A habit of attentive clarity

From Walter Russell Mead in his essay, Sun Tzu: The Enemy of the Bureaucratic Mind.

The Art of War is a handbook for living in an uncertain and dangerous world. It is dominated by paradox: training is necessary to produce a good general, but any general who comes to trust the rules he has learned is headed for defeat. The successful general will have studied The Art of War so profoundly that he ceases to trust it.

I was not reaching for hyperbole when I wrote that this is a book that wants to slap its readers in the face. Like a Zen monk trying to astonish and trick the novice into a moment of enlightenment, Sun Tzu seeks to surprise, to shock and ultimately to awaken his readers. He is not teaching a body of doctrine but a habit of mind: a habit of attentive clarity out of which can come true judgment and decisive action.