It’s funny,when i was younger I’d always read on Warriors like this.
And then I started watching things about more modern soldiers and was perplexed at how worried about getting killed they were. It didn’t make them them cowards, it just meant they wanted to survive their war so they could go back to civilian life, but a Warrior more than often doesn’t really have a civilian life, or at least he doesn’t want to return to it.
Perhaps they were fools… But fools with the tightest discipline of thought, spirit and body that I ever heard about.
That is why few soldiers are actually warriors. On the other hand, an adrenaline and power trip junkie also fits that description.
Of course. Some of history’s most infamous spies have set nations against each other profiting for themselves. I really like the art of espionage and sabotage.
You perform best in War when you accept the fact that you’re already Dead, Those who wished to live would surely die and those who wished to die would surely win.
Perhaps thats part of it, then again they could just go Parachuting or Bungie Jumping…
Interestingly I was looking up Samurai vs. Ninja and found this.
Aztec Warrior
This has been my desktop backround for a while.
Except they never fought someone head on, like one on one. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but at least face them mano a mano. They couldn’t do it, and that’s why they were ninja’s.
They were smart. You never face a enemy better armed or superior in numbers head on. You ambush them time from time when they are overly exposed or cut off when they are vulnerable. The ninja shinobi were brilliant assassins and guerilla tacticians. They invented the original black OP I think.
I don’t disagree that they weren’t smart in that regard that you list. They would kill on samurai by one facing them and having the others hide and shoot them from behind. That’s smart, but looks like Nietzsche might say that those ninja’s are weak and while the Samurai isn’t more of a superman. They do, after all, build themselves up and follow their own code to live by.
For me it is the survival of the smarter not the stronger. Strength is not everything.
To Stoic:
You would not think jaguar warriors were so noble reading upon the ritualized flower wars. Have fun reading.
You know this from how many years of combat experience?
Modern soldiers are hired mercenaries doing the bloody work that politicians and government policy lawmakers refuse to do on their own.
Nothing more and less.
Law enforcers such as the police are nothing more than government thugs and intimidators cow towing the status quo.
Bugger off all of them.
When did I say Jaguar Warriors were Noble?
Ok here’s a story I read about honour. A samurai had fallen from a cliff and was lying unconscious and badly injured as the tide rose around him, the shouts of his people could not rouse him, so one of his vassals took it upon himself to throw himself off the cliff, hoping it would make enough noise to rouse the Samurai. It did but the peasant died, his family were made Samurai as a reward. It’s understandable only in the construct of their society and social rules.
Also there’s a strong element of shame, it would be far worse to strip someone of their title and exile them, because then for generations to come their own family would be dishonoured also. Far better from the perspective of family to kill yourself in the Samurai way than suffer the dishonour and shame you have bought on you and your kin.
This doesn’t just mean its about some servile obedience to honour, it’s more complicated than that. If you had a familly you could understand how you would be prepared to sacrifice your own well being to help them even if it meant the ultimate sacrifice. There are lots of examples of Samurai turning against their lords and becoming Ronin because of honour. Honour is sort of the God of Bushido, if your lord does not honour you and you him because lets say he is an ass and a coward, you have no reason to serve him.
Well said.
People please! Stop using the term “superman” like all you knew about it was the comic book!
Also, your opinions on Nietzsche are meaningless unless you can name at least two books that you read all the way through.
To say that he would have thought the ninjas “weak” shows a complete missunderstanding of what Nietzsche was about.
I spent most of my educated existence, since my teens, in study and continuous practice and exploration of application of the strategic and combat arts, as was asked of Americans by President Kennedy in comprehending the phenomena of guerrilla warfare in a old marine corps journal I had found in my library. There now isn’t a era I have read in. In modern times, I have as a soldier visited in the height of my generations greatest war it’s greatest battlefield, the triangle of death before and during the surge in Iraq.
As to concepts of Honor, I have little comprehension in terms of comprehending it honestly anymore. I do not speak of ignorance of the concepts put forth historically, I can go though culture by culture, shore by shore, ethnicity and era around the globe and tell you of their mores and means to effecting such concepts. It all got lost to me in the shine of dress shoes and dress uniforms rarely used safe for mundane tasks, of men undeserving of medals demanding them, and fuck ups and cover ups addressing inconsistencies and embarrassments. But I know what you call Honor, before you can ever pronounce upon it, better than you can ever strive to understand. The ritual underlining it isn’t as baseless as my comprehension of it as a thing suggests, as it’s a appendage of a greater methodology of the corps meeting the unconscious. I care not to engage it for my hypocrisy, but make no misunderstanding I comprehend it under a edge of perfection not comprehended by any other alive. I am saturated in it’s logic.
The concept of Power is meaningless without a understanding of the ritual basis to the forms of emotive honor. Power without it’s symbolic intercourse quickly becomes useless, and any struggle for power results in death without achievement. Even saying this, I no longer believe in the concept. It is a useless and tiresome thing, to be tossed aside. Men chase it, proclaim and and become one with it. I no longer comprehend what it is that they are chasing, and my lack of honor means I become disturbed when men try to match the two, as a overman unifying the power of a Borgias insurgency with that of a Pope. They don’t understand the unfolding of the synthesis that brought them to power will automatically reorder society in ways they clearly didn’t comprehend when they struck out for their end goal. Very few men in history seems ever to have considered this, it’s why there are so very few successes, and too many genocidal pretenders and petty tyrants pretending to it. The fetishment of power blinds one to the consequences of the now, and the assumption of identity produces expectations and demands on behavior and preservation of honor. I am suspicious of this, and hold it in low esteem. None the less, I am aware of the advantages that can result from such unfortunate pursuits. Behind every gloomy rain is a chance for a blooming, under the light of every bold sun the increasing likelihood to wither.
Sovereignty and Right… has there been anything besides class more delusional? It’s based upon faulty scheme upon coerced faulty scheme, and the friction as time goes by amasses against it. I do not naturally rebel against any claim of sovereignty, or right, but rather treat it as all claims of a categorical nature… to be investigated if fitting to do so… for nature abhors a void as Aristotle would put it, and the law of the common dumbest denominator demands one replace the void of the other. It’s a competition not worth involving myself in, better to educate and grow the minds of such men.
Fearlessness, Boldness, Intestinal Fortitude? If the conditions of strategic depositions are attended to, these are values, though never undervalued, are not paramount. Wise thinking and foresight is. A man who can march a hundred miles a day is of higher value than one who cannot, but a strategist who achieves his aims without the need to fall into such bravado and extremes is ever the more impressive. Men should ot be arrayed in formations that require a suppression of fear, for if they are, the enemy will eventually grasp this, exploit it, resulting in a rout as men run confused trembling, searching and not searching, run blind and seeing the whole time, lost in the last sight of their sea of innocence they will never see. Men should be arrayed, no matter the moment or how deep in the rear, or how great the time spent in peace, in a state of continuous consideration of their cognition and the tactical synthesis. They should test themselves when they can for oddities in their own outlook and expectations. Men without fear should not be entrusted with command, nor sent out in command of small detachments. They are for mass troops, and are to be entrusted never with a sole command or the rear, for a retreat will be sure to ensue if they are ever put to the test. This isn’t to apply to long tested men, who know the circumstances of the nightmares firsthand that have broken lesser men. Until your scars can attest to this, welcome your fear, and query your fantasy and motivations. It is a easy thing to die, but it is better to live successfully. When one fails in this, you must reconstitute yourselves under a basis productive for a counter-assault… to make oneself viable once more. It’s unlikely you will become fearless or bold, and by this point your intestines would of emptied themselves out, so feel free to the hypocritical claim to intestinal fortitude.
At it’s root, the art of war is a short cut to solving without solving… a reduction of logic in achieving the things we couldn’t come to terms with consciously. Why do men fight? Do they not have enough? What prevents them from having enough? Should not this be a question first of the pursuit of self sufficiency and not of arms? When confronted with a threat, make oneself impenetrable if your imperiled and can successfully resist. If you cannot, but can flee successfully, do so. If you cannot, make alliances, but this is rude in asking others to die with you, the best ally morally results in a reality of short term but like minded and self interested alliances. Long term one produces feelings of togetherness than can be exploited in time for their presumptions, shown to be rotted and weak. Immediately strengthen oneself afterwards. If this cannot be done, wreak havoc on any awards that can be gained from your conquest, deny them any honor in becoming low and deranged, piss on their conception of honor and become unworthy financially and in terms of honor to be bothered with. Seek to make strong or to retreat as soon as you can, and if necessary, if the complex is too great, undermine them with spies and derelict pleasures and advantages, tearing them apart from the inside so your dishonor does not stand alone, so you may once again rise to a level of equanity and self sufficiency in time. The useless fool is just as likely to write the history books as the victors if he survives well and with clarity and foresight.
I speak a contradiction to the ideal. I know your cult of heroes you Nietzscheans, from Achilles to Baltasar Gracian. Do not mistake me for a coward, for the means to ravish and explode is more potent in me than any other man. When you rest, it is in luxury, for me, I must live the art of the guerrilla just to know rest. For you, work is to travel by bus or train, for me, it is miles through jungle and urban terrain with ruck. I know the means to insurgency and destruction, and I forsake it. It is not to be reveled in. It is a means to a reality that is currently not needed. Yes, there is brutality, there is wrong doing, but there are remedial means to dealing with it first and foremost. Your conception of technics is no where as advanced as mine, and the worst, most terrible things you can imagine pale in comparison to my one innate tendencies. The true art of a warrior is the exploration of growth, of finding that which was the supposed in game of his whole life’s mission. Where are the fruits to this greater peace, this wealth we sought? Such things are delusional and always apart from a man who has achieved it. But what of those effects achieved from it? Knowledge, mannerism, a means to a higher, better good? The art of a warrior is to surmount war when he can and be the better man beyond the war, to make it’s promises known now, to remind men of the better things in this life, the better life. What else has have we been fighting for? The foolish sake of strife? Find strife in engineering, in solving the problems of being productive, of leading a meaningfull life. Prepare yourself always for the day of failure when men cease to care for such things, and take a deep gaze into their heart and inconsistencies, and strike in manners that progressively rehabilitate them to a new standard as close or higher than that they had before. This is the underlining meaning of the progressive navigation of conflict. It always assumes the law of dumbest denominator will triumph in any recent formulation of government or intent, or in a lazy corps or by men of caste awarded with esteem and honor. Their technics can still kill, but their understanding of the rhythm of mutability over productive mutations of responsive forms will be highly limited, and exploitable. They become a decaying algorithm, skipping it’s beats. Set in like wolves, and seek to make men of them once more. Come into contact with their humanity and assert it mutually, be if bloodless which is preferable or in the crimson edge of a hard wrought peace.
Your understandings in this thread would be scoff and shame to any man who ever served his country, be it poorly or badly, and is washed in ignorance and misunderstanding. Best to immediately abandon such ruminations. Seek the better life. The path of the instrument requires great study and concentration, and causes perversion of understandinf the tactical synthesis save by it’s means, as well as a limited strategic outlook that will ultimately be more brutal to thinking than any lobotomy can ever be. Yes, the samurai were Nietzschean, they died for factionalism, to become the emperor’s shield. The failed heroes were Japan’s only idealist. Christians were hated and tortured for hundreds of years, because they made such excellent defenders who nearly brought down the entire samurai class in a single siege of their stronghold, and who’s leader died a death worthy of any Japanese samurai. This became a oddity for their capacity to survive, as no known method of replication of a ideology had been known in Japan at this time. They were sincere and motivated, and after the siege no longer could trace the christian spread by fief or lineage under a single lord. This was a threat to the shogunate, who didn’t know how to control it but readily exploited it much as Nero did as a perpetual scapegoat. Christians achieved the morality that lead to the collapse of the Shogunate and a direct struggle to control the imperial family itself, converting half of it by the outbreak of WW2. Not even a Nietzschean such a Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu was successful in countering it by becoming it’s antithesis as the antichrist, the spirit of wotan incarnate in spreading dread and terror over a peaceful realm. Men can become obsessed with the weapon and confuse the way of living with the necessities of training with it and it’s functions. Something wearable and easily repaired like the ropedart is prefered over the sword for this reason, and it’s what I’ve always predominately have trained in… the most difficult, but how attached can one be to a rope?
The Dokkodo of every man of fighting and deep insight have not passed without due imprint upon me. I follow Miyamoto Musashi’s in majority, but not fully, for the contradictions mentioned above… but where I contradict, in 4 and 20, was not by him originally. I do not live a life of killing, I fetishize the potential of a better life among men… but perhaps I am the last alive still paying any attention to such things myself in my own constitution and discernment, for it has left a great and obvious mark upon me in my kishido.
Accept everything just the way it is.
Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
Be detached from desire your whole life long.
Do not regret what you have done.
Never be jealous.
Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
In all things have no preferences.
Be indifferent to where you live.
Do not pursue the taste of good food.
Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
Do not act following customary beliefs.
Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
Do not fear death.
Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.
You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honor.
Never stray from the Way.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokk%C5%8Dd%C5%8D
Enjoy the peace. It can only last as long as you attend to the seriousness of the affairs of it’s stomach… which is ever enlarging. Great potential can befall us if we succeed in this peace, if we fail, my lifestyle will differ little, but you will all become wretched and destructive in being ‘knocked down’ to my level of material existence. Know I will triumph with a efficiency and though force unseen classically or in modern times if that becomes the case.