133. The art of Weiqi (Go/Baduk) war (碁#15) 離 (☷/☵)

While the upside of Baguazhang is that a fighter gets to fight outside of the ring as something like a phantom. The downside of Baguazhang is that war is fought on the individual immediate level: Every experience is felt personally and direct. There is no room for abstraction. When it comes to the I-Ching and the I-Ching Art of War, one is in the set-up stage that happens way before any inkling of war has dawned on the smartest of people. Here we are making decisions and making moves that can easily be changed, if circumstances dictate it. There are very few masters around the world who are able to win an I-Ching based war. As we are dealing with forces far beyond ordinary people's comprehension. And while the law of cause and effect, and physics still hold true, many of the imports and corresponding outputs are hard to explain with plausibility. But it works. For those not sure, it's best to view the I-Ching as a close-counsellor helping you to make policy. And by consultation, you engage in the process of defining the very war you seek to engage in. Now, the Weiqi Art of War lies somewhere in the middle of the two; Where Baguazhang is tactical, Weiqi is strategic. And where the I-Ching is consultive, Weiqi is the tangible moves born out of those consultations. It is war fought, when there is no war being fought because the tit-for-tat moves are played out too far apart. A modern example of this would be the dispute between Iran and the United States of America. While there has so far not been a traditional war between the two countries in which the soldiers can use their combat skills, the Weiqi Art of War has been in play since at least the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Shorten the time lapses between events and it would start to look very much like war. So now you may ask, why not just make peace or just get the war over and done with? Well, that would be like quitting the Weiqi (Go/Baduk) game. As hard as it may be to believe, but sometimes being enemies is good for business. In business it is called competition. And while it is supposed to benefit the consumer, very few of us notice the cartels running it right in front of our faces. No conspiracy theories here. It's just the way things are at the moment. And as long as the money keeps flowing, it will remain so. And that is where it will end: No more stones to play – empty and run out of moves. Only then will it be time to switch to the Baguazhang's version of war ⚔️圍棋戰聖