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The historical significance of the Opium Wars waged by China and Britain on Chinese territory is by no means insignificant. However, the battles over two phases ultimately ended in China’s humiliating defeat. In terms of science, technology, culture, and wealth, the West was unparalleled by the East. Even if the entire area of Europe were combined, it would still be smaller than the current territory of a single Chinese nation, not to mention that China had a larger population. Until Britain began exporting opium cultivated in India to China after 1820, China had been a country with a trade surplus. Even in the worst competition, which we call war, it is difficult to compare the West with the East. Until the early 1300s, the Mongol army alone swept through Europe, so there may be no need for further debate.

When did such a situation begin to reverse? With the Renaissance of the 1400s, the Age of Discovery and the discovery of the New World in the 1500s, the era of merchants in the 1600s, and the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s, Western science and technology developed dazzlingly, and wealth could be accumulated.

Moreover, in the case of the East, there were almost no full-scale wars, while wars never ceased in Europe. Externally, they fought against Islamic forces wishing for the Turks, and internally, they fought between Catholicism and Protestantism, wars related to territorial disputes between nations, succession wars related to throne succession, and internally, there were numerous large and small wars divided into nobility factions, royal factions, and republican factions. Paradoxically, it is believed that these frequent wars led to the development of weapons and the advancement of science and technology. Experts believe that the balance of power between the East and the West completely reversed after the Thirty Years’ War that took place across the entire European continent.

However, until the Opium Wars, the West had not even considered touching China’s potential, and China was still steeped in arrogance. But with the defeat in the Opium War in 1840, it became clear that China was a paper tiger, and the reversal between the East and the West began to materialize. Afterward, Europe, based on its superior military and economic power, entered into a competition for colonies in Asia and other countries, ultimately leading to two world wars.

I rear a 600,000-strong army within me

To become the top male in the animal kingdom, one must engage in many battles. Even after becoming the victor, one cannot let down their guard. This is because the defeated may challenge again at any time. The defeated also have a goal of survival, so they do not easily give up. If they were to give up, they would have no way of passing on their genes to future generations.

To attack an opponent who has already become strong, the loser must prepare with an attitude of humility. That is the principle of competition we have discussed. In order for the loser to become the winner, they must strive to emulate the winner’s tactics. Both the loser and the winner cannot afford to not prepare for the future. Though they may change slightly by basic conditions, overcoming the “practice beetles” is not easy. Winners are usually those who have prepared for the future.

In this sense, what distinguishes humans from animals is not “social animals,” “emotional animals,” or “tool-using animals,” but “animals that prepare for the future.” While squirrels bury acorns in their territory for the winter and bears eat voraciously to build up body fat before hibernation, they do not intentionally lose competitions or negotiate and contract for cooperation instead of competing, as humans do.

The most effective and efficient way to prepare for the future is through learning. And learning is also the process of paying the price for what needs to be done in the future in advance. However, blindly studying and training is not the best way. If learning is a process of preparing for the future, it should be done in a way that can be useful in the future. What good is knowing a lot if it cannot be used at the moment of execution? Once entering the state of competition, all I can do are well-trained actions. That’s why our 600,000-strong army is still training today, repeating the same actions and tactics for wars that may not occur during their service.

The author of “Successful Intelligence,” Robert J. Sternberg, wants to express competitiveness as a numerical value called the Success Quotient (SQ). The Success Quotient he refers to is the sum of analytical ability, creative ability, and practical ability. Of course, it is not yet a measurable value like IQ. However, what Sternberg wants to emphasize is that the higher the Success Quotient, the higher the probability of winning in competition, and for that, both thinking ability and execution ability are necessary.

Emphasis on execution ability is because, in reality, when competition surfaces and battles begin, there is little time to think about many things. What is needed for victory is only discipline and ruthless execution. Superiority is already determined by who has undergone more training. In that sense, training is about mastering how to control my subconscious.

Throughout our lives, we learn many things. The fastest way to learn is to try it out yourself. Most of human history was spent without writing or books. It’s saying that we learned through experiencing it ourselves. There is nothing as certain as what you directly experience, and it stays in memory for a long time. It’s like multi-media learning, gathering information through the senses of smell, hearing, sight, taste, and touch.

Our thoughts actually miss most information unless we focus. This is because there are limits to what we can consciously perceive. We have coped with this weakness of humans with another ability called the subconscious. Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalyst who introduced the concept of the subconscious, estimated that the subconscious would account for 90% of the entire consciousness. Consciousness is just a tip of the iceberg that corresponds to the entire consciousness of humans.

On the other hand, the author of “Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious,” Timothy Wilson, emphasizes that consciousness is not just the tip of the iceberg but merely the snow piled on top of the iceberg. He suggests that numerically, it may not be significant, but it could be as much as 99% unconsciousness. Indeed, much of our lives rely on the unconscious. Proving the existence of the unconscious is difficult, mainly because it is invisible. However, just because something is invisible doesn’t mean it can’t be proven. As demonstrated in “Reconstruction of Knowledge,” various examples of the existence of the unconscious can be provided. Since the unconscious coexists with consciousness, it is not easy to separate our actions or thoughts into unconscious and conscious. In such cases, one way to prove it is to focus on the results that occur when the unconscious is absent.

Suppose we assume there is no unconsciousness. For someone with only consciousness, life would be extremely busy. Even when playing with friends, they might have to calculate the angles of their body parts and the force needed to throw something. For every tennis swing, they would have to determine the size of the backswing and the angle of the wrist.

There is no doubt that we have unconsciousness. It doesn’t just vaguely exist; it occupies most of our mental activities. Nonetheless, the existence of the unconscious is a blessing. Timothy Wilson emphasizes that “imagining what the world would be like if we only had a conscious mind doesn’t make sense.” To illustrate, let’s compare consciousness and unconsciousness to the organization of a government. Consciousness is like the president and ministers in the executive branch, while the unconscious corresponds to all the lower-level officials, including local government employees. Daily tasks are mainly handled by lower-level officials, while significant national affairs or decisions about the future are dealt with by the president and ministers. Similarly, in our brains, repetitive and mundane functions like perception and language comprehension are handled by the unconscious, while higher-order functions such as reasoning and analysis are done consciously.

However, it doesn’t mean that lower-level officials will handle everything well on their own. They always need training and education. Only well-trained unconsciousness can perform tasks excellently without the help of consciousness. In a sense, competitive habits are formed through training. Training is about making the unconscious work. Not only is doing everything consciously difficult, but in quick execution, the unconscious is more efficient than consciousness.

There is an Indian proverb that says, “Say the same thing a thousand times, and it will come true.” There is also the “10,000-hour rule.” If you repeat something 10,000 times, you can do anything well. This saying is slightly modified into the “10,000-hour rule” by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of “Outliers.” As mentioned, this book attributes success to luck. However, it’s not just any luck but the luck of getting opportunities for training. He calls those who excel more than others “outliers.” To become better than others, one needs 10,000 hours of training. Therefore, those who have such training opportunities naturally achieve victory.

Ten thousand hours roughly equate to about five years of daily immersion without rest, dedicating about eight hours each day. If one trains while doing daily tasks, it would take ten years, spending four hours each day, to become an expert in the field.

It’s a long time. However, let’s not jump to conclusions that it will be boring. Even learning or training that seems to show no progress at first will reach a tipping point at some point. This tipping point is the moment when you suddenly feel that your skills or abilities have greatly improved, as discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s previous book, “The Tipping Point.” It’s like pouring water into a cup almost full, drop by drop, without it overflowing. It may not overflow easily, but eventually, when the last drop goes in, the water overflows. This small change represents the tipping point, the moment when small changes cause unexpected events to occur.

Water at 99 degrees is different from water at 100 degrees, which starts to undergo a phase change into gas. However, even water at 100 degrees exists because it has been heated up to 99 degrees. The tipping point here is used to describe the moment when unexpected events occur due to small changes.

Moreover, after that point, skills increase not arithmetically but geometrically. Let’s recall the effect of networks mentioned earlier. Our knowledge also takes the form of a network. As data increases, the effects of new combinations increase at a surprising rate. The effect of learning also increases. Understanding something new ultimately means interpreting it with existing knowledge. The more you know, the faster you can accept new knowledge. Furthermore, the more you learn, the faster you learn new things. If knowledge is the cause of the law of diminishing returns, then accumulating knowledge accelerates growth.

There is a saying, “A sharp stone rubs against another sharp stone to become a needle.” A stonemason starts to polish a rough stone from its pointed part to the tip. This proverb is used to mean that people with imperfect characters or many differences from others are attacked. Society tends to ridicule rough people. It is because they hinder the overall movement in a unified manner. However, even forcing young and young people to become round stones makes it difficult to expect creativity and differentiation.

Being young means being a generation still in the process of learning. Although many people may not reach the level of learning even as they age, they are still responsible for themselves and live with the actual consequences. However, by experiencing success and failure, people change through the ages as they familiarize themselves with the world. Through various failures and mistakes, rough people gradually become smoother. Even round people are sometimes likely to burst with repressed passion or occasional anger, making them somewhat rough. And everyone has a different shape. In this way, round stones and rough stones compete and cooperate in life.

The important thing is to enhance one’s competitiveness through learning from the past. Here, competitiveness does not refer to abilities honed alone in the mountains but to comprehensive abilities obtained by interacting with others. When we say the skill of competition is a multiplication, it implies such meaning. The art of competition is making that multiplication one’s own. And above all, one must learn from past failures. Because it’s the most reliable data.

It’s the same for companies. The reason why Apple and IBM, as mentioned earlier, fell behind Microsoft is because they misjudged their core competencies to be in hardware, computers. They misread the market. But they didn’t just sit still. They learned from past mistakes, and Apple developed its core competency in design, while IBM demonstrated its core competency in software and services. And these companies became number one again.

We learn from the past. However, what we encounter is always today. Today is a new day that we have not experienced yet. We learn from the past and acquire skills, but we cannot always expect to achieve victory in the same way each time.