the system-monger, the general and the aphorist, The Mechanics of Virtue, aphorism 300

300


A system-monger is a strategist with an equal capacity for detail as the efficient general, except that the strategy is the victory, whereas with the latter, the original strategy – in the pell-mell of actual experience – is usually an obstacle when followed meticulously: victory is victory.  The former hangs his purple robe upon the eternal hook of strategy-on-display; the latter, on an actual trophy, and for which the strategy was only the original approach.  What for the general is cunning adaptation to ever-changing conditions would be for the system-monger recanting.  This is why the aphorism is the superior form of expression, one recants and recants as one records correction after correction ... and it is precisely this sort of correction that the system-monger considers a failure.  The aphorist corrects himself and records the moment of correction: he turned left at the last corner to maintain his destination – truth – whereas the system-monger turned left at the last corner too but is now proving to us how his system had been right all along.

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