Sun Tzu and The Golden Rule

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?

Though there are naturally abundant renditions of the fundamental “Golden Rule,” the way Americans typically get it is the more-or-less Christian way of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This is typically credited to Jesus Christ, clearly a venerated persona, and one who is characteristically portrayed as the ultimate “peacenik.” On the other hand, Chinese military philosopher, Sun Tzu, is generally thought of as the fundamental thinker in military strategy, sort of the opposite of a peacenik; we will discuss this in greater detail later. My proposition in this essay is that there is a deep connection between the “nice” Golden Rule and the much more ominous Art of War: both urge you to imagine “the other.”

Christians and Jews go on with their familiar Ten Commandments and according to Doug Nash, Sun Tzu goes on with his Ten Principles. https://suntzudo.weebly.com/sun-tzu-ten-principles-of.html Those are:

1 Planning, 2 Character, 3 Using Advantages, 4 Alliances, 5 Deception, 6 The Use of Spies, 7 Strength & Weaknesses, 8 Energy, 9 Communication, 10 Winning Whole

Comparing the individual ten commandments and the ten principles will not be useful to the point here; let us be satisfied that The Art of War can be compared to the so called Great Commandments, the first of which is "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," and the second of which is The Golden Rule. Now, one may be tempted to point out a failed parallelism and leap to say that Jesus’ first-cited Great One is superfluous to its runner-up, but it is indeed not. Sun Tzu does not point out the overarching concept of his war principles, but it is implicit: that

there is a desire to win at war for the benefit of what one holds dear. Otherwise, of course, a complete lack of principles would serve perfectly. 

This compares to Jesus’ first principle, that mankind would want to serve his God, as the provider of his essence (much as one’s country or personal survival might be his secular god for war-making purposes). Accordingly, I submit there are no underlying conflicts in the philosophical constructs being compared. 

Now let us get into the specifics of Sun Tzu and illustrate how they are considerate of “the other,” which is characteristically and necessarily how one’s enemy is viewed. 

To start with, Sun Tzu properly leads off with “Planning,” and that immediately informs us to think in abstractions like values and goals. In doing so, we inevitably consider others, our relationship to others, and even ourselves as “others,” in the sense that the future self is distinct from the present one. Immediately, The Golden Rule begins to arise. We could scarcely imagine the future self without evaluating the present one. And like we might do with ourselves in order to imagine our future selves, we must imagine the “Character” of our opponents. We must imagine how their future selves are informed by their own present ones. Victorian Era military thinker Carl Von Clausewitz famously observed that “War is the continuation of diplomacy by other means.” By turns, diplomacy, the social aspect of competition, is itself a form of war. In this, we can see that

negotiations arise as an operational part of diplomacy, much as troop movements might be an operational aspect of war. 

Even the friendliest negotiations regard the needs and wants of each side, and famed 1980’s negotiation guru, Chares Karrass always admonished “Win-Win Negotiating,” the principle that a truly successful negotiation has as a result, happy parties on both sides. This is identical to the basic principle of an economic transaction, that a trade yields desired outcomes (at least initially) for the parties. Negotiations vary from a single trade in that they tend to be complicated by the element of time and other factors as trust and reliability, related, but different concepts. One’s evaluation of these determines one’s relative “Use Of Advantages” and disadvantages vis-à-vis his opponents, thus “how hard one can negotiate.” In war-fighting, the calculus compares assets, their size, quality and availability for expenditure. 

Depending on the scale of a conflict, one’s assets may be combined beneficially through “Alliances” against another, common foe. Oftentimes, such alliances may themselves serve as deterrents to “shooting war” for brief or extensive periods. But they also involve yet another invocation of The Golden Rule: The Ally must be considered in terms of his wants, needs and future plans! As much as it may help, it is not enough to merely imagine others, though. A committed competitor must heed the famed admonition of The Oracle at Delphi to “Know Thyself,” and meanwhile avoid letting his enemy in on the same information, while going to lengths in knowing his enemy and all his “Strengths and Weaknesses.” This latter item would generally be the product of “The Use of Spies,” which one’s capable opponent would be sure to employ, as well, leading one to engage in all manner of “Deception” to the disadvantage of one’s foe. 

Such efforts are much easier said than practiced. We have above noted that Alliances might be deterrents, but the quality of them must be promoted as surpassing, otherwise an opponent might justly discount them. Thus, spies must operate within one’s own borders, to find and render ineffective those of his opponents, they must operate in the lands of his allies, to thwart opponent actions intended to undermine the alliance, and naturally within the lands of the opponent, to gauge his strengths and weaknesses. I believe these all relate directly to the Golden Rule’s implicit command to “put oneself into the other’s position,” or as Joe South might have sung, to “Walk a Mile in my Shoes.” https://youtu.be/ofhw0lWpVZc

Now, we come to “Energy,” and while Nash admonishes against its waste in favor of battlefield vigor, it does go far beyond that, and can be tied into The Golden Rule, once more. When all is said in diplomatic negotiations and all is done in war in terms of violence, either side, at least as would be recognizable in humans, wants peace. Some may want a so-called “just peace,” and others might want a coerced peace, but nobody, no human, would want “NO PEACE!” as the alien in 1996’s Independence Day movie growled. So we might expend what Energy we have in war, that we and our foes might stop doing it, having satisfied one another that we have found the value of peace. From there, we might choose to implement “nice” Golden Rule more often. On the other hand, we might have short memories and yield once again to envy, jealousy or actual threats by others. Sun Tzu and Jesus would probably agree on the wisdom of abjuring one’s egotistic passions, though. It would save energy. 

What could be communicated about “Communication” beyond the need for it to be reliable? In war, Sun Tzu would at once emphasize the importance of clear and timely information flow and command decisions while warning against false representations of these by enemy spies. Jesus was famously tempted by and then rebuffed Satan when the Prince of Darkness offered him dominion over all the earth. 

I interpret that scene less as the hubris of the devil and more as his probing the person he had already perceived as his opponent, much as a spy or a scouting force might do. I further infer that this was necessary for him to do, since as a fallen angel, he has been denied the sight of The Lord and therefore could not be sure. 

We might go somewhat farther and conclude that herein is the fatal and decisive weakness of evil—that it does not have the vision of good. When we see in modern times the zest with which ”Deception” is employed by anti-American forces, courting the venal with the false ideal of “wokeness” and the corollary falsehood that “the end justifies the means,” we see Satan’s work. Remember that Man’s original sin is to think that he might have The Divine Prerogative, which would include the ability to see all as it is. Lacking such a faculty, as all in the temporal realm surely do, it is impossible to know what the end is and therefore to justify the means to it. (I have been astonished by even some Bible-quoting experts who do not recognize their certainty as that same original sin). 

And so we come to “Winning Whole,” which is identical in principle to Jesus’ rhetorical question “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” He might have said it to his tempter, but it was in a different scene. Sun Tzu would not call it a victory if the land he has fought for was immolated in the process of obliterating his enemy. He might apprehend the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction as a tactic, but simultaneously understand its implementation as an ipso facto strategic failure. 

For our own part, we might have battles in this life, but we do not truly win those in which we sell out our principles. Yet isn’t this what corrupt politicians, media and voters so often do, disregarding the very freedom that has sustained them all along for a few years of power, for thirty pieces of silver? Voters who elect those who offer “security” in exchange for giving up rights, have in the end, neither.  There are two valid approaches that might be taken, that of Sun Tzu or that of Jesus. In the end, as I have argued, they are about the same.