Hi!
I’m writing a few books live and in public:
Patterns of Conflict, a book about the nature of competition, strategy, war, thinking, and John Boyd.
The Problem of Unknowledge, a book about how to play active defense and passive offense in a world where the future is fundamentally unknown and unknowable.
Spectacles, on the decay of social reality and the colonization of all life by images.
You can find all the chapters I have published below. I’d love to get your feedback and comments. Tell me what you like or don’t like. If you’re subscribed, I’ll email you once a week with an update and new chapters.
— Zeno (it’s a pseudonym, duh)
Patterns of Conflict: John Boyd In His Own Words (Kinda)
by Zeno
In his day, Colonel John Boyd was known as the Mad Major and Genghis John. He was a voracious genius who attacked ideas with a churning, dialectical energy. His work covers all territory — war, strategy, psychology, philosophy, entrepreneurship, organizational design, the meaning of life.
In a single lifetime, Boyd became the best fighter pilot in the Airforce, invented a new branch of aerospace physics (E-M Theory), designed the most successful fighter jet of all time (F-15 Eagle, 104-0 combat record), developed the foundational doctrine of the Marine Corps (Maneuver Combat), and architected one of the most successful wars of the modern era (Desert Storm).
Boyd was the definitive military mind of the 20th century, yet almost all his work has been forgotten. His magnum opus was a legendary five hour military briefing called Patterns of Conflict. But he never wrote any of it down formally; all we have is a slide deck of notes, a grainy audio recording from 1989, and a transcript of his comments and dialogue with Marines at Quantico.
So what I’ve done is, I’ve taken 1989 Quantico transcript as a starting place, and adapted it into a book. I’ve added, cut, reworded, reordered, explicated, and edited — drawing heavily from Tremblay, Coram, Osinga, Destruction and Creation, MCDP-1 Warfighting, and of course, Major Brown’s groundbreaking transcription work. As much as possible, I’ve tried to retain Boyd’s voice, tone, and vigorous way of thought. This is the book I wish Boyd had written.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter 2: Sun Tzu, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan
Chapter 3: Napoleon (new!)
Chapter 4: Von Clausewitz (new!)
Chapter 7: WWII, and Blitzkrieg (coming soon)
Chapter 8: Modern Guerilla Campaigns (coming soon)
Chapter 9: Counter-Blitz
Chapter 10: Patterns of Conflict
Chapter 11: Epilogue
The Unknowledge Project
by Zeno
I’ve been working on this book for about a decade now without realizing it. I picked up Black Swan by Nicholas Nassim Taleb and it changed my life. Taleb’s follow-up book, Antifragile was even more impactful.
Taleb’s books are exciting but maybe not the best written. Every book is stuffed with so many ideas and tangents, it’s hard to ever see the big picture (this is by design on his part).
For a while now, I’ve been trying to write something for myself that distills Taleb’s work to the core. It turns out this is much more annoying to do than you’d expect. There are so many interrelated and overlapping concepts, I’ve had a lot of trouble finding a through-line that makes sense. I’m just going to start publishing chapters in the way you’d publish blogposts, and after a while, we’ll see what we’ve got and refactor.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Bridges
Chapter 3: Fragility
Chapter 4: On Risk
Chapter 5: Posture
Chatper 6: Antifragility
Spectacles
by Zeno
This book started by accident. I read Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and loved it but had no idea what it meant. I started out trying to write myself some notes to articulate Debord’s ideas in plain english, but the notes kept expanding until one day there were a few hundred pages. I’m trying to develop a set of related ideas around media, culture, religion, capitalism, reality, celebrity, and the image — and thread them into a single gesture articulating what has happened to us and what is happening to us.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter 2: Fandom (coming soon)
Chapter 3: Hyperspace
Chapter 4: Three Meaning Networks
Chapter 5: Althusser
Chapter 6: Lacan
Chapter 7: Durkheim
Chapter 8: Images