Engage the enemy then we will see

June 05, 2002
By Bukka Rennie

When Iron-Mike Tyson was told his opponent had a plan to defeat him, Tyson replied: "Everybody has a plan, until they get hit!"

Very often do we get such deep understanding of the very processes of life and the nature of the development of all social phenomena from the mouths of people we tend to regard as crude simpletons.

Intellectualism is the exercise through which people prove able to formulate clear perspectives out of their analytic assessment of common everyday experiences.

Boxing taught Tyson no plan is foolproof, that every act promotes reaction.

All the body of knowledge that has come to be formulated and classified under the heading of various sciences have as their underlying truths formulations from the day to day observations of human, plant and animal behaviour.

Intellectualism loses its rootedness when it is divorced from such concrete observation of phenomena in everyday life and is pigeon-holed meaninglessly in the lofty towers of academia unrelated to anything that can and may be useful in transforming human existence.

Napoleon has been considered by historians as probably the greatest military mind the world has known. And what were the key watchwords of Napoleon's address to his soldiers before they ran forward into battle with the advancing enemy? His message could be summed up in the following: S'engagez et puis s'on voit ­ Engage the enemy in battle and then we will see!

In other words, there was a basic formation and approach with which Napoleon was prepared to begin the process, but that was not cast in stone. He remained flexible in order to change in accordance with what he observed the enemy to be doing.

But as social historians, such as our own CLR James, maintained, he (Napoleon) could only be successful because he first summoned to his ranks and assembled under his guidance the very best military talent available to him from throughout the whole of Europe.

And more than that, he listened to them and paid consideration to their opinions.

Armed with such an understanding of social phenomena, Napoleon almost conquered the then whole known world until tactically he overextended and his lines of logistical support thinned out.

Engage and then see! Be prepared to be flexible and to apply human reason, wit and creative imagination to any and all situations that may present themselves. That is the cardinal formulation for all human endeavour.

The football World Cup that is taking place provides us with the reality.

The best national teams will be the ones prepared to engage with a basic structure in which to seat the modes of attack and defence that is best suitable to their national distinct style and temperament. Yet once they engage, the teams that win will be the ones that are best able to adjust to suit the conditions of the said moment and to counter what their opponents are doing in the field.

Once the attack of team "A" breaks down, and team "B" goes on the offensive, team "A" quickly has to readjust structurally and tactically, in seconds, to be able to deal with what "B" throws at them; moreso in modern day football, in which the entire team attacks and the entire team defends.

It is about 90 minutes of total concentration by every single player on the pitch or all is lost. That is why it is so laughable when Jack Warner uses his FIFA clout to get T&T rated number 34 in the world when in reality we should be closer to number 84. The false ratings have only served to blind our eyes to the realities.

The faster we get rid of such falsity and come to the realisation that we are not as good as we think we are and we are in fact going backward rather than forward in terms of development, is the faster we will come to face our shortcomings and put in place not merely stadiums but a coherent programme of development that takes players from childhood to adulthood.

We can learn a lot from the World Cup just by studying how coaches and players adjust intelligently to suit the conditions and to suit opposing teams.

But, unfortunately, we will learn nothing new from our fundamentalist politics and religions that seem to confine us forever in strait-jackets of rituals that blind our eyes to engaging with the clear aim to see.