, pueden señalarse los siguientes grupos: • Nominal . El valor numérico no representa sino una identificación. Por ejemplo, el número de un portal en una calle, o el numero del DNI de una persona. Este tipo de variable, al igual que la de tipo alfanumérico, es de tipo cualitativo, frente a las restantes que son de tipo cuantitativo. • Ordinal . El valor numérico establece un orden. Por ejemplo, una ca- pa en la que se recoja el año de fundación de las distintas ciudades contenidas en ella. • Intervalos . Las diferencias entre valores de la variable tienen un sig- nificado. Por ejemplo, entre dos valores de elevación. • Razones . Las razones entre valores de la variable tienen un significado. Por ejemplo, podemos decir que una precipitación media de 1000mm es el doble que una de 500mm. La pertenencia de una variable a un grupo u otro no solo depende de la propia naturaleza de la misma, sino también del sistema en que se mida. Así, una temperatura en grados centígrados no se encuentra dentro de este grupo (pero sí en el de intervalos), ya que la razón entre dichas temperaturas no vale para decir, por ejemplo, que una zona está al doble de temperatura que otra, mientras que si expresamos la variable temperatura en grados Kelvin sí que podemos realizar tales afirmaciones. El valor mínimo de la escala debe ser cero. Alfanumérica

Un concepto a tener en cuenta en relación con las componentes de la información geográfica es la dimensión. Los elementos que registramos pueden ir desde sencillos puntos (0D) hasta volúmenes tridimensionales (3D). Un caso particular —y muy frecuente— lo encontramos cuando estudiamos la forma tridimensional del terreno, pero tratando la elevación como variable temática, no como una parte más de la com- ponente espacial. En este caso, tenemos una serie de valores de elevación (Z) locali- zados en el plano XY. Esto no es realmente equivalente a utilizar una componente espacial tridimensional, ya que no permite recoger en un mismo punto distintos valo- res (no puede, por ejemplo, modelizarse la forma de una cueva o un objeto vertical), por lo que se conoce como representación en 2.5 dimensiones (2.5D

Además de las componentes espacial y temática, Sinton [ 32 ] añade la componen- te temporal

Por ultimo, un aspecto importante de toda variable estudiada es su continuidad. Se entiende esta continuidad como la capacidad de la variable para tomar todos los valores dentro de un rango definido. La temperatura, la presión o la elevación son valores continuos, mientras que ninguna variable de tipo nominal puede ser continua, ya que se encuentra limitada a un numero (finito) de identificadores posibles

En realidad, y en el lenguaje habitual de trabajo con SIG, la capa no define únicamente una división vertical, sino también una horizontal. Es más sencillo visualizar la idea de capa con un esquema como el de la figura 4.3, en el que las distintas variables se «apilan» en capas de información superpuestas. Sin embargo, las divisiones horizontales en un mosaico de datos también se consideran como capas distintas en un SIG, pese a contener una misma variable y un mismo tipo de información.

Las capas pueden emplearse también para incorporar en cierta forma la variable temporal si se considera que la dimensión vertical es el tiempo. Aunque no es la manera más adecuada, y en la actualidad el manejo del tiempo es uno de los principales problemas a resolver en el diseño de los SIG, podemos trabajar con varias capas que representen una misma información y una misma zona, pero en instantes distintos.

La información geográfica tiene dos componentes: una componente temática y una componente geográfica. Estas van unidas y conforman una unidad única de información geográfica

La información geográfica se divide horizontal y verticalmente.

5 Modelos ME HE QUEDADO AQUI EN EL LIBRO DE OLAYA

We live in a culture that promotes democratic values of being fair to one and all, the importance of fitting into a group, and knowing how to cooperate with other people. We are taught early on in life that those who are outwardly combative and aggressive pay a social price: unpopularity and isolation. These values of harmony and cooperation are perpetuated in subtle and not-so-subtle ways—through books on how to be successful in life; through the pleasant, peaceful exteriors that those who have gotten ahead in the world present to the public; through notions of correctness that saturate the public space. The problem for us is that we are trained and prepared for peace, and we are not at all prepared for what confronts us in the real world—war.

This war exists on several levels. Most obviously, we have our rivals on the other side. The world has become increasingly competitive and nasty. In politics, business, even the arts, we face opponents who will do almost anything to gain an edge. More troubling and complex, however, are the battles we face with those who are supposedly on our side. There are those who outwardly play the team game, who act very friendly and agreeable, but who sabotage us behind the scenes, use the group to promote their own agenda. Others, more difficult to spot, play subtle games of passive aggression, offering help that never comes, instilling guilt as a secret weapon. On the surface everything seems peaceful enough, but just below it, it is every man and woman for him- or herself, this dynamic infecting even families and relationships. The culture may deny this reality and promote a gentler picture, but we know it and feel it, in our battle scars.

It is not that we and our colleagues are ignoble creatures who fail to live up to ideals of peace and selflessness, but that we cannot help the way we are. We have aggressive impulses that are impossible to ignore or repress. In the past, individuals could expect a group—the state, an extended family, a company—to take care of them, but this is no longer the case, and in this uncaring world we have to think first and foremost of ourselves and our interests. What we need are not impossible and inhuman ideals of peace and cooperation to live up to, and the confusion that brings us, but rather practical knowledge on how to deal with conflict and the daily battles we face. And this knowledge is not about how to be more forceful in getting what we want or defending ourselves but rather how to be more rational and strategic when it comes to conflict, channeling our aggressive impulses instead of denying or repressing them. If there is an ideal to aim for, it should be that of the strategic warrior, the man or woman who manages difficult situations and people through deft and intelligent maneuver.

Many psychologists and sociologists have argued that it is through conflict that problems are often solved and real differences reconciled. Our successes and failures in life can be traced to how well or how badly we deal with the inevitable conflicts that confront us in society. The common ways that people deal with them—trying to avoid all conflict, getting emotional and lashing out, turning sly and manipulative—are all counterproductive in the long run, because they are not under conscious and rational control and often make the situation worse. Strategic warriors operate much differently. They think ahead toward their long-term goals, decide which fights to avoid and which are inevitable, know how to control and channel their emotions. When forced to fight, they do so with indirection and subtle maneuver, making their manipulations hard to trace. In this way they can maintain the peaceful exterior so cherished in these political times.

This ideal of fighting rationally comes to us from organized warfare, where the art of strategy was invented and refined. In the beginning, war was not at all strategic. Battles between tribes were fought in a brutal manner, a kind of ritual of violence in which individuals could display their heroism. But as tribes expanded and evolved into states, it became all too apparent that war had too many hidden costs, that waging it blindly often led to exhaustion and self-destruction, even for the victor. Somehow wars had to be fought more rationally.

The word “strategy” comes from the ancient Greek word strategos, meaning literally “the leader of the army.” Strategy in this sense was the art of generalship, of commanding the entire war effort, deciding what formations to deploy, what terrain to fight on, what maneuvers to use to gain an edge. And as this knowledge progressed, military leaders discovered that the more they thought and planned ahead, the more possibilities they had for success. Novel strategies could allow them to defeat much larger armies, as Alexander the Great did in his victories over the Persians. In facing savvy opponents who were also using strategy, there developed an upward pressure: to gain an advantage, a general had to be even more strategic, more indirect and clever, than the other side. Over time the arts of generalship became steadily more sophisticated, as more strategies were invented.

Although the word “strategy” itself is Greek in origin, the concept appears in all cultures, in all periods. Solid principles on how to deal with the inevitable accidents of war, how to craft the ultimate plan, how to best organize the army—all of this can be found in war manuals from ancient China to modern Europe. The counterattack, the flanking or enveloping maneuver, and the arts of deception are common to the armies of Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and the Zulu king Shaka. As a whole, these principles and strategies indicate a kind of universal military wisdom, a set of adaptable patterns that can increase the chances for victory.

Perhaps the greatest strategist of them all was Sun-tzu, author of the ancient Chinese classic The Art of War. In his book, written probably the fourth century B.C., can be found traces of almost all the strategic patterns and principles later developed over the course of centuries. But what connects them, in fact what constitutes the art of war itself in Sun-tzu’s eyes, is the ideal of winning without bloodshed. By playing on the psychological weaknesses of the opponent, by maneuvering him into precarious positions, by inducing feelings of frustration and confusion, a strategist can get the other side to break down mentally before surrendering physically. In this way victory can be had at a much lower cost. And the state that wins wars with few lives lost and resources squandered is the state that can thrive over greater periods of time. Certainly most wars are not waged so rationally, but those campaigns in history that have followed this principle (Scipio Africanus in Spain, Napoleon at Ulm, T. E. Lawrence in the desert campaigns of World War I) stand out above the rest and serve as the ideal.

But what connects them [his strategic patterns], in fact what constitutes the art of war itself in Sun-tzu’s eyes, is the ideal of winning without bloodshed.

Certainly most wars are not waged so rationally, but those campaigns in history that have followed this principle (Scipio Africanus in Spain, Napoleon at Ulm, T. E. Lawrence in the desert campaigns of World War I) stand out above the rest and serve as the ideal.

Soldiers were not taught strategy, for that would not have helped them on the battlefield. Besides, it was unwise to arm one’s soldiers with the kind of practical knowledge that could help them to organize a mutiny or rebellion.

To maintain strategy and the arts of war as a branch of specialized knowledge is actually to play into the hands of the elites and repressive powers, who like to divide and conquer.

Mastering the art will only make your life more peaceful and productive in the long run, for you will know how to play the game and win without violence. Ignoring it will lead to a life of endless confusion and defeat.

In strategy you must see your emotional responses to events as a kind of disease that must be remedied. Fear will make you overestimate the enemy and act too defensively. Anger and impatience will draw you into rash actions that will cut off your options. Overconfidence, particularly as a result of success, will make you go too far. Love and affection will blind you to the treacherous maneuvers of those apparently on your side. Even the subtlest gradations of these emotions can color the way you look at events. The only remedy is to be aware that the pull of emotion is inevitable, to notice it when it is happening, and to compensate for it. When you have success, be extra wary. When you are angry, take no action. When you are fearful, know you are going to exaggerate the dangers you face. War demands the utmost in realism, seeing things as they are. The more you can limit or compensate for your emotional responses, the closer you will come to this ideal.

The brilliance of warfare is that no amount of eloquence or talk can explain away a failure on the battlefield. A general has led his troops to defeat, lives have been wasted, and that is how history will judge him. You must strive to apply this ruthless standard in your daily life, judging people by the results of their actions, the deeds that can be seen and measured, the maneuvers they have used to gain power. What people say about themselves does not matter; people will say anything. Look at what they have done; deeds do not lie. You must also apply this logic to yourself. In looking back at a defeat, you must identify the things you could have done differently. It is your own bad strategies, not the unfair opponent, that are to blame for your failures. You are responsible for the good and bad in your life. As a corollary to this, look at everything other people do as a strategic maneuver, an attempt to gain victory. People who accuse you of being unfair, for example, who try to make you feel guilty, who talk about justice and morality, are trying to gain an advantage on the chessboard.

In the search for success in life, people tend to rely on things that seem simple and easy or that have worked before. This could mean accumulating wealth, resources, a large number of allies, or the latest technology and the advantage it brings. This is being materialistic and mechanical. But true strategy is psychological—a matter of intelligence, not material force. Everything in life can be taken away from you and generally will be at some point. Your wealth vanishes, the latest gadgetry suddenly becomes passé, your allies desert you. But if your mind is armed with the art of war, there is no power that can take that away. In the middle of a crisis, your mind will find its way to the right solution. Having superior strategies at your fingertips will give your maneuvers irresistible force. As Sun-tzu says, “Being unconquerable lies with yourself.”

In the mythology of ancient Greece, the cleverest immortal of them all was the goddess Metis. To prevent her from outwitting and destroying him, Zeus married her, then swallowed her whole, hoping to incorporate her wisdom in the process. But Metis was pregnant with Zeus’s child, the goddess Athena, who was subsequently born from his forehead. As befitting her lineage, she was blessed with the craftiness of Metis and the warrior mentality of Zeus. She was deemed by the Greeks to be the goddess of strategic warfare, her favorite mortal and acolyte being the crafty Odysseus. Ares was the god of war in its direct and brutal form. The Greeks despised Ares and worshipped Athena, who always fought with the utmost intelligence and subtlety. Your interest in war is not the violence, the brutality, the waste of lives and resources, but the rationality and pragmatism it forces on us and the ideal of winning without bloodshed. The Ares figures of the world are actually quite stupid and easily misled. Using the wisdom of Athena, your goal is to turn the violence and aggression of such types against them, making their brutality the cause of their downfall. Like Athena, you are always one step ahead, making your moves more indirect. Your goal is to blend philosophy and war, wisdom and battle, into an unbeatable blend.

In war, strategy is the art of commanding the entire military operation. Tactics, on the other hand, is the skill of forming up the army for battle itself and dealing with the immediate needs of the battlefield. Most of us in life are tacticians, not strategists. We become so enmeshed in the conflicts we face that we can think only of how to get what we want in the battle we are currently facing. To think strategically is difficult and unnatural. You may imagine you are being strategic, but in all likelihood you are merely being tactical. To have the power that only strategy can bring, you must be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the reactive mode that so many battles in life lock you into. Keeping your overall goals in mind, it becomes much easier to decide when to fight and when to walk away. That makes the tactical decisions of daily life much simpler and more rational. Tactical people are heavy and stuck in the ground; strategists are light on their feet and can see far and wide.

Every day you face battles—that is the reality for all creatures in their struggle to survive. But the greatest battle of all is with yourself—your weaknesses, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end. You must declare unceasing war on yourself. As a warrior in life, you welcome combat and conflict as ways to prove yourself, to better your skills, to gain courage, confidence, and experience. Instead of repressing your doubts and fears, you must face them down, do battle with them. You want more challenges, and you invite more war. You are forging the warrior’s spirit, and only constant practice will lead you there.

The following are six fundamental ideals you should aim for in transforming yourself into a strategic warrior in daily life.

1. Look at things as they are, not as your emotions color them.
2. Judge people by their actions.
3. Depend on your own arms.
4. Worship Athena, not Ares.
5. Elevate yourself above the battlefield.
6. Spiritualize your warfare.

Each chapter is a strategy aimed at solving a particular problem that you will often encounter. Such problems include fighting with an unmotivated army behind you; wasting energy by battling on too many fronts; feeling overwhelmed by friction, the discrepancy between plans and reality; getting into situations you cannot get out of.

In any event, they are not intended as doctrine or formulas to be repeated but as aids to judgment in the heat of battle, seeds that will take root in you and help you think for yourself, developing the latent strategist within.

The strategies themselves are culled from the writings and practices of the greatest generals in history (Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Shaka Zulu, William Techumseh Sherman, Erwin Rommel, Vo Nguyen Giap) as well as the greatest strategists (Sun-tzu, Miyamoto Musashi, Carl von Clausewitz, Ardant du Picq, T. E. Lawrence, Colonel John Boyd).

The book is divided into five parts: self-directed war (how to prepare your mind and spirit for battle); organizational war (how to structure and motivate your army); defensive war; offensive war; and unconventional (dirty) war.

Strategy requires a constant contact between the two realms. It is practical knowledge of the highest form. Events in life mean nothing if you do not reflect on them in a deep way, and ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as you live it. In strategy all of life is a game that you are playing. This game is exciting but also requires deep and serious attention. The stakes are so high. What you know must translate into action, and action must translate into knowledge. In this way strategy becomes a lifelong challenge and the source of constant pleasure in surmounting difficulties and solving problems.

War, or any kind of conflict, is waged and won through strategy. Think of strategy as a series of lines and arrows aimed at a goal: at getting you to a certain point in the world, at helping you to attack a problem in your path, at figuring out how to encircle and destroy your enemy.

Your mind is the starting point of all war and all strategy. A mind that is easily overwhelmed by emotion, that is rooted in the past instead of the present, that cannot see the world with clarity and urgency, will create strategies that will always miss the mark.

To become a true strategist, you must take three steps.

1. First, become aware of the weakness and illness that can take hold of the mind, warping its strategic powers.
2. Second, declare a kind of war on yourself to make yourself move forward.
3. Third, wage ruthless and continual battle on the enemies within you by applying certain strategies

1 DECLARE WAR ON YOUR ENEMIES: THE POLARITY STRATEGY

Life is endless battle and conflict, and you cannot fight effectively unless you can identify your enemies. Learn to smoke out your enemies, to spot them by the signs and patterns that reveal hostility. Then, once you have them in your sights, inwardly declare war. Your enemies can fill you with purpose and direction.

2 DO NOT FIGHT THE LAST WAR: THE GUERRILLA-WAR-OF-THE-MIND STRATEGY

What most often weighs you down and brings you misery is the past. You must consciously wage war against the past and force yourself to react to the present moment. Be ruthless on yourself; do not repeat the same tired methods. Wage guerrilla war on your mind, allowing no static lines of defense—make everything fluid and mobile.

3 AMIDST THE TURMOIL OF EVENTS, DO NOT LOSE YOUR PRESENCE OF MIND: THE COUNTERBALANCE STRATEGY

In the heat of battle, the mind tends to lose its balance. It is vital to keep your presence of mind, maintaining your mental powers, whatever the circumstances. Make the mind tougher by exposing it to adversity. Learn to detach yourself from the chaos of the battlefield.

4 CREATE A SENSE OF URGENCY AND DESPERATION: THE DEATH-GROUND STRATEGY

You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Cut your ties to the past; enter unknown territory. Place yourself on “death ground,” where your back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.

You may have brilliant ideas, you may be able to invent unbeatable strategies—but if the group that you lead, and that you depend on to execute your plans, is unresponsive and uncreative, and if its members always put their personal agendas first, your ideas will mean nothing. You must learn the lesson of war: it is the structure of the army—the chain of command and the relationship of the parts to the whole—that will give your strategies force.

The primary goal in war is to build speed and mobility into the very structure of your army. That means having a single authority on top, avoiding the hesitancy and confusion of divided leadership. It means giving soldiers a sense of the overall goal to be accomplished and the latitude to take action to meet that goal; instead of reacting like automatons, they are able to respond to events in the field. Finally, it means motivating soldiers, creating an overall esprit de corps that gives them irresistible momentum. With forces organized in this manner, a general can adapt to circumstances faster than the enemy can, gaining a decided advantage.

This military model is extremely adaptable to any group. It has one simple requirement: before formulating a strategy or taking action, understand the structure of your group. You can always change it and redesign it to fit your purposes. The following three chapters will help you focus on this critical issue and give you strategic options—possible organizational models to follow, as well as disastrous mistakes to avoid.

5 AVOID THE SNARES OF GROUPTHINK: THE COMMAND-AND-CONTROL STRATEGY

The problem in leading any group is that people inevitably have their own agendas. You have to create a chain of command in which they do not feel constrained by your influence yet follow your lead. Create a sense of participation, but do not fall into groupthink—the irrationality of collective decision making.

6 SEGMENT YOUR FORCES: THE CONTROLLED-CHAOS STRATEGY

The critical elements in war are speed and adaptability—the ability to move and make decisions faster than the enemy. Break your forces into independent groups that can operate on their own. Make your forces elusive and unstoppable by infusing them with the spirit of the campaign, giving them a mission to accomplish, and then letting them run.

7 TRANSFORM YOUR WAR INTO A CRUSADE: MORALE STRATEGIES

The secret to motivating people and maintaining their morale is to get them to think less about themselves and more about the group. Involve them in a cause, a crusade against a hated enemy. Make them see their survival as tied to the success of the army as a whole.

To fight in a defensive manner is not a sign of weakness; it is the height of strategic wisdom, a powerful style of waging war. Its requirements are simple: First, you must make the most of your resources, fighting with perfect economy and engaging only in battles that are necessary. Second, you must know how and when to retreat, luring an aggressive enemy into an imprudent attack. Then, waiting patiently for his moment of exhaustion, launch a vicious counterattack.

In a world that frowns on displays of overt aggression, the ability to fight defensively—to let others make the first move and then wait for their own mistakes to destroy them—will bring you untold power. Because you waste neither energy nor time, you are always ready for the next inevitable battle. Your career will be long and fruitful.

To fight this way, you must master the arts of deception. By seeming weaker than you are, you can draw the enemy into an ill-advised attack; by seeming stronger than you are—perhaps through an occasional act that is reckless and bold—you can deter the enemy from attacking you. In defensive warfare you are essentially leveraging your weaknesses and limitations into power and victory.

The following four chapters will instruct you in the basic arts of defensive warfare: economy of means, counterattack, intimidation and deterrence, and how to retreat skillfully and lie low when under aggressive attack.

We all have limitations—our energies and skills will take us only so far. You must know your limits and pick your battles carefully. Consider the hidden costs of a war: time lost, political goodwill squandered, an embittered enemy bent on revenge. Sometimes it is better to wait, to undermine your enemies covertly rather than hitting them straight on.

Moving first—initiating the attack—will often put you at a disadvantage: You are exposing your strategy and limiting your options. Instead, discover the power of holding back and letting the other side move first, giving you the flexibility to counterattack from any angle. If your opponents are aggressive, bait them into a rash attack that will leave them in a weak position.

The best way to fight off aggressors is to keep them from attacking you in the first place. Build up a reputation: You’re a little crazy. Fighting you is not worth it. Uncertainty is sometimes better than overt threat: If your opponents are never sure what messing with you will cost, they will not want to find out.

Retreat in the face of a strong enemy is a sign not of weakness but of strength. By resisting the temptation to respond to an aggressor, you buy yourself valuable time—time to recover, to think, to gain perspective. Sometimes you can accomplish most by doing nothing.

The greatest dangers in war, and in life, come from the unexpected: people do not respond the way you had thought they would, events mess up your plans and produce confusion, circumstances are overwhelming. In strategy this discrepancy between what you want to happen and what does happen is called “friction.” The idea behind conventional offensive warfare is simple: by attacking the other side first, hitting its points of vulnerability, and seizing the initiative and never letting it go, you create your own circumstances. Before any friction can creep in and undermine your plans, you move to the offensive, and your relentless maneuvers force so much friction on the enemy that he collapses.

This is the form of warfare practiced by the most successful captains in history, and the secret to their success is a perfect blend of strategic cleverness and au- dacity. The strategic element comes in the planning: setting an overall goal, crafting ways to reach it, and thinking the whole plan through in intense detail. This means thinking in terms of a campaign, not individual battles. It also means knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the other side, so that you can calibrate your strikes to its vulnerabilities. The more detailed your planning, the more confident you will feel as you go into battle, and the easier it will be to stay on course once the inevitable problems arise. In the attack itself, though, you must strike with such spirit and audacity that you put your enemies on their heels, giving irresistible momentum to your offensive.

The following eleven chapters will initiate you into this supreme form of warfare. They will help you to put your desires and goals into a larger framework known as “grand strategy.” They will show you how to look at your enemies and uncover their secrets. They will describe how a solid base of planning will give you fluid options for attack and how specific maneuvers (the flanking maneuver, the envelopment) and styles of attack (hitting centers of gravity, forcing the enemy into positions of great weakness) that work brilliantly in war can be applied in life. Finally, they will show you how to finish off your campaign. Without a vigorous conclusion that meets your overall goals, everything you have done will be worthless. Mastering the various components of offensive warfare will give all of your attacks in life much greater force.

Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the battle and calculating ahead. It requires that you focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it. Let others get caught up in the twists and turns of the battle, relishing their little victories. Grand strategy will bring you the ultimate reward: the last laugh.

The target of your strategies should be less the army you face than the mind of the man or woman who runs it. If you understand how that mind works, you have the key to deceiving and controlling it. Train yourself to read people, picking up the signals they unconsciously send about their innermost thoughts and intentions.

In a world in which many people are indecisive and overly cautious, the use of speed will bring you untold power. Striking first, before your opponents have time to think or prepare, will make them emotional, unbalanced, and prone to error.

People are constantly struggling to control you. The only way to get the upper hand is to make your play for control more intelligent and insidious. Instead of trying to dominate the other side’s every move, work to define the nature of the relationship itself. Maneuver to control your opponents’ minds, pushing their emotional buttons and compelling them to make mistakes.

Everyone has a source of power on which he or she depends. When you look at your rivals, search below the surface for that source, the center of gravity that holds the entire structure together. Hitting them there will inflict disproportionate pain. Find what the other side most cherishes and protects—that is where you must strike.

Never be intimidated by your enemy’s appearance. Instead, look at the parts that make up the whole. By separating the parts, sowing dissension and division, you can bring down even the most formidable foe. When you are facing troubles or enemies, turn a large problem into small, eminently defeatable parts.

When you attack people directly, you stiffen their resistance and make your task that much harder. There is a better way: Distract your opponents’ attention to the front, then attack them from the side, where they least expect it. Bait people into going out on a limb, exposing their weakness, then rake them with fire from the side.

People will use any kind of gap in your defenses to attack you. So offer no gaps. The secret is to envelop your opponents—create relentless pressure on them from all sides and close off their access to the outside world. As you sense their weakening resolve, crush their willpower by tightening the noose.

No matter how strong you are, fighting endless battles with people is exhausting, costly, and unimaginative. Wise strategists prefer the art of maneuver: Before the battle even begins, they find ways to put their opponents in positions of such weakness that victory is easy and quick. Create dilemmas: Devise maneuvers that give them a choice of ways to respond-all of them bad.

21 NEGOTIATE WHILE ADVANCING: THE DIPLOMATIC-WAR STRATEGY

Before and during negotiations, you must keep advancing, creating relentless pressure and compelling the other side to settle on your terms. The more you take, the more you can give back in meaningless concessions. Create a reputation for being tough and uncompromising, so that people are back on their heels before they even meet you.

You are judged in this world by how well you bring things to an end. A messy or incomplete conclusion can reverberate for years to come. The art of ending things well is knowing when to stop. The height of strategic wisdom is to avoid all conflicts and entanglements from which there are no realistic exits.

A general fighting a war must constantly search for an advantage over the opponent. The greatest advantage comes from the element of surprise, from hitting enemies with strategies that are novel, outside their experience, completely unconventional. It is in the nature of war, however, that over time any strategy with any possible application will be tried and tested, so that the search for the new and unconventional has an innate tendency to become more and more extreme. At the same time, moral and ethical codes that governed warfare for centuries have gradually loosened. These two effects dovetail into what we today call “dirty war,” where anything goes, down to the killing of thousands of unwarned civilians. Dirty war is political, deceptive, and supremely manipulative. Often the last recourse of the weak and desperate, it uses any means available to level the playing field.

The dynamic of the dirty has filtered into society and the culture at large. Whether in politics, business, or society, the way to defeat your opponents is to surprise them, to come at them from an unexpected angle. And the increasing pressures of these daily wars make dirty strategies inevitable. People go underground: they seem nice and decent but use slippery, devious methods behind the scenes.

The unconventional has its own logic that you must understand. First, nothing stays new for long. Those who depend on novelty must constantly come up with some fresh idea that goes against the orthodoxies of the time. Second, people who use unconventional methods are very hard to fight. The classic, direct route—the use of force and strength—does not work. You must use indirect methods to combat indirection, fight fire with fire, even at the cost of going dirty yourself. To try to stay clean out of a sense of morality is to risk defeat.

The chapters in this section will initiate you into the various forms of the unorthodox. Some of these are strictly unconventional: deceiving your opponents and working against their expectations. Others are more political and slippery: making morality a strategic weapon, applying the arts of guerrilla warfare to daily life, mastering the insidious forms of passive aggression. And some are unapologetically dirty: destroying the enemy from within, inflicting terror and panic. These chapters are designed to give you a greater understanding of the diabolical psychology involved in each strategy, helping to arm you with the proper defense.

Since no creature can survive without the ability to see or sense what is going on around it, make it hard for your enemies to know what is going on around them, including what you are doing. Feed their expectations, manufacture a reality to match their desires, and they will fool themselves. Control people’s perceptions of reality and you control them.

People expect your behavior to conform to known patterns and conventions. Your task as a strategist is to upset their expectations. First do something ordinary and conventional to fix their image of you, then hit them with the extraordinary. The terror is greater for being so sudden. Sometimes the ordinary is extraordinary because it is unexpected.

In a political world, the cause you are fighting for must seem more just than the enemy’s. By questioning your opponents’ motives and making them appear evil, you can narrow their base of support and room to maneuver. When you yourself come under moral attack from a clever enemy, do not whine or get angry; fight fire with fire.

The feeling of emptiness or void—silence, isolation, nonengagement with others—is for most people intolerable. Give your enemies no target to attack, be dangerous but elusive, then watch as they chase you into the void. Instead of frontal battles, deliver irritating but damaging side attacks and pinprick bites.

The best way to advance your cause with the minimum of effort and bloodshed is to create a constantly shifting network of alliances, getting others to compensate for your deficiencies, do your dirty work, fight your wars. At the same time, you must work to sow dissension in the alliances of others, weakening your enemies by isolating them.

Life’s greatest dangers often come not from external enemies but from our supposed colleagues and friends who pretend to work for the common cause while scheming to sabotage us. Work to instill doubts and insecurities in such rivals, getting them to think too much and act defensively. Make them hang themselves through their own self-destructive tendencies, leaving you blameless and clean.

Overt power grabs and sharp rises to the top are dangerous, creating envy, distrust, and suspicion. Often the best solution is to take small bites, swallow little territories, playing upon people’s relatively short attention spans. Before people realize it, you have accumulated an empire.

Communication is a kind of war, its field of battle the resistant and defensive minds of the people you want to influence. The goal is to penetrate their defenses and occupy their minds. Learn to infiltrate your ideas behind enemy lines, sending messages through little details, luring people into coming to the conclusions you desire and into thinking they’ve gotten there by themselves.

By infiltrating your opponents’ ranks, working from within to bring them down, you give them nothing to see or react against—the ultimate advantage. To take something you want, do not fight those who have it, but rather join them—then either slowly make it your own or wait for the moment to stage a coup.

In a world where political considerations are paramount, the most effective form of aggression is the best hidden one: aggression behind a compliant, even loving exterior. To follow the passive-aggression strategy you must seem to go along with people, offering no resistance. But actually you dominate the situation. Just make sure you have disguised your aggression enough that you can deny it exists.

Terror is the ultimate way to paralyze a people’s will to resist and destroy their ability to plan a strategic response. The goal in a terror campaign is not battlefield victory but causing maximum chaos and provoking the other side into desperate overreaction. To plot the most effective counterstrategy, victims of terror must stay balanced. One’s rationality is the last line of defense.

We all have the power of attraction—the ability to draw people in and hold them in our thrall. Far from all of us, though, are aware of this inner potential, and we imagine attractiveness instead as a near-mystical trait that a select few are born with and the rest will never command. Yet all we need to do to realize our potential is understand what it is in a person’s character that naturally excites people and develop these latent qualities within us. Successful seductions rarely begin with an obvious maneuver or strategic device. That is certain to arouse suspicion.

Yet all we need to do to realize our potential is understand what it is in a person’s character that naturally excites people and develop these latent qualities within us.

Successful seductions rarely begin with an obvious maneuver or strategic device. That is certain to arouse suspicion.

Successful seductions begin with your character, your ability to radiate some quality that attracts people and stirs their emotions in a way that is beyond their control. Hypnotized by your seductive character, your victims will not notice your subsequent manipulations. It will then be child’s play to mislead and seduce them.