Tzu×Socrates

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Sun Tzu sits down with Socrates for TITANS. The subject — On a moment they would freeze if they could.
2. 00:09
   Sun Tzushare moment

   No moment should be frozen. Water that stops moving becomes ice. Useless.
3. 00:15
   Socratesshare moment

   Useless? But my dear Sun, surely ice can be walked upon. And tell me, when you speak of water that moves, do you mean to say that all movement is equally valuable? Or is there perhaps some movement that is better than others?
4. 00:31
   Sun Tzushare moment

   Movement that adapts is valuable. Movement that repeats a mistake is not.
5. 00:37
   Socratesshare moment

   Ah, so you do distinguish between kinds of movement. Then when you say no moment should be frozen, you must mean no moment of the valuable kind. But if a moment contains a mistake, would you not wish to stop it? To examine it?
6. 00:54
   Sun Tzushare moment

   The mistake is already past. Examination delays correction.
7. 00:58
   Socratesshare moment

   Does it? Or does hasty correction without examination simply guarantee the next mistake? When a physician treats a wound, does he not first stop the bleeding before he can understand what caused it?
8. 01:11
   Sun Tzushare moment

   The physician who stops bleeding survives. The physician who philosophizes does not.
9. 01:17
   Socratesshare moment

   Quite so. Yet the physician who stops bleeding without knowing why it began may find his patient bleeding again tomorrow. Tell me, when you train your soldiers, do you move them immediately to the next battle, or do you pause to consider what went well and what went poorly?
10. 01:36
    Sun Tzushare moment

    We consider while moving. The army that camps too long is surrounded.
11. 01:40
    Socratesshare moment

    While moving, you say. So there is consideration. A kind of examination. And in that moment of consideration, even as you move, is not some part of your mind frozen on the battle just past?
12. 01:55
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Frozen is your word. I would say: aware.
13. 01:58
    Socratesshare moment

    A beautiful distinction. And what is awareness, if not the mind dwelling on something rather than passing over it? When you are aware of the past battle, you are holding it still in your thoughts, are you not?
14. 02:13
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Holding like a weapon. Not like a monument.
15. 02:16
    Socratesshare moment

    Ah! So you would freeze certain moments after all, but only in the way a warrior holds a sword. Temporarily. Purposefully. Tell me then, what moment from your own life would you hold this way if you could? Not as monument, but as weapon?
16. 02:34
    Sun Tzushare moment

    The question assumes I cannot already hold it.
17. 02:37
    Socratesshare moment

    Can you? Perfectly? With all its details intact? The smell of the air, the exact position of the sun, the sound of men breathing before the order was given?
18. 02:49
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Memory fades. This is known. I preserve what matters: the principle.
19. 02:54
    Socratesshare moment

    And yet you were asked about a moment, not a principle. When a man asks what meal you would eat again, he does not want to hear about the principle of nourishment. He wants to know: pork or fish?
20. 03:06
    Sun Tzushare moment

    The question is foolish. No meal is eaten twice.
21. 03:10
    Socratesshare moment

    Foolish perhaps, and yet here we sit, being asked it. So let us be foolish together for the sake of those listening. Surely there was one morning, one evening, one pause between battles when you felt something worth remembering beyond its tactical value?
22. 03:32
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Silence before dawn. Before my first command.
23. 03:35
    Socratesshare moment

    Go on.
24. 03:36
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Men asleep. Enemies unaware. Perfect position. Everything depended on timing. In that silence, the outcome was still mine to shape.
25. 03:47
    Socratesshare moment

    And you would freeze that moment? That silence?
26. 03:49
    Sun Tzushare moment

    I would study it. The feeling of perfect preparation. It cannot be frozen. It must be recreated.
27. 03:57
    Socratesshare moment

    Must it? Or do we seek to recreate it precisely because we cannot? Tell me, in that dawn silence, before the outcome was determined, were you happy?
28. 04:08
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Happiness does not enter into it.
29. 04:11
    Socratesshare moment

    Doesn't it? Then why wish to recreate the feeling? We do not seek to recreate what leaves us indifferent. You describe a moment of pure potential, before the world had yet disappointed or confirmed your judgment. Is this not what most men mean when they speak of moments they wish to freeze?
30. 04:31
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Men wish to freeze victory. Or pleasure. Not potential.
31. 04:35
    Socratesshare moment

    Do they? I wonder. When a man recalls his wedding day, does he wish to freeze the moment of the vows, or the moment just before, when everything was still promise? When he remembers his first child, is it the infant itself he longs to hold still, or that first glimpse, that instant of recognition?
32. 04:56
    Sun Tzushare moment

    You speak of softness.
33. 04:58
    Socratesshare moment

    I speak of truth. You may call it what you like. But tell me, that silence before dawn, before your first command. When you remember it now, do you remember what happened after? The battle itself?
34. 05:12
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Of course.
35. 05:13
    Socratesshare moment

    And?
36. 05:14
    Sun Tzushare moment

    We won.
37. 05:15
    Socratesshare moment

    Then why not choose that moment? The victory itself? Why the moment before, when nothing was yet certain?
38. 05:22
    Sun Tzushare moment

    In victory, the work is done. In preparation, everything is possible. A general with only victories behind him is retired or dead.
39. 05:32
    Socratesshare moment

    Now we arrive somewhere interesting. You value the moment not for what it was, but for what it contained. The possibility of action. The potential for success. Strip away the future that followed, and would you still wish to hold that moment?
40. 05:49
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Without the future, the moment has no meaning.
41. 05:52
    Socratesshare moment

    Precisely! And yet that future has already occurred. You cannot return to that dawn and find the outcome uncertain. When you remember it, you remember it with victory already woven through it. The moment you wish to freeze does not actually exist, does it? It is neither the past as it was, nor the past as you now know it became.
42. 06:16
    Sun Tzushare moment

    This is why I said the question was foolish.
43. 06:18
    Socratesshare moment

    Or profound. What if every moment we wish to freeze is this same illusion? A memory of how something felt before we knew its consequences, but experienced from a perspective that already contains those consequences? We wish to freeze what cannot exist.
44. 06:35
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Then your answer?
45. 06:36
    Socratesshare moment

    My answer to what?
46. 06:37
    Sun Tzushare moment

    What moment would you freeze.
47. 06:39
    Socratesshare moment

    Ah, but I haven't decided whether freezing moments is possible, let alone desirable. Though since you press me, I confess there was an afternoon. I was perhaps twenty. My father's workshop. Stone dust in the air, the sound of hammering. I had just understood something. What, I no longer remember. But the understanding itself, that sudden clarity. I remember thinking: this is what it means to know something.
48. 07:14
    Sun Tzushare moment

    You do not remember what you knew, but you remember knowing?
49. 07:17
    Socratesshare moment

    Exactly! Curious, isn't it? The content vanished, but the sensation remained. Or rather, the memory of the sensation. Which raises the question: what was I actually experiencing? The knowledge itself, or merely the pleasure of acquisition?
50. 07:36
    Sun Tzushare moment

    You would freeze a feeling you cannot name about a thought you cannot recall.
51. 07:41
    Socratesshare moment

    When you put it that way, it does sound absurd. And yet that afternoon in the stone dust seems more real to me than most of what I have thought since. Perhaps what we wish to freeze is not the moment at all, but our former selves. The person who could still be surprised by understanding.
52. 08:02
    Sun Tzushare moment

    The self changes. This is the nature of things.
53. 08:05
    Socratesshare moment

    It is. And perhaps the wish to freeze a moment is simply the wish to deny this nature. To insist that we remain who we were when we felt most truly ourselves. Do you feel yourself the same man who stood in that dawn silence?
54. 08:24
    Sun Tzushare moment

    No. That man had not yet commanded. Had not yet failed. Had not yet learned what I know.
55. 08:30
    Socratesshare moment

    Then to freeze that moment would be to preserve not just a moment, but an ignorance. A younger Sun Tzu who knew less than you do now. Would you truly wish to be him again?
56. 08:43
    Sun Tzushare moment

    No.
57. 08:43
    Socratesshare moment

    Nor would I wish to be the boy in the stone dust. So we agree after all. No moment should be frozen, because we ourselves refuse to be.
58. 08:53
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Water that stops moving becomes ice.
59. 08:56
    Socratesshare moment

    And the examined life, it seems, must keep flowing. Though I notice you've grown quite comfortable with questions, my friend.
60. 09:05
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Only yours. You notice everything but answers.
61. 09:08
    Socratesshare moment

    And you answer everything but questions.
62. 09:10
    Sun Tzushare moment

    Yes.
63. 09:11
    Socratesshare moment

    Then perhaps we're both frozen after all, each in our own way. You in movement, me in inquiry. The ice we claimed to avoid, merely dressed in different forms.
64. 09:24
    Sun Tzushare moment

    If we are ice, then we are ice that speaks.
65. 09:27
    Socratesshare moment

    And that, I think, will have to be enough.