The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

It is human nature to not be able to endure any kind of void. We hate silence, long stretches of inactivity, loneliness. (Perhaps this is related to our fear of that final void, our own death.) We have to fill and occupy empty space. By giving people nothing to hit, being as vaporous as possible, you play upon this human weakness. Infuriated at the absence not just of a fight but of any kind of interaction at all, people will tend to chase madly after you, losing all power of strategic thought. It is the elusive side, no matter how weak or small its force, that controls the dynamic. The bigger the enemy, the better this strategy works: struggling to reach you, the oversize opponent presents juicy targets for you to hit. To create the maximum psychological disturbance, you must make your attacks small but relentless, keeping your enemy’s anger and frustration at a constant boil. Make your void complete: empty negotiations, talks leading nowhere, time passing without either victory or defeat. In a world of accelerated pace and activity, this strategy will have a powerfully debilitating effect on people’s nerves. The less they can hit, the harder they will fall.