Great book, gets a bit slow in the middle 80% but makes up for it with strong start and finish. Holds the Guinness record for most rejections by a book that went on to be a best seller. Not sure I’d reread the book regularly though, but I’ve always loved this passage at the end:
The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of “style” to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it’s not just depressingly dull, it’s also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized houses. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It’s the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don’t know where to start because no one has ever told them there’s such a thing as Quality in this world and it’s real, not style. Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.
A few points. First I agree, never really liked it for that reason. However remember it was written ~2400 years ago, it’s strategy 101 now. The not obvious stuff is the Taoist execution of those tactics (often using non-action, weakness, contrarianism, lack of interest in status and reputation)…the book completely leaves out the mindset of “the sage”, which is my main complaint (but in context, China at that time it was written, people already knew the root text). It’s pretty one-dimension stuff as a stand-alone.
“Feign madness but keep your balance. Hide behind the mask of a fool, a drunk, or a madman to create confusion about your intentions and motivations. Lure your opponent into underestimating your ability until, overconfident, he drops his guard. Then you may attack.”
^ Trump and friends have been pulling that for over a year. Perhaps it should be obvious, but apparently it’s not??
The whole point going back to the original Tao Te Ching is to create illusions of being “a fool” so seamless nobody suspects, and to keep those illusions alive despite victories (hard to do). If you suspected, it wouldn’t be very good AoW. Trump was tweeting AoW quotes back in 2012 (I think this is when he met Bannon, who uses AoW as his operating manual).
Notice how Xi never takes the bait, they wrote the book!
Uh huh, its all part of trumps MASTER TOP SEKRIT PLAN. He goes on a decades long tour, trying to make himself look like the biggest tool in the world, the most narcissistic person, the most repugnant comments, with the most adhd riddled brain, all just waiting for the perfect moment to STRIKE… when american political parties had become impotent to a degree never before experienced, and the populace was divided to a degree not seen in decades if not more than a century. He foresaw EVERYTHING decades ahead of time. Ok. Ya, everything is all part of Trumps master plan. All of it. And its really just trumps world, were just living in it.
Or he’s a jackass, a narcissist, a tool and a populist.
Just look at your own logic. By your thinking, there are no such things is deep strategy and prearrangement, or only by people who seem competent to make such (which goes against success of the strategy). That doesn’t make any sense. You need to go back and read the books; mask competence in incompetence, mask prearrangement in seeming randomness.
Dude, all you are saying is that you fell for the con!
Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions."
Lets see those fucking wins that he talks so much about. Lets see those fucking millions of jobs that got automated that aren’t coming back. Lets see the country get tired of winning because it wins so much, like he said. Then I’ll be happy I was wrong. But I will be incredibly surprised if thats the case.
