(This is Part 25 of a series. Go back to Part 24.)
In concluding this series on military strategy, I'd like to look further into one of the main expressions of the principle of concentrating strength against weakness, this time the associated corollary of finding or creating a distraction, which we've already talked about.
When we look at the huge problems facing the world today—everything from disappearing topsoils and forests to gigantic debt bubbles everywhere to the decline in potency of antibiotics—they can seem daunting indeed. Where to make a dent?
Here is where military strategy can help us. Remember we saw that every form of concentrating strength against weakness included finding or creating a diversion? That diversion is the left hand of the magician, saying "Focus here!"—while meanwhile the real action is taking place somewhere else.
So about these world problems we might ask: Where's the diversion? Where is that which is distracting us from the real action? Where is the left hand of the magician?
As far as I can tell, the distracting left hand is in seeing these global problems as problems. Perhaps that is the actual diversion, which is serving to keep our attention off the right hand, where the real action is taking place.
And what is the right hand, the real location of the action? It's in seeing these global problems not in terms of problems but in terms of solutions.
"Now hold on, Jim," you might say. "Did you take your meds today? I know you have a tendency to lapse into the simplistic and the banal, but this is going a bit far even for you. Great. So we see problems in terms of solutions instead of problems. Wonderful. What a big help."
Well actually it might be, if we harness the natural tendency of the brain to want to crunch on things.
I've noticed that the brain likes to crunch on something. It can be the size of the universe or the size of Mary's bust, but it likes something to crunch on. And I've noticed that the thing it likes to crunch on the most is problems.
Nature seems to have designed the brain this way. After all, if we're at a watering hole in the jungle we'd better pay more attention to a lion approaching than to the fact that we're thirsty. The thirst can wait; we have to make sure we're not this lion's lunch first.
So the brain is especially fond of crunching on problems. Ken Keyes called this the Mosquito Phenomenon. He said if we're in a room and there's 1000 mosquitos and we kill 997 of them, where will the brain focus? That's right, on the three that are left.
This shows up in daily life. The brain will tend to pick those things out of our reality that are still not "right" and crunch on those. There's an infinite number of potential examples, but let's take a few possible ones:
Why won't MaryJane love me?
Why is this world so screwed up?
Why can't I succeed?
Why won't they leave me alone?
Why are politicians so corrupt?
Why are corporate polluters so evil?
Why do the terrorists hate us?
...and on and on. The mind loves to crunch on problems, if not personal ones then family ones or national ones or global ones or religious ones or whatever it can possibly find. The brain likes to stay occupied.
The thing is, this kind of crunching tends to lead in a negative direction, a downward spiral. Though the brain grinds on and finds "answers," the answers don't help us. Our mood, our sense of possibilities, our sense of power to affect events all tend to diminish.
But from military strategy we can see a solution to this, if we see that our focus on the problems in this fashion is the diversion. And our focusing on the diversion like this holds our attention away from concentrating on where the real action is in these problems.
Suppose instead we use the proclivity of the brain to crunch away on something and give it something valuable and fruitful to crunch on? The interesting thing to notice is that the brain doesn't care what it crunches on. It just likes something to crunch on!
Imagine what would happen if we gave the brain some empowering questions to crunch on about global and other problems, and humans all over the world started crunching on them? What do you think would happen?
When we ask empowering questions, situations tend to start spiraling upward even before we get answers. Just crunching on an empowering question moves the mind to a place of much greater possibility and spaciousness.
It's already a much more positive place, and then the answers—whether they come as words, actions, events, breakthrough moments or whatever—come as a kind of tremendous and beautiful bonus.
Now let's look at some examples:
(This is the end of Part 25. Go to Part 26.)
—jim sloman, 10.5.03 for 1.17.05
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