Lessons From: The Godfather

How Corleone earned respect and loyalty

The Godfather is thought by many to be the best movie, and if you haven't read the books, do yourself a favor. It's a pretty good story all in all about a family that came from Sicily to the United States, especially about Vito and Michael, the two main patriarchs or Dons, and the situations that they had to deal with concerning other families.

What interests me most about the story, though, is how Vito Andolini, born in Corleone, rose from being a simple as a clerk, having been sent to New York because his family had been killed by the local chieftain, Don Ciccio. Had he stayed, he would've been murdered as well, because he would've eventually sworn revenge.

His life of crime began when his foster father hired him. The neighborhood's padrone demanded that Mr. Abbandando hire his nephew, so he had to comply, so Vito became friends with Peter Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio, who taught him the basics of being a criminal and exchanged favors for loyalty. When Fanuccio, the padrone, asked for a cut of their profits, Corleone hatched a plan to kill him. He took advantage of the distraction a street festival had to offer and sneaked into Fanuccio's house by the rooftop, and murdered him. Then, he took over the district, treating it with respect.

He then started an olive importing operation with his foster brother Genco, and they named it Genco Pura. Between that business and his illicit activities, he became a rich man, and returned to Sicily. There he met his partner Don Tomassino, and together, they systematically took out Don Ciccio's men involved in the murder, and arranged a meeting with the man himself, in which Vito carved open his stomach and let his partner take over Corleone.

Eventually, through various exploits, gang wars, and takeovers, the Corleone crime family is the most powerful one in the United States. His oldest son then becomes a capo and even fights a war with an Irish family, but his youngest son, Michael, wants nothing to do with the business. Then, his home and base of operations is moved to Staten Island.

Friendship was very important to Corleone, to the point that people would make lines to ask for favors and he would give them, with only the condition of eventually asking for another favor back. He also made sure that his friends felt valued, and always showed gratitude, with this he would build respect and appreciation.

Of course, he always knew how to profit, and was generally a master at having leverage in almost any situation. He always made sure he was informed, and in part was thanks to his clear head. He would never get angry and would try to reason with people to get the best results.

How can we apply this?

They always say that you should despise the free lunch. This is because there never really is a free lunch, and you can take advantage of that yourself. It's the reason they tell you to make friends and network when you're in college, after all, that leverage you have with other people can be of great help, either in your personal or professional life. The ability to actually profit and have an entrepreneurial mindset can be a subject for a few other posts, but it's always important to see what you can get from a situation in your mind.

The most important thing is probably to be as best informed as possible; you can't just waltz into anything head-on and think that you'll come out a winner. Always assume that there's somebody who's better prepared than you, in any situation, and act accordingly.

Of course, Corleone also believed that every man had a destiny, but I'm no fatalist. Forge it yourself.

Lessons From: Oedipus Rex

How to avoid a self-fulfilling prophecy

If you've a love for the Greek tragedies or a basic knowledge of psychology or the history of literature, then you probably know about the story of Oedipus. For those of you that don't, I'll be happy to tell you the story and I swear to god you can't get mad about spoilers this time because the story's been out there for more than two thousand years.

It's a pretty simple story all in all. Basically, before the story begins, Laius is a guest of King Pelops of Elis, and becomes the tutor of his son Chrysippus, who he promptly proceeds to abduct and rape, then kills himself in shame. This casts doom over Laius, and his son Oedipus and all those who come after.

Eventually a boy is born to Laius and his wife Jocasta, and when an oracle tells Laius that he is to perish by the hand of his own son, so his father naturally ties his feet together and orders his wife to murder him with a pin. Again, naturally, she declines, , and orders a servant to do it, but killing babies is generally not a pleasurable business, so she took him to a mountaintop to die from exposure. A shepherd rescued him and named him Oedipus which means "swollen feet", probably because they'd been tied since the moment he was born, and takes him to Corinth, where he is raised by King Polybus as his own, for he had no son.

As a young man, Oedipus hears that he's not biologically the son of Polybus and asks the Pythia, Oracle of Delphi, who his parents were. She ignores the question and said that he is doomed to shed the blood of his sire and mate with his mother, so the man, horrified, flees Corinth to avoid this horrible fate, and goes to Thebes to avoid the horrible fate that the oracle foretold.

On the road to Thebes, he runs into Laius, and they argue about whose chariot has right-of-way. The King strikes Oedipus with his scepter, and he responded by throwing him off the chariot, thus killing him. He then runs into the sphynx who asks him a riddle, and answers it, so the creature throws herself off the cliff and as a reward for ridding the city of its curse he gets the kingship and the hand of the widow Jocasta. The prophecy is thus fulfilled.

This is, as those of you who read it probably know, not the story itself but the background. In itself, the story begins as a plague on the city of Thebes, which is said to be caused because the man who murdered Laius had not been caught. This leads Oedipus to ask Tiresias, the blind prophet, for help, and he claims to know the answer but tells his king to cease his search. Of course, the refusal drove Oedipus angry and he accused the prophet to be implicitly responsible, so in his outrage, Tiresias responded that he himself is the criminal he seeks, and as the king mocked his lack of sight, the prophet said the same of his king, and when the murderer is caught, it will be seen that he is a native citizen of Thebes, brother and father to his children, son and husband to his mother.

Then Creon, his brother-in-law, is brought forth to be sentenced to death, but the chorus persuades Oedipus to let him live and Jocasta comforts him, mentioning a prophecy that never came true for her, because it was not their son but some stranger who killed Laius in a crossroads. This, of course, lights up the proverbial lightbulb over the king's head and he calls for the only surviving witness of the attack, and then he tells his wife the story. They still have hope because it was said that his father had been killed by several bandits.

A messenger then arrives from Corinth saying that his father had died. This delights him because it means that he could never accomplish the first half of the prophecy, but the messenger tells him to rest easy because Merope is not his biological mother. This messenger used to be a shepherd, in fact, and had received a baby who Polybus adopted, and the chorus says that he is the same shepherd who witnessed the murder of King Laius. Jocasta begs her son to stop asking questions and runs into the palace. Thus, Oedipus asks the messenger to tell him the story, and so he does. A servant comes to say that Jocasta hung herself, and her son proceeds to remove the long pins that held her dress together and plunge them into his eyes in despair. Now blind, he begs for exile and asks Creonte to watch over his daughters, Antigone and Ismene. Then the chorus says what was known in Ancient Greece, that no man is to be considered fortunate until he is dead.

What can we learn from this?

I'm not exactly a fatalist, in fact, I believe that absolutely nothing is written in stone and you can only trust in what you're living in this moment, for nothing is certain. That being said, there are many problems which you can try to avoid with all the effort you can muster, and they'll happen anyways. These are called self-fulfilling prophecies and Oedipus Rex is one of the most ancient examples you could probably think of. 

You wake up, feeling like crap and knowing it's going to be a bad day. Everyone's in a bad mood and nothing good happens. 

You run a basketball team and you expect freshmen to be worse at playing, so you put them in less. When they do get to play, they suck, and your expectation is fulfilled. 

You see a girl you like, and your friend convinces you that he knows her and you're totally her type. You expect a good result, and when you go and talk to her, it turns out that she's being friendly and probably attracted to you. 

You're a professor and expect a student to do well, so you help him prepare better. It goes well for him.

This is also known as the Pygmalion effect, and the way to avoid it is pretty simple. Reconsider your expectations. The problem with the protagonists in Greek tragedies was the fact that they pretty much listened to their oracles without question; had Oedipus not tried to flee his destiny, he would've never fulfilled it in the first place, and had his father never sent him away, he probably could've cultivated and nurtured a loving boy. Of course, it's a story meant to be tragic, so there's going to be a bit of fluff in there with coincidences that would never (or hopefully extremely rarely) happen in real life, but if you see things turning out just as you expected them to, maybe it's time to reconsider what you think and what you do. 

Read Oedipus Rex here:

http://abs.kafkas.edu.tr/upload/225/Oedipus_the_King_Full_Text.pdf

Lessons From: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

How Huxley showed that excess can cripple society

Aldous Huxley is one of the most intelligent authors the world has ever seen, and his ability to predict the way society and government would function in the future was pretty impressive. In Brave New World, society is completely post-scarcity and is controlled not by authoritarian repression, but by their own hedonistic desires which can be so easily manipulated.

"Every one belongs to every one else" was the society's motto, in which individuals were nothing more than a cog in the machine, genetically engineered to fit a specific function. Bokanovsky's process was used in order to ensure that embryos would eventually grow to be Gammas, Deltas, or Epsilons, by carefully administering alcohol and produce, which gave humans capable of work but not of independent thought, while Alphas and Betas are left to develop and socially interact with each other, but never the Gammas, Deltas or Epsilons for doing so would be social suicide.

Freedom to question the government or society itself is drowned through one of various methods. The first is consumption and commodification. When people love the material, they'll work to maintain it and have more, so they live their lives working without really giving much thought to what they're doing. Otherwise, they can blur the line between love and recreational sex with "Orgy-Porgy", for acknowledging an individual identity as one you cherish can put the stability in uniformity disbalanced. In this society you have the moral imperative to have sex with anyone who asks it of you. If that doesn't work, you can always take soma, a drug that works for practically anything, be it grief, pain, stress, boredom, disappointment, and you can even take a soma-holiday. With this drug, you aren't aware of your degradation, nor are you of individuality itself.

Nowadays, it's clear that his prediction is closer to the truth than what Orwell, his student, believed would happen. Of course, we're not at the stage where people are being genetically engineered for specific roles, nor the whole sexual freedom/responsibility deal, but there are worrying aspects like the extreme consumerism, inversion of public and private lives, for example with Facebook and Instagram, things that were only your business are suddenly known by everybody, and in the book, whatever happens in private might as well not have happened, in real life we seem to get closer to this every day (pic or it didn't happen), and with Facebook being able to read your private messages, as well as Twitter showing your thoughts to the world, which aren't kept private by people most of the time anyways, you have to wonder when it is that a social network's benefits will be outweight by the disadvantages that having your life broadcast will bring. At least in Mexico, people feared that they'd be kidnapped because of would-be criminals targeting through social media, and that's just one of probably many examples.

What frightens me most is the lack of critical thinking in the book, which I'm starting to see in real life, and it goes beyond "X politician is good and Y politician is bad". Tell someone to explain why they believe what they believe, and most of the times they won't be able to tell you why without falling into various fallacies or going on irrelevant tangents that have nothing to do with the idea that they should explain. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is an example of people telling you what you should think instead of you deciding for yourself.  That's pretty creepy, if you ask me, people can't even keep up with the narrative the media's pushing and you can even tell that Colbert's pretty damn nervous about it.

What can we learn from this?

As an individual it's pretty complicated to change a society's course, but people must resist power grabs whenever they can, otherwise, you'll get to the point where it's pretty much impossible to do anything without suffering consequences, or worse, not realize you're suffering them. In the book, when one character asked another to speak in private, she laughed at the idea because she didn't even have a conception of privacy. It's our responsibility to avoid reaching this point.

This also goes to show that hedonism isn't necessary the best course for an individual. If you're always keeping your mind busy with things that don't necessarily require your attention, you eventually reach a point of contentment and then lose any reason to actually improve yourself or your life. Always strive to be better, and always question yourself and everyone around you, otherwise, you might as well take the reigns of your life and hand them over to the government or a corporation.

Read more on Brave New World here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/nov/17/classics.margaretatwood

Lessons From: J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

How to resolve your inner struggles in life's hardships

Most people have either read the books or seen the movies, or at least heard of them if they haven't had the pleasure. Lord of the Rings is extremely influential and most fantasy either tries to imitate, or differentiate itself, from LOTR. For the sake of the message, we'll also be looking at parts from The Hobbit. I'll avoid spoilers and keep it simple.

A lot of people tend to complain about the simplistic good vs. evil take on morality that the series takes, either with Smaug or Sauron, who only seem to exist as a nuisance or threat to the world. You have humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits, and a few other creatures coexisting, but they cannot do so with orcs, goblins, and a few other foul creatures which roam Middle-earth.

Friendliness and fellowship is one of the most obvious topics Tolkien touched upon, but the way it plays into the story is very neat. Generally, whenever a character or species accepted another, like Bilbo the dwarves or the elves a dwarf in particular, something good arose. Whenever a character got greedy, it would either lead to a rupture in the group and greater difficulty, or in some cases even death. It's probably no mistake that fellowship is often set in conflict with the ring itself, probably as a way to contrast what truly matters with material value itself. This also leads to the value of being a good host. Tolkien's religious values probably had a lot to do with this, what with Christians generally proclaiming generosity as one of their values, and you can see this a lot of times, what with Bilbo throwing the banquet for the dwarves despite not even knowing them, the elves taking care of their prisoners and guests as if they were one of their own, or even a half-man half-beast who took care of Bilbo and company, and even a damn weird wizard-god who's probably as old as the world itself who gave the hobbits a nice surge of morale for the world ahead.

The value of courage, which has been explored in Plato's Virtues, is a recurring theme in the story. It's not just about a halfling finding the courage to take the ring into the heart of his enemy's empire, all while under the influence of dark magic that weakens him, but about men fighting temptation, rushing to each other's aid when needed despite the danger that they put themselves through, and even making friends with a member of another species which has been loathed by and loathed yours for practically the entirety of their existence. Practically the only woman character is one of the most courageous of them all, and it's pretty nice to be able to see this virtue in the most of the heroes. This leads to what's probably the most important value in LOTR: Hope. No matter how dire the situation the heroes were in, they always had to find a light inside their soul, or in the real world for that matter, which would pull them out. Even if they seemed ot run out of courage to rely on, it was hope that kept them going.

How can we apply this? 

These tend to be a little more abstract when it comes to using them. After all, you can't just tell someone to "be more courageous" and expect them to actually face their fears just like that, and you probably can't tell the greedy man to at least lighten up on his pursuit of wealth in lieu of companionship. You also can't exactly expect the world to be in black and white, especially when it comes to morality. 

The best thing I can say is probably to keep hoping. Generally when you feel that you can't keep going on in whatever it is you're doing, you have to remember that it gets better and you can generally have a network of people supporting you during your endeavor. I know it sounds generic but usually when you remember that, you can deal with the "how".

Read more about Lord of the Rings here:
http://lotrproject.com/statistics/books/

Lessons From: Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness

How Ayn Rand viewed the necessity of freedom

Ayn Rand is an inflammatory figure and is frequently brought up in politics either by ultra-conservative Republicans who didn't get the point (or even read her books), libertarians who did, and libertarians who didn't, as an example of why their ideology is the one that works. At the same time, she's brought up by liberals who've never read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, as an example of why the others are not that bright if they believe that her philosophy is sound or that her writing is good. It's a hit and miss, for sure, but there are a lot of lessons you can get from her. If you know about Bioshock's background, then you know that the storyline of Rapture is based off Atlas and shows the danger of taking it too far.

The interesting thing about Rand is that she's practically a refugee that fled to the United States from the Soviet dictatorship. This means that if you want an example of somebody who's seen the horrors of communism, Marxist thought and postmodernist thought, there you have it, and having seen such a flawed reality of the communist ideology, she practically had no choice but to resent it, and thus was a pretty stern individualist.

Her Virtue of Selfishness is a collection of essays which explained her philosophy, Objectivism. This philosophy consists of reality's existence in spite of consciousness. In other words, she takes the age-old question of whether a tree really falls in the woods if there's no one around to see or hear it, and she pretty much takes a dump over it because regardless of anybody being there, the tree will fall because it's happening.

Objectivism also goes into morality, explicitly stating that man's moral purpose is to pursue his own happiness and the only socioeconomic system that will allow this is laissez-faire capitalism. This is why a lot of libertarians identify with Ayn Rand, they want a system as close to a truly free market as possible with minimal government intervention, in order to not have their individual rights threatened by any institution. This means that you can produce what you want, sell it to whomever you want, with whatever standards you have. As a customer, this also allows you the freedom of choice, and this seems to be threatened on both sides because the freedom of choice implies the freedom of discrimination, of having standards. The same way you can't just up and open a bar without getting a license to sell liquor in developed countries, you aren't really free to choose your religion in places like Egypt, where you can legally convert to Islam but not to any other religion.

Then, we have to wonder, what does Rand mean when she talks about selfishness? It's usually a derogatory term, after all, and one who praises the selfish is usually pretty egotistical himself. Thus, the term must be understood as "concern for your own interests", and when this is held back from the individual, it is when evil is manifested. If you're wondering whether this means one is not capable of loving another, then you have to realize it's not like that either. Ayn Rand was married to a designer who tried becoming an artist, who was living off royalties from his past works, and when asked whether she would need to help him stay on his feet were money to stop flowing into his pockets, she replied that not really, because she'd be doing it out of her love for him and it would give her immense pleasure that would be self-gratifying for herself.

To take an example from her fiction, in Atlas Shrugged the producers are burdened with the weight of the world on their shoulders, not only with taxes and regulations but the demand that all must be shared, after all, it is man that holds his brother up. Her heroes reject this because they refuse to live for another, only for themselves, and so they leave everything behind and create their own society in which everybody is equal and free, and nobody is obligated to live for another. It's a very utopic vision, for sure, but there is an interesting lesson to be learned about society's entitlement and resentment towards those who actively look out for their own interests. This is not to say that they wouldn't be fair or even charitable. Some of these men actively improved humanity with their inventions, innovations, discoveries, what have you, and there's even a banker who refused to loan money to people who wouldn't be capable of paying it back, which, if I may remind you, was a big factor of the 2008 crisis in the first place.

What can we learn from this? 

Objectivism is pretty simple to apply if you can understand that altruism is definitely a virtue you can have, but you can never place your love of another over the love of self, that is what cripples individuals and in the long run cripples societies. You may ask how it is that Bill Gates can dedicate most of his wealth to charity, then, and to that the answer is that he's pretty much covered, as well as his family, and they have more than enough money to last themselves a few generations, even with all they have donated. 

It's a pretty Aristotelic way to view the world, for sure, centering yourself in what's reality instead of the interpretation of what it should be, and acting according to that, and if you want to lead an existence that is both moral and practical, you wouldn't regret checking her philosophy out. I'd suggest reading Anthem, though, instead of Atlas or The Fountainhead. It's a pretty quick read and has most of her ideas. 

You can read Anthem here:

https://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/anthem/complete.html

Lessons From: George Orwell's Animal Farm

Orwell's rendition of the working class and how to make yourself essential

Shoutout to my cousin Daniel for suggesting this topic.

If you've been to a British or American high school chances are you've read Animal Farm and saw the obvious allegory regarding the rise of Leninism in the early Soviet Union, and all the problems that communism can generate, and to be frank, they really are many. Through different animals establishing this economic political system and their interactions, you get to see the nuances of communism and what were the fears of western intellectuals who were against the Bolshevik movement. 

If you know how the story goes in real life, then you can pretty much work out how it goes in the book. Regardless, I'll do my best to avoid spoiling the story, but some of it will be mentioned because we will look at Boxer's life and learn from his mistakes. One important aspect in the system that the animals established, though, was this: 

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Boxer is probably the most sympathetic character in the novella because of his personality. He's loyal, dedicated, and being a horse is very well-suited to taking on big and heavy assignments that the other animals couldn't handle. This meant that he had a great skill to produce and little need besides a place to rest and nourishment. He could protect himself, and he didn't mind the grind. 

His biggest issue was his naivety. Now, this is generally discussed as one of the biggest themes in the story for all the animals were "deceived" in some way or another, but Boxer's case was particularly heinous. In the new system working for the animals, he was exploited by the others, but he never saw it and always told himself he would work harder. He eventually collapses from exhaustion and is taken to a glue factory to be melted. 

What can we learn from this?

Although the character is another factor to the whole critique on communism, that's not what this post is about. If you're working yourself to death in real life, just as the poor horse did it until his lung collapsed, and you're a one trick pony, you're doing it wrong and will eventually become obsolete and be disposed of without any real acknowledgement of your effort. 

That's not to say hard work isn't good, on the contrary, it's pretty important that you make a strong effort in whatever you do. There's a book that is pretty well-known in the self-help communities called The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It basically tells you 48 different maxims that will help you with certain dynamics in your life, and it can help you in other areas beyond acquisition of power. Illacertus has a great series of videos on this book in case you don't have the chance to read it. Boxer could have done well to learn Law 11: Learn to keep people dependent on you. 

You may ask how if Boxer's whole schtick was working hard than other animals. It's pretty simple. He was twice as strong as any other horse and could have basically kept some of his energy to himself to avoid exhaustion in the long run, which would have allowed him some time to recover and actually be able to work better, and maybe even teach some other horses how to be as strong as he was once he could no longer do that. Instead, he gave his life because he felt he had to do more and more. 

Don't work hard. Work smart. 

Lessons From: Ray Bradbury

The story of Ray Bradbury and his interpretation of Fahrenheit 451

Published in 1953, and one of, if not the best work that Bradbury has ever published, Fahrenheit 451 is by this point considered one of the classics in Western canon. It's a dystopian novel about a society in which books are burned by "firemen", and its explanation for the title is: "Fahrenheit 451  - the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns..."

People like to interpret what they watch and read, especially academics, and many say that the book is about censorship because reading books is forbidden and back in Bradbury's day, it was a more common way to push down on dissenting ideas, either in the infamous Nazi book burnings or the Stalinist campaigns in political supression, and the author himself in a radio interview stated that some of it was influenced by his fears in the McCarthy era of witch hunts and whatnot. 

Of course, it never was quite about censorship at all. 

I won't spoil major plot points but I will mention a few situations and characters that are in the novel. Guy Montag's wife, Millie, is addicted to sleeping pills spends the day watching soap operas in the "walls" which were actually flat televisions, and despite Guy's best efforts she spent her days absorbed in a world away from reality. Her friends constantly brag about ignoring life's issues and think children just exist to ruin lives. All in all they are the display of a hedonistic society. 

Captain Beatty, Montag's boss, has actually read books and come to hate them because of the unpleasant contents. Faber is an english professor who regrets not doing anything when the first movements to ban books began. It is clear while one goes through the book, though, that the process did not begin from the government. 

As Beatty said, the hatred of books was a bottom-up thing, meaning that the people themselves were those who asked for the censorship. Media consumption tends to be shallow when it's just for entertainment, and as attention spans become shorter, and content which requires critical thinking skills to understand becomes unpalateable for most people, you will see jealousy turn to hatred against those who still cultivate the skills to understand complex information, just as those "body positivity" movements tend to shame people who have cultivated skill and kept their discipline long enough to have good bodies. 

So it goes in the plot. The burnings weren't issued by the government just because, they were issued by the government because they were giving people exactly what they want. Bradbury felt that in forty, fifty, sixty years, the reality he presented in the book would come to pass in real life, and to be fair, it does appear to be happening. The author was scared once because he was walking in Beverly Hills, and saw a woman with a miniature radio and a "cone" plugged into her right ear, oblivious to her dog and her husband. 

It may be far from a dystopian image for some of us, especially those who are pretty used to technology and grew up with either the birth of the internet or its refinement, but back in the day, it was pretty hard to imagine that you could be in the same room with ten different people and all of you would be living a completely different reality from each other, without any interaction or even acknowledgement of each other's existence. I won't say Ray Bradbury was a prophet, but he was one of the first to see the dangers of technology in a more realistic way regarding the psychosocial implications it could have on people. 

Generally when talking about a story that's been transcribed from a book to a movie, or a radio show, or a play, we refer to the original source as Word of God, and in a book's case, Word of God is always what the author says about it. Sure, your philosophy teacher might think that Friedrich Nietzsche was a nihilist and your English teacher might have told you that Kerouac's On the Road was about the glorification of the Beat Generation, when really Nietzsche felt that nihilism would be humanity's doom and Kerouac thought beatniks were a bunch of losers. 

Knowing about Word of God, you can't help but laugh about knowing that Bradbury gave a lecture about Fahrenheit at a college once, and was interrupted by a student who shouted that, no, it's not about mass media dumbing people down, but about censorship. You can imagine he was livid, and he tried to correct the kid. After all, he wrote the damn book, so he should have a say about what it means, but then the rest of the group agreed with the other guy and he vowed never to give a lecture about his book again. 

What can we learn from this?

This is a way to show the futility of interpretation. Generally, if you take a literature course, you will either see a teacher that tells you the obvious meanings behind a story either by taking every theme in the book and going through them one by one, or your teacher will try to derive a psychoanalytic thesis because the narrator mentioned a spot on the wall. Sure, you can imagine a corpse is the representation of the fear of death that we all carry with us, and sometimes it just means there's a corpse in there, but it's just as accurate as Freud pointing out that everything was sexual in one way or another.

This isn't dissing on works where it's up to the consumer to interpret the meaning. Some things are just meant to be ambiguous, like Blade Runner, if you're talking about the theatrical version. If it makes you feel better that Harrison Ford is a replicant, or human, then kudos to you. But then you have situations like that picture where two people are watching what could be a six or a nine, like a way to justify that some things can be interpreted, ignoring the fact that somebody had to draw the number on the floor looking at it a certain way. Sure, discussing themes can be fun and all, but if you're telling the author of the subject matter that you know more than he does about it, then take a look in the mirror and see who's doing it wrong.

More on Bradbury's college fiasco here:
http://www.factfiend.com/ray-bradbury-told-interpretation-book-wrong/

Lessons From: Sun Tzu's Art of War

From Sun Tzu himself: Three main ideas that will help you win every battle in your life

War. What is it good for? Showing off your strength, that's what. 

All jokes aside, the Art of War is an excellent book that you need to read at least once in your life in order to find your inner strength and take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way. Because not everybody has the time to read, I'll help you understand it so you can apply the knowledge in the meantime. This knowledge is not only good for war, and I would prefer you don't use it for that if you can avoid it, but when it comes to business strategy, politics, and gossip at the office's water cooler, you will always come out on top. 

There are three main ideas in Art of War, which are position, expansion, and situations. They do not necessarily come in that order because the book is written in a circular fashion, but we will explore these ideas in that order. 

Position

Sun Tzu says: All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

In a related note, he also says: If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

There's an old motto that talks about selling a product: Position, position, position. In many ways, it is the key to success. In Taoist philosophy, nature has a five-point cycle of creation and destruction, where each point creates the next, just as in war, are five main elements to position: 

1. Ground
2. Climate
3. Mission
4. Command
5. Methods

From the ground is created climate, for each area has its own pattern of behavior. From the climate, is born the mission, for there is change and with change come objectives. From mission comes command, for a leader needs people to follow his objectives. From command come methods, for these are borne from the decisions of leaders. 

If you try to apply game theory to real life, you will soon find out that there is a lot of information missing. Not every game is as simple as the Prisoner's Dilemma, wherein two criminals involved and arrested for a crime know the consequences of confessing or denying their crime, but if you were one of the prisoners, then you would be missing information yourself for not knowing what the other one's decision would be. In real life, you don't even get to know every rule of the game. Information is valuable in situations where it is scarce, and you must be making sure that you're working with objective information. What is reality and what you percieve as reality can be two very different things. 

Competition has an economic nature, in the sense that winning must be worth it, so efforts or cost must be limited. You don't send the best squadron in the Mexican army just to capture a measly place like the Alamo, and you don't spend a million dollars if your revenue will be less. This means that efficiency is the way to go when it comes to conflict, and you always need to do a cost-benefit analysis to make sure that winning is worth it and not just a way to inflate your ego. 

Sun Tzu says: Where the army is, prices are high; when prices rise the wealth of the people is exhausted.

Sun Tzu also talks about using spies. Although you can maybe hire a private eye, most of the time you don't have to take it so literally. Information is key. He says that there are five sorts of spies: 

1. Local spies - People who live there
2. Inward spies - People who work with the enemy
3. Converted spies - People who worked for the enemy but are now working for you
4. Doomed spies - People who do things openly to decieve the enemy
5. Surviving spies - People who bring information from the enemy's camp

Every one of these will have to be managed in a different manner, but you must always make sure you get along with your sources of information, after all, information is key. 

Expansion

This deals with advancing your position. What is the nature of strength? In order to survive, you must advance your current position. Defense is cheaper in the short term, but in the long term, change is what defeats entrenchment, just as a river erodes stone. 

Sun Tzu says: It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.

How do you get into a competent position? Recognize that as man cannot play god, you cannot alter the environment in order to create opportunities. Instead, observe, and find your opportunity to advance. There is an energy behind humanity, and that is imagination, which is infinite. This makes competitive environments unpredictable, for the possibilities are infinite, but by itself, imagination can do nothing. When imagination comes together with reality, or in our case, actual knowledge that we can apply, we have what Sun Tzu called force. Applying this force is what will get you into a competent position. 

Sun Tzu says: It is the rule in war, if ten times the enemy's strength, surround them; if five times, attack them; if double, be able to divide them; if equal, engage them; if fewer, defend against them; if weaker, be able to avoid them.

What is behind change? When you open a window in a spaceship, air flows outward to fill the void (and probably your internal organs). This is how opportunity works as well; need is a form of emptiness, and production is fullness, and when you can put yourself into the flow you find opportunity, but be careful about forcing opportunities, for, direct conflict is dangerous and costly, and creativity can help you avoid dire circumstances. Should you come to direct conflict, then you must tip the balance in your favor by knowing yourself and knowing your enemies. 

Sun Tzu says: For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.

Situations

Just as every place has its pattern, every situation you find yourself in will be different and you will be forced to adapt. Despite this, there will be certain elements you will find in common in some situations, and here is where your creativity will help you excel and win every single battle, and if you've been paying attention, you'll do it before there even is a battle. 

The marching army is the first of these situations. You must fly over mountains and stick around in the valleys, and you mustn't fight uphill battles, or your expense will be extraordinary. If you cross a river, go ahead so your enemy crosses it, and fight when half the army has reached the ground, for the other half will not have the time to gather its bearings. Although you will rarely use geography for warfare, adapting to a change has its own geography and you need to understand the advantages that knowing the landscape bring. 

Sun Tzu says: And therefore those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him.

The general mentions different terrains in warfare, but these can be separated into early, middle, and late-stage terrains, and they go from easier to harder to access. 

In the easily accesible terrains, you must always arrive first and be uphill. Discover a genre, invent a new product, be the first to cast the stone. If the ground can be abandoned, but be difficult to recapture, you must defeat your enemy when he is unprepared. If the enemy is prepared, ignore it, for you will not be able to return. 

Sun Tzu says: Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions.

You then have situations where he who makes the first move will end up losing in the long run. If you make the first move in chopsticks, the second player can always make you lose if he knows what he's doing. Your enemy will try to bait you, but resist and retreat, and when your enemy thus advances, get him while he's unprepared. Narrow passes are on a similar level. If you can get control of one, heavily reinforce it and wait for the enemy. If your enemy is already there, observe if it is heavily fortified or not, and if it is not, attack with all your might so you may occupy and defend it. 

If the ground has a steep rise, go to the highest point, the advantageous position, and if your enemy is already there you must retreat and put a bait. In a personal situation this can be the moral high ground, in a business situation this can be the preference of your boss or business partner. 

If you're far away from your enemy, be aware of his strength. If the enemy is as strong as you are, abstain from chasing him, and make him come to you with bait or impatience, which will tire him out. Otherwise, do not fight, for a direct conflict in even terrain with an equal is very costly. 

Sometimes, absolute destruction of your opponent is the only way to proceed. This is known as attacking with fire, and there are five ways to go about it. 

1. Burning soldiers in their own camp. Sure, in real life, you can't just go to your rival's house while he's sleeping with a container full of kerosene and a couple of matches, but you can catch your enemies off-guard in their own terrains every once in a while. This is the theoretical equivalent of opening a Walmart in a small town. 
2. Burn stores. Just as Julius Caesar wrote a book about burning fields of corn and made it his guideline on winning the Gaelic Wars, you must make sure your enemy does not have any incoming streams of resources in order to win. 
3. Burn baggage trains. Cut the outflow. 
4. Burn arsenals and magazines. If you make your enemy's stash of resources worthless in some manner, then you will win in the short and long term. 
5. Hurl dropping fire amongst the enemy. In war you set your arrows on fire and shoot your enemy camps. In business you prove your rival's product is inferior to yours and drive his sales down. In academics you sneer at your intellectual enemy and make sure the inner circle disapproves of his theories. This one is the most direct, but it must be done carefully, for dripping fire can drip on you as well. 

If you treat the whole book as a metaphor of sorts, then you will see that all it takes to winning is making sure you know everything and putting yourself in the perfect position. If you can avoid conflict and win your battles before they even begin, you will avoid many troubles which can be costly and even win the heart of the enemy while you're at it. 

Sun Tzu says: The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.

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