Read in Korean

Explore the Table of Contents

A philosopher poured a handful of beads onto a tray he held. The beads rolled noisily, bumping and tumbling around until they quieted down after a while. Then the philosopher spoke, “the beads rolling around the tray as they please is fate (運命), them stopping abruptly at the edge of the tray is destiny (宿命), and me quietly observing this scene on the tray can be called providence (天命).” This is a slightly modified passage from the Japanese novel ‘Tokugawa Ieyasu’ by Yamaoka Sohachi,” which deals with the life of the first shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu.

We know what we need to be good at to win the game of competition we encounter. In other words, we understand the rules of the game. And we also know what rewards await the winner. However, the reality we will encounter in the future is not even clear in terms of rules. Therefore, I don’t even know what values I should give up to play that game. I don’t even know who I’m competing with, in fact.

Moreover, the competitions we face today are becoming more uncertain and the pace of change is accelerating. In the past, there was a time when becoming a doctor, lawyer, or professor almost guaranteed a certain level of success. But we will never see an era where success is guaranteed again.

230 years ago, Clausewitz, who wrote “On War,” pointed out that three-fourths of war is a series of uncertainties. Our lives today will only add to that. More elements are interconnected in the form of networks, interacting with each other. In a world dominated by such uncertainty, we have no choice. We have to feel our way forward. Fortunately, I hope to enter tournaments that I am good at and enjoy, and I hope the rewards will be quite substantial.

However, this doesn’t mean everything is left to chance. As the saying goes, “One-third of success is due to luck, two-thirds is due to skill.” That’s not a small number. Just by diligently mastering the skills, even if I only score 30 points in the test of life, it’s still something. Then is the rest really just luck? No, we just lump everyone we don’t understand together and call it luck. Therefore, to understand the “one-third of success is due to luck,” it may be necessary to deconstruct and analyze the luck of the “one-third of success.”

Anyway, in war or in real life, we encounter situations different from what we expected because the information given to us is incomplete, and chance constantly intervenes. Clausewitz emphasizes that to fight against these unexpected factors and to win, we need ‘coup d’oeil’ that leads us to the truth in the darkness. ‘Coup d’oeil’ is a French term meaning ‘the power of the glance.’

In short, ‘coup d’oeil’ is closer to what we commonly call animal instinct. People with this kind of instinct can make luck work in their favor. It can be considered as the ability to smell success without any special analysis or logical reasoning. Maja Storch, a German psychologist, even advises, “Play with animal instinct.” When faced with difficult problems in life, relying on emotional intuition rather than rational judgment is more helpful. And in his book “Play with Animal Instinct,” he emphasizes that historical figures and successful entrepreneurs mostly thought and judged with intuition or sensation.

It may not be important how we know this fact. We sometimes experience that my momentary intuition was correct. Animal instinct is another expression of what we call intuition or sensation. Malcolm Gladwell calls this “Blink.” And Blink refers to the thoughts that come up momentarily in new or urgent situations. As he puts it, these thoughts are short but even powerful. You might think you shouldn’t meet someone again when you meet them for the first time. You might make wrong decisions after observing this and that at the end of a golf swing even though you felt the first slope of the green was correct. The first judgment was correct. This is because most of our thoughts happen in our subconscious.

People add a sense called sensation to the five senses that humans have. Here, sensation means the sixth sense, not the sensual feeling. Although scholars in various fields explain this sensation in various ways, it is difficult to consider that humans have another sense organ that they do not know about. Then sensation can be thought of as a sense that integrates the existing five senses. In other words, it’s a unified sense.

The human brain, which has a supercomputer, analyzes all the information coming in through the five senses and makes integrated judgments. That judgment can be conscious or simply a feeling. It’s like feeling “the enemy is targeting us”.

We receive enormous information every moment. We can feel the sound of the wind blowing, the feeling of the wind brushing against our legs, and the smell that comes with the wind, the sight of the leaves carried by the wind, and the taste of the peppermint candy in our mouth at that moment. If we feel these, we consciously accept this information. However, unconscious information is much more than this. By integrating all this information, we sometimes make rational judgments such as good, bad, depressed, or refreshed, and we also sometimes make decisions such as it’s going to rain. In other words, it’s making a final decision by integrating all the information.

However, even conscious thought must rely on the help of the unconscious. Just as even top officials cannot fulfill all their duties without the help of the information given to them or the assistance of their subordinates, the process of thinking itself can be seen as bringing unconscious information into consciousness. To solve a problem, it is necessary to collect the necessary information, and then consciousness integrates this information to make decisions.

What we analyze and understand can be interpreted with our existing knowledge. When we receive new information, we interpret it with the knowledge we already have, storing it or reconfiguring it with existing information to create new information. In short, what I don’t know becomes information stored in my hard drive as an unintelligible code.

However, what happens when we encounter information that is important but cannot be interpreted consciously? In such cases, we still rely on the unconscious. To interpret this important information, we first extract the most important information from our hard drive and interpret it as new information. Usually, consciousness handles this task, but in urgent situations, we can’t help but rely on the unconscious. Neuroscientists interpret such moments of insight or understanding as intuition. William Duggan, author of “The Seventh Sense: Strategic Intuition,” calls actionable ideas that arise from such intuition “strategic intuition.” Ultimately, strategic intuition, as described by William Duggan, is created by combining existing knowledge and information with new information.

Clausewitz says that strategic insight leading to victory in war consists of four stages: historical examples, cold-bloodedness, flashes of insight, and decisiveness. Historical examples refer to the understanding and memory of various events we already know. Therefore, such knowledge can be acquired through diligent preparation.

Such knowledge accelerates as we learn and work in life. The thick book Napoleon had under his armpit in the movie shows how thoroughly he studied military history. First, it’s about making past knowledge our own. However, we can’t learn everything in reality with this knowledge alone. Reality is continuous and analog, while knowledge is digital. So we read novels or poems. It’s to obtain knowledge that cannot be filled with theory or academia. It’s a saying that says we need fun.

Even so, it may be difficult for us to fill even a part of reality in our minds. It’s not because of lack of storage capacity, but lack of learning time. Ultimately, new knowledge can only be created by ourselves. What is needed at this time is creativity. Then, how can creativity be cultivated? Another opportunity will be needed to discuss this. However, since we started with Clausewitz, let’s look into his method more.

The second step in obtaining the insight Clausewitz talks about is cold-bloodedness. It is about forgetting the past. In other words, it means not thinking the same thoughts as in the past. And we must recall the third step, insight. Insight is about combining selected elements from various past examples in a free mind. It’s about creating a new combination of knowledge modules highlighted in “Knowledge Reconstruction” for a situation.

Therefore, to have true competitiveness in fierce competition, it depends on how we can combine the elements of the competitive environment we face and the knowledge we already have in a new way. The genius described by Clausewitz, the author of “On War,” is someone who can make swift and appropriate decisions in any situation. For Clausewitz, strategic intuition is insight. He defines insight as the ability to quickly grasp the truth that is not visible to ordinary minds or can only be seen after long contemplation and reflection. And he emphasizes that a person with insight, namely the genius he talks about, is created with a spirit that explores freely without being bound by any rules or laws.

Such insight is necessary because reality does not always match what we know and understand. What we can learn in advance is skills and the like. Technical skills, for example, do not allow for exceptions. However, most of the reality we encounter does not move as we think. Therefore, improvisation and fine-tuning are required. That’s when intuition is needed. We call people with such intuition who excel in one-on-one contests having animal instincts.

Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary top swordsman in Japan who never lost in a one-on-one battle, said, “There is no divination for me. I only fight as it goes.” However, this is when you have reached a certain level through long training and study. This is why we learn skills and practice art in the environment of life competition. Because it’s not a path where you can know the answer in advance.