Reality can be defined by a sharp series of limitations on every living thing, the final boundary being death. We have only so much energy to expend before we tire; only so much in the way of food and resources is available to us; our skills and capacities can go only so far. An animal lives within those limits: it does not try to fly higher or run faster or expend endless energy amassing a pile of food, for that would exhaust it and leave it vulnerable to attack. It simply tries to make the most of what it has. A cat, for instance, instinctively practices an economy of motion and gesture, never wasting effort. People who live in poverty, similarly, are acutely aware of their limits: forced to make the most of what they have, they are endlessly inventive. Necessity has a powerful effect on their creativity. The problem faced by those of us who live in societies of abundance is that we lose a sense of limit. Abundance makes us rich in dreams, for in dreams there are no limits. But it makes us poor in reality. It makes us soft and decadent, bored with what we have and in need of constant shocks to remind us that we are alive. In life you must be a warrior, and war requires realism. While others may find beauty in endless dreams, warriors find it in reality, in awareness of limits, in making the most of what they have. Like the cat, they look for the perfect economy of motion and gesture—the way to give their blows the greatest force with the least expenditure of effort. Their awareness that their days are numbered—that they could die at any time—grounds them in reality. There are things they can never do, talents they will never have, lofty goals they will never reach; that hardly bothers them. Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Knowing when to slow down, to renew, to retrench, they outlast their opponents. They play for the long term.
Daily Law: Sometimes in strategy you have to ignore your greater strength and force yourself to get the maximum out of the minimum. Even if you have the technology, fight the peasant’s war.
The 33 Strategies of War
, Strategy 8: Pick Your Battles Carefully—The Perfect-Economy Strategy