The 33 Strategies of War (81 page)

Understand: you may have brilliant ideas, the kind that could revolutionize the world, but unless you can express them effectively, they will have no force, no power to enter people's minds in a deep and lasting way. You must focus not on yourself or on the need you feel to express what you have to say but on your audience--as intently as a general focuses on the enemy he is strategizing to defeat. When dealing with people who are bored and have short attention spans, you must entertain them, sneaking your ideas in through the back door. With leaders you must be careful and indirect, perhaps using third parties to disguise the source of the ideas you are trying to spread. With the young your expression must be more violent. In general, your words must have movement, sweeping readers along, never calling attention to their own cleverness. You are not after personal expression, but power and influence. The less people consciously focus on the communicative form you have chosen, the less they realize how far your dangerous ideas are burrowing into their minds.

The Lydian King Croesus had had Miltiades much in this thoughts so when he learned of his capture, he sent a command to the people of Lampsacus to set him at liberty; if they refused, he was determined, he added, to "cut them down like a pine-tree." The people of the town were baffled by Croesus' threat, and at a loss to understand what being cut down like a pine-tree might mean, until at last the true significance of the phrase dawned upon a certain elderly man: the pine, he explained, was the only kind of tree which sent up no new shoots after being felled--cut down a pine and it will die off completely. The explanation made the Lampsacenes so frightened of Croesus that they let Miltiades go.

T
HE
H
ISTORIES
,
H
ERODOTUS
, 484-432
B.C.

For some time I have never said what I believed, and never believed what I said, and if I do sometimes happen to say what I think, I always hide it among so many lies that it is hard to recover it.

--Niccolo Machiavelli, letter to Francesco Guicciardini (1521)

KEYS TO WARFARE

For centuries people have searched for the magic formula that would give them the power to influence others through words. This search has been mostly elusive. Words have strange, paradoxical qualities: offer people advice, for instance, no matter how sound, and you imply that you know more than they do. To the extent that this strikes at their insecurities, your wise words may merely have the effect of entrenching them in the very habits you want to change. Once your language has gone out into the world, your audience will do what they want with it, interpreting it according to their own preconceptions. Often when people appear to listen, nod their heads, and seem persuaded, they are actually just trying to be agreeable--or even just to get rid of you. There are simply too many words inundating our lives for talk to have any real, long-lasting effect.

This does not mean that the search for power through language is futile, only that it must be much more strategic and based on knowledge of fundamental psychology. What really changes us and our behavior is not the actual words uttered by someone else but our own experience, something that comes not from without but from within. An event occurs that shakes us up emotionally, breaks up our usual patterns of looking at the world, and has a lasting impact on us. Something we read or hear from a great teacher makes us question what we know, causes us to meditate on the issue at hand, and in the process changes how we think. The ideas are internalized and felt as personal experience. Images from a film penetrate our unconscious, communicating in a preverbal way, and become part of our dream life. Only what stirs deep within us, taking root in our minds as thought and experience, has the power to change what we do in any lasting way.

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat there; and the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: "A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away. Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundred-fold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear." Then the disciples came and said to him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" And he answered them, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which says: 'You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never perceive.'"

M
ATTHEW
13:1-15

The historical figure who most deeply pondered the nature of communication was surely Socrates, the great philosopher of classical Athens. Socrates' goal was simple: he wanted to make people realize that their knowledge of the world was superficial, if not downright false. Had he tried to say this conventionally and directly, though, he would only have made his audience more resistant and would have strengthened their intellectual smugness. And so, pondering this phenomenon, and through much trial and error, Socrates came up with a method. First came the setup: he would make a show of his own ignorance, telling his audience of mostly young men that he himself knew little--that any wisdom he was reputed to have was just talk. Meanwhile he would compliment his listeners, feeding their vanity by praising their ideas in an offhand way. Then, in a series of questions constituting a dialog with a member of his audience, he would slowly tear apart the very ideas he had just praised. He would never directly say anything negative, but through his questions he would make the other person see the incompleteness or falsity of his ideas. This was confusing; he had just professed his own ignorance, and he had sincerely praised his interlocutors. Yet he had somehow raised a lot of doubts about what they had claimed to know.

The dialog would lie in the minds of Socrates' targets for several days, leading them to question their ideas about the world on their own. In this frame of mind, they would now be more open to real knowledge, to something new. Socrates broke down people's preconceptions about the world by adopting what he called a "midwife" role: he did not implant his ideas, he simply helped to deliver the doubts that are latent in everyone.

The success of the Socratic method was staggering: a whole generation of young Athenians fell under his spell and were permanently altered by his teachings. The most famous of these was Plato, who spread Socrates' ideas as if they were gospel. And Plato's influence over Western thought is perhaps greater than that of anyone else. Socrates' method was highly strategic. He began by tearing himself down and building others up, a way of defusing his listeners' natural defensiveness, imperceptibly lowering their walls. Then he would lure them into a labyrinth of discussion from which they could find no exit and in which everything they believed was questioned. According to Alcibiades, one of the young men whom Socrates had bewitched, you never knew what he really believed or what he really meant; everything he said was a rhetorical stance, was ironic. And since you were unsure what he was doing, what came to the surface in these conversations were your own confusion and doubt. He altered your experience of the world from within.

Think of this method as
communication-in-depth.
Normal discourse, and even fine writing and art, usually only hits people on the surface. Our attempts to communicate with them become absorbed in all of the noise that fills their ears in daily life. Even if something we say or do somehow touches an emotional chord and creates some kind of connection, it rarely stays in their minds long enough to alter how they think and act. A lot of the time, these surface communications are fine; we cannot go through life straining to reach everyone--that would be too exhausting. But the power to reach people more deeply, to alter their ideas and unpleasant behavior, is sometimes critical.

What you need to pay attention to is not simply the content of your communication but the form--the way you lead people to the conclusions you desire, rather than telling them the message in so many words. If you want people to change a bad habit, for example, much more effective than simply trying to persuade them to stop is to show them--perhaps by mirroring their bad behavior in some way--how annoying that habit
feels
to other people. If you want to make people with low self-esteem feel better about themselves, praise has a superficial effect; instead you must prod them into accomplishing something tangible, giving them a real experience. That will translate into a much deeper feeling of confidence. If you want to communicate an important idea, you must not preach; instead make your readers or listeners connect the dots and come to the conclusion on their own. Make them internalize the thought you are trying to communicate; make it seem to emerge from their own minds. Such indirect communication has the power to penetrate deep behind people's defenses.

In speaking this new language, learn to expand your vocabulary beyond explicit communication. Silence, for instance, can be used to great effect: by keeping quiet, not responding, you say a lot; by not mentioning something that people expect you to talk about, you call attention to this ellipsis, make it communicate. Similarly, the details--what Machiavelli calls
le cose piccole
(the little things)--in a text, speech, or work of art have great expressive power. When the famous Roman lawyer and orator Cicero wanted to defame the character of someone he was prosecuting, he would not accuse or rant; instead he would mention details from the life of the accused--the incredible luxury of his home (was it paid for out of illegal means?), the lavishness of his parties, the style of his dress, the little signs that he considered himself superior to the average Roman. Cicero would say these things in passing, but the subtext was clear. Without hitting listeners over the head, it directed them to a certain conclusion.

In any period it can be dangerous to express ideas that go against the grain of public opinion or offend notions of correctness. It is best to seem to conform to these norms, then, by parroting the accepted wisdom, including the proper moral ending. But you can use details here and there to say something else. If you are writing a novel, for instance, you might put your dangerous opinions in the mouth of the villain but express them with such energy and color that they become more interesting than the speeches of the hero. Not everyone will understand your innuendos and layers of meaning, but some certainly will, at least those with the proper discernment; and mixed messages will excite your audience: indirect forms of expression--silence, innuendo, loaded details, deliberate blunders--make people feel as if they were participating, uncovering the meaning on their own. The more that people participate in the communication process, the more deeply they internalize its ideas.

Irony.
--Irony is in place only as a pedagogic tool, employed by a teacher in dealing with any kind of pupil: its objective is humiliation, making ashamed, but of that salutary sort which awakens good resolutions and inspires respect and gratitude towards him who treats us thus of the kind we feel for a physician. The ironist poses as unknowing, and does so so well that the pupils in discussion with him are deceived, grow bold in their belief they know better and expose themselves in every way; they abandon circumspection and reveal themselves as they are--up to the moment when the lamp they have been holding up to the face of the teacher sends its beams very humiliatingly back on to themselves.--Where such a relationship as that between teacher and pupil does not obtain, irony is ill-breeding, a vulgar affectation. All ironical writers depend on the foolish species of men who together with the author would like to feel themselves superior to all others and who regard the author as the mouthpiece of their presumption.--Habituation to irony, moreover, like habituation to sarcasm, spoils the character, to which it gradually lends the quality of a malicious and jeering superiority: in the end one comes to resemble a snapping dog which has learned how to laugh but forgotten how to bite.

H
UMAN
, A
LL TOO
H
UMAN
,
F
RIEDRICH
N
IETZSCHE
, 1878

In putting this strategy into practice, avoid the common mistake of straining to get people's attention by using a form that is shocking or strange. The attention you get this way will be superficial and short-lived. By using a form that alienates a wide public, you narrow your audience; you will end up preaching to the converted. As the case of Machiavelli demonstrates, using a conventional form is more effective in the long run, because it attracts a larger audience. Once you have that audience, you can insinuate your real (and even shocking) content through details and subtext.

In war almost everything is judged by its result. If a general leads his army to defeat, his noble intentions do not matter; nor does the fact that unforeseen factors may have thrown him off course. He lost; no excuse will do. One of Machiavelli's most revolutionary ideas was to apply this standard to politics: what matters is not what people say or intend but the results of their actions, whether power is increased or decreased. This is what Machiavelli called the "effective truth"--the real truth, in other words, what happens in fact, not in words or theories. In examining the career of a pope, for instance, Machiavelli would look at the alliances he had built and the wealth and territory he had acquired, not at his character or religious proclamations. Deeds and results do not lie. You must learn to apply the same barometer to your attempts at communication, and to those of other people.