SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! THE REASON THE GARDENER IS IN A BLOODY WAR IN THE FIRST PLACE IS BECAUSE THE WARRIOR’S ARMY IS PILLAGING THEIR GARDEN!!!
I’d rather just not be in a war, regardless of my profession
mah boi, this peacegarden is what all true warriors strive forI assumed this quote was invented by the columnist in question, but I looked it up and since it’s repeatedly attributed as a “Chinese proverb” or to Sun Tzu (I checked, not there) or Lao Tzu or Miyamoto Musashi, I’m pretty sure some other random white person made it up.
It stands out to me as a very modern idea- for the entirety of feudalism every man levied to an army was some kind of gardener/farmer to the point that the length of a campaign was usually defined by when the soldiers had to get back to harvest their crops
feudalism produces groups of people who have bound others to property to do that farming while they are on campaign, that’s what knights were. a modern levee en masse is much more disruptive to agricultural production, because it doesn’t tap classes who are already expected to go on a campaign. one shouldn’t even assume because a certain peasant area was required to produce so many levy soldiers that this would be an excessive draw on the labor pool either–it bad times it might’ve, but in others a handful of third sons weren’t exactly missed, and those men entering armed life was expected and prepared for in advance.
Yeah, its kinda got a hard times make hard men chuddish vibe to it.
so based on that, it was probably a mil-SF writer in the 80s
It deffinitly seems like something you think sun tzu would say if you’ve never read sun tzu.
I like Sun Tzu. Its a lot of don’t fight unless you can win. The way you win is forcing your enemy to fight where they’re outnumbered.
Gardening is hard work
MASSIVE cope from soldiers and cops once they start masturbating about how they’re “warriors” and ad-libbing remote memories of romantic chivalry as self-aggrandising fantasy
soldiers aren’t warriors. they don’t follow an honorable code, do what they want–they follow orders. they don’t succeed through their individual heroism and martial skill, they are miniscule cogs in a war machine.
you know who is a warrior? a Taliban guerilla, taking up arms of their own accord, going unpaid, organizing autonomously, and dis-arming as it suits them. even a communist guerilla–though a military discipline is emphasized among them–has more in common with a warrior philosophy than these feckless cowards in the US military
Honestly yeah, guerillas are actually forced to take up that hyper-perceptive professional attitude for their survival, meanwhile US Army groundlings need to sit behind giant hesco walls and joystick maneuver a dirty bomb strapped to an AC130 into a house on a mountainside because they think it might be a sniper’s outpost.
They couldn’t possibly rally up enough courage to win a war in their own backyard, because where would they dream of going home to every waking moment? They don’t learn to accept struggle, just to dissociate and let machines carry them. The USA is anti-nature and anti-reality, basically.
going unpaid, organizing autonomously
wait a minute i thought the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a state is a good guy with a state
People who talk this shit are not, have never been and never will be either of those
