The Art of Winning without Winning

As most of you know, I’ve done a fair amount of martial arts in my time. Over the years I’ve gone from Karate to Kung Fu until finally settling down in Aikido and in all that time hanging out with martial artists, there is one question that seems to come up more than any other.

“Which style is really the best?”

I’ve spent hours, particularly after a few drinks, debating the various advantages of different styles from Muay Thai to Capoeira . It’s sort of like comic book fans arguing over, Who is stronger, Superman or the Hulk. Fun to talk about but no real answers.

However, all that changed with the rise in popularity of Mixed Martial Arts. Suddenly, it was very clear which styles were most useful in a cage match, and Aikido, the art I’ve studied for almost a decade, was not among them.

All of which begs the question, Why am I wasting my time studying a martial art that isn’t “The Best?”

We all want the best: Best car, best house, best relationships. We want to elect the best politicians who have the best ideas and will execute the best policy. We want our children to go to the best schools so they can get the best jobs and live the best lives.

The question is, “How do we find the best?

The answer, almost invariably, is through competition. We turn the choices into combatants, put them in a cage, and have them fight it out. Our legal, political and, in many way, economic systems are predicated on the theory that, that which wins is inherently better than that which loses. In fact, “The Best” is so closely linked to winning as to be almost axiomatic.

However, we rarely stop to ask if this competitive system is really giving us the results we want.

Imagine this cage match:

In one corner, a 300 pound professional football player who has taken five kickboxing classes at the local Y. In the other corner is an 85 pound, 13 year old who has been a dedicated Jujitsu practitioner since he was five years old.

Will their match teach us anything about the relative merits of the martial arts involved, or even about the individual’s skill in the practice of those arts? No, because the strength, speed, size and athleticism of the football player will overwhelm any advantage of skill or style the 13 year old might have.

Does that sound like a ridiculous scenario?

Well, try this one.

Imagine two politicians are running for office. One is a tall handsome, articulate, well financed neophyte who knows nothing whatsoever about economics, foreign relations or public policy. The other, is a short, poorly dressed, ugly woman with a pronounced stutter and a deep, understanding of practical governance.

Is the person you want to see in office the same as the person who would win the election?

Once again, the traits necessary for winning are often very different from the ones we hoped the competition would favor.

To make matters worse, the media, who should be guiding us through the complex issues are, instead, covering the competition as if it were just another sport. Who’s up? Who’s down? Who made a mistake? Who can win?

“Who can govern?”rarely enters into the conversation.

The idea behind our political system is kind of like a cage match, except instead of a battle of technique it is supposed to be a battle ideas. Unfortunately, rather than bringing us the most qualified people with the best ideas, the crucible of election tends to sensationalize conflict, water down content and polarize the country.

This reality is so deeply woven into our political system that our highly qualified but, in all likelihood, unelectable woman would probably never even bother to run.

Our most important institutions are predicated on the idea that competition brings out the best. The result is a criminal system that favors the rich and penalizes minorities and an economic system that has concentrated the vast majority of our wealth in the hands of a privileged few while millions of others fight their own “cage matches” everyday merely to survive.

You would think that our incredibly competitive marketplace would ensure the healthiest, most durable products in the world, instead we get fast food hamburgers and electronics which are out of date almost before we unwrap them.

The American media system is more than competitive. It’s “Dog eat Dog”, with producers, networks, publishers and studios fighting tooth and nail for our attention. If winners are “The Best” then the most successful shows, magazines, movies and newscasts must be the most intelligent, well made, informative, dramatic and high quality media in the world, right?

Wrong. The opposite is true because the rules of the competition do not favor quality only eyeballs. The game is to get you to tune in and the easiest way to win is not by appealing to the best in us, but often the worst.

Of course, the biggest, most destructive and most terrifying cage match in the world is war and when it comes to war, the American military is the best of the best. They are the best trained, best supplied, best organized and in, every way, most powerful military organization the world has ever seen. So, if they’re so great, why have they struggled so much in places like Iraq and Afghanistan?

The answer is: They haven’t. By every military measure, the US Armed Forces have performed in an exemplary manner, defeating Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard in a matter of weeks and easily capturing the Taliban strongholds of Kabul and Kandahar..

Unfortunately, our expectations didn’t end with winning the war. We wanted them to win a peace. We expected an organization trained to destroy an enemy to become diplomats and nation builders. We demanded they navigate ancient religious conflicts, rebuild damaged infrastructure, and establish new governments for cultures they didn’t understand while surrounded by sectarian violence and the constant threat of terrorism.

The training, equipment and even mindset which makes the American military so formidable in war has worked against them because the skills necessary to succeed, sensitivity, patience, acceptance, restraint cooperation and compromise are non-competitive and as such are fundamentally antithetical to any military mission.

Or, to put it more simply, asking the same organization to conquer a country and save it from itself is almost a contradiction in terms.

Can you imagine a top MMA fighter trying to defeat and provide medical, psychological and economic aid to his opponent at the same time?

Make no mistake, I am not writing this to criticize our armed forces, martial artists, or anyone else fighting the good fight for what they believe is a good cause. I merely want to examine, more carefully, the premise that competition is the only pathway to success.

Competition can bring out the best in us and often does. However, it can also bring out the worst and the harder we try to win, whether it’s selling the most products, beating the other guy in an election or winning a war, the more we tend to lose sight of why we started competing in the first place.

In our families, friendships, workplaces and communities the biggest challenges we face are almost always about working together. There are no awards for the best cooperator and you can’t win at sensitivity or flexibility but those are the skills we need everyday to be a good friend, father, sister or citizen. They also help you to lead a happy life.

And it’s not just on an individual level. If we are to solve the biggest challenges our planet faces, the environment, energy, poverty and religious, racial and cultural conflict we must find ways, not to compete but to cooperate.

If human society is to survive, the only way to “win” is to stop trying to beat the other guy and start working together for the common good.

All of which, I suppose, brings us back to why I study Aikido.

The truth is, if you’re goal is to win a no-holds-barred cage match then Aikido isn’t for you, because the purpose of Aikido isn’t to hurt, but to harmonize, to meet anger with compassion and violence with gentleness. In the end, the goal is not to end conflict by destroying an enemy. The goal is to resolve conflict by the destroying the idea enmity itself.

Gandhi and Bin Laden

In my last blog, I wrote about the tragic consequences of failing to recognize paradigm shifts in military conflicts, and I discussed how such a shift has occurred in our so-called war on terror. It is our inability to understand the true nature of this conflict that has resulted in both the tragic loss of life on both sides and our failure to achieve anything remotely resembling victory.

But what is the nature of this paradigm shift? How does terrorism differ from conventional war and what counter measures are the most effective in combating its spread? These are not easy questions and as I sought answers something very offensive popped into my mind. “Mahatma Ghandi and Osama Bin Laden have a lot in common.”

The moment I had the thought I felt bad about it. Gandhi is one of the most revered pacifists in history and Bin Landen one of the most reviled villains. One man, was willing to sacrifice his life rather than lift a finger to hurt another soul. The other is willing to kill thousands to achieve his ends. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that once you let go of the moral considerations, there are, in fact, many similarities. Not in goals or philosophies but in how their tactics manipulate the world.

Gandhi, a native of India, began his exploration of non-violent resistance, in South Africa and rose to world prominence when he brought his movement into direct conflict with the British Raj in India. The expression, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” Was not an exaggeration. They had prosperous colonies all over the world and their power, both militarily and economically, was unrivaled.

Bin Laden, a native of Saudi Arabia, began fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union and rose to world prominence when he turned his attack on the United States whose Military and Economic eclipses that of the former British Empire.

During Gandhi’s time, the powerful British Navy, disciplined army, comparatively fair justice system and efficient bureaucracy made them uniquely suited to control a world empire. The fact that the empire was built on the backs of a hundred conquered nations did not concern them. In the minds of the British, what we would call imperialism was merely their way of brining civilization to the savages. After centuries of colonization the British had become experts at controlling native populations, whether through direct use of force or by bribing or coercing local leaders to do their bidding.

Today, the United States military is the most powerful the world has ever seen and the US/Western Capitalist Economy has become an almost unstoppable force, spreading across the world along with American Culture, and Values. What some would call American Imperialism we think of as spreading democracy and freedom.

Gandhi believed that only through the removal of British rule and the establishment of a free and independent India, was it possible for the Indian people to live the lives that they deserved. Bin Laden’s, beliefs, although perhaps less appealing to the western mind, are similar. He wants an Islamic world free of American interference, which will govern itself based on Islamic principals.

To achieve their goals both men had to overcome a seemingly unbeatable foe. One who’s power both militarily and economically is way out of their league.

Most people would conclude that this is where the similarities between the two men end. However, in my opinion, although their methods are diametrically opposed, the ingredients necessary to produce them and their effect have much in common. To explore this idea I have come up with, what I consider to be, five crucial ingredients in the non-violent revolution which we can compare to Islamic Terrorism.

1. Desperation. The risks of any revolution, non-violent or otherwise, are tremendously high. Lives will be changed, if not lost. Wealth will be shifted and society will be irrevocably transformed. Nobody would take those kinds of risks unless they saw no other choice.

2. Lack of Representation. A well-run government does not guarantee that its citizens won’t be put in desperate situations from time to time. What a well-run government should guarantee is that when the desperate situation arises there will be some mechanism to air grievances and attempt to gain justice. This is not to say that all people are taken care of at all times, merely that opportunities for social change are possible within the system. When Justice is absent, when desperate people have no established voice in the halls of commerce or government their only choice is to move outside of the rules and fight back (peacefully or otherwise) against the system that has betrayed them.

3. Courage. What does it take to face down a squad of policeman armed with shotguns and fire hoses? What does it take to march unarmed through 1000 miles of enemy territory knowing that an attack could come at any moment? What does it take to stand alone in front of a Chinese tank? Non-violent resistance takes courage and more. It takes a belief in something greater than yourself because in this kind of struggle there is the very real possibility that you could die. Nobody, who is only interested in their own worldly advancement would become a non-violent resistor. This is why so many of the great pacifist movements were inexorably linked to religion. Faith is part of what gave the followers of Gandhi and Martin Luther King the courage they needed for their struggle.

4. The Media. I wont go so far as to say that non-violent resistance cannot succeed without media attention but it is incredibly difficult. A Buddhist monk burning himself alive to protest the South Vietnamese government would only have effected those who actually saw the event, were it not for the photographs which were seen all over the world. We all remember the images of Tiananmen Square, and the protestors being attacked at Kent State. Without media attention, non-violent resistance is like a gun without bullets because the true weapon of non-violent resistance is not the boycotts or sit-ins it is the reaction those incidents have on the rest of the world. Which brings us to the fifth and most important factor in a non-violent revolution.

5. The Enemy. In the end, it is the opponent whose actions have the real power. Remember, the resistors cannot change the situation on their own. They need the help of those in power. That help can come in both positive and negative ways. Positive, in the form of help and negative in the form of force. Force used against non-violent resistors can help the movement because it casts the protestors as the heroes of the story and the Government as the villain. The greater the force the more polarizing the effect. It is possible, to scare a non-violent movement out of existence but if the movement remains true to it’s principals and united against the common enemy, perceptions about the situation will begin to shift. Once that perceptional shift solidifies, the powers that be are in an untenable situation. The more openly they pressure the resistors the worse they look.

In this sense, Non-violent resistance is a kind of psychological war. It does not attack the resources or men of the enemy directly. Instead, it attacks their will to continue an oppressive system while at the same time inspiring those sympathetic to join the cause. In other words, non-violent resistance changes the worldview of both oppressor and oppressed by showing them both the courage and morality of the people in the weakest position and the cowardice and immorality of those in power.

This is how men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. achieved their goals. These were great men, brave men, men who were willing to, and eventually did give their lives for a cause greater than themselves. To make any comparison between them and the terrorists of 9/11, or the men who planned those attacks, is an insult to their memory. However, it is my contention that much can be learned from just such a comparison. Let’s look once again at my five ingredients for a non-violent revolution, except now, let’s do it in a context of Islamic Fundamentalism and the war on terror.

1. Desperation. Islamic Fundamentalism rises out of extremely stratified, repressive societies, where there is minimal access to education, or representation. The followers of Fundamentalist principals, feel, they have been betrayed, economically, socially, religiously or politically by the modern world.

2. Lack of Representation: We claim to be fighting for democracy but the truth is all of our Islamic allies are dictatorships. If a viewpoint is antithetical to the wishes of the government it simply will not be aired.

3. Courage: Bill Maher was fired from ABC for saying it but let’s not bullshit here. Terrorists might be evil, crazy religious fanatics but they are not cowards. Sacrificing your life for any cause, regardless of it’s relative justice, takes tremendous courage. And, like the non-violent resistors, it is no coincidence that often this kind of willingness to self-sacrifice is built upon belief in a spiritual world beyond our own.

4. The Media: Terror feeds on press. Terrorism has killed fewer than 4000 people in the entire history of the United States. More people are killed each year by Bee Stings but we treat Terrorism as the number one threat to our livelihood. Why? Because the bees aren’t in the news. How may times have you seen the towers fall? How many red, yellow and orange alerts have you heard? How many times have you tuned in to the evening news only to discover that you still are not safe. The Media is the terrorist’s number one weapon.

5. The Enemy: Since 9/11 the ball has been almost entirely in our court. We have entered two wars, gone deeply into debt, suspended, the rights of our own people and openly advocated mass arrests and torture as reasonable methods for the achievement of our ends. We have in short become very much like the unilateral Imperialist nation that Osama Bin Laden claimed that we were. Did the terrorists do this to us?

6. Remember how angry you felt when you watched the World Trade Center collapse 6 years ago? How hopeless? Now try to imagine how an Iraqi feels when he sees the pictures from Abu Ghraib. 2743 people died on 9/11 and in our nation of 300 million, we all felt some connection to the victims of that tragic day. Iraq has less than 10% of our population but some estimates put the death toll there at over 500,000. Imagine how they feel.

9/11 resulted in a few thousand deaths and approximately 30 billion dollars in damage. Our war on terror has resulted in a few hundred thousand deaths and cost over a trillion dollars. After 9/11 America experienced a worldwide outpouring of compassion and support unlike anything in history. Today, the rest of the world has begun to view America as a dangerous power, wholly consumed with the pursuit of it’s own interests. Did the terrorists do this to us or did we do it to ourselves?

Like the opponents of a non-violent revolution, our actions since 9/11 have had a polarizing effect on the world. We, not the terrorists, have sent many of our people to their deaths in impossible wars. We have driven away some of our staunchest allies and we have used the politics of fear to divide our nation. Where once we were seen as the heroes of the story, much of the world now sees us as the villain. This is what we have done, not the terrorists.

Is it my intention to imply, through this comparison, that Gandhi and Bin Laden are the same? No. Gandhi is one of my great heroes and Bin Laden, certainly, is not. What this comparison does hopefully point out is that, in the end, the true weapons of the terrorists are not IED’s and Dirty bombs. The true weapons are the effect those things have on the minds of their targets and the actions that state of mind produces.

Next Week: The Parable of the Bee