^ All obstacles may be understood as compressed force. We can leverage this force immediately to resolve the (apparent) ‘problem’ it presents. When done properly, the ‘problem’s’ force is transformed into (astonishingly rich) assets. If, instead, we ‘attack’ it… we are attacking ourselves, and the assets hidden within the problem. Most often this is fatal. There are nearly no exceptions, especially with a formidable opponent.

Yet this is what nearly everything in our common culture trains us to.

As with Aikido, T’ai-chi, Qi-kung, Ba-Gua, Hsing-e, and other arts of ‘intimacy with and redirection of immediate force’… we can use these same principles in -any arena-. Politics, intelligence, personal situations, relationships, communications … even nature. In fact, this is what we -should have been doing all along to generate power- but we prefer -to attack- instead.

Parkour is another interesting example of this. So, too, is the practice of subtle arts. In Parkour we see the perspective of Tactical Opportunism at play. Obstacles -become powers of movement-, for the one who can -relate with them in this fashion-.

This… is the nature of actual intelligence.

We can no longer afford any attacking. We must learn to use our capacities for relational and ecological intelligence with some at least modest degree of insight and maturity. To redirect and ‘harvest the assets’ within the challenges and responsibilities we must now rediscover and integrate into our cultures and lives.

Let us recover together the methods and traditions that will allow our cultures to admit these principles into simple, nondogmatic, common awareness, activation, exploration and development. We live now in a world of forces far too momentous to oppose. We must, instead, inclusively transform them. Even with a deadly enemy, this is the most useful and powerful move.