brannerchinese
Joined 14 years ago
Joined 14 years ago
> As well as documenting personal misery, this book is a portrait of a society that has forgotten what it is for. Our economies have become “vast engines for producing nonsense”. Utopian ideals have been abandoned on all sides, replaced by praise for “hardworking families”. The rightwing injunction to “get a job!” is mirrored by the leftwing demand for “more jobs!”
Sure — machines just program themselves if the environment is right.
Musashi lays great weight on developing keen perception of the moment and its potential. When he says _nama_ 生 'unripe' strategy, I understand him to mean strategy that is settled before conditions have ripened. That's comparable to Knuth's remark about optimizing code. I don't think Musashi means that the strategist is too inexperienced.
Although there is a vein in East Asian military theory about wizard-like long-range anticipation of strategic conditions, Musashi doesn't indulge in that.
I've had a successful academic career, but have also worked in industry (which I prefer), in the non-profit sector, and in a semi-government think-tank. I am fluent in Chinese and have spent six years living and working in rural China and Taiwan.