Taking a Chill Pill

The time for a war mentality is when we find ourselves in a war but ancient teachings about strategy have taught us that while we can learn and prepare ourselves for the strategy of engaging a war, the best strategy is to win without fighting one.

In the 20th Century leadership theory was also derived from military strategies but that does not mean that those strategies are still relevant to a knowledge era world, even the military have moved on and realized that even modern war requires strategies more akin to Sun Tzu.

It is our understanding of what war is as a stereotypical view or an alpha-male concept that gets in the way of understanding that fighting can involve not fighting. It is not deviousness or manipulation, it is simply understanding that what we are really talking about is power.

In a knowledge world our power is in our thinking and not in our physical strength. So the mano-in-mano mentality that is the original macho spirit, will not do us any good in an environment where we have not trained the full range of our power. The industrial or masculine traits of 20th Century workplaces may still deploy a war mentality, but that war is mostly internal and it is the very dog-eat-dog culture of abuse that marks this in-fighting.

Lets take an idea like blue ocean strategy

We get to those strategies by creating the space to think rather than battle the wad that is occupying our mind. For sure we might occupy someone else's mind and they spend their time in fruitless revenge that only costs everyone in the end, but there is way too many things up in the air to be brought down to the gutter level, but unfortunately we do still live in a world where the barbaric mind still exists. In a blue ocean approach, there is no opponent because there is no market - and the only people who can see us coming is ourselves and the demand we have discovered. Yet if our minds are constantly fighting wars on several fronts, usually most of them being personal, how do we focus on this strategy?

Cutting one's losses is not surrender, it is best thinking that allows us to pivot where our energy is best used and more importantly where we can leverage external energy - but in a war mentality or war mindset we keep on expending energy, and we know where that road goes to at the personal level - turn and burn or the wonderful world of burnout. We don't have to fry people in order to succeed, not in the 21st Century context and mixing with 21st Century thinkers. For sure they may be a minority space but they are also leading edge.

It is the same on the so called "War on Cancer". Have we won that war? Maybe the reason we cannot win that war is because we need to understand how cancer works and then the modern approach to cancer is to try to outsmart it, because this is adaptive existence.

It is the same with war on fear on war on anything for that matter, unless of course we are past that point and now find ourselves in a battle. Yet even in a battle the key is to figure out how to outsmart the problem, rather than create extra tension within us trying to fight an invisible enemy. Fear is not even constructed of atoms yet we keep on fighting it and how does one best fight a shadow. One does not, the smart thing to do is just turn on the light.

Lets get back to Sun Tzu

In the 5 minute video the clip of Harrison Ford fighting the skilled sword wielding opponent isn't the typical stereotypical view of fighting, but then using drones in modern fighting provides the strange reality that the combatant is a guy or gal on a computer screen, pushing buttons and that is the difference between outsmarting and the macho view of combat. Yet technology alone is not a sure fire tool of success. Once an opponent outsmarts the technologist, it is because they have accessed the control point and that much is to be found in any Star Wars movie about how Luke Skywalker neutralizes the Death Star - and the Death Star reminds us that technology supremacy alone is not a supremacy.

Using the Force is not a silly idea, when our ability to think under pressure is the force within us. It is way more than understanding what the acronym VUCA means, it means unlearning what does not work. It means being smarter about what does work and keep on doing that until we find something better or need something smarter to move ahead. This is where the war mentality simply means we fell into our own trap and not just the trap of someone else's making - and here we need to understand the internal function within us of paranoia and the only way we make paranoia work for us is to be smart about guiding it with our prefrontal cortex rather than smash things to pieces with it with our amygdala.

This means embracing paradox and not war. It is the same thing John Lennon and Yoko tried when they tried to advertise peace, but we can't advertise peace when everyone at the personal level are at war with themselves. If everything we see in life is an attack, then we will see less that which in life is an opportunity. That is why I am not in the business of fixing people, or stopping them making their own decisions - I can point out what an optimum version of existence looks like - but it is the other who either ignores that or more to the point are not ready or even able to see that point of view. It has to be their point of view, because I have achieved very little on seeing or approaching things as war on anything including learned helplessness, procrastination or even haters.

A war on hate is hate. That is why while in principle we like hearing about people who advocate non-violence like Mahatma Gandhi or MLK, we don't want to recognize the other side of that equation which is satyagraha - which is to endure, stand your ground and work on the basis of using the opponents energy, which is violence as the energy against them. For that Mahatma Gandhi did not take punches for the sake of getting hit, he deployed an army of PR and news people and ask them to witness it and report it. It wasn't the personal attack that was his ace card, it was the consciousness stirred when people get to replay the acts of violence and recognize that humanity needs a better way of being.

The mentality of war is still with us because we are not adopting 21st Century thinking. We cannot adopt that which has hardly evolved but we can begin evolving it. It is called learning to see, which is the point where what we learn to see brings us to never wanting to see things the other way again. This is not radicalization or brain washing, it is knowing or discovering greater depths to critical, creative and observant thinking. Even when people discuss the difference between creative and critical thinking, it is not a fight between the two or whatever number of thinking styles we adopt, it is that Power of And some continue to talk about but most fail to apply.

So it is I am learning to take a chill pill on the war mentality.