Sacrificing to Win
In high school in Newfoundland, we only had 54 students, 9th-12th. Every student, and this a rare statement, but all 54 students wanted to have a chess club. The school agreed we could have a chess club, and a teacher agreed to sponsor it,
So 54 kids cram into a classroom after school with 20 desks, and chess from individual desks is not very conducive for setting up a chess game anyway. The other classrooms were locked and our first club meeting a bust, but they decided I would approach the principal again and asked if we could use the cafeteria.
No. Absolutely not. The cafeteria could not be used for afternoon for after school facilities.
“Wait, why not?”
““It could interfere with lunch preparation.”
“What? Mr. McNeil,(I’m going to name him, he was one of the most extreme jerks I’ve ever dealt with, a vengeful man who thought anything that might bring momentary joy to another could not be tolerated. I also happen to know he would die the very next year from cirrhosis, so to hell with the bastard, I’m calling him out) what preparation? We bring our lunch.”
“Well the tables and chairs have to be unfolded and wouldn’t be ready for lunch the next day,”he said.
{Now wait a minute—his policy was that all the tables and chairs had to be folded up and stacked against the walls after every lunch period. But of course that meant before lunch period all the tables and chairs had to be unfolded and set up.}
But when I pointed this out to him, he just blew up and called me a back-stabbing son-of-a-”
Actually he completed the epitaph, but no one will really believe a principal could say the things he frequently called me.
But it was not our first run-in, and I often had gone over his head to the bass commander. One of the joys in growing up in a military school was that while it was highly unlikely that my father and the commander could meet socially, there was no rank in the kids, so the NCO’s kids, Warrant’s kids, junior officer’s and senior officer’s kids all socialized at each other’s homes. The base Captain had two sons and a daughter that were among our 54. And while no one else would challenge Mr. Principal Ed McNeil, I would, because, I also had no compunctions in bringing the issues to the captain.
Even though we kids could frequent each others’ houses irregardless of the parent’s rank, protocol still had been instilled into my classmates you couldn’t use that opportunity to put forth a parent’s grievances to a higher rank. I suppose theoretically, I shouldn’t have either. But one of the sons would say, “hey, Dad, Ken wants to ask you about…”
While the base commandant had a great deal of authority, what this captain never did was try to force other commands into compliance on my requests–what he would do was open the door to permit me to make my requests to whoever might be responsible for a facility. And in this way I, once again, back-stabbed our principal.
Before I go on, let me point out, it was not just not my conflicts with Ed McNeil that make me call him a mean man. Did he not give us permission for our chess tournament in the first place?
What he did was give us hope we could have a chess club by saying yes but then assigning a facility where it was impossible to have it. And everyone, not just me, was really upset that he was the one who was abusing us by pretending to allow us to have the club and then preventing our being able to practically have it.
Well I couldn’t quite find a permanent facility for the club. But one of the commands, and I do not remember which, had a large meeting room that would be vacant for two weeks. When I reported to my mates, we decided to turn it into a tournament and a group set about seeding it, etc. And I went about arranging for trophies to be paid for my everyone contributing to a fund.
For me, the tournament was one match and out. I’ve never been good at chess.
But recently I came upon a piece written by Jonathan Rowson and this passage stood out:
“is sacrifice, a notion that every strong chess player knows intimately. We sacrifice regularly, sometimes several times in one game. We give up our pawns and pieces and even queens for the sake of greater goals, sometimes short term, and sometimes long.”
To be fair to Mr. Rowson, I’m going to admit the commentary I’m going to make by signaling out this passage, is a distortion of the entirety of the article. And I will leave a reference to the article which is well worth the time to read.
But the passage struck a chord. Because the reason I play chess terribly, or another game called stratego, is that I am incapable of playing the games for the strategic purpose of capturing the opponent’s king. My strategy is to prevent him from capturing my king. Of course in the long run, my strategy fails, at meat the game is a draw, but most often I lose.
But it has always been my strategy in approaching the world In a tussle I have always had as my goal to defend another. So in defense, I might initiate an attack, but the attack is to deflect the attack to myself. I don’t consider myself as the sacrificial pawn, per se, because my intent does not include the concept I will ultimately become the sacrifice. But to defend might have at some point demanded my sacrifice for the victory of defending the other.
What stuck me about this passage is the notion to win as the goal that might entail sacrificing others along the way is somehow a skewed notion of victory. Or at least not a victory that I could cherish.
A prime example is the Floyd case a few years ago. I have some idea of how I would have responded because over 50 years ago, I witnessed a somewhat similar beating of a black man. The situation that led to the beating was somewhat different; but it gives me a clue to how I would respond in a similar situation.
In that instance I had witnessed an incident where a gentlemen was attempting to defend a female companion from attack, but when the police arrived they ganged up on the black man who was acting in defense of his companion.
But even thought the precipitating event was different, i jumped to his defense and attempted to prevent the police from beating the gentleman.. Of course in such a situation, my attempt was in vain; more police simply arrive and we were both being subdued by the police.
The fundamental problem with the Black Lives marches around the country, that even they were demonstrations to bring attention to an injustice no one was willing to defend Mr. Floyd until after he died. But if the attack upon Mr. Floyd was unjust, and even if the police officers can be held accountable and the demonstrations amply illustrated the issue—no one attempted to defend Mr. Floyd during the conflict.
In other words, Mr. Floyd’s death resulted in a victory for his attackers, and the eventual defeat of the police officer’s by imprisoning them fails to deter future attacks on other blacks. The deterrence has to occur before the death of Mr. Floyd, and the sacrifice has to be made in that defense to deter future aggression by the police who might continue attacking others. Derek Chauvin can easily be sacrificed to jail in pursuit of eventually defeating the Black King–(BLM’s quest to end police malfeasance and unjust treatment.)
Afterwards i hear the lament chagrin that nothing has changed. That the marches did not alter anything should have been expected, because the demonstrations were a sideshow that were not occurring on the board.
And of course, if the victor is willing to sacrifice as many pawns, or even one’s queen, the end game remains capturing the opposing movement, or however many police officers it takes, to make it seem the goal of policing has changed.
A victory can come by slaughtering mine workers, it can come from winning battles in a war and toppling another government. It can come from “eliminating’ terrorists—
But is this game ever secure, does being victorious in the game, ever become a victory?
The problem is the grandmaster eventually is no longer grandmaster. The great gunfighter eventually loses. The great army eventually is defeated.
Now from my perspective of team sport, rather than chess, the “win” doesn’t come as much by defeating the other team. One wins by consolidating one’s defense into a team that works not for victory, but to prevent loss and in preventing loss the team works in a harmonious and united effort that achieves victory at the end–sometimes.
The superstar who plays only for himself and everyone remembers the team that endured because they worked together.
If the Floyd defenders had attempted to defend Floyd, perhaps we might have had Stonewall. But even Stonewall was insufficient in itself. The freedom that it installed, the pride that may have come, has to remain a vigilant effort to defend what has been gained.
Defense can never stop, but victory can never be final.
We have made a false assumption in the history of mankind that history belongs to the victor, and the individual who leads one to victory is the heroic efforts of those who are willing to sacrifice others to gain the victory. But victory always remains insecure.
The victory that freed the slaves did not end in freeing them because the efforts were seen as no longer necessary and their defense was abandoned to the gilded manufactures desire to enslave all workers.
The problem lies in seeing temporary wins as the end of the game. But to be a chessmaster one still must win the next match, the single match never succeeds in the glory of becoming the master.
Was the civil war really the way to free blacks from their southern servitude? What if the northern workers had joined Nat Turner in an attempt to solidify all workers against oppression?
So instead of being enlisted (or drafted) to fight for victory against southern secessionists, the white workers had defended black slaves when Nat Turner rose up in the south; the downtrodden souther whites and left out whites might have joined them as well and they could have temporarily defended themselves.
Would any fewer be lost in pursuit of defense than in pursuit of offense?
Probably not. But I guess defense loses eventually to offense only because the defender is less willing to sacrifice himself in defense than the offensive pursuers are willing to sacrifice others in pursuit of victory. And that is what I don’t quite understand.
Why will people march in in offense, knowing they may be sacrificed, but think it the height of folly to defend one’s neighbor because interfering might lead to one’s death?
Until there comes a time when defense becomes offensive and the victors are put to the guillotine. The result is a new offensive captaincy after the kings of other team’s king and nothing changes.
What I wonder is can governments ever be formed that deny victory to those who want to win, economically, politically, socially, etc and defend anyone from losing to those victors? It seems to me that is how we lose, because the end can never be seen as a victory if the victory has to continually be rewon.
So why wouldn’t it be better to win by continuing to defend, we might at least achieve a stalemate? I don’t know, but it is a question seldom pursued. Just what does victory bring us?