Zero Sum (John Rain, #9)

by Barry Eisler

Tsukanoma no koto is how it’s said in Japanese. The fleetingness of things.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society, where Niebuhr talked about how the baser self has to deceive the better self to get the better self’s buy-in for behavior it would never otherwise agree to.

Wa implies an elevation of the needs of society over the needs of the individual, the primacy of peaceful unity and conformity.