I visited Saint Gabriel's today with some old friends from said academy. For the most part, it was all somewhat-awkward, but definitely enjoyable, reunions with old teachers, and simple nostalgia from walking the hallways, looking at the art projects and the familiar off-white walls and green stairs. Good times. One of my friends has a mohawk (screw you firefox I am not capitalizing mohawk) now and caused a roadblock in the stairway while everyone was staring at it.
The highlight, though, was seeing Mr. Moseley again. Good lord that guy is awesome. I had actually forgotten how cool he is. I mean, I knew he was just about the coolest guy ever, and one of the best teachers I ever had, but I didn't remember just the pure goodness that he has. People sometimes say I should be a teacher, and usually I kind of feel disquieted by the thought. It's disturbing. But when I met Mr. Moseley again, it kind of made me think that wouldn't be so bad.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Strategy
I've been thinking about politics, and I came up with a metaphor for thinking about political strategy (or, really strategy in general) that I'd like to note down here. I'll outline the thoery first, then give examples in the sport of American football, the art of war, and politics.
The theory: Strategy is about controlling space. The person who will a competition of the sort I am talking about is the person who is better able to exert control over space or to challenge the control of his opponent. First off, space does not necessarily mean physical space. Rather, it represents whatever terrain, real, ideological, or what have you, over which the battle is waged. Generally, the goal of defensive actions is to exert control over a certain area of space and thus limit the operations of the opponent. The goal of offensive actions is to wrest control of whatever areas the enemy controls from them. Generally, there are two sorts of offensive actions: first, actions which attack the strong; second, actions which attack the weak. The first work by battling the enemy on their own terms, essentially by asserting that one's own control of a given space is greater than one's enemies. The second works by asserting control of space not claimed by the oponnent and then using that control to undermine the opponent's control of the space they claim, and thereby make their position untenable or enable an easier assault on their space.
The example, 1: American football. Defense is about limiting space - limiting the space for the back to run, limiting the open field in which to place receivers, either by pretty literally having your players control space in a zone or by having them control the space directly around the players in man coverage. Or both. Offensively, football mostly uses the second sort of strategy. Attacking the strong points is often impossible, unless you are simply much, much better than your opponents. Basically unless you're randy moss. Mostly, offenses work by finding open spots for receivers against the zone, or creating mismatches against the man to man, or by using the run to distort the defense for later in the game.
The example, 2: War. Probably the most obvious, but defenses are essentially meant to control space and to limit the possible options of an enemy. Attacks can either attempt to destroy the enemy's strong points, or can attempt to control weak points - for example, attacking the flank or weak point of a line. Modern warfare does tend to be more about things like logistics and communications that are somewhat outside the scope of this theory - almost metastrategies. I'll talk briefly about those below.
The example, 3: Politics. Defense doesn't work well, but defensive plans revolve around taking some strength of yours and using it to stop whatever plan the other party has. For example, in the 2004 election, Democrats attempted to use Kerry's war experience defensively - to control the ideological space around criticisms of Democrats as weak-willed and anti-military by asserting their own claim over militarity and strength. In this election, on the other hand, McCain is using the POW thing as a serious defensive effort. Not only is he using it to control space about honor and integrity and character, but also about all sorts of things - houses, for example. On the offensive side of things, both strategies are used. The Republicans are particularly adept at attacking strong points - for example, in the Kerry election, they won largely by taking control of the space Kerry had tried to exert control over with the military experience. That was crucial and led directly to Kerry's defeat. The other strategy is much more typical, and involves attacking the opponent where' they're weak - for example, attacking Republicans on economics.
Metastrategies: There's a bunch of metastragies, but I just want to mention a couple. First, resource denial. This only works some places, but essentially it attempts to limit the opponent's access to necessary resources. For example, in football, it might entail intentionally injuring opposing players. In war, it entails destruction of roads or food. In politics, it might entail a battle for the news media. The second: mind games. In football, this might take the form of press and publicity before the game. In war, it would take the form of espionage and counter-espionage - for example, the allied deceit involving the D-Day landing spot in WW2. In politics, an example would be the odd spell of pessimism enveloping the Democrats for the past while.
That is all. Should be one of those stroppy personal posts some of you apparently want above this.
The theory: Strategy is about controlling space. The person who will a competition of the sort I am talking about is the person who is better able to exert control over space or to challenge the control of his opponent. First off, space does not necessarily mean physical space. Rather, it represents whatever terrain, real, ideological, or what have you, over which the battle is waged. Generally, the goal of defensive actions is to exert control over a certain area of space and thus limit the operations of the opponent. The goal of offensive actions is to wrest control of whatever areas the enemy controls from them. Generally, there are two sorts of offensive actions: first, actions which attack the strong; second, actions which attack the weak. The first work by battling the enemy on their own terms, essentially by asserting that one's own control of a given space is greater than one's enemies. The second works by asserting control of space not claimed by the oponnent and then using that control to undermine the opponent's control of the space they claim, and thereby make their position untenable or enable an easier assault on their space.
The example, 1: American football. Defense is about limiting space - limiting the space for the back to run, limiting the open field in which to place receivers, either by pretty literally having your players control space in a zone or by having them control the space directly around the players in man coverage. Or both. Offensively, football mostly uses the second sort of strategy. Attacking the strong points is often impossible, unless you are simply much, much better than your opponents. Basically unless you're randy moss. Mostly, offenses work by finding open spots for receivers against the zone, or creating mismatches against the man to man, or by using the run to distort the defense for later in the game.
The example, 2: War. Probably the most obvious, but defenses are essentially meant to control space and to limit the possible options of an enemy. Attacks can either attempt to destroy the enemy's strong points, or can attempt to control weak points - for example, attacking the flank or weak point of a line. Modern warfare does tend to be more about things like logistics and communications that are somewhat outside the scope of this theory - almost metastrategies. I'll talk briefly about those below.
The example, 3: Politics. Defense doesn't work well, but defensive plans revolve around taking some strength of yours and using it to stop whatever plan the other party has. For example, in the 2004 election, Democrats attempted to use Kerry's war experience defensively - to control the ideological space around criticisms of Democrats as weak-willed and anti-military by asserting their own claim over militarity and strength. In this election, on the other hand, McCain is using the POW thing as a serious defensive effort. Not only is he using it to control space about honor and integrity and character, but also about all sorts of things - houses, for example. On the offensive side of things, both strategies are used. The Republicans are particularly adept at attacking strong points - for example, in the Kerry election, they won largely by taking control of the space Kerry had tried to exert control over with the military experience. That was crucial and led directly to Kerry's defeat. The other strategy is much more typical, and involves attacking the opponent where' they're weak - for example, attacking Republicans on economics.
Metastrategies: There's a bunch of metastragies, but I just want to mention a couple. First, resource denial. This only works some places, but essentially it attempts to limit the opponent's access to necessary resources. For example, in football, it might entail intentionally injuring opposing players. In war, it entails destruction of roads or food. In politics, it might entail a battle for the news media. The second: mind games. In football, this might take the form of press and publicity before the game. In war, it would take the form of espionage and counter-espionage - for example, the allied deceit involving the D-Day landing spot in WW2. In politics, an example would be the odd spell of pessimism enveloping the Democrats for the past while.
That is all. Should be one of those stroppy personal posts some of you apparently want above this.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)