Year: 2015

Samuel B. Griffith: Warrior And Scholar

Quintus Curtius Biography , ,

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One of the more remarkable military men of recent history was Samuel B. Griffith (1906-1983).  Born in Lewiston, Pennsylvania, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps.  From 1931 to 1933, he served in Nicaragua with the American forces aiding that country’s Guardia Nacional, in what later became somewhat derisively referred to as the “Banana Wars.”

After this, he was posted to China.  It is not widely known now, but units of the Fourth Marines were posted in Shanghai in the early 1930s to protect American interests.  China at the time was  experiencing one of its periodic descents into chaos and war, and duty there was not without its share of excitement.  Duties there consisted primarily of policing the borders of the international concessions that had been carved out by various foreign powers.

Griffith, however, was assigned at the language officer at the American Embassy in Peking.  From the moment he arrived in China, he devoted himself to the study of the Chinese language.  According to his statements in later interviews, he spent six hours per day, five days per week, in intensive study of this most challenging and subtle language.  Within two years he was able to read a basic newspaper article.  After leaving China in 1938, he was confident that he had gained a working knowledge of modern Chinese. This knowledge would serve him well in his later career.

Griffith also took the opportunity to study the nature of the irregular conflict that was raging all around him.  China and Japan were openly at war; and although the Americans were strictly forbidden from intervening, it was impossible for an observant mind not to be impressed by the tactics of the Chinese insurgents.  Japan had occupied Manchuria in 1931 before launching an all-out invasion of the rest of the country in 1937.  Griffith traveled widely in China, and came to know personally Merrit A. Edson, a language student like himself who would later become famous as leader of a “raider” unit against the Japanese during the Second World War.

The Second World War closed in on him quickly.  After hostilities between Japan and the United States began, Griffith served with the 1st Marine Raiders Battalion (rising to the command of that unit) on Guadalcanal.  He was awarded the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart on Guadalcanal for his part in the fighting at Matanikau River; later, at the island of New Georgia, he was decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross.  The Navy Cross is the second-highest award for combat bravery that can be issued by the Navy; the Distinguished Service Cross is its equivalent for the US Army.  Without doubt, Griffith was intimately acquainted with combat in a variety of settings.

With the end of the war in 1945, he returned to occupation duty in Northern China in the city of Tsingtao.  The remainder of his career was spent in the United States in a variety of staff and command appointments.  He retired from active duty in 1956 as a brigadier general.

It was at this point in his life that Griffith proved he was no ordinary military man.  Whereas most veterans would have been content to rest on their laurels and seek a comfortable retirement in some government post, Griffith felt the call of other disciplines.  So he exchanged the tunic of the soldier for the robe of the scholar.  He applied for, and was accepted to, a Ph.D. program at Oxford University in the Chinese language.

This was not the colloquial, modern Chinese that Griffith had been exposed to previously:  this was the classical language of ancient China, as different from modern Chinese as the language of Euripides would be to a modern resident of Athens.

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Nevertheless, his proficiency in the modern language did give him a huge advantage over other students.  He received his doctorate in 1961, and soon after published translations of two military texts that had interested him for some time.  One was Sun Tzu’s Art of War; and the other was Mao Tse-tung’s On Guerrilla Warfare. 

In the modern era, Sun Tzu has become a familiar fixture of contemporary literature, to the point of almost being a cliché.  This was not the case in the early 1960s.  Sun Tzu was almost completely unknown outside of specialist circles.  The text had been translated into English only a few times previously, none of them satisfactorily; and Griffith’s version remains, in my mind at least, the most authoritative and readable version of the many that have emerged in recent decades.  The translation was begun, he tells us in the foreword to his book, a “considerably revised version of a thesis submitted to Oxford University in October 1960 in part satisfaction of the requirements for the [Ph.D.] degree.”

The translation of Mao’s work On Guerrilla Warfare had actually been done in the 1930s, when Griffith had been in China.  It had appeared in an issue of the Marine Corps Gazette in 1941.  Griffith revised this previous translation before issuing it as a separate volume in 1961.

Griffith thus proved himself to be a man acquainted with both the theory and brutal practice of warfare.  Besides the two works noted above, he has also published later in his life such notable accounts as The Battle For Guadalcanal and The Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

My own acquaintance with Griffith came as a Marine second lieutenant at The Basic School in 1991, where his translation of Sun Tzu was required reading for young officers.  After reading about Griffith’s background, I was impressed by how his career blended both the profession of arms and the labor of the scholar.  There were no other military men like him, and I wondered why he was not more widely known.

His translation of Sun Tzu is packed with the most recondite and detailed information about ancient Chinese warfare and linguistic subtleties.  There are also special sections on the influence of Sun Tzu on Mao Tze-tung and on Japanese military doctrines.  Regarding the latter topic, he makes this grim (and accurate) assessment of his former adversaries:

Both the Americans and their British allies learned important lessons from [their] early defeats and developed successful methods of combating Japanese tactics…During these operations the Japanese showed themselves to be obstinate fighters, but unable to cope with the unorthodox methods their opponents now used against them.  Thus it appears that in spite of devoted study the Japanese understanding of Sun Tzu was not better than superficial.  In the most profound sense, they knew neither their enemies nor themselves; their calculations in the councils had not been made objectively.

Griffith died in 1983 in Rhode Island.  It is unfortunate that he has not achieved the notoriety that he deserves.  He knew warfare not through books, but through actual experience in the field.  He knew the Chinese language intimately, in both the colloquial patois of its bustling cities, as well as in its rarefied classical form.  Few, if any, military men in modern history attaining the rank of brigadier general can claim the same level of combat experience and scholarly distinction.

 

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The Practical Wisdom Of Thomas A Kempis

Quintus Curtius Thought , ,

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One of the most enlightening yet now underappreciated books of “personal improvement” is a small volume entitled The Imitation of Christ.  It was written by an obscure cleric named Thomas a Kempis in the late medieval period in Germany.  His name has various spellings, among them Thomas Von Kempen and Thomas Haemerkken.

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The Worst Weapon Ever Made

Quintus Curtius History ,

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The greed and callousness of combat weapons designers have resulted in the deaths of many men.  Nowhere else has this fact been more starkly portrayed than in the story of what may be the worst small arm ever made, the Chauchat (also called the Fusil-Mitrailleur mle 1915, or the CSRG).  It was a French light machine gun designed for use at the squad level on the eve of the First World War.  The story of the Chauchat reveals much about the workings of the military-industrial complex, and how that combination can work to undermine the welfare of an army.

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Invective Has A Distinguished Lineage

Quintus Curtius Thought ,

Acquaintance with the ancient art of invective reminds us just how hypersensitive today’s reading audience can be.  We often hear tiresome complaints from some quarters about how some article or other on the internet “triggered” someone, or how some author is a “horrible person” for upsetting someone’s serenity.  It was not always so.  Invective and personal attack have a long and distinguished history.

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The Traits Needed For Progress In Mystical Studies

Quintus Curtius Thought , ,

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In Pantheon, we devoted a chapter (“The Heart Of Plotinus”) to the foundational text of Western mysticism, Plotinus’s Enneads.  That text made it clear that every man possesses within himself the capacity for special knowledge of the world; and every man has the potential for awareness of things outside the realm of accepted cognition.

Some will use and develop this innate and intuitive capacity, and some will not.  The question then arises: what are the attributes of the true mystic?  And for those who seek to embark on a study of this field, what traits mark those with natural talent?  An awareness of these traits will assist us in our own spiritual explorations.

The great mystics of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all seem to have a few core traits in common:

1.  A capacity for concentration.  The ability to master large amounts of recondite and difficult material is a prerequisite for success.  This must happen before the novice can approach the more abstruse doctrines.  Before the great rewards can be reaped, a great deal of effort must first be expended.  Furthermore, without a single minded focus on study, ritual, and recitation, it will not be possible for the student to achieve the correct mental states required for ascension to higher consciousness.

2.  A sincere and pious disposition.  The true seeker is not a chest-beater, a braggart, or a publicist.  He does not wish to be seen to do good, but instead wishes actually to do good.  The open heart carries the additional advantage of not being enmeshed by the nets of jealousy, pride, or preconception; it is willing to give a fair hearing to doctrines that may run counter to its own experience and common sense.  The mystic is a lover, first and foremost:  a lover of truth, divine knowledge, and the wonders of the natural world.

3.  A soaring imagination.  The literature of the best mystics is marked by an intoxicating language derived from the seeker’s imaginative creations.  This is not frivolous vanity, but rather a necessary part of the search for esoteric knowledge.  The fundamental nature of existence is cloaked in ambiguity.  As we delve more deeply into our own imagination and our own dreams, we quickly discover that our imagination serves as a “bridge” (in Arabic, a برزخ or barzakh) between the world of the spirit and the world of the corporeal.

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Unless we understand the imagination and how it operates, it is not really possible to grasp the deeper core of mystical doctrines.  The great mystic Ibn Arabi assured us that imagination (خيال or khayal) actually took place on three planes:  in the cosmos, where existence equaled the Divine imagination; in the intermediate world between the corporeal and spiritual realms; and in the individual man, whose soul used it as a means of communication with the body.

Not all of us will be great mystics, but all of us can benefit from a consideration of these matters in a basic way; they will open spiritual doors for us previously closed.

If anyone would doubt the power of imagination, let him consider this unsettling story told by Ibn Arabi in his monumental work The Meccan Revelations.  

When he was but a beardless youth in his early teens, Ibn Arabi had begun to attract attention for his incredible powers of perception, recitation, and cognition of spiritual matters.  His “opening” came at an early age.

The chief judge in Seville, Spain at the time was the famous philosopher and jurist Averroes (Ibn Rushd).  Ibn Arabi’s father was an acquaintance of Averroes, and one day decided to take his precocious young son to meet him.  Averroes had heard about the young lad’s abilities and wanted to take his measure.  We should also note that he was a strict rationalist, and had little use for the imprecise and airy creations of the mystics, whom he doubtless considered to be mostly deluded.

He asked the boy, “How did you find the situation in unveiling and divine emanation? Is is what rational thought demonstrates for us?”

Ibn Arabi replied, “Yes and no.  Between the yes and the no, spirits fly from their matter, and heads from their bodies.”

Upon hearing this answer, Averroes was said to have gone pale and begun to tremble.  He had no further meetings with the young man, whose strange answer had completely disarmed him.

 

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How Character Can Change According To Circumstances

Quintus Curtius Thought , , ,

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It may be asked how a man’s character changes according to his circumstances.  Without doubt it does change; there remains an unalterable core of our character, fashioned from our earliest years, but onto this trunk may be grafted or discarded a variety of traits and habits.

On this subject we should be mindful of the following:

1.  It is easier to add character traits than it is to remove them.  The learning of a new set of habits and traits can be accomplished if the incentives and motivations are there.  Far more difficult it is to try to remove some ingrained character feature that may have been with us for years.  It is not impossible, but it is difficult.

Adding is easier than removing.  Being mindful of this, we should endeavor to add character traits, rather than to try to remove ones that may already exist.  The removal of character traits should be reserved for those situations where the trait in question is directly harmful or a serious impediment to future growth.

2.  The true revelation of character comes at moments of difficulty or stress.  If we wish to know our own, or someone else’s character, we should seek out situations in which we can exert pressure on that individual.  The resulting observations will be useful.

3.  The ravages of disease or old age can corrode positive character traits.  It will not corrupt the most important ones, but it can have adverse effects.  As an example of this, Plutarch mentions an incident (Pericles 38) where Pericles, who had contracted the plague, permitted some visitors on his sickbed to lay amulets and charms on him. He had always derided superstition and would never have permitted such conduct had he been healthy.  Thus is it shown that disease may corrode the bulwarks of virtue.

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Somewhat conversely Plutarch in his Spartan Sayings also relates an anecdote about the Agiad king Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandridas.  The king had suffered greatly from a long bout of illness, and in desperation, had enlisted the aid of practitioners of the magical arts.  When his friends had expressed unease at this development, the king said, “There is no reason to be amazed.  I’m not the same person I was before, so of course what I believe and disbelieve isn’t the same either.”

It is also clear that with the advance of old age come the vices of greed, superstition, and timidity; for these vices flourish in a climate of fear, which old age does much to aggravate.  As a man advances in age, he will acutely feel the hound of fear biting his heels, as he becomes more and more worried about his security and health.

And it is for this reason that we must do all we can when young, so that the advance of old age or sickness will not expose us to these vices.

 

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On Why Some Negative Gossip Can Be A Benefit

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Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades is rich in anecdote.  One such anecdote (Alcidiades 9) relates how the great statesman, who lived from 450 to 404 B.C., used a minor transgression to his advantage.

He was said to have owned a large and attractive dog, which cost him a significant sum of money.  Alcibiades then proceeded to have the dog’s tail cut off.  His friends and acquaintances were angered and dismayed by this action; one trusted advisor told him that the general public were also grumbling about what he had done.

Alcibiades was not concerned.  “That is exactly what I wanted,” he told his advisor sternly.  “For if all of Athens is complaining about this, then it will stop them from saying anything worse about me.”

By this he meant that people often permit themselves to become fixated on relatively minor things, and miss the larger issues in their distraction.  Canny leaders and wise men are aware of this, and are always careful to lay out carefully-placed lightning rods, which channel and absorb the grumblings of the people.  Anger must be managed with the same care as good feelings.

Just as we attempt to have some measure of control over the good things that people may say about us, so we should not neglect to attempt to control some of the malicious things that are said about us.  It is also proven by experience that most people, conscious of their own foibles, feel more comfortable knowing that a person may have a minor misdeed in his history.

A small amount of vice humanizes, but a large amount destroys.  Those who are too free from vice attract not admiration, but contempt.

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Are Omens Real?

Quintus Curtius Thought , , ,

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The ancient historians would often mention portents, oracles, augurs, and omens.  The ancients like to interpret events by various such means:  observing the flight of birds (the Romans loved this ), or the entrails of sacrificed animals, or nearly any unusual phenomenon that happened to present itself.

It is not always clear how we should take such observations.  Should we laugh at them?  Gloss over them?  Study them?

Cicero wrote a minor treatise on the subject (On Divination).  Even writers noted for their cool-headed rationality like Plutarch, Livy, and Tacitus would occasionally interrupt their narratives with comments such as:

“In the fourth year of the consulship of [insert name here], it was noted that the sun remained red for seven days.”

“In the third year of the war of [insert name here], it is said that a two-headed calf was born in Palermo.”

On the face of things, it would seem that such comments are relics of an ignorant and barbarous past.  And of course, man’s progress of knowledge since those times have rendered such comments quaint with age.

But is there something more happening here?  It is not as simple a question as it may seem.  Divination, portents, and oracles are very ancient.  It seems clear that they would not have endured so long if they did not serve some useful purpose.  I would be not be surprised that, even today, the horoscope section of the newspaper is more popular than any other section.

I was walking today from Copacabana to Ipanema to meet with girl I had met earlier.  On the way, I saw something that caught my attention.  I saw the proprietor of a drogaria (drugstore) forcibly throw a filthy vagabond out of the store and onto the street.  He seized him by the back of the collar and the seat of the pants and actually threw him out into the street; as I was walking by, he nearly collided with me.  The proprietor’s face was afire with rage.

This type of thing happens nearly every day.  But this was the first time I had seen it.  Something about it left an impression on me.  My date later that day did not go well, despite my best efforts.  Life is like that sometimes.  You just move on.  At the time I saw the “ejection” incident, it felt like it was significant.  It felt like…a portent.

There is no better way to describe it.

Maybe the incident was an example of one of those happenings that the ancients so much liked to use to explain unfortunate events.  Or, maybe the incident had absolutely nothing to do with anything, and I’m just projecting my own misfortune onto an unrelated incident.

This is what I’ve come to believe about omens.

1.  They say more about the person observing the omen, or reporting on it.  In other words, an “omen” only has significance if a person already, somewhere deep in his subconscious, has some predisposition for believing something.  Omens appeal to our subconscious.  Omens are true in the sense that exorcisms “work”:  they operate through the power of suggestion.

They confirm things that we may have suspected for some time.  In my situation, I likely deep down knew that my date was not going to go well.  Or, I had some sense of foreboding about it.

 

Where all of this really gets complicated is when we ask if such a belief becomes a self-fulfilling “prophecy.”

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2.  Omens and portents are our way of reminding ourselves that Fate controls more than we like to believe.  Omens are our way of channeling the nervous energy that comes about when we finally recognize that Fortune holds many of the cards in the game of life.

3.  It might be argued that omens were a way of explaining phenomena that were inexplicable to ancient man.  This has much truth, but I don’t get this sense from looking at the actual texts.  Ancient man was not as ignorant as we moderns like to believe.  His range of vision was more limited than ours, but he was not a fool.  The primary purpose of omens, I believe, was to satisfy man’s psychological needs, not his informational needs.

These observations make sense to me.  Divination, omens, portents, and such things must serve some psychological purpose for us, or they would not have lasted as long as they have.  To the question of whether omens are “real” the answer must be:  yes, they are real to he who faithfully observes and reports the omen.  For he who does so reveals something to us of his own inner nature, and his mental workings.

When we seek to understand man, we must look at his habits and practices over many centuries.  Longevity does confer some authority, however much we may dislike the idea.

 

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You Will Carry Burdens

Quintus Curtius Thought , ,

I was re-reading Plutarch’s Life of Pericles over the past few days.  One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that the best solace is always to keep company with the greatest of men; for in doing so we cannot help but become greater.

We should be careful with whom we spend out time.

When you wish to improve your basketball game, you don’t play two-on-two with a flat-footed dullard.  When you wish to improve your social skills, you don’t pick an uncalibrated dunce as a wingman.  So how can one expect to improve one’s character if a man constantly associates with fools and clowns?

The life of a great man, Plutarch tells us, is one of burdens.  The average spectator doesn’t see these burdens, believing the great man to be blessed by the Divine.  And his is, in a way.  But there is a Janus-face to this rosy picture.

The glories of the great man are counterbalanced by the price of such greatness.  What are some of these burdens?  The life of Pericles shows us that they are these:

1.  You will be surrounded by non-comprehending people.  In one anecdote, Plutarch describes how Pericles was boarding a ship during a time of political crisis.  Suddenly, a solar eclipse took place.  The phenomena caused great consternation among the passengers, and the ship’s navigator was greatly disturbed.

Pericles said to him:  “Why are you so upset?,” and held his cloak up before the navigator’s face, blocking the navigator’s vision of the sun.

“If you cannot see the sun now, and are not afraid, why would you be afraid when some other obstruction blocks it from view?”  This question he asked the navigator.

The point of this story was obviously to show that people are often afraid of what they do not understand.  Great men, almost by definition, seek out paths that are not trod by others.  They will be misunderstood, ridiculed, mocked, even vilified.  But if we wish to achieve anything in this world, there will come a time–often not of your own choosing–where you will have to swim against the prevailing currents.

The salmon will all be swimming one way, and you will have to swim another way.  And the salmon will not be pleased about this.  Not one bit.

2.  You will have to endure great tragedy.  Plutarch also tells us how the life of Pericles, although filled with the most transcendent glory, was scarred by personal tragedy.  During the wars against Sparta, a plague gripped Athens, killing off a great many people and throwing the city into disorder.

Pericles was blamed for much of this (unfairly, of course) by his political enemies.  He lost a number of personal relatives in the plague, including several of his own sons.  One anecdote has him being driven almost mad with grief over the loss of one of his favorite sons.

And yet he had to endure.  He could not take “time off” for morbid self-reflection.  He had to keep going.  There was no respite.

And this is one measure of greatness:  the ability to carry great burdens.  It is not often discussed.  It is not often meditated on.  But it is there.

Theodore Roosevelt lost both his wife and his mother in one day, and was nearly paralyzed by grief.  Yet it forced him to go West, and seek a new type of life for himself; and this act probably saved him from madness and a stupefying inactivity.  Cicero lost his favorite daughter, and this fact threw him into a serious bout of depression.  Yet this period of convalescence he used to write some of his best philosophical works.

General John J. Pershing, one of America’s most capable military figures of the early twentieth century, lost nearly his entire family in a catastrophic fire.

The neck of the Chinese peasant has a thick musculature, gained from years of pole-carrying and balancing of heavy weight.  He knows hardship, and he knows how, in the Chinese phrase, how “to eat bitterness.”

In our efforts at character development, and in our polishing of our souls, we should know from the beginning that we will carry heavy burdens.  It is inevitable.  It is unavoidable.  Don’t seek to avoid them:  instead, learn how to manage them.

But with practice, these burdens can be managed and balanced.  We can, in time, develop the thick pole-carrying neck of the patient, determined Chinese peasant.

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How To Gain Your Boss’s Appreciation

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A lot has been written about how to be an entrepreneur.  A lot has been written about how to innovate.  Not as much has been written about how to be a good employee.

Being a good team-player is not glamorous.  Being a good team player is not what receives all the attention.  But it is just as critical–if not more so–than the innovator or trend-setter.

We don’t talk much about the virtue of obedience very much.  Which is our loss.  Because obedience is absolutely critical.  In everything.

Before you can innovate, before you can create, before you can speak as an authority, you must obey.  You must submit.

Yes, I mean you.  

One of the (many) problems in America today is that there are too many chiefs, and not enough Indians.  Too many cooks, but not enough servers.  Too many shit-talking bastards, and not enough work-horses.

You get my drift.  I tend to curse a lot when I speak colloquially.

In every type of situation in life, we will have some form of boss.  In every situation.  No man is an island, unto himself.  No man.  Not a single one.

Very, very few people are answerable to no one.  There is always someone else.  Someone who needs to be kept happy.

And this is something that most people will not tell you.

It is this:  you need to learn how to obey.  I don’t mean a slave.  I don’t mean that you should demean yourself.  I mean something more along the lines of loyalty, fidelity, and comradeship.  There is a quiet dignity in these virtues.  They are somewhat out of style now, in this age of bombast and self-promotion.

That’s what I mean.

All that innovation stuff comes later.  After you’ve built a foundation.  After you’ve demonstrated your worth.  Yes, you.  You’re not a unique snowflake until you’ve proved that you are.

So, let me talk about how you can gain your boss’s appreciation.  Do you really want to know?  I will tell you.

First, put yourself in the position of the average boss.  He is harried, harassed, and overworked.  He already has a lot of problems.  And he doesn’t need more of them.  He doesn’t need you to add to his problems.

Bosses want this:

1.  Do your fucking job.  Your boss doesn’t want to spoon-feed you.  He doesn’t want to wipe your nose or your ass.  He wants you to do your fucking job.  With no bullshit, no back-talk, and no attitude.

So do your fucking job.  Isn’t that simple?  If you have to study extra to learn your job, do it.  If you have to work harder than Mary Jane Rottencrotch to learn your job, then do it.

But do your fucking job.  No whining, no bullshit, and no problems.

2.  Don’t be an asshole.  An asshole is someone who thinks the rules of the world don’t apply to him.  An asshole thinks he can do whatever he wants.  Don’t be an asshole.

How do you know if you are an asshole?  Here’s a good test.  If more than three people think you’re an asshole, you are an asshole.  Figure out why, and correct yourself.

3.  Don’t fuck your boss up.  Your boss wants things to go smoothly.  He has a million things on his plate.  The last think he needs is more of your stupid drama.  So get your head out of your ass.  What do I mean by not “fucking your boss up”?

I mean don’t do things to embarrass your boss.

I mean don’t do things to make your boss look bad.

I mean don’t cause drama, create drama, or perpetuate drama.

That’s what I mean.  If more people could understand the beauty and the simplicity of these principles, there would be much less problems between bosses and employees.

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Your boss is (usually) not evil.  He’s (usually) not trying to go out of his way to make your life difficult.  But the reality of the rough-and-tumble of life is that he is stressed out.  He wants to have his stress reduced, not increased.

Bosses hate whiners, complainers, and assholes who cause drama.  He wants things to run smoothly.  If there is a problem, he wants you to have a proposal on how to solve it.  He doesn’t want to hear your stupid-ass bullshit.  

So there you have it.  There it is.  Let’s recap the three things you need to do to gain your boss’s appreciation (notice I didn’t say respect.  That a subject for another day):

1.  Do your fucking job

2.  Don’t be an asshole

3.  Don’t fuck your boss up.

If you can follow these rules, you’d be surprised at how much your boss will appreciate it.

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