I’ve watched a couple of documentaries on war a while ago and will continue to do because I feel like an ‘ignorant slut’ when it comes to world issues.  These two I watched are more on philosophy of war though, and not so much on occurring wars which are what I need to learn more about.

The first one I watched was The Fog of War and it’s Robert S. McNamara telling us what he’s learned throughout his career and it’s the kind of thing that I like because it’s something I want to be able to do, learn lessons from everyday life.  I suppose his job was always more than your everyday job but eventually you would be able to ‘think big’ from small things if you do it enough.  Robert S. McNamara is also a very animated speaker and a passionate person, despite his age when the movie was made.

The second was The Art of War which was a documentary on the History Channel and has all this fancy aesthetic feel to it.  The Art of War is a classic body of work and should be read (yes read, not watched) by everyone because it really pertains to many walks of life and careers, although it’s actually not as intriguing as The Fog of War because most of what is in The Art of War seems like common sense.  I’m sure the movie has only covered the few most popular doctrines and is missing a lot of it though, so it’s definitely going on my to-read-list.

Sometimes people react to things in ways that I’m not used to, and I get annoyed.  Eventually I realized these are nuances I should appreciate; who wants to interact with a whole world of clones that act the same way?  I mean, unless they’re really annoying.  But we as humans are given the ability to adapt to various environments, and the culture that arises from a given group of people is a kind of environment that we should be able to adjust ourselves to evolve in, and that culture encompasses their type of behaviour.  I suppose we’re not always successful in adapting, but we should still try.  Being successful doesn’t mean that we adopt their ways of behaviour and thinking, but that we are able to accept it and collaborate with them amiably without losing ourselves.  Now ‘losing ourselves’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘changing ourselves’ — if we find other ways of thinking and behaving that are superior to ours, it only makes sense to embrace them.  I really mean ‘losing ourselves’ by the way of us pretending to agree with the values and preferences of others when deep down we don’t, thereby deceiving others and sometimes ourselves.  So the adaptive skill is what I wish to attain; most of the time I simply get visibly annoyed at others and I’m starting to annoy myself by doing so.