Life is Conflict

What conflicts define your life? Are they clashes of ideas, struggles for resources, or battles within your social network? What similarities do they have? How do they repeat in familiar ways? How might those patterns help you navigate conflict? 

Enter John Boyd. Fighter pilot, strategist, and professional thorn in the Pentagon’s side, Boyd was obsessed with how people behave in conflict. He believed that whether between armies, companies, couples, or your past and future selves, every conflict follows the same fundamental rules. And he argued that understanding those rules is the difference between winning and losing.

But the stakes were far higher than bragging rights, a cash prize, or even a trip to Disneyland. Boyd summarized the dilemma this way: “Life is conflict, survival, and conquest.” If we fail to understand conflict and the patterns it follows, we’re not only unprepared for the game of life—we’re missing the whole point of playing in the first place.

The challenge is that John Boyd rarely wrote his theories down. Instead, he delivered them in a constantly evolving series of briefings known as A Discourse on Winning and Losing. We’ve distilled many of his ideas for this chapter and woven them throughout the book. 

It is impossible to understand much less master conflict without understanding Boyd’s theories. Which means it’s worth studying A Discourse as deeply as he lived it.

Colin

p.s. this is the first section in Chapter 2: Patterns of Conflict. 

p.p.s. if you'd like to discuss the conflicts you're facing, i will be available for 1-1 sessions in September. reply "conflict" to get on the waitlist.