Reflections on the saying "keep your friends close and your enemies closer"
War, politics, sports, and the simple computer game, what do they all have in common? They all involve, sides that are at warring relations with each other. Even the common friendship has to face this dilemma and paradox, if not enigma. It is in fact, a natural part of life to have enemies as well as friends. It is a problem that humanity has had to face for a very long time. What would you rather have: Prosperity or Power, Security or Stability, Freedom or Fascism? All of these depend on the other as well. When we are happy, we seldom think much about the times when we were sad and miserable.
In war, and politics, even in day to day relationships, we all want to know what other people think about us. We want to be able to prepare ourselves for the worst, and arm for the best. We all want to know, be ready, and take charge. This phrase, keep your friends close and your enemies closer is true because our enemies may know more about us and our faults and our achievements more than we can know from our friends. We have intelligence agencies and spies because we need to be prepared and not be surprised when we are under attack or under stress. We have hackers so that we may know how they operate, and ultimately, defeat them in their own front by using what they use against us.
In our society, the struggle between power and prosperity requires an intimate understanding of how the human mind operates on a collective scale and also on the individual level. The struggle for power depends on whether or not you are prospering. In order to prosper, one must have stability and security. This depends on how a state is built. Does the state practice freedom or fascism? Is it a collective or an individual based system? Is it based on truth and not lies? How is the state organized on an economic level? Ultimately, this age old wisdom is all about self-reflecting and self-actualization. Your enemies exist as a reflection of your own inner weakness and strengths. We are more concerned about our enemies because they pose a more immediate threat to us than our friends. We can learn far more from our mistakes and errors than our immediate allies and friends tell us, because our enemy knows us as well as we know them. After all, know thyself and know thy enemy' as Sun Tzu stated in his famous book, The Art of War can be read as both a psychological and social manual on the conduct of war on the microcosm and macrocosm scale. Even as individual human beings, we must be aware that we are at the same time, part of a cohesive whole known as Civilization.
Wars illustrate the practice of, keeping your friends close and your enemies closer by the use of intelligence, surprise attacks, and espionage and conspiracy. After all, secrecy and subliminal propaganda of all kinds are necessary for a successful military operation. It is absolutely essential that friends and enemies are blurred because at any time, in the struggle for military supremacy, there can be traitors. After all, war does not occur in a vacuum, much like how a relationship between individuals does not occur in an isolated environment. War is influenced by politics, by technology, by military skill and training, as well as society as a whole. Even religion and ideology plays a vital role in the uses and developments of wars throughout history. I recommend reading Carroll Quigley's Weapons Systems and Political Stability: A History. There are many factors and variables involved in this struggle of emotional and psychological instincts. We keep an eye on our enemies so that we can have an idea of what to expect and how to better ourselves. Our enemies' shows us our true faces, and our friends help improve that which needs much, renovation.
Enemies and friends are not really that distinguishable in the real world since at any time, when a contract, whether stated or unstated is broken, relations can change in an instance. A high level of trust is required for the sake of human sanity and cooperation. Trust is not something that can easily earned for some people because ofpast regressions, but this is a normal aspect of any human relationship. Countries and governments is a larger reflection of the human psyche as Plato has stated in his famous Republic.
Friends and enemies has always existed, and always will. It is a natural part of the human psyche to engage in competition, wars, and challenges, because if it did not, it would never be able to improve and sustain itself. After all, early man depended on more cooperation because of its inferior weapons systems, but gradually, through the development of more complex systems of government, control of weapons, finance, ideology, and technology, philosophy and science, the concept of keeping your enemies closer is truer than ever before. As the world is getting closer to thermonuclear warfare due to the instability in the Middle East and the formation of AFRICOM by the United States, there is no doubt that China and Russia are feeling insecure since both nations are relatively weak militarily to the United States.
On a personal level, as the geopolitical and global political crises of wars and global financial crisis deepens, people would find it necessary to depend on and count on each other. We would need to let go of our differences, and cooperate or risk losing everything we have worked so hard for to build. Trust and respect would become greater psychological issues as people lose jobs, and the powers that be continue their same policies of global hegemony. We, the people of this planet, need to realize that we are not really each other`s enemies, because as civilians, we all have the common interests of peace, prosperity, and partnership. As humans, we all wish for the best of ourselves and the major reasons why we hate each other or dislike each other so much is because of our psychological instability. Our enemies are a reflection that disease known as hatred and war.
There is a chance for us, as a species to learn to slowly trust each other again, and gain the power to take back the world from our true enemies: ourselves and our own power of manipulation and deceit. Know yourself. That is why you have enemies.
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