Zen and the art of interstellar genocide.

dogscoff · #1 August 29th, 2001, 05:03 PM

QUOTE:
Ancient generals used to MEMORISE the whole book, I wonder how they did it!
/QUOTE

It probably wasn't such a big deal back then. Before telecommunications, widespread literacy and post-it notes people had far better memories, just out of necessity. Think about all the long and complex mythologies, stories and songs that were propogated for genrations by illitrate people by word of mouth.

Think about your average soap actor, commiting hundreds of lines of drivel to mmory every week...

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geoschmo · #2 August 29th, 2001, 05:17 PM

quote:
Originally posted by dogscoff:
That's a great read. Is that really it though? I'm into chapter 6 already, I thought the famous Art of War would be a huge, 10,000 page tome which takes 6 months to read and 12 years to understand.

I'm not belittling it because (according to that website) it can be read in 45 minutes, I'm just surprised.

I believe it is complete. I think I know what Suz Tzu would say...Do not confuse a quantity of words with a quality of wisdom.

Geo

geoschmo · #3 August 29th, 2001, 05:40 PM

Just for grins I looked at copies for sale on some book sites. Some were as small as 130 pages, and that's with pictures and other annotations, examples etc. I don't know exactly how much of that is Sun Tzu's words...

Geo

Rich04 · #4 August 29th, 2001, 05:43 PM

Trivia question. How many people on this list know that The Art of War was only one volume of a larger number studied by ancient Chinese generals?

CW · #5 August 29th, 2001, 05:49 PM

I do.

And I wonder how they memorised so much! (yes I MEAN memorising!)

Sean92 · #6 August 29th, 2001, 07:40 PM

Another good book on strategy is "A Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi.

dmm · #7 August 29th, 2001, 08:17 PM

Not Zen or anything, but "The Prince" by Machiavelli is also great Evil Emperor strategy guide, and also short.

More on-topic would be "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull." Also short. I don't agree with its underlying philosophy (reincarnation), but I liked how JLS kept striving to be better. Supposedly Winnie the Pooh is Zen-like, at least according to "The Tao of Pooh." And physics is Zen-like, according to "The Tao of Physics." Personally, I think you'd be better served by just reading the Pooh books and studying physics.