I’m delighted to pass along this message from Caitlin Fitz Gerald, who to my mind (and eye and heart) has achieved her audacious goal of putting Clausewitz into verbal and pictorial language suitable for “bright ten-year-olds” and delightful, as well as hopefully informative, to adults — all this with intelligence, skill and wit..
Caitlin writes:
I know many of you already know this, but I wanted to spread the word that the Kickstarter for the Children’s Illustrated Clausewitz is now live! Thank you so much for all of your support over the years. It really means a lot, and I’m so excited to finally see this project in print thanks to my partnership with Nic Jenzen-Jones at Helios House Press!
If you’re so inclined, I’d love for you to spread the word. The Kickstarter runs through the end of the month.
Love,
Caitlin
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I’m pleased to note that Caitlin and her publisher, Helios House, have raised more than $40,000 on Kickstarter, with an initial goal of $7,500 — I’ve been waiting for Caitlin’s brilliant work to receive the recognition is so clearly deserves.
Act now to obtain the standard edition for a pledge of £25 or more! And pass the word!
On the topic of words, these came up in a discussion on Twitter: fict, fact, fuct — the latter from Ali Minai, for a statement claimed to be factual by Trump — and fiction, faction, faketion — the latter from Cynthia, for a fiction Trump claims is true?
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Strategy:
“Even Frederick II of Prussia, who was in the enviable position of being strategic thinker, supreme decision maker and commander-in-chief in one, could not implement the Strategy of short, sharp wars that he himself thought most desirable.”
That’s from Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present, via PR Beckman posts it..
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Now, how about a couple of ouroboroi?
I hope a school child did this one, not a too-clever adult..
And:
That’s from the film Mississippi Grind. The character cries, “It’s a sign, it’s a sign.”
[ by Charles Cameron — ouroboroi — i’ll take the elephant first, since the cats are frankly vulgar ]
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More vicious circles — serpents biting their tails. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, the serpent biting its tail or ouroboros, is one of humankind’s oldest and most profound patterns.
It appears that cats, and elephants too, can enact it.
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The circle here is a triple one — same transformer which killed child elephant is avenged by child’s mother:
Mother elephant uproots transformer that electrocuted her baby in Andhra – a sad but also a fascinating read. Thankfully the villagers understood the mom’s emotions – for most part the human ego assumes these to be ‘human’ emotions https://t.co/zn2FdxdmFb
[ by Charles Cameron — our advertising and magic series continues — the Volkswagen bug in its many transforms! ]
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In our last magic and commercials post, The magic of miniatures, we saw the power of associating the small with the large. Volkswagen seems toi have taken this idea to new levels, with the assistance of toy manufacturers and the film industry.
Let’s start here:
Okay?
Hey boy, c’here!
Remember Chuang-Tsu? Here’s a fragment in Burton Watson’s translation:
Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn’t know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.
This post is all about the transformation of things, eh?
Okay, who’s dreaming here?
There and back again — the mechanics behind the dream:
[ by Charles Cameron — I wasn’t intending this to be my next post in the commercials and magic series, but here it is, with miniatures and matryoshkas all in a row — and Churchill! ]
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Who knows when it started — Egyptian shabtis were small figurines inscribed with the names of the deceased and buried with them, answering for them during judgment in the Hall of Truth where, for the best afterlife, one’s heart should weigh lighter than a feather on the scales —
(From left) Painted shabti of Ramesses IV. 20th Dynasty; decorated shabti of the Lady of the House, Sati – reportedly from Saqqara. 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III; and, a double shabti of Huy and Ipuy, a father and son pair. 18th Dynasty. Louvre Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Museo Egizio, Turin, Italy. (Photos: Heidi Kontkanen and Margaret Patterson)
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A jar fit for a giant to drink from, one of thousands in the Laotian Plain of Jars:
I was reminded of Egyptian shabtis by an article I saw today about thousand-year-old burial practices in Laos, where the vast Plain of Jars is dotted with thousands of large “jars” so called — some have thought of them as chalices from which giants would drink — used in funerary rites, and the article contained this para:
We’d love to know why these people represented the same jars in which they placed their dead, in miniature to be buried with their dead.
Miniatures!
I suppose we all play with miniatures as children — toy guns, toy sheriff’s badges, dolls and dolls houses — all parents need to ensure their children grow up prepared for adult life! — but after-life may have come first where miniatures are concerned.
In any case, there’s an enormous, likely archetypal pull associated with the large and its small analogs.
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Look at this Myself and Mini-me commercial from National:
The large and the small together are somehow more attractive than just the large alone.
And let’s take this a step further into the realm of magic, as understood by the great anthropologist Sir JG Frazer:
Sympathetic magic, anthropologically speaking, is magic in which you enact in miniature what you want the gods to perform on a larger scale. You urinate — or as Shakespeare more delicately puts it, go to look upon a bush — so the gods will pour down their rain upon you.
That kind of magical thinking — sympathetic magical thinking — is what the boy is instinctively doing in this Farmers rooftop parking commercial, while the Farmers rep thinks it’s gravity that throws a large car way up in the air..
To be honest, my money’s with magic and the boy.
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Farther yet, and we come to the Matryoshka principle, in which Russian dolls are contained (‘nested”) within dolls within dolls:
And now consider this commercial featuring vans nested within vans:
Sir Winston Churchill was playing a brilliant variant on this Matrioshka principle when during a BBC broadcast in October 1939, he said:
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
