The 33 Strategies of War (41 page)

The Olympians could now join battle with the giants. Heracles let loose his first arrow against Alcyoneus, the enemy's leader. He fell to the ground, but sprang up again revived, because this was his native soil of Phlegra. "Quick, noble Heracles!" cried Athene. "Drag him away to another country!" Heracles caught Alcyoneus up on his shoulders, and dragged him over the Thracian border, where he despatched him with a club.

T
HE
G
REEK
M
YTHS
,
VOL.
1, R
OBERT
G
RAVES
, 1955

The effect of this march was devastating. For the Confederate soldiers still fighting in Virginia, the ruin of Georgia--where many had left behind homes--was a terrible blow to their morale. Sherman's march cast a mood of deep gloom over the entire South. Slowly but surely it was losing its will to keep up the fight, Sherman's goal all along.

Interpretation

In any conflict it is often the weaker side that in fact controls the dynamic. In this case the South was in control in both the strategic and the grand-strategic sense. In their immediate, local strategy, the Confederates had entrenched themselves in powerful defensive positions in Georgia and Virginia. The temptation for the North was to fight on the enemy's terms, to hurl division after division against these positions, at tremendous loss of life and with little chance of advancing. In the South's grand strategy, the longer this stalemate prevailed, the more likely Lincoln was to be thrown out of office. Then the war would end through negotiation. The South set the tempo for the battle (slow and grinding) and controlled the stakes.

As Sherman saw it, his goal was not to capture a city or to defeat the Confederates in battle. In his view the only way to win the war was to regain control of the dynamic. Instead of brutal, frontal attacks against Dalton or Atlanta, which would play into the South's hands, he operated indirectly. He frightened the timid Johnston into abandoning his stronghold and goaded the rash Hood into senseless attacks, in both instances playing upon the psychology of the opponent to force the issue. By constantly putting his enemy on the horns of a dilemma, where both staying put and moving were equally dangerous, he took control of the situation without having to waste men in battle. Most important, by demonstrating to the South with his destructive march that the longer the war dragged on, the worse it would be for them, he regained grand-strategic control of the war. For the Confederates, to keep fighting was slow suicide.

The worst dynamic in war, and in life, is the stalemate. It seems that whatever you do only feeds the stagnation. Once this happens, a kind of mental paralysis overcomes you. You lose the ability to think or respond in different ways. At such a point, all is lost. If you find yourself falling into such a dynamic--dealing with a defensive, entrenched opponent or trapped in a reactive relationship--you must become as creative as General Sherman. Deliberately shake up the pace of the slow waltz by doing something seemingly irrational. Operate outside the experience of the enemy, as Sherman did when he cut himself loose from his supplies. Move fast here and slow there. One major jolt given to the stale dynamic will shake it up, force the enemy to do something different. With the slightest change, you have room for greater change and taking control. Injecting novelty and mobility is often enough to unbalance the minds of your rigid and defensive opponents.

4.
In 1833, Mr. Thomas Auld, the slaveholding owner of a plantation on Maryland's Eastern Shore, summoned back his slave Frederick Douglass, fifteen years old at the time, from Baltimore, where Douglass had just spent seven years serving Auld's brother. Now he was needed to work the fields of the plantation. But life in the city had changed Douglass in many ways, and to his chagrin he found it quite hard to disguise this from Auld. In Baltimore he had secretly managed to teach himself how to read and write, something no slave was allowed to do, for that would stimulate dangerous thoughts. On the plantation Douglass tried to teach as many slaves as possible to read; these efforts were quickly squashed. But what was worse for him was that he had developed a rather defiant attitude, what the slaveholder called impudence. He talked back to Auld, questioned some of his orders, and played all kinds of tricks to get more food. (Auld was notorious for keeping his slaves near starvation.)

One day Auld informed Douglass that he was hiring him out for a year to Mr. Edward Covey, a nearby farm renter who had earned a reputation as a consummate "breaker of young Negroes." Slaveholders would send him their most difficult slaves, and in exchange for their free labor Covey would beat every last ounce of rebellion out of them. Covey worked Douglass especially hard, and after a few months he was broken in body and spirit. He no longer desired to read books or engage in discussions with his fellow slaves. On his days off, he would crawl under the shade of a tree and sleep off his exhaustion and despair.

One especially hot day in August 1834, Douglass became ill and fainted. The next thing he knew, Covey was hovering over him, hickory slab in hand, ordering him back to work. But Douglass was too weak. Covey hit him on the head, opening a deep wound. He kicked him a few times, but Douglass could not move. Covey finally left, intending to deal with him later.

Well, my dear reader, this battle with Mr. Covey,--undignified as it was, and as I fear my narration of it is--was the turning point in my
"life as a slave."
It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was
nothing
before; I WAS A MAN NOW. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be A FREEMAN. A man, without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot
honor
a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise. He only can understand the effect of this combat on my spirit, who has himself incurred something, hazarded something, in repelling the unjust and cruel aggressions of a tyrant. Covey was a tyrant, and a cowardly one, withal. After resisting him, I felt as I had never felt before. It was a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to the heaven of comparative freedom. I was no longer a servile coward, trembling under the frown of a brother worm of the dust, but, my long-cowed spirit was roused to an attitude of manly independence. I had reached a point, at which I was
not afraid to die
. This spirit made me a freeman in
fact
, while I remained a slave in
form
. When a slave cannot be flogged he is more than half free. He has a domain as broad as his own manly heart to defend, and he is really
"a power on earth."
While slaves prefer their lives, with flogging, to instant death, they will always find christians enough, like unto Covey, to accommodate that preference. From this time, until that of my escape from slavery, I was never fairly whipped. Several attempts were made to whip me, but they were always unsuccessful. Bruises I did get, as I shall hereafter inform the reader; but the case I have been describing, was the end of the brutification to which slavery had subjected me.

M
Y
B
ONDAGE AND
M
Y
F
REEDOM
, F
REDERICK
D
OUGLASS
, 1818-1895

Douglass managed to get to his feet, staggered to the woods, and somehow made his way back to Auld's plantation. There he begged with Master Auld to keep him there, explaining Covey's cruelty. Auld was unmoved. Douglass could spend the night but then must return to Covey's farm.

Making his way back to the farm, Douglass feared the worst. He told himself that he would do his best to obey Covey and somehow survive the weeks ahead. Arriving at the stables where he was supposed to work that day, he began his chores, when out of nowhere, like a snake, Covey slithered in, rope in hand. He lunged at Douglass, trying to get a slipknot on his leg and tie him up. He was clearly intending the thrashing to end all thrashings.

Risking an even more intense beating, Douglass pushed Covey away and, without hitting him, kept him from getting the rope around his leg. At that moment something clicked in Douglass's head. Every defiant thought that had been suffocated by his months of brutal labor came back to him. He was not afraid. Covey could kill him, but it was better to go down fighting for his life.

Suddenly a cousin came to Covey's aid, and, finding himself surrounded, Douglass did the unthinkable: he swung hard at the man and knocked him to the ground. Hitting a white man would most likely lead to his hanging. A "fighting madness" came over Douglass. He returned Covey's blows. The struggle went on for two hours until, bloodied, exhausted, and gasping for breath, Covey gave up and slowly staggered back to his house.

Douglass could only assume that Covey would now come after him with a gun or find some other way to kill him. It never happened. Slowly it dawned on Douglass: to kill him, or punish him in some powerful way, posed too great a risk. Word would get out that Covey had failed to break a Negro this one time, had had to resort to a gun when his terror tactics did not work. The mere hint of that would ruin his reputation far and wide, and his job depended on his perfect reputation. Better to leave the wild sixteen-year-old slave alone than risk the kind of crazy or unpredictable response Douglass had showed himself capable of. Better to let him calm down and go quietly away when his time of service there was over.

For the rest of Douglass's stay with Covey, the white man did not lay a hand on him. Douglass had noticed that slaveholders often "prefer to whip those who are most easily whipped." Now he had learned the lesson for himself: never again would he be submissive. Such weakness only encouraged the tyrants to go further. He would rather risk death, returning blow for blow with his fists or his wits.

Interpretation

Reflecting on this moment years later in his book
My Bondage and My Freedom
, after he had escaped to the North and become a leading advocate of the abolitionist movement, Douglass wrote, "This battle with Mr. Covey...was the turning point in my '
life as a slave
.'...I was a changed being after that fight.... I had reached the point at which I was not
afraid to die
. This spirit made me a freeman in
fact
, while I remained a slave in
form
." For the rest of his life, he adopted this fighting stance: by being unafraid of the consequences, Douglass gained a degree of control of his situation both physically and psychologically. Once he had rooted fear out of himself, he opened up possibilities for action--sometimes fighting back overtly, sometimes being clever and deceitful. From a slave with no control, he became a man with some options and some power, all of which he leveraged into real freedom when the time came.

To control the dynamic, you must be able to control yourself and your emotions. Getting angry and lashing out will only limit your options. And in conflict, fear is the most debilitating emotion of all. Even before anything has happened, your fear puts you on your heels, cedes the initiative to the enemy. The other side has endless possibilities for using your fear to help control you, keep you on the defensive. Those who are tyrants and domineering types can smell your anxiety, and it makes them even more tyrannical. Before anything else you must lose your fear--of death, of the consequences of a bold maneuver, of other people's opinion of you. That single moment will suddenly open up vistas of possibilities. And in the end whichever side has more possibilities for positive action has greater control.

5.
Early in his career, the American psychiatrist Milton H. Erickson (1901-80) noticed that patients had countless ways of controlling the relationship between patient and therapist. They might withhold information from him or resist entering into a hypnotic trance (Erickson often used hypnosis in his therapy); they might question the therapist's abilities, insist he do more of the talking, or emphasize the hopelessness of their problems and the futility of therapy. These attempts at control in fact mirrored whatever their problem was in daily life: they resorted to all kinds of unconscious and passive games of domination while denying to themselves and to others they were up to such tricks. And so, over the years, Erickson developed what he called his "Utilization Technique"--literally using these patients' passive aggression, their clever manipulations, as instruments to change them.

Erickson often dealt with patients whom someone else--a partner, a parent--had forced to seek his help. Resentful of this, they would get revenge by deliberately withholding information about their lives. Erickson would begin by telling these patients that it was natural, even healthy, not to want to reveal everything to the therapist. He would insist they withhold any sensitive information. The patients would then feel trapped: by keeping secrets they were obeying the therapist, which was just the opposite of what they wanted to do. Usually by the second session, they would open up, rebelling to such an extent that they revealed everything about themselves.

One man, on his first visit to Erickson's office, began anxiously pacing the room. By refusing to sit down and relax, he was making it impossible for Erickson to hypnotize him or work with him at all. Erickson began by asking him, "Are you willing to cooperate with me by continuing to pace the floor as you are doing now?" The patient agreed to this strange request. Then Erickson asked if he could tell the patient where to pace and how fast. The patient could see no problem with this. Minutes later Erickson began to hesitate in giving his directions; the patient waited to hear what he was to do next with his pacing. After this happened a few times, Erickson finally told him to sit in a chair, where the man promptly fell into a trance.