Why should a warrior give a flip about flipping culture? Just blow the flipper’s flipping head off, and his hearts and minds will follow, right? Well, it’s because the flipper’s got more than one flipping head, and they don’t think flipping logical! And, because that’s the flipping way it goes, the first flip you gotta give is what kind of flippers they are. And that’s a fact, Jack.
The cloak and dagger types got an acronym (who doesn’t) they use to flip some flipper around to the other side. It’s called MICE. Not the flipping squeakers rattling around in the walls, but M for Money, I for Ideology, C for Compromise, and E for Ego. In Gordon’s War, MICE is the flip side of a new and improved acronym F4F which isn’t the flipping fighter plane.
The Family in question is also known as (AKA) the primary group which usually maxes out at 150 people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number) . Primary groups are company sized groups. In modern times, an individual can belong to more than one primary group. The more primitive and rural, the customs, mores, behaviors, beliefs, and opinions are more cohesive and inclusive.
F4F includes the four factors of Family: Fate, Face, Fame and Fortune that favor cohesion of the family from flipping to the other side. Like MICE.
M for Money is the same a Fortune in F4F and that is the default motivator for most. Money represents food, shelter, health, and that which keeps the body, and sometimes the soul together.
Any one whose motives are not directed towards the niceties and necessities of life, have motives outside the norm, the middle two thirds of us. One out of six calls the shots for the rest and who cleans up the mess after the other one sixth left creates.
The middle two thirds is flipping arithmetic for one standard deviation plus and minus from the mean … that’s for a two tailed distribution. Pareto’s law says that eighty percent of the shtuff comes from twenty percent of the shtuffers. Either way you flip it, you deal with the minority, not the majority the majority of the time. The flipping few who run things are overly endowed with a concern for their flipping fame, and associated fate and face underlying the fame (and/or fortune).
A warrior’s concern is to know whether the other guy’s family (primary group) is going to fight, flee, or flake out. Once M for Money has been ruled out … or failed, the other guy won’t flip if his sense of Face requires to face us off. This is facilitated by his sense of who or what is his F for Fate is.
The Fate of a leader depends a lot on how his face (reputation, bravery, cowardice, etc) is seen by himself and by his Family. The Fate of a follower is likewise tied to the leader, and the Follower’s sense of his own fate under the leader. Saving Face is a really big face saver, even to the point of an unfortunate Fate.
The Warrior must not assume that the other guy’s F4F is the same is her own. Different strokes, you know. We assumed that Hitler could be dumped by his people if enough cities were blow to shtuff. He killed himself with Germany in ruins about him, and condemning the German people for failing him. Hitler’s face was in his mirror.
We assumed that Shock and Awe and precision munitions would depose Saddam. He died well, unshakable in his personal Fate and Face as President of Iraq. Nasty fellow, though. And many a nasty is about whose sense of Fate, Face, and Fame is on a plane of existence not familiar to many Americans.
It is wrong for a warrior to favor insulting an enemy’s face and the cohesion of his hosts of warriors and sycophants, when enhancing it may serve better. That is the stuff of deception, of ambush, of bait and switch, and the pursuit to ambush so loved by the crafty warrior. A good insult, or a flipping of whatever passes for the bird, taunts, and obscene gestures has insulted many a ferocious warrior to rush to his doom, and those of his or her people.
Prior to battle, part of knowing one’s enemies (and allies) is to know what makes up his/her sense of Fate, Fame, Fortune and Face is prudence, if not absolutely essential. Assumption are the Mother of All F*ups.
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