Thursday, March 1, 2012

Musings

Time to take a break from the informative, On war style- actually, it may be a whole change of pace completely. Instead of working on a personal theory that isn't 100% fully developed, I thought instead I should work on adapting existing knowledge on combat and war to paintball.

I'd like to start with a quote from the book of five rings. for those of you unfamiliar with it, the Book of five rings was written in 1643 by Miyamoto Musashi, who was an undefeated dueler in Feudal Japan. His first duel took place when he was 13, his last, at 29. In the realm of personal combat, in Japan at that time, he had no apparent equal.

The book he penned is, of course, directed towards, predominantly, personal combat. that said, it's also an extremely good text on leadership and theory, and should be considered a 'must read' for just about anyone out there, in my own opinion.

"The true science cannot be attained by just mastery of swordsmanship alone"
-Miyamoto Musashi, Book of Five rings


On the surface, this statement is simple- true mastery of the science (in his case, martial arts, in ours, paintball) cannot be achieved by just mastery of Swordsmanship (gunfighting) alone. It's a warning against the assumption that consummate skill in even the 'most important' area of study hardly constitutes a complete understanding of  the whole of an area of study or endeavor. This, of course, leads to the conclusion that there are multiple skills in which a player must seek an understanding if they are to attempt to achieve an overall mastery.

It is an extremely important concept to really grasp- no one facet, or skill, of the overall whole can be said to give mastery of the whole thing. to put it in simpler terms, a puzzle is hardly solved when the first two pieces fit together- in complex puzzles, as paintball surely is- the whole of the image isn't even recognizable until many dozens of pieces have been connected.