Persuading With The Thirty Six Chinese Stratagem
"So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win a hundred times in a hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always lose." -Ancient Chinese Proverb
I love to learn. One of the fields of study I have most enjoyed and which has brought a huge amount of insight and is entirely relevant in relation to persuasion, are the ancient Chinese proverbs known as the Thirty-Six Chinese Stratagem. Stratagem are cunning and pervasive strategies. They are along the same lines as The Art of War, but more subtle. These stratagem can be easily applied to our daily lives. We see examples of them all the time in politics, business, communications, negotiations, sports, and even romance. The Thirty-Six Chinese Stratagem are innately connected persuasion.
A stratagem is not a strategy. This is a common mistake. Stratagem is more akin to a ruse, something that is done to intentionally deceive. With the intention of deceiving, we can see that these are not always nice. They are at their core manipulations and psychological warfare. In the West we have our own version of this as 'all's fair in love and war'. These stratagems can be cold and cruel.
Having said all that, I want to stress the necessity of integrity and honesty. Persuasion works best when we are true to ourselves and act with total congruency with what is right. All may or may not be fair in love and war, if we have the tools that we need to really get to the bottom of human nature, we can protect ourselves if or when others try to use intentional deception against us. Moreover, we can find ways to use these tools with honor and truth, in new ways that expand our potential to persuade. From time to time, I intend to write on these stratagem because their correspondence and relation to persuasion is inseparable. I will be starting an even deeper exploration of these stratagem because it is my feeling and experience that they bring persuasion and influence and self knowledge to an entirely new level, in magnitudes of improvement, and once they become a part of your other than conscious, you will begin to see clearly how these teachings benefit all aspects of life.
The six categories that the stratagems are broken down into correspond to six conditions or situations. They are as follows: The Stratagems of Winning; The Stratagems of Defending; The Stratagems of Attacking; The Stratagems of Scuffling; The Stratagems of Merging; The Stratagems of Losing. I am confident these lessons will benefit your persuasion. I figure if we can understand exactly what they describe, we can reverse engineer it, pull out the parts that work, and decide when and how others are going to be able to use them against us, and decide when it's ethical and honorable to use them on others.