The Tactics Of Mistake

When I was about 40% of my current age, I read a book which changed my approach to life. This book was Gordon R Dickson's Tactics Of Mistake. Although only one of the many SF novels I've read over many years, the focus of the book is on a specific strategy - to use various means (including non-violent resistance and refusal to resist) to tempt an opponent into minor, non-fatal mistakes. The accumulative effect of these minor mistakes is that opponent's failure and your own success.

Such a strategy requires a medium- to long-term view of life. It is a patient strategy, terribly unsuited to the choleric and mercurial personality that I am. Yet, by keeping it in my armamentarium, I've built the discipline of patient waiting - not merely forbearance or patience, but the habit of waiting for long periods with intent. Passive patience is easy for many, but active patience, the patience of the stalking cat or watching hawk, is hard to learn.

At the same time, the Good Book tells us to be 'as wise as serpents, but harmless as doves'. In my more cynical days, I used to take it to mean that you could either choose to bury your waste carefully or deposit it in large and unsightly piles. Of course, what the Book means is that you should learn to avoid trouble, but without using aggressive defence. What options are open to us, then?

Here are three possibilities which may seem quite odd, so I shall explain them as best as I can. If you add all three to your armamentarium, it improves your chance of surviving the vicissitudes of life, and emerging scathed but sound at the end of your days.

1. Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the strongest defence. The word means 'capacity for suffering wounds' and has become the equivalent of 'defencelessness'. But what if there is nothing to defend? A lie has no target, the intent to hurt finds no object, the duellist aims into a cloud of mist; this is what vulnerability is about. The person with nothing to hide and the true capacity to 'suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; to forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night' is strong indeed. It requires the virtue of faith from the people of the Book, for without faith, there is only the fear of injury.

2. Perseverance

Perseverance is the steadiest approach. The word means 'capacity for continuing in one's endeavours'. It isn't 'stubbornness' or 'doggedness', but something creative and active: the power by which water continues to find a way past barriers. Note that many have defined perseverance as 'persistence', 'fortitude', 'endurance' and so on. These definitions miss the point of 'creative and active'; one who perseveres is not just a barnacle of some sort, immovable and stony. It requires the virtue of hope from the people of the Book, for without hope, there is no point in perseverance.

3. Perspicuity

Perspicuity is the sharpest weapon. The word means 'capacity for seeing acutely through or into things'. It is associated with intelligence focussed to a specific point - it is intelligence used to bring wisdom, discernment and understanding to bear on practical problems. Some people have used it to mean 'shrewdness', but that would be the basest form of such a trait. The problem of course, is that a weapon can be used unjustly to hurt and damage others. It thus requires the virtue of love from the people of the Book, for without love, perspicuity is violence.