by Universal Cynic

Created on: July 08, 2009

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

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