On Sun Tsu

I am writing in response to Mr. Sumarsono Sastrowardoyo's letter in your paper on Oct. 17 on "Sun Tsu's Art of War".

I read this letter with much surprise as he, in his letter of Oct. 9, had just suggested that we learn from American friends about debating and democracy and now conversely he has proposed we learn from Sun Tsu's Art of War. Mr. Sumarsono, debating, democracy and war are very much opposing matters.

Sun Tsu's ideas on war were distilled from various and numerous military encounters among the prince-kingdoms after the breakdown and disintegration of the Chou dynasty, which resulted in a state of anarchy, lawlessness and wars.

Mr. Sumarsono, let us move on and not dwell on this state or period of anarchy, lawlessness, disorder, battles and wars. Instead of retreating to learn the art of war, we can move on to a much more enlightened period after Sun Tsu, that of Confucius (551 BC to 479 BC).

Instead of teaching the art of war, he advocated horizontal and hierarchical social harmony and orderliness by means of personal virtuous deeds and rule through meritocracy by example on the part of government.

One of the famous sayings is (Analects XII,2) "... do not do to others what you do not wish yourself..." This can be simply and practically explained and interpreted as follows, "Do not rape woman, because our grandmothers, mother, wife or girlfriend and daughters are women too and we are all born from women's wombs too."

Beyond practical matters, he has such universal categorical imperatives to offer as human heartedness (jen) and righteousness (Yi). He classified people socially into four categories hierarchically, namely, literati, farmers, artisans and merchants. Merchants are the lowest in social rank because the merchants understood li (profit) and forgot Yi (righteousness).

Soldiers also did not have a rightful place in Confucian thought and the military was always despised. Traditionally, except for the first founding emperors, the supreme command was always in the hands of bureaucrats, to be exact, in the hands of the literati. Throughout history, China had been weak militarily and at its glorious time during the Sung Dynasty when books were mass produced and the biggest ships were made, its military was at its weakest.

Remember that China was completely conquered twice by foreigners whose population was only one percent of the Chinese Yuan Mongolian and Manchurian Qin dynasties. And usually soldiers were drawn from farmers. We may perhaps speculate to say that the Chinese culturally do not like war.

With regard to the application Sun Tsu's Art of War in business, it is not so relevant anymore as quantity matters less than quality during this era of knowledge economy, unless we want to continue making shoes.

SIA KA MOU

Jakarta