Jigabod's Excellent Adventure

Okay, so you people out there know by now that Karl Marx and I are homebois now. Cool. So I've got Karl riding shotgun in the jalopee, right? When all of a sudden...

Actually, before I go any further, lemme just throw this out there: a friend of mine once told me to read the Art of War by Sun Tzu. I did... what I always do, which is give it the okey-doke. I didn't internalize anything at the time, cuz I actually had a lyrical battle with somebody coming up (which I won by the way B-J)


So, I'm taking this Military Thought course right now, right? And all of a sudden, this dude Sun Tzu is in my face again...

"Whattup dude," I sez, "whaddaya want now?"

Sun Tzu doesn't answer my question. He just poses the following:

"What is of extreme importance is to attack the enemy's strategy... And as water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions... Avoid force, strike where he is weak..."

So I sez, "...DUDE!!! We're, like, RIGHT HERE DUDE!! I apply the SAME TACTICS to... EVERYTHING! Politics, debates, rhyme battles, sports, video games... YOU SHOULD SEE MY SOUL CALIBUR 3 RECORD! That's the VERY REASON my Mitsurugi is the TRUTH! Aww DUDE!"

So I grab this cat right? And I bring him to Karl Marx. "Karl Marx, this is Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu, Karl Marx..."

"Sup."

"Sup."

I was a little nervous, because it didn't look like immediate chemistry between the two. But then Karl Marx says, "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it..."

To which Sun Tzu responds, "Good rulers deliberate on plans, good generals execute them..."

And then I sez, "Yeeeeeeeeaaah! Talk is cheap, action is priceless man!" ANd I put 2 and 2 together. "We're not philosophers... we're GENERALS MAN!!"

"EXCELLENT!!"

Somehow, I always knew Sun Tzu was somebody I'd acknowledge. How do I know? It's complicated: I got cool with Karl Marx not because of the new things he taught me, but because of the old suspicions he confirmed for me. And it's the same thing here: I'm not doing anything any differently, but I now have a great military strategist to affirm my methods.

Here's the beautiful thing about the way I operate; I don't live and die by the affirmations of others. I take the time to dissect completely situations before I open my mouth. I clear my head of all biases and traditional logic and make the most efficient use of the knowledge placed right in front of me. I create systems in my mind; I put them through rigorous testing, in everything from the most favorable to the most unfavorable circumstances. I study the things around me to find out what more I can incorporate into the systems. Finally, when I've purged it down to its most empirical, basic, bulletproof form, I use it. And I let people doubt me and call me crazy, until they put me to the test and find out just how wrong they are.

And when I go through that process, I've found that the affirmation comes after the fact, as a Karl Marx or a Sun Tzu comes along and says, "DUDE! I did the SAME THING just a few hundred years ago! RIGHTEOUS!"

The truth is, there really is "nothing new under the sun". So, I guess there's something to be said for those who go in search of other footprints to trace. But I can tell you, it means so much more when you blindly make your own footprints, only to discover you share a greater man's shoe-size.

Be Excellent to One Another B-J