Large Fierce Mammal

When “Pure” scientific research results in a body of documented work that lacks any immediate real world application in the form of a problem to be solved, it can enter the realm of knowledge that, for all intents and purposes, does not exist. With the passing of time it gathers dust and, unless later unearthed and rediscovered, may be absent from the ken of men in an hour of need. As such, it represents work that might as well never have been done. A waste of effort no matter how valuable it might have turned out to be if only someone still living even knew about it.

In his Book of Five Rings, 17th century Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi presented his school of strategy in five parts or books, the last of which he called “The Book of No-Thing”. In this book he makes exactly the assertion I’m talking about. As translated by Stephen F. Kaufman in what is to my mind the only interpretation of the Book of Five Rings worth reading, Musashi’s assertion is this:

“If you know something, you know something. If you do not know something, it does not exist in your world.”

Some may view this as simplistic and even obvious, but looking around I would posit that it represents in and of itself the very sort of no-thing it describes. Specifically, this piece of fundamentally vital understanding is seen as so obvious that it rarely gets applied and so, for most of the world, might as well not exist.

Let’s read that again: “If you do not know something, it does not exist in your world.” This is at the very heart of all personal development and achievement! It’s why we have the phrase, “If I knew then what I know now.”

In 1866, a book was published titled Readings for Young Men, Merchants, and Men of Business. Fortunately for the world, this tome has been unearthed and scanned by Google bringing it back just in time to prove my point.

This is a world of excuses where everybody needs to have one foot over the safety line and nobody can imagine any reason for ever working without a net. Achievers are looked on not so much as people to be celebrated as they are held in suspicion of rudely flaunting their gifts just to make the less motivated or adept feel bad about themselves. People aren’t responsible for what happens in their lives because it’s always someone else’s fault, and a person’s actions, no matter how vile and base, are reduced to unfortunate manifestations of some “syndrome” or “disorder”. The evil that men do has been supplanted by the sicknesses men have, and the unfortunate outcomes of bad choices cannot be spoken aloud lest one be adjudged a blamer of “victims”.

So now, back from the void, comes this, on the subject of “ENERGETIC MEN”:

We love upright, energetic men. Pull them this way, and then that way, and the other, and they only bend, but never break. Trip them down, and in a trice they are on their feet. Bury them in the mud, and in an hour they will be out and bright. They are not ever yawning away existence, or walking about the world as if they had come into it with only half their soul; you cannot keep them down; you cannot destroy them. But for these the world would soon degenerate. They are the salt of the earth. Who but they start any noble project? They build our cities and rear our manufactories; they whiten the ocean with their sails, and they blacken the heavens with the smoke of their steam-vessels and furnace fires; they draw treasures from the mine; they plow the earth. Blessings on them! Look to them, young men, and take courage; imitate their example; catch the spirit of their energy and enterprise, and you will deserve, and no doubt command, success.

Bring this forward out of the day when men were thought to be doing most of the moving and shaking, look at the references to blackening the heavens and mining the earth as being what they actually represent; metaphors for the actions of people who will commit themselves passionately to a worthy enterprise, even in the face of ridicule, injury, death, financial ruin, or even, Gods forbid, getting dirty.

I’m warnin’ the lot o’ ya, don’t lose sight of this again!