Learn & Master “The Art of War” (Sunday Edition, Wednesday Edition)
Learn & Master “The Art of War” – Free Introductory Session (Ch. I: Laying Plans)

I have now completed preparations for a full course on Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” what I hope is merely my first venture into e-Learning specifically oriented towards strategic thinking. My goal is to help students and learners of all stripes learn how to broaden their horizons and improve their understanding of the world around them.

I seek to accomplish this through using Sun Tzu’s ancient wisdom and providing context, explaining any obscure elements, elaborating while making use of modern examples, and providing a platform for further inquiry, questioning and discussion. The ultimate objective is for attendees to use this time-honored, ancient Oriental perspective to create winning strategies to win their own battles in life.

Full details at the links above. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. Thank you.

A book I keep hearing mentioned but at the same time a book i might find too dry to read myself alone, so if Jeremiah is ready to present it to us, i’m in. Come on people, let’s learn some strategy! The type of book that is good for one’s general education.

Right. As a Japanese>English translator, I learned all about the issues that can create a disconnect with an English reader. I don’t read ancient Chinese, but I can extrapolate quite a lot from Lionel Giles’ 1910 translation (which luckily for us is pretty good, and has an expired copyright so hello, Project Gutenberg and free reading). That plus getting info from commentary by other people, my own input from other sources, some creative reasoning, and the fact I learned a while back the necessity of explaining in plain English wherever possible, and voila: a course.

It was only yesterday I had a chance to look over the reviews on the class wall page for my free intro class (which I’ve given a few times already on EduFire) at the link above. I’m honored and elated at the response I’ve received so far – and I didn’t even have the full class finished yet. Hopefully it just gets better from here!

In my free class, I was asked about Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings. I’m reading that this week.

Also, a very unfortunate mishap occurred that made me miss the Sunday Edition. I know new things can have growing pains, but this was a scheduling snafu combined with some family business that made me not discover the error fast enough. Anyway, I’m editing the post to reflect the new links; this Wed. and next Sun. will cover Ch. II & III of The Art of War, the free PowerPoint is complete… and all should be smooth sailing from here. Thank you for your interest.

P.S. I’m working on an Art of War website too but it isn’t complete yet. The schedule fell behind Saturday because of a nuisance-level computer virus (still took forever and a day to clean), it hit 2 hours after my classes got posted, so that’s how things got bent out of shape a bit. It’s OK now though. Take care, everyone!

Hi Jeremiah, I am sure this will be a great class.:) I have studied it myself but can’t remember everything now.:D Will see you in class then.

Well I do have a similar experience. I first read this book when I was say… 18? 19? years old…. and this was long before I’d ever played a Romance of the 3 Kingdoms or Dynasty Warriors video game (which has quite ironically played a large role in my interest in ancient China…. we all need our inspirations). Just re-reading the book with over ten years more life experience helped but, I really felt that organizing my thoughts, spreading them out on PowerPoint slides, filling in the gaps etc…. it helped.

From this point it’s all about connecting this stuff to the world we live in today. Easier than I thought, really – people are people, so some things haven’t changed much in 2,500 years. I first got that impression reading things like Caesar’s Commentaries (another fascinating little book, and 100% from Julius Caesar, self-promotion included)….

Wednesday’s class went very well. The only problem is that a late registering individual was unable to enter class; unfortunately, that’s not my doing. Registration needs to be in advance of the start of the class. I hope the fact I have a Sunday session will help.

Other than that, went spectacularly well. Thanks for coming, Claire. I really enjoyed it.

So, I had a student having to skip this Sunday but, I’m still running the session if anyone shows so please, if you’re interested, register in advance and drop on in. Thanks!

I’ll have a website for this course and my other strategy related dealings that’ll be up sometime soon too.

Another session is due in 2 hours 30 minutes.

This week’s sessions address chapters 4 and 5 in “The Art of War”.

Ch. IV covers offensive and defensive postures, what separates a good leader from a mediocre or bad one, not playing to the gallery, avoiding unforced errors, the importance of timing, and the power of momentum.

Ch. V covers communications, direct and indirect maneuvers, combining the two in various ways, applying timing to the attacking of weak points, fostering order amidst chaos, applying deception in warfare, managing individuals within a group, raising the net energy of the group, and giving this energy momentum to amplify it into victory.

Wednesday’s session went spectacularly well. It was my first class covering Ch. IV and Ch. V, and the message that the lesson built up to and the overall effect was much like the ‘raging torrent’ Sun Tzu describes; momentum built up and I am happy to say the students were extremely happy with the results. I don’t know if a class quite like this exists anywhere else on the Internet today. I hope future weeks go just as well.

I’ll repeat the material for this session for the Sunday Edition, of course.

I had to reboot the Sunday Edition because somehow it didn’t have a session for Nov 1 as it was supposed to – clearly a clerical error. Well, I’ve fixed that and updated the links at the top of the page.

Sunday Edition is http://edufire.com/classes/10602-learn-master-the-art-of-war-sun-

New free introductory session! Covers Ch. I: “Laying Plans.” No prerequisites.

There’s another session in two hours, covering good, heavy hitting stuff. All presented in an easy to digest format you’re not going to find anywhere else. Check it out!

And a new Sunday session will begin soon. We’re covering circumstances in warfare. By learning about analyzing circumstances and responding to them, we learn how to think more strategically and evaluate circumstances in modern times and how to respond to these modern circumstances. It’s all very interesting and real, not fiction, but founded in fact.