Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot
Vice Admiral James Stockdale is an American hero. Stockdale spent nearly eight years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. He spent four of those years in solitary confinement and was repeatedly tortured. He was the commanding officer of hundreds of other U.S. soldiers and received the Medal of Honor for his service beyond the call of duty. This is an incredibly inspiring look at the powerful mind and equally powerful moral commitment of a hero. Big Ideas we explore: Being our brother’s keeper, chiseling our integrity to achieve delight with life, courage as endurance of the soul and heroes vs. bums.
Big Ideas
- You Are Your Brother's Keeper (Virtue + Vice)vs. What’s in it for me?
- Chiseling Our Integrity —> Delight with Life!--> Delight with life!
- Courage = Endurance of the Soul= Endurance of the soul.
- Is It Within Your Control?Is it within your control?
- Sorting Out The Heroes And The BumsAdversity sorts them out.
“I’m going to talk about heroes and heroism.
I know you midshipmen have thought about this subject—it was probably a touch of the romantic that initially stirred you to come to this place (certainly was true in my case). It’s just that today we’re grounded into the idea of egalitarianism, that it’s somehow unfair, or undemocratic, to recognize, let alone admire, those uncommon and special people who over history have risen to challenges in ways totally incompatible with conventional wisdom’s view of so-called instincts of self-preservation. In other words, we’ve become too self-conscious and embarrassed to talk about certain human behaviors limited in distribution to a highly selective few.
So tonight, I want to throw self-consciousness and embarrassment to the wind and, for a half hour or so, talk about something you should know: the history, the literature, and yes the reality of heroes. Let me tell you, they are out there—those of confounding selflessness and seeming immunity to fear; those with fires burning in their breasts, fires that may turn the tide for you as leaders someday. They have eluded concise definition since the beginning of recorded history. Aristotle would say only that they do exist and exist as the polar opposite of the beasts—that as the beasts are a cut below the normal human, the heroes are a cut above him, somewhere between the humans and the gods.”
~ James B. Stockdale from Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot
Vice Admiral James Stockdale is an American hero.
We featured Stockdale’s wisdom in our Note on another one of his speeches that was turned into a book (that speech is also part of this book), called Courage Under Fire.
Stockdale spent nearly eight years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. He spent four of those years in solitary confinement and was repeatedly tortured. He was the commanding officer of hundreds of other U.S. soldiersand received the Medal of Honor for his service beyond the call of duty.
The passage above is from a speech he gave to alumni of the Naval Academy and this book is a collection of speeches he gave toward the end of his life forming this compilation: Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot.
This is an incredibly inspiring look at the powerful mind and equally powerful moral commitment of a hero. (Get a copy of the book here.)
It’s packed with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
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Download PDFRemember, you are an actor in a drama of such sort as the Author chooses—if short, then in a short one; if long, then in a long one. If it be his pleasure that you should enact a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, see that you act it well. For this is your business—to act well the given part, but to choose it belongs to Another.
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Listen to the PodcastYou Are Your Brother's Keeper (Virtue + Vice)
“Father O’Malley asked that I talk about ethical notions of the sort that would qualify as growing within a person’s interior self and not simply a set of lessons learned from without. Be assured that I’m not just building a set of guideposts for prison or for a more general military setting. My conclusions are infinitely general. From this eight-year experience, I distilled one all-purpose idea, plus a few corollaries. It is a simple idea, an idea as old as the scriptures, an idea that is the epitome of high-mindedness, an idea that naturally and spontaneously comes to men under pressure. If the pressure is intense enough or of long enough duration, this idea spreads without even the need for enunciation. It just takes root naturally. It is an idea that, in this big easy world of yakety yak, seems to violate the rules of game theory, if not of reason. It violates the idea of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, our ideas of human nature, and probably the second law of thermodynamics. That idea is that you are your brother’s keeper.
That’s the flip side of What’s in it for me? If you recognize the first as an expression of virtue and the second as an expression of vice, as I’m sure any student of Father O’Malley would, let Bacon’s distinction add relevance to my concentration on adversity on this graduation day of joy: ‘Adversity doth best induce virtue . . . while luxury doth best induce vice.’”
That’s from the first chapter—a commencement address Stockdale gave in 1981 called “The Melting Experience: Grow or Die” in which he talks about how his 8 years in prison shaped his character.
Rule #1?
You are your brother’s keeper. Period.
The question is NOT “What’s in it for me?”
The question is “How can I help?
As Martin Luther King, Jr. taught: “The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
Christopher McDougall tells us that leading with love and compassion is at the root of the ancient Greek word for “hero.”
In Natural Born Heroes he says: “And what Plutarch taught them is this: Heroes care. True heroism, as the ancients understood, isn’t about strength, or boldness, or even courage. It’s about compassion.
When the Greeks created the heroic ideal, they didn’t choose a word that mean ‘Dies Trying’ or ‘Massacres Bad Guy.’ They went with hērōs—‘protector.’ Heroes aren’t perfect; with a god as one parent and a mortal as the other, they’re perpetually teetering between two destinies. What tips them toward greatness is a sidekick, a human connection who helps turn the spigot on the power of compassion. Empathy, the Greeks believed, was a source of strength, not softness; the more you recognized yourself in others and connected with their distress, the more endurance, wisdom, cunning, and determination you could tap into.”
Heroes care.
They’re willing to go beyond the call of duty to protect and to love.
In the Age of the Selfie it’s more important than ever for us to shift our focus from “What’s in it for me?” to “How can I be my brother’s keeper?”
Which begs the question: How can YOU help more today?
The turning point in anybody’s life, he said, is when you come to that fork in the road where you have to decide whether to risk your life or to lose your conscience. One road leads up, one down. To survive at any cost is to think me first, to lose your conscience, to take the low road. To support others at any cost, is to risk your life, to take the high road.
Chiseling Our Integrity —> Delight with Life!
“Integrity is a powerful word that derives from a specific concept. It describes a person who is integrated, blended into a whole, as opposed to a person of many parts, many faces, many disconnects. The word relates to the ancients’ distinction between living and living well. Contrary to popular thought, a person of integrity is typically easygoing with a sense of humor. He knows himself, reflects a definite and thoughtful set of preferences and aspirations, and is thus reliable. Knowing he is whole, he is not preoccupied with riding the crest of continual anxiety but is free to ride the crest of delight with life!”
Let’s talk about integrity and the resulting tranquility.
First, integrity. When we live with integrity we are an integrated, complete whole rather than a dis-integrated, crumbling array of conflicting parts.
In Primary Greatness, Stephen Covey tells us that “A life of total integrity is the only one worth striving for.”
He also tells us about the Latin phrase “Esse quam videri, which means ‘To be rather than to seem.’ This should be the motto of every person seeking primary greatness. Unfortunately, too often, ‘seeming to be’ substitutes for real integrity. It’s ‘seeming’ as opposed to ‘being.’”
To be rather than to seem. That’s the target.
The result? Tranquility.
—> “Knowing he is whole, he is not preoccupied with riding the crest of continual anxiety but is free to ride the crest of delight with life!”
David Brooks echoes this wisdom in The Road to Character. Here’s how he puts it: “We don’t live for happiness, we live for holiness. Day to day we seek out pleasure but deep down, human beings are endowed with moral imagination. All human beings seek to lead lives not just of pleasure, but of purpose, righteousness, and virtue. As John Stuart Mill put it, people have a responsibility to become more moral over time. The best life is oriented around the increasing excellence of the soul and is nourished by moral joy, the quiet sense of gratitude and tranquility that comes as a byproduct of successful moral struggle. The meaningful life is the same eternal thing, the combination of some set of ideals and some man or woman’s struggle for those ideals. Life is essentially a moral drama, not a hedonistic one.”
How do we build that type of integrated character?
By chiseling away one choice at a time. As Jim Rohn advises in Leading an Inspired Life: “Personal success is built on the foundation of character, and character is the result of hundreds and hundreds of choices you make that gradually turn who you are at any given moment into who you want to be. …
Character comes from a Greek word meaning ‘chisel,’ or ‘the mark left by a chisel.’ Of course, a chisel is a sharp steel tool used for making a sculpture out of a hard or difficult material, like granite or marble. …
Character isn’t a magic wand; character comes from chisel, and I hope you’ll remember that. You’ve got to chisel your character out of the raw material of yourself just like a sculptor has to create a statue. The raw material is always there, and everything that happens to you, good or bad, is an opportunity for building your character.”
How’s YOUR integrity?
What is important to you? What are your values?
How are you living with integrity to those ideals? How are you falling short?
How can you optimize 1% more today as you take the next baby step to total integrity?
(Note: Total integrity, a la Conquering Perfectionism 101, is a guiding star *not* a distant short. It’s an asymptote—an ideal we’ll never actually hit yet one that is still the only thing worth striving for.)
Here’s to living for holiness, chiseling our integrity and being our true, integrated selves as we ride the crest of DELIGHT with life!
It’s time to talk about heroism and what I think it is. This may sound strange, but to me a hero is a man who will not accept the status quo if it does not meet his standards. ... He will stand up and turn his world around.
Courage = Endurance of the Soul
“Theologians have found many exalted lessons in the story of Job. One of them is that we should not try to measure the standards of the infinite with those of the finite—they are incommensurable. The lesson I take from Job is simpler. Life is not fair. There is no moral economy or balance in the nature of things such that virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. The good man hangs on and hangs in there. It is significant that the nearest Plato comes to a definition of courage is in the dialogues of Laches where Socrates is talking to a general under whom he served whose motto is ‘Courage is the endurance of the soul.’ The Greeks admired the bold stroke, the audacious dash, but reserved top credit for the man that holds on under pressure. They knew by bitter experience what stress situations are. They knew what it means to break under pressure and what it means to hold on. On the battlefield, says Aristotle, the greatest pressure is fear of death and the temptation is to run away. But the courageous man holds on.”
One of the themes of the book is the fact that life—against all wishes to the contrary—is simply not fair.
Things happen.
The only relevant question is: What do we do when those “things” happen?
And, that’s where courage comes in. The highest regarded quality in Greek culture was courage—an ability to hold under pressure.
I love this definition: courage = endurance of the soul.
How’s yours?
P.S. Endurance of the soul sounds a lot like Grit, eh?
The notion that human beings are always victims of their circumstances is an affront to those bold spirits who throughout history have spent their lives prevailing over adversity.
Is It Within Your Control?
“I want to step off the chronology escalator for just a minute and explain what memories of The Enchiridion I did have ‘ready at hand’ when I ejected from that airplane. What I had in hand was the understanding that a Stoic always keeps separate files in his mind for (A) those things that are up to him and (B) those things that are not up to him or, another way of saying it, (A) those things that are within his power and (B) those things that are beyond his power or, still another way of saying it, (A) those things that are within the grasp of his will, his free will, and (B) those things that are beyond it. Among the relatively few things that are up to me, within my power, within my will, are my opinions, my aims, my aversions, my own grief, my own joy, my attitude toward what is going on, my own good, and my own evil.”
The ancient (1st century) Stoic philosopher Epictetus played a central role in Stockdale’s life and his wisdom permeates nearly all of his talks. (He often refers to Epictetus as his patron saint. :)
In his late 30’s (before being shot down and imprisoned), Stockdale was an up-and-coming Navy pilot with a very bright future who spent a couple years at Stanford getting his Master’s in international policy. He finished the program early and decided to see if he could explore philosophy during his remaining six months.
Quite fortuitously, he connected with a Stanford professor named Phil Rhinelander who became his mentor. As a parting gift, Rhinelander gave him a copy of Epictetus’s Enchiridion—thinking Stockdale would enjoy the wisdom.
Little did he know that, three years later, Stockdale would be shot down and imprisoned for eight years—with this going through his mind during his last moments of freedom:
“On September 9, 1965, I flew at 500 knots right into a flak trap, at tree-top level, in a little A-4 airplane—the cockpit walls not even three feet apart—which I couldn’t steer after it was on fire, its control system shot out. After ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed in the main street of a little village right ahead. And so help me, I whispered to myself: ‘Five years down there, at least. I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.’”
The cornerstone of Epictetus’s wisdom?
“Of things some are in our power, and others are not… examine it by the rules which you possess, and by this first and chiefly, whether it relates to the things which are in our power or to the things which are not in our power: and if it relates to anything which is not in our power, be ready to say, that it does not concern you.”
If it’s within your control, fantastic. If it’s not, then be prepared to say it does not concern you.
Stockdale elaborates: “stop kidding yourself, just do the best you can on a commonsense basis to make your station of life what you want it to be, but never get hooked on it. Make sure in your heart of hearts, in your inner self, that you treat your station in life with indifference. Not with contempt, only with indifference.
And so on to a long list of things that some unreflective people assume they’re assured of controlling to the last instance: your reputation, for example. Do what you will, it’s at least as fickle as your station in life. Othersdecide what your reputation is. Try to make it as good as possible, but again, don’t get hooked on it. In your heart, when you get out the key and open up that old rolltop desk where you really keep your stuff, don’t let ‘reputation’ get mixed up with what’s within your moral purpose, what’s within the power of your will, in other words, what’s up to you. Make sure it’s in the bottom drawer, filed under ‘matters of indifference.’ And so too with your health, your wealth, your pleasure, your pain, your fame, your dispute, your life, your death. They are all externals, all outside your control in the last instance, all outside the power of where you really live. And where you really live is confined to the regime of your moral purpose, confined to matters that can be projected by your acts of will: like desires, aims, aversions, judgments, attitudes, and, of course, your good and your evil. For a human, the moral purpose, the will, is the only repository of things of absolute value. Whether they are projected wisely or foolishly, for good or for evil, is up to you. … Your deliverance and your destruction are 100 percent up to you.”
I love that vision of putting all things outside your control (station in life, reputation, health, wealth, life, death) into the BOTTOM DRAWER. They are not your primary concerns. You are indifferent to them.
Our focus? The things of absolute value?
Our moral purpose. Our will. Our commitment to doing our best and to being GOOD.
This is a very (!) tough one to crack but unbelievably important. Do your best. Forget the rest.
How’re you doing with that? How can you +1% it?
P.S. From a mundane perspective, I’m always asking myself: Can I do something about that? Is it within my control? Yes or no. If no, then it makes NO sense to get upset about it. All I have control over is my RESPONSE to it.
Of course, easier said than done. But make it a sport—see how often you get annoyed by the mundane and practice using those moments to step back and choose a wiser response. Build that muscle—diligently, patiently, persistently—so the strength is there when you really need it.
George Bernard Shaw said that most people who fail complain that they are victims of circumstances. Those who get on in this world, he said, are those who go out and look for the right circumstances. And if they can’t find them they make their own.
Who is the invincible man? He who cannot be dismayed by any happening beyond his control.
Sorting Out The Heroes And The Bums
“It sort of fell out of Epictetus’s proclamation that ‘difficulties are what show men’s character. Therefore, when a difficult crisis meets you, remember that you are the raw youth with whom God the trainer is wrestling.’ But our bottom line was this: The challenge of education is not to prepare people for success but to prepare them for failure. I think it’s in the hardship and failure that the heroes and the bums really get sorted out.”
Want to sort out the heroes and bums?
Enter: Hardship.
The wisest among us remember that wind extinguishes the candle and fuels the fire.
Let us remember that the Obstacle Is the Way. Let us see the Upside of Stress. Let us cultivate our Iron Will.
I don’t subscribe to environmental, genetic, or any simple determinism. Will is the thing. Man makes his character here on earth. I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.
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