The Enigma

No matter which author’s perspective of my favorite hero Alexander the Great I study, I find myself in the same quandary: awe tempered with grief.

What ranks him above all others is unique.  Alexander chose:

~ To make himself without peer by constant self-education and regimented practice (among his corps);
~ To take nothing for himself except earned honor: great prizes are only at great hazard;
~ Privations and danger as the toll of deeds of glory:
“What is sweeter than to live bravely and to die leaving immortal renown?”
~ To always attack–seeking decisive battles that determine the fate of all others–with unrivaled speed and awesome shock;
~ To earn such a reputation that all wished to be his friend and all feared to become his enemy;
~ To conquer the impossible in order to be forever FIRST!

The night before his 50,000-man army defeated the Persian King Darius’ 1,250,000-man army at Gaugamela, Alexander instructed his generals: “When you seek my colors tomorrow, you need look only to the fore!”
(The Virtues of War, Steven Pressfield)

To my knowledge, no other human has liberated so many with such swiftness, dispatched battle-proven elite forces with such brilliant strategy, and rewarded his ranks with such storied recognition–all while maintaining a code of conduct without equal. Yet after leading so many to such magnificence, entitlement ensued and many lost faith in his leadership–with some of his most decorated plotting his demise.

The Enigma of inspiration and anguish persists within. I’m inspired by my hero’s skill of arresting from this world its best by overcoming its very worst. Yet, in such pursuits, he was rewarded with limitless anguish?

Why seek to better a world that deserves its misery? Why expect cowardly derelicts to rise above? Yet in such harrowing endeavors, history records that we hybrids of animal and gods perform with honor, and even valor. And in those endless moments on battlefields like Chaeronea, Granicus River, Issus, Gaugamela, and Hydapses River–charging into hell’s fury between blade and beast and spear–Alexander’s poise led many to eclipse the courage of even the gods–and gain their envy.

Zeus grants us such prodigies, I conclude, to show NOT what has been done…  but what can be!

See all the myths

November 2006 by Steven Moreland

Control is what they call this.  The locks failed to open at 12:30 as they ordinarily do at the bottom of each hour for a 10 minute “controlled movement,” allowing an exchange of location: one locked area for another.  Like anxious animals pacing by the locked door – waiting, hoping – for one “less savage” to open the locks.  But the locks did not open.

Confusion ensued.  Aimless scurrying about.  Whispering to one another.  When will the locks open?  Why didn’t they?  How could this happen?  And, of course, those among them that “know” the answers.  To witness painful absurdity causes its own form of craziness.  It is sad to see but really unnecessary — if — if one is aware to simply and calmly — see all the myths.

Instinct stars Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding, Jr.  It portrays a myth in order to reveal a truth.  Hopkins portrays a once well-respected psychologist who left civilization two years earlier to study the “savage” gorillas in Africa.  He disappeared.  Now caged in an asylum for evaluation for alleged crimes of killing “civil” humans, a young psychologist played by Gooding must determine whether he is sane enough to stand trial for such brutal savagery.

They were not “takers” as the humans were, as “I” used to be, remarks Hopkins.  They lived in freedom, real freedom, in harmony with nature; anything but savage.  I did not live as a gorilla but they accepted me anyway, reaching across to make me family.  Yes, this myth has savages, ones with guns and bullets, stalking “his” family, “his” gorillas!  Not for good.  Not for survival.  For sport!  For Profit!  It is sad to see but really unnecessary — if — if one is aware to simply and calmly — see all the myths.

As Gooding pushes him further in an interrogation, to remember the events of that day — the killing — in the jungle, Hopkins snaps, leaps behind him and wrestles him into a strangle hold… threatening to end his life!  He growls in his ear:

“Tell me what I have taken from you?”

C O N T R O L scribbles Cuba with a crayola on a piece of paper on the table.

“No! you never had control!!”  Tightening his strangle grip, “Tell me what have I taken from you?!!”

MY  F R E E D O M

“No!  Were you ‘free’ to do — to go — to be — as you wish at 2 pm today?!!
One last chance, and believe me — I have nothing to lose, TELL ME WHAT I HAVE TAKEN FROM YOU?!!!”

MY  I L L U S I O N S

It is sad to see but really unnecessary — if — if one is aware to simply and calmly — see all the myths.

SAPERE VIDERE

February 2008 by Steven Moreland

{read POPULAR PREJUDICE first}

PREMISE:
An individual’s ability to see, specifically to perceive, is necessarily flawed with regards to “truths” relative versus “Truths” objective.  The cliche’ “One cannot see the forest for the trees,” reflects that the objective Truth, i.e. “the forest,” was both present and obvious — yet it remained unseen… but why?  Does Leonardo da Vinci’s favorite Latin phrase Sapere Videre or “knowing how to see” have something to do with this?

DISCUSSION:
1. Though the medical diagnosis, Scotoma, means a literal or optical blind spot within the normal range of vision, could it also metaphorically mean seeing only what one wishes to perceive — one’s relative truth(s) due to self-created or “learned” blind spots within the psyche?
2… If the Scotorna is in, or of, the mind (the thinking), and we are predisposed to our prejudices unknowingly, is it any surprise we remain blind to reality, “the forest”?
3. Since the mind interprets reality by use of catalogued symbols stored in the format of myths should we expect more than relative perspectives?
4.. If our perception of reality is “our” truth but not “the” Truth, is perception an illusion or a delusion?
5. Is the conflict of history not Truth (ultimate, sacred, and objective) versus truth (self-determined, secular, relative, and subjective) but rather one’s truth versus another’s truth?
6. If absolutes do not exist and the statement “all truths are relative,” itself, is a logical fallacy, does truth or Truth exist?

CONCLUSION:
Perception, perspective, or paradigm are all representations for the concept of interpreting the external world through one’s mental filters of preferences, prejudices, and biases.  Interpretation, itself, denies objectivity. The act causes one to become the subject observing, If one is observing one is also interpreting and thereby projecting self-bias in the process. Bias denies objectivity.

Therefore, absolute Truth is a myth!

Exchanging archaic mythology for a new dogma is only a quantitative distinction.  Qualitatively, absolute Truth fails, as does relative truth. There must be something else: tentative truth.

THE CONSTRUCT:
Define reality.  What is real?  Reality is perceived.  It’s perceived via paradigms organized from beliefs.  Beliefs are supported by aggregating dogmas.  Dogmas are derived from myths, superstitions, or their symbology.  True, the construct of our reality contains both both the trees and the forest.  Or, more accurately, the trees in aggregate “are” the forest.  It is our inability to correctly perceive all aspects of both that causes the limitation to unconditional comprehension.

Existence within the CONSTRUCT necessitates communication. To communicate, language relies upon words that equate to meaning(s) within the mind’s memory database. Words linked together form sentences, paragraphs, thoughts, and eventually the creation of a new story (aka myth), even if only temporarily in order to transfer an idea. Such a complex CONSTRUCT affords the opportunity, or rather the probability, for erroneous transmission, as well as reception, of meaning. Compound this difficulty by members of the construct suffering from Scotomas, Cognitive Dissonance, Shared Delusion Syndrome, that impede the transfer of identical meaning, thus degrading the potential for perfect comprehension during communication.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE (CD):
A psychological phenomenon suffered when one fails to correctly reconcile contradictory, or seemingly contradictory, observations. Unknowingly, for causes related to trauma, culture, or indoctrination, the mind forms an incorrect interpretation of the observed. During these occurrences, Truth, that could cause a psychological conflict is ignored, by the conscious mind, as if one is blind to the obvious, i.e. the forest.

SHARED DELUSION SYNDROME (SDS):
If Scotoma is a metaphor for CD then Scotomas shared by groups within a collective would equate to a Shared Delusion Syndrome. Within a bell-shaped curve members in the center of the curve “share” overlapping beliefs: similar backgrounds, cultures, indoctrinations, or traumatic experiences. Those to the outlying ends have little or none of these commonalities. Therefore, the perceptions at either extreme would be distinctively different from the consensus of the bell’s center, or belly. Nietzsche defined this consensus as the “popular prejudice.”  Society historically  errs by correlating “consensus,” a positive term., with other positives such as: good, right,  absolute, or Truth.

MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS:
Abraham Maslow designed the well-known psychological scale defining how humans prioritize their actions. Survival first, then security or safety, etc.. Society acting at these two primary levels mirror the instinctual conduct of animals.

DISCUSSION:
How one relates to his environment necessitates an establishment of fundamental beliefs. The possibility, or probability, that everything one believes is NOT Truth is denied by Scotoma because such an existential revelation conflicts with Maslow’s foundational operating protocol for functional life. The fail safe protects the construct; but at what cost? The sacrifice of what is real?

How does one explain something to another who has no basis to understand? One would use a concept the other already accepts as a relative shared consensus. What most have not considered is that these relative shared concepts are often not fact-based nor withstood scrutiny. Such should be referenced as myth, conjecture, or hypothesis. But all too often, when referencing sacred subject matter, they become accepted as a necessary cornerstone to society’s psychological foundation. These are the religions based upon dogma: “truth-claims backed only by authoritative fiat” (Ken Wilber)…..

The mind interprets reality by use of catalogued symbols stored in the format of myths.  They are nothing more than relative perspectives. Objectivity means a point outside, external, un-biased, and without pre-disposed or pre-conceived “pre”-judging.. Measuring Mt. Everest is not the point of this essay. Measuring the distinction between such conceptual non-physicals as good and evil — is.. If one person’s religious beliefs demand him to sacrifice a human child of his tribe, who are we to dictate that his beliefs are wrong, bad, or evil? To believe our group within the bell curve can only own Truth, or hold exclusive access to the supernatural, is nothing but a narcissistic, shared delusion. This example is merely one’s relative truth conflicting with another’s relative truth. These pre-dispositions reach the scale of zealous piety — causing wars between nations, races, creeds, and dogmas — over myths. Neuroscientist Sam Harris, warns that such may cause the extinction of mankind, thereby ranking ANY dogmatic belief system as the greatest threat to man’s future survival.

If our perception of reality is “our” truth but not “the” Truth, does this make it an illusion or a delusion?  Illusion is a non-real, specifically visual-related, event. Delusion, specifically mental or psychological, is a mis-perception caused by SDSs wherein members share overlapping dogmas by incorrectly defining their consensus of adopted, or experienced, truths — as Truth. Absolutes, not physical, measurable, self-evident matter, but rather, mental interpretation affecting beliefs constructed from dogmas, myths, and symbols, DO NOT EXIST. Beliefs utilize personal perception, derived from shared myths or possibly delusions, to choose between diametrically opposed concepts: right or wrong, good or evil, T(t)ruth or falsity, positive or negative, or even, Truth versus truth. If so, my point: Can one ever know Truth? If all suffer to different extents from an SDS how can humans ever map the entire forest and then azimuth each person’s location relative therein? For example, how are we to define the “good” or “evil” of love, duty, honor, sacrifice or any conduct? We must define the metric to fixed markers, as an absolute, beforehand? WE CANNOT.

Why can absolute Truth not exist in an immeasurable, ethereal environment such as thought or beliefs? As stated, one teaches another a new concept by building upon a shared, relative consensus previously adopted. The first uses a relative truth of the second as a staging point. The second’s staging point is presumed correct because it is popular prejudice. The first then uses language to create a myth, a story not necessarily True but carrying some of his relative truth(s) necessary to create a picture or symbolic representation inside the mind of the second. The general idea is inferred based upon the context of the subject matter, but the error inherent to this construct remains. The representation cannot be identical to that of the first’s because individuals’ memories and interpretation filters (prejudices, biases, etc.), are non-identical. Since the process of communication entails the complexities described, depending thereafter upon comparison and contrast, Truth evades capture. Parties compare and contrast against variable points of interpretation believed to be fixed or absolute. Instead these variables are flawed interpretations of adopted concepts, myths, and dogmas — misrepresented as an absolute.

From society, culture, government, school, family, and religion,   our reference points   we adopt WHAT to believe. To question the HOW or the WHY of these popular prejudices risks exposure to ridicule or even violent opposition. The status quo satisfies Maslow’s safety fundamental. The possibility, or probability, that one’s life is based upon a masquerade cannot be faced. Cognitive dissonance occurs..

Sapere videre, “knowing how to see” was Leonardo da Vinci’s favorite Latin phrase. Could it be he was attempting to tell us something about the syntax of perspective, itself? How to see. Particularly, knowing, how to see — absent false pretense, prejudice, bias, and myths. But without these staging points WHAT are we to believe?  Who is to referee which relative truth… is Truth?  A supernatural and absentee landlord? Truth will always evade capture because any data must be filtered through the SDS thinking of the parties interpreting the data. Non-Truth is the best one could hope for,- if we are honest.

Truth, objective and untainted by perception, cannot exist, but only degrees of truth relative to individualistic beliefs, most assuredly containing dogmas and myths and therefore, regrettably, tainted. What shall we call these individually-asserted, relative truths? We cannot state “all truths are relative,” for such an absolute statement is a logical fallacy, a conundrum. Instead, should tentative truth be accepted provisionally correct until dis-proven? Under such a caveat the consensus may be accepted as the “best possible solution” (relative to the situation) but certainly not the absolute. Science acknowledges there are no laws, no absolutes, only theoretical solutions adopted by the consensus of trial and error: the scientific process. As science progresses, disproven theories are discarded for better, tentative solutions.

Plotting one’s position upon the belly of the bell curve may become as simple as The Bullock Cart story:

In a thickprimitive part of Burma, a small machine was left by the army. They were in a hurry, they were retreating, and for some mechanical reason they could not manage to take it with them. The primitives found the machine, but could not “understand” what it was. They figured out it must be some kind of bullock cart   that was the only possible thing for them to think, the bullock cart was the ultimate vehicle “in their vision.” So they started using the machine as a bullock cart, and they enjoyed it. It was the best bullock cart they had ever found.

Then somebody was passing by — a man who lived further away from the primitive tribe but was part of the tribe. He had come to experience cars, trucks, buses. He said, “This is not a. bullock cart, this is a car, and I know something about cars.” So he fixed it, and they were immensely amazed that without horses, without bulls, the machine was working. It was such a toy! Every morning, every evening, they enjoyed just looking at it again and again from all sides, entering it, setting in it, and because there were not many roads, even to go a few feet was A great excitement.

Then one day a pilot passed by the primitive forest and he said, “What are you doing? This is an airplane, it can fly!” He took the primitives with him, and when they left the ground they could not believe it. This was absolutely beyond their imagination, beyond all their “d-r-e-a-m-s.” They used to “think” that only gods could fly; they had heard stories about gods flying in the sky. Yes, they had seen airplanes in the sky, but they had always “believed” they belonged to gods.

The moral: you may leave a milestone behind, but if you remain upon the same road, path, or maintain the same linear distinctions, your dimension has not changed. You have only gained quantity, the measurement of the milestone (a variable not a fixed point) to your new position (dogmatic belief). To affect your qualitative perception of the construct, to transcend erroneous myths, fallacious dogma adopted as Truth, your elevation requires change — a non-linear approach. Both the bullock cart and the car were incorrect or non-Truths.  But the primitives could not “believe” anything beyond their imaginations (limited beliefs based upon shared delusions or dogma). It took a non-resident, one not inculcated by the primitives’ way of thinking, reason – not its abandonment, to transcend their tentative truths. A breakthrough resulted:

Gods do not exist in the sky but rather men who have abandoned primitive ignorance.

POPULAR PREJUDICE

~Shared Delusional Consensus~
December 2007 by Steven Moreland

“Perceptions are portraits, not photographs.”
~Daniel Gilbert, Harvard psychologist, Stumbling On Happiness

While our perceptions, for the most part, contain truth, they are not in the absolute sense “true.” Using our all-too-human senses, our minds paint a portrait of the present upon a canvas prepared in our past. Like an artist, our perceptions say more about ourselves than anything else. We are, in a word, delusional.

The construct of perceptions are worth discovering. They correspond to our preferred assumptions and rely upon prejudice or “pre-judgment.” They are crafted from many influences, especially from superstitious myths.  Rooted in these myths hides what philosopher Ken Wilber defines as dogma: truth-claims backed only by authoritative fiat. When adopted from a group’s shared lens, these (false) perceptions congregate to form biases (or biased paradigms), otherwise known as “popular prejudices.”

The intent of popular prejudice is a convenient form of dogma and therefore has little, if any, integrity. Convenient dogma dispenses preferences that act in a contagious fashion, much like a virus within a group, infecting an individual’s interpretation process. These shared interpretations mirror religious indoctrination, decreeing “claims of truth” by fiat (“something out of nothing”). For example, civilization hosts 28,000 known religious cults, each asserting its interpretation of the “sacred” as the only guarantee to a mythical after-life, claiming sole possession of ultimate or “absolute” truth. Due in part to such an absurdity, our world is, in a word, delusional.

For example, a reasoned, philosophical debate among Catholic, American, Caucasian men will conclude differently than an equally capable group of Hindu, Indian, Asian women. Who is qualified to act as the unprejudiced judge to determine whose conclusions are right and whose are wrong? Nietzsche remarked, “Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology..” Yet, groups within society prefer to equate their dogmas to the absolute.

Even this erroneous thinking demands academics to deal with philosophical interpretations differently from hard science judgments. Even relying upon the “scientific method,” scientists frame their evidence-based findings as provisional. But this method is inadequate for philosophical “opinions.”  Non-fact determined “truth-claims” must be treated with extreme suspicion. Quite often, these preferences of belief fail tragically when assaulted by the random nature of fate (life).  And, once proven false, these unfulfilled expectations create a dilemma: either continue “the faith” or abandon it altogether and search for something better. Most prefer the former to the latter. Why?

What is critical to life is that a person believes in some meaning. Psychological pathologies are due to the loss of meaning, notes Dr. Viktor Frankyl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, not the will to pleasure or power proposed by earlier psychologists like Freud or Adler, respectively. Meaningful faith may be the only thing that guides us through the deserts of life. It acts like a mirage, an oasis of beautiful and pacifying answers to desolate questions. Throughout man’s   history, in every culture, nation, and epoch, the utility of such “claims-of-truth” has been recorded. The purpose of dogma, once ordained by “authority,” is to infect every subsequent aspect of thought thereby controlling the group’s perspective (blinding them from truth).

This manipulation becomes a shared delusional consensus or meaning also known as popular prejudice.

By combining the above — the construct of perception, Wilber’s definition of dogma, and Dr. Viktor Frankyl’s Logotherapy, the answer takes shape. Bottomline, life requires meaning, whether right or wrong; it’s the blood of human psyche. One man’s meaning may be nothing more than faith in a myth. It’s truth or falsity is a value judgment based upon perception from another person who is arguably and equally deluded by his own interpretation by his interpretation of meaning.. Therefore, his perception is equally questionable.

Frankyl’s discovery of this pattern of psychological manipulation reinforced Voltaire’s warning about any form of dogmas: “Those that can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”  The nucleus of all action is not value-oriented but fear-motivated. Lack of meaning results in fear causing false perceptions which dominos into wrong action. (This is very similar to the Japanese Zen definition of the False Mind).

So how can we eliminate absurd prejudices when they conveniently pacify? If our judgments potentially suffer from these erroneous conclusions, and these biases are just opinion and nothing more, how can we escape our illusion of what is true? The mark of society rests within the answer to a simply question: “Would you rather be a satisfied pig or a dissatisfied Socrates?” Life appears to be either a leisurely gorging upon purposelessness or a disciplined regimen of meaningfulness…. Swine or philosopher. Ignorance or knowledge. Beautiful myths or ugly truths.

Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, focused upon the need to perceive correctly because our minds see (interpret) things the way they “prefer” them to be, instead of the way they are. Consciously aware that popular prejudices are unavoidable delusions, the Socratic method relied upon a process of questions designed to reverse the perspective of the observer, to shake him from his apathy. He did so by turning him into the subject in question. His method challenged the observer to perceive meaning absent his subjective prejudices. The great Italian thinker Leonardo da Vinci called it sapere videre or “knowing how to see..”

Let’s try, shall we? What if humanity chose to perceive life as a great challenge designed to prove our mettle, our worth; a journey to discover who we are, and, what we can overcome? What if we exiled our childish expectations of genie-like gods (God), fiat religions, and acted purely upon principle alone?

Once our best defense against the absurd, universities taught “how” to think instead of “what” to think. But even the community of intelligentsia falls prey to the contagion because learning is the process of thought. It is memorizing adopted assumptions and then interpreting real-time information through this now “tainted” lens. Thus, the institution that was meant to rescue mankind yields more sophisticated forms of psychological scotomas (blind spots).

The conclusions to these questions inevitably begins the next myth, dogma, and prejudice. So how do we escape our own absurd sense of what is true without chasing our tails? Socrates believed there was an answer, although he was served hemlock for it.. At his trial, he presented this defense in rebuttal to his prosecutor’s accusations. He said that he was smarter than the prosecutor on only one point. That the prosecutor does not know… that he does not know what he is talking about.. “I,” stated Socrates, “at least know… that I do not know.”

What on earth did he mean? The most popular “self” prejudice is the delusion that we actually know what we think we know, is it not? Socrates knew that it was our own myths, made up superstitions in our own minds, that we cannot divorce ourselves from. Our beliefs are not intentional misrepresentations of what is true, but are nonetheless false. We are our own worst enemies, every judgmental perception lacking truth to some extent. For the integrity of this belief he was sentenced to death by those that he had spent his entire life loving and defending.

Once more, even this conclusion potentially becomes another dogma. It’s basis, however, is unique because it borrows from art something unique: the “beauty” of perspective. Art is about difference, not sameness. Judgmental conclusions have no place because art is not “an exact science.” Each artist retains the liberty to perceive differently. Not more, not less, not equal to. Just different.

We began with Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert’s statement, “Perceptions are portraits, not photographs.” In art, there are no rules, no absolutes, regarding perception; no right or wrong way to think. An artist attempts to reproduce, in his portrait, his “interpretation” of the images within a photograph. If the photograph is a metaphor for “Truth” then our perspectives are nothing more than opinionated interpretations. They are no more truth than an artist’s portrait can be the photograph.

Our goal should be to witness each person’s beautiful interpretation of life: to seek to realize each person’s relative, provisional, and unique perspective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it’s fleeting, some have said. The Greeks regarded the goddess Aphrodite’s nakedness as: “…beauty in things seen is not covered.” (The Five Stages of Greek Religion, Gilbert Murray, 1956). These representations describe beauty as anything but grotesquely absolute. Yet society balks at handing each individual his own paintbrush to interpret independently.. History is a record of men ill-contented to remain in their own studios practicing to better their abilities. Instead, an insane few “decree” that all must adopt their portrait as the photograph, and worship such a counterfeit, thereafter, as Truth. They are nothing more than the stolen portraits of ancient popular prejudices re-framed in ignorance and deceitfully ordained as photographs.

Glossary: Webster’s Dictionary. 2nd Ed. (1998)

Delusional: a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact.

Prejudice: an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.

Perception: the result or product of perceiving, as distinguished from the act of perceiving; percept.

Perceive: to become aware of, know, or identify by means of the senses; to recognize, discern, envision, or understand.

Perspective: the state of one’s ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship; the faculty of seeing all the relevant data in a meaningful relationship; of or pertaining to the art of perspective..

Scotoma: loss of vision in a part of the visual field; blind spot.

Fiat: an arbitrary decree or pronouncement, especially by a person or group of persons having absolute authority to enforce it.

Myth: a traditional  or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature; an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution.

Dogma: a specific tenet or doctrine authoritatively laid down, as by a church; prescribed doctrine; political dogma a settled opinion, belief, or principle.

Truth: conformity with fact or reality; a verified or indisputable fact; an obvious accepted fact ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience..

{read Sapere Videre next}

Functional Life Navigation

May 2009 by Steven Moreland

Epictetus, Roman Stoic philosopher (55 – 135 A.D.) taught: “Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Therefore give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal.. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths. Remain steadfast.. . and one day you will build something that endures, something worthy of your potential.”

In life, the metric of worth is performance within a given period of time. Sadly, most spend more of this rarest of commodities planning their vacations rather than planning how to perform exceptionally….. Accordingly, their navigation skills are dysfunctional. What if there was a system, a process, that could help you ensure a more successful trip to Disney World with your children, achieve your personal fitness goals, enhance your relationships, or transform you into that star employee that you’ve always wanted to be? If this is you, read on. Most measure life navigation by the answer to: How do I spend time? They busy themselves with “to do” lists and other lackluster yardsticks. If we’re to escape their fate we must choose differently. Herein I provide a combination of contrarian suggestions, beginning with a new question: Why do I spend time the way I do?

Noted psychologist Dr. Viktor Frankl diagnosed the cause of mankind’s aimless wandering as a lack of “will to meaning.” In Man’s Search For Meaning he determined that this pursuit gives life worth. Without it, the force that animates man expires. Philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche provides the distinction. “He that has a why to live for can deal with almost any how.” Purposeful instead of purposeless actions are the difference between efficient versus effective activity. It’s the same distinction between asking how? to accomplish a goal versus why? it should be done. Begin with the “why” which is frequently characterized by powerful emotions such as love of family, allegiance to a cause, or devotion to a system of beliefs (i.e., religion or philosophy). Words, the clumsy expression of these feelings, are the means to meaning.

During Japan’s post-WWII rebuilding of its industry an American statistician named Dr. Edward Deming introduced a radically new way of thinking about performance. His concept was a system for managing change known as “TQC” or Total Quality Control.. This method is known by the Japanese term kaizen which means “the good (or the correct) change.” It represents an evolutionary process of incremental, controlled and continuous improvements. Japan’s rivaling of the industrial giants just four decades after near destruction proves that maverick thinking pays huge dividends..

Establishing meaning and constructing a goal to carry you in that direction is great, but then what? The process I’m recommending uses a functional navigation system known by the acronym D.M.A.I.C. (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control / Continue) (pronounced duh-maic). This art optimizes performance by eliminating inefficient uses of effort and time. It is different because it succeeds where others fail proving itself over nearly half a century. What is the synergy between the “will to meaning,” kaizen, and DMAIC you ask? The first answers “What matters most to me?”. The second improves quality in any given endeavor.. And the last manages the quality process to ensure performance… DMAIC uses the basic framework known as goals, objectives, and actions.. Common goal setting fails because of the basic misunderstanding that goals are to be numerous. That’s incorrect. You should never attempt more than two at a time. Goals should be a few, important, life-changing events. Weekly, monthly or annual goals simply do not exist. The shorter time line events (improperly) referred to as goals are actually objectives. The difference can be determined by asking two questions to any goal: “Why?” and “Because?” The answers are probably the goal. What you thought was the goal is an objective.

Objectives are milestones that determine our progress. It’s a way of measuring how far we’ve moved relative to the goal. You may have an objective with an annual completion date. The tasks that must be completed in order to reach each milestone are called “action items.” These mini-milestones accumulate along even smaller daily, weekly or monthly time lines. Establishing goals and objectives is not as simple as it sounds. It’s like a good business plan, the more refining put into it, the greater your probability of success.

For example, what if your goal is to improve your communication skills? That’s poorly constructed. By asking “why?” you state that it is important to keep your job. By asking “because?” you state that keeping your job allows you to care for your family’s needs. Why is that important? Because you love them. Reformatted, your goal is “to correctly influence people.” Your objective is “to gain improved communication skills to keep your job.” What gives all this meaning is the happiness you feel when demonstrating your love for your family.

Another example of properly formatting goals, objectives, and action items could look like this fitness format: The goal could be a picture of your idea of a “fit” person, along with a date to look similar. An objective could be to reduce body fat to less than 10% by a certain date. Action items could include: (1) cutting carbs by a certain percentage or number of grams per day, (2) doing a specific amount of cardio at a specific heart rate each day, or (3) completing a specific resistance training routine for a period of time.

Remember, every goal, objective, and action must include an E.C.D. or “estimated completion date.” ECDs guide our use of time and effort. They hold our feet to the fire and keep us “on mission.”

DMAIC is the acronym for the effective process management system: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control / continue. Think of DMAIC as the process you use when going to a shopping mall. The first place you stop is the map. Why? To find the “you are here” on the map. The first step is defining your current situation: Where are you? Where are you going? What are your resources? What are your (known) obstacles? What do you want the outcome to look like? And don’t forget: Who are you? Measuring, the second step, establishes milestones in order to mark progress. Your “gap” where you are versus where you want to be is very important to understand. How many planes leave Los Angeles not knowing where they headed, how long it will take them to get there, how much fuel they’ll need, et cetera? Gap can also be what you know versus what you don’t know. Analyzing gauges the progress by comparing the milestones to the origination and destination. This outcome is your meaning or “what matters most.” Planes leaving Los Angeles for Hawaii are “off course” roughly 95% of the time. They arrive at their destination because of this never-ending step. Improvements are the adjustments taken once you have a fix on where you are now (your progress) in relation to the predetermined milestones and the ultimate goal. Each action produces a corresponding consequence (cause and effect). The kaizen method achieves successful changes because of “incremental” and “continuous” adjustments, not major, sweeping reconfigurations. However, adjustments are dependent upon gaining control in an operation, otherwise known as consistency. It is impossible to make improvements in a chaotic environment. Once there is a tight and recognizable pattern, “controlled” improvements move us toward the correct destination. And finally, after completing these steps, repeat or continue this process.

Because the only guarantee is change, there can be only one motto: “Improvise.. Adapt.. Overcome.” Improvisation means taking decisive, immediate and correct action(s), often without the time for preparation. Adaptation corresponds to the use of immediate resources available. The amount of planning invested, beforehand, influences the outcome. But it doesn’t guarantee the outcome! It betters your odds against fate and random chance. Louis Pasteur wisely stated: “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Kaizen, controlled and continuous improvement, isn’t a single destination, it’s the never-ending journey. With this in mind, once you have completed one pass through DMAIC you can only improve by repeating it, again and again. The continue stage is the plotting of “you are here” on the mall map. Milestone objectives must be formulated within the “realm of possibility” or realistic. They can stretch your abilities, force you to grow, but must be within your scope of believability. A man that has never made more than $50,000 in a year should not set next year’s income goal at $1 million. “People overestimate what they can accomplish in a year but underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade.” (Anthony Robbins)

Let’s apply what we’ve discovered so far. First, we have to make some assumptions: that taking your family on a vacation to Disney World in a year from now would make everyone happy. This statement defines both a meaning (happiness) as well as a goal (Disney World in one year from now). In order to reach the goal there may be many objectives (or challenges) such as money, education, scheduling, and transportation. Milestones often come from realizing your “gap” or what do you know or have versus what you need to acquire. Better preparation ensures better performance. The money milestone is the amount of budgeted dollars essential for the round trip. Education means learning about the trip as well as the park. Scheduling includes coordinating the parks availability of tickets with your vacation schedule from work and the kids’ time off from school. And transportation considers how you will get to and return from your goal as well as how you will move to and from your lodging to the park each day. Under money, you’ll have a specific amount to save ahead of time to pay for fuel, food, lodging, tickets, and souvenirs. You’ll have to make deposits on lodging by certain dates.. You’ll have to calculate the trip mileage, if traveling by car, and determine how much fuel you will need, how far you can travel each day, the cost of lodging each night, and the expenses for meals each day. If traveling by air you’ll need rates that coordinate with your park tickets. Under the educational and scheduling objectives you’ll need to do research through books at the library, friends who have made the trip, and access Internet web sites to find out necessary information such as the cost of food in the park, the best way to stretch your money, and the “must see” events. You might need to reserve special “Disney character meals” ahead of time so that your kids can share meals with Mickey Mouse or Cinderella. Education ensures the best use of your funds and reduces wasteful and unnecessary expenses, like paying fees at the last minute. The transportation objective includes the determination of the mode of transportation: air, train, bus or car. It’s dependent upon the financial objective and actions of savings versus actual costs. Otherwise, auto tune ups, tires, and inspections need to be budgeted and scheduled. Costs fixed to specific deadlines resemble “E.C.D.’s.”

The process of establishing a specific goal supported by clear milestones and definitive actions enables any outcome to be achieved. The old adage is true that no one can move mountains. But they never finish the lesson. The moral of the story is that anyone, given a meaningful purpose, can move a mountain one milestone at a time.

THE BEAUTIFUL DEATH

September 2007 by Steven Moreland

{read The Enigma of Valor first}

“You’ve never lived till you’ve almost died.  For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected will never know.”
~ Green Beret Sergeant Larry Trimble, U.S. Army (S.O.G.), Recon Team: New Mexico, Kontum, Viet Nam, 1986

In Herodotus’ Histories, the Spartan Dienekes expresses the imperative attitude of the beautiful death:

Although extraordinary valor was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespians, yet bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dienekes.  It was said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, when they fired their volleys, the mass of arrows blocked out the sun.  Dienekes, however, quite undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, “Good.  Then we’ll have our battle in the shade.”

Offsetting is a term that causes a disconnection between pain and performance-on-command.  It becomes wrongly described, by the uninitiated, as a reckless disregard for safety and welfare.  In Gates of Fire, Pressfield offers us a definition regarding the subtle nuances within valor in a monologue by Dienekes to his famed Third Platoon:

“To call it aphobia, fearlessness, is without meaning.  This is just a name, thesis expressed as antithesis.  To call the opposite of fear fearlessness is to say nothing.  I want to know the true obverse, as day of night and heaven of earth.  Expressed as a positive!  Dogs in a pack find courage to take on a lion.  Each hound knows his place.  He fears the dog ranked above and feeds off the dog below.  Fear conquers fear.  This is how we Spartans do it, counterpoising to the fear of death a greater fear: that of dishonor.  Of exclusion from the pack.

“But is that courage?  Is not acting out of fear of dishonor still, in essence, acting out of fear?  [There is] something nobler.  A higher form of the mystery.  Pure.  Infallible.  Fear of disgracing the city, the king, the heroes of our lines.  Fear of proving ourselves unworthy of our wives and children, our brothers, our comrades-in-arms.  The secret shame of the warrior, the knowledge within his own heart that he could have done better, done more, done it more swiftly or with less self-preserving hesitation.  The closest I’ve come is to act despite terror.  But that’s not it either.  Nor is the beast like fury or panic-spawned self-preservation.  These are katalepsis.  Even Polynikes’ valor, though closer, I find unsatisfactory.  He fights not our of fear of dishonor, but greed for glory.

“The seat of this higher valor, I suspect, lies in that which is female.  The words themselves for courage, andreia and aphobia, are female, whereas phobos and tromos, are masculine.  Perhaps the god we seek is not a god at all, but a goddess.  What elevates such an act to the stature of nobility is, I believe, that it is performed in the service of a higher and more selfless cause.  Like the mother whose story we have heard from childhood who, on learning that all five of her sons had been killed in the same battle, asked only, “Was our nation victorious?”  And, being told that it was, turned for home without a tear, saying only, “Then I am happy.”  Is it not this element — the nobility of setting the whole above the part — that moves us about sacrifice?”

The lowest rank is fear harnessed and counterbalanced (or “offset”) against fear un-harnessed.  The second level is greed-driven, so, let’s be honest, the purpose served is amoral selfishness.  If others benefit, it is more of an accident than an obligation.  The third elevates a man’s efforts above that of a fearful dog, beyond a greed-driven bastard, to that which is regal, and therefore noble.

Many warrior cults have competed for the nobility of the pedestal of valor but few have achieved such legendary renown that their name, itself, became synonymous with valor.  Spartans could lose their helmet or breastplate in battle without penalty.  But if a Spartan lost his shield (“aspis”), he was court-martialed and even lost his citizenship.  Why?  Because the former protected the warrior’s person; the latter defended the entire phalanx (battle line formation).  The mothers of these warriors are reported to have charged their sons to return from battle “with their aspis, or on it!”  From this ideal the “beautiful death” was born, that a Spartan warrior was only remembered if he died “in combat”; otherwise, no memory of his existence was worthy.

How is such devotion instilled?  The answer lies within their controversial agoge’, their bellicose and notorious decade-long boot camp.  Before a boy of Sparta could don the scarlet cloak of the ranks, to become a Peer, a Spartiatai, intense drilling untrained his natural responses when Phobos seized his daemon (spirit).  Phobos, the god of fear, was constrained through a fear-shedding mental science of initiation called katabasis.  This technique produced a sentiment “not in the frenzied shrieking rage, lip-curled and fang-bared, but predator-like, cold-blooded, applying the steel of the wordless cohesion of the killing pack and the homicidal efficiency of the hunt.” (Gates of Fire)

The arosis, part of the mental harrowing process of the agoge’, inured the trainees’ senses and forged their wills, not to trophy valor, but to protect the Greek city-state of Sparta.  Metaphorically, the agoge’ prepared each Peer to serve that something which is more excellent than his personal interests: to sacrifice himself for a cause greater, one less imperfect than his desires.  Pressfield defined the quintessence of these venerated as “performing the commonplace under uncommonplace conditions.”  The agoge’ was not magic nor Herculean strength, but routine conditioning: “Habit will be your champion.  When you train the mind to think one way and one way only, when you refuse to allow it to think in another, that will produce great strength in battle.”  (Gates of Fire)

This code is erected upon an unspoken understanding: In all things, value is defined by the sacrifice suffered.  I found this key concept repeatedly in the Stoic martial mindset.  As another example, the Tokyo Riot Police are revered because of their grueling entrance exam.  Applicants must survive a brutal year of one of the most rigorous of all martial arts: Yoshinkan Aikido.  Dedication to practice this discipline is represented in Robert Twigger’s book Angry White Pajamas (1993).  As a graduate himself, he explains the secret to this agoge’-like training method known in Japanese as kidotai:

“The harsh policy on senshusei (trainee) injuries was another traditional way of “building spirit.”  The idea was to produce fighters who could acquit themselves well whatever the state of their bodies.  The aim was to break the subjective link between how you feel and how you perform.  Instead, it sought to replace it with a decided goal and achievement of that goal using the body, rather than the body dictating what the goal should be.”

This method counterbalances or offsets the pain suffered through the difficulties of training in order to survive the unforgiving unknowns met while prosecuting a mission.  Military special forces repeat a mantra that echoes this ideal: “pain is weakness leaving your body, therefore extreme pain is extremely good.”  US Marines are taught to “improvise, adapt, and overcome!”  Excuses are not tolerated; only performance is accepted.

Searching further, I discovered Robert Bly’s book Iron John that offered a final clue, a seductive description of the magnificently terrible pageantry experienced within the othismos in the journal of a knight from 1465 named Jean de Brueil:

Battle is a joyous thing.  We love each other so much in battle.  If we see that our cause is just and our kinsmen fight boldly, tears come to our eyes.  A sweet joy rises in our hearts, in the feeling of our honest loyalty to each other, and seeing our friend so bravely exposing his body to danger in order to fulfill the commandment of our Creator, we resolve to go forward and die or live with him on account of love.  This brings such delight that anyone who has not felt it cannot say how wonderful it is.  Do you think someone who feels this is afraid of death?  Not in the least!  He is so strengthened, so delighted, that he does not know where he is.  Truly, he fears nothing in the world!

If a man is not ready to die, if he has not written his own epitaph, he will act selfishly, cowardly even, within the othismos.  The “reasonable” do not understand and, due to such failings, seldom champion anything of worth.

“All men die.  It’s only How?  And Why?”  ~Sir William Wallace

:::::::::::::::::::::
The Beautiful Death, The Enigma of Valor, and The Perfect Imperfection were originally a single essay when constructed in 2007.  It took ME over a year to write but they represent nearly twenty years of research into this rarest of virtues.

Vale!

THE ENIGMA OF VALOR

September 2007 by Steven Moreland

{read A Perfect Imperfection first}

“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”  ~Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during WWII

This riddle whispered as valor isn’t easily defined.  To help explain my perspective I’ve drawn from different depictions within film in hopes of defining its essence, to portray what words profane.  For instance, in the classic French novel turned motion picture The Count of Monte Cristo, the protagonist Edmond Dantes is betrayed by his best friend, wrongfully imprisoned, and then abandoned by his great love.  He loses his ‘will’ to continue to fight but is rescued by a fellow prisoner: a well-educated swordsman and ex-military officer.  His hell becomes an agoge’ (Greek for the 10+ year bellicose boot-camp that transformed ancient Sparta’s chosen into the legendary warriors of renown).  Neither brawn nor intellect, nor God himself, rescued this man in the pitch of his storm.  Instead, self-determination redeemed Dantes from his prison, the Chateau d’If, rewarding him with an identity both earned and proven: The Count of Monte Cristo.  His credo:

Life is like a storm.  One moment you are basking in the sun.  The next, shattered upon the rocks!  Who you truly are is ~how~ you respond.  For when Fate comes for you, you must shout: “Do your worst… for I will do mine!”

How does one find such courage to persevere when assaulted by life’s bloodstained hurricanes?  Where do you go when you realize the truth, as Dantes did, that God does not care and justice is only a myth?

The answer may begin in the action flick The Punisher (2003) as the protagonist Frank Castle pursues “natural” justice.  Like a mantra, he methodically recites the principles drilled into him by his boot-camp sergeant:

Rule #1: “sic vis pacem para bellum” (Latin: If you want peace, prepare for war!)
Rule #2: Make a declaration of intent that includes the death of your former identity.
Rule #3: In extreme situations the law is inadequate; therefore, it is necessary to go outside the law in order to affect natural justice.  Vengeance is not a rational motive, it’s and emotional response.  Revenge cannot be pursed, but instead, punishment!

Thus, vengeance cannot be the vanguard of valor.  Instead, it should be vigilance to a worthy cause and Zen-like insouciance to the risks that await.  These characteristics, interestingly enough, form the themes of many box office blockbusters like Braveheart, Mission Impossible, Tears of the Sun, and The Last Samurai.  A common denominator is shared among their protagonists: each is a trained warrior that kills to serve a cause worthy of dying for.  This cause becomes their meaning to exist, an immortal duty that sanctions violations to the popular rules ordained by the “divine.”

This is the irony portrayed in The Bourne Identity where an elite CIA assassin performs black op missions for his country’s safety, supposedly without the knowledge of his “boy-scout” superiors.  But when he reaches a moral impasse and fails to complete an assassination, he becomes a liability to their “Machiavellian” task force and their next “necessary” target.

What is so seductive about these ostensibly “fictional” characters? I ask myself.  Why are they worshipped as heroes?  Is the reverence cultural?  Or is it a primal endorsement of those few that do “whatever is necessary” to protect the “civilized” from threats?  Whether they be real or imagined.  It seems that such danger justifies violations to morals, laws, and even holy dogmas.  The inconvenient question of right or wrong, the distinction between good and evil, pales before the expedient when it masquerades as the necessary.

And yet, to confuse the issue more, these same necessary heroic characteristics are at other times vilified.  Such is the role of the antagonist in the film A Few Good Men.  Facing a court-martial for the use of an unwritten “code red” form of military discipline, Marine Colonel Nathan Jessup replied insouciantly to the arrogant JAG Lieutenant’s demand for truth:

“You can’t handle the truth!  Son, our world has walls, and those walls have to be guarded!  Who’s going to guard them, you?!  My existence, though grotesque to some, saves lives.  You rest under the blanket of the freedom that I provide and then question the way in which I provide it!!  But in places down deep inside that you don’t want to talk about at parties…you WANT me on that wall!  You NEED me on that wall!!

In a similar fashion the film Heartbreak Ridge portrays a Marine gunnery sergeant as an anachronism that caused too many collateral disturbances for a peace-time force.  His commander wanted to put him in a glass box marked “break only in time of war.”  His blunt methods that get the job done has been the same story for all empires.  We cry for our warriors, demanding them to do the ugly necessities required for our luxuries, but then ridicule their methods — until the next time the devil is on our doorsteps.  In the words of the classic British soldier’s lament: “It’s Tommy this and Tommy that and Tommy ‘ow’s your soul; but it’s a thin red line of soldiers when the drum begins to roll…”

The brutality of courage is a forgotten but essential fundamental of freedom.  One of history’s most heroic feats of valor was portrayed in the 2007 film 300.  For days 300 of Sparta’s elite valiantly battled a million-man Persian invasion force, sacrificing their lives holding the line at a mountain pass called Thermopylae.  Stephen Pressfield personifies this hallmark of excellence in his historical novel Gates of Fire:

At Thermopylae, the Leonidas Monument in honor of the Spartan king who fell there, is engraved with his response to Xerxes’ demand that the Spartans lay down their arms.  Leonidas’ reply was two words.  MOLON LABE!  “Come and get them!”

This caliber of men speak with their actions.  Like William Wallace, another symbolic figure, portrayed in Braveheart as a man fueled to action by the murder of his only love and decades of brutality to his countrymen.  Fearful and severely outnumbered, his fellow Scotsmen were moments away from surrendering before a mighty British army at Bannockburn.  But Wallace enters the scene and marshals their flagging spirits by giving them a glimpse into the eyes of fears named Shame and Regret:

Sure, you may run.  And you may hide.  And you may live.  But dying in your beds many years from now, will you not give all the days, from this day to that, to come back here… once, just once! to tell our enemy “that you can take our lives, but you can NEVER take… our FREEDOM!!”

See, most cower when fear bites into the flesh of their spirits, yet a few bite back.  Why?  Lao Tze, in his great Tao te Ching, suggests that “The man who knows himself is fearless.”  And in the Art of War, undefeated Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, instructs: “All warfare is deception. …” therefore, “know thyself and know thine enemy, and you need not fear the outcome.”  Is the secret of fearlessness determined by how well you know your enemy AND how well you know yourself?  If so, it is only then that the scales of justice weigh against Randomness.

But is deception an inconvenient necessity or a convenient excuse?  I found an answer in the strategy manual The Prince.  Its author, sixteenth century statesman and Florentine philosopher Niccolo’ Machiavelli, often falls under scathing disdain for his infamous suggestion that “the ends justify the means.”  Though well-intentioned, his advice has too often been misconstrued to rationalize the most heinous abuses of power history records.  The origin of the phrase can be found in chapter 18:

Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by so doing it would be against his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist.  If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them.

Are not men wretched beasts?  Therefore, a distinction may serve to clarify Machiavelli’s instruction: a positive and a negative perspective.  The positive is doing evil to “be” evil.  The negative is doing evil to “be free from” evil.  The former attempts to justify personal gain at the expense of “the greater good.”  The latter defines reality, a truth that few wish to admit, that Good does NOT conquer evil!  Evil neutralizes evil.  Religious dogma stands contrary by stating that one should “turn the cheek” and let God fight one’s battles.  Fallacies like this have murdered untold millions who died on their knees praying to heaven for rescue instead of fighting on their feet and leaving their enemies for the vultures.

Machiavelli’s frankness was not motivated towards Prince di Medici’s personal benefit but for something truly necessary: the good of his public’s survival.  For this higher cause he sanctioned the sacrificing of the “holy” (that which is perfect) for the necessary (that which is excellent).  The enemy of the perfect is the good and the excellent.

This virtue of the necessary evil is also found in the Japanese manual Heiho Kaden Sho (“The Sword of No Sword”).  In it, the revered samurai Yagyu Munenori recorded his strategic Zen philosophy for the sword as well as life.  As Machiavelli’s contemporary he taught, “Deception is strategy.  By the false, the truth is obtained.”  Close-quartered-battle techniques utilized in martial arts, fencing, boxing, et cetera, incorporate bluffs and feints to misdirect the opponent.  These forms of “reconnaissance” ferret out an opponent’s intentions.  “Though strategy is deception,” explains Munenori, “it is through deception that victory is obtained. . . . This way, deception becomes truth in the end.”  Munenori’s philosophy compliments Machiavelli’s efforts to articulate this most forbidden concept: perfect ends often necessitate imperfect means.

Doing evil, to those that are evil, becomes good, ultimately.  Therefore, Machiavelli was not endorsing evil but rather perceiving life from the unfortunate but realistic perspectives of tenured strategists.  Yes, their thinking is contrary to popular and divine dogma, and because of such, it remains difficult for less diligent students to grasp.

See if you agree with the portrait President Theodore Roosevelt painted of the perfect imperfection:

It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error or shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows, in the end, the triumphs of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Valor, if it is to overcome an unjust end, must use imperfect means: “… there is not effort without error or shortcoming…”  This could mean that doing what may be perceived as evil within a vacuum, may be realized as good, or even excellent, in reality.  Valor is elusive, but it appears that it describes doing what is necessary; it’s fearlessly facing the enemy; it’s allegiance to a cause in the absence of the majority’s approval.  Acting by such a code sets a warrior apart and makes him noble.

{read A Beautiful Death next}

A PERFECT IMPERFECTION

September 2007 by Steven Moreland

“A man is never more than a man than when he embraces an adventure beyond his control, or when he walks into a battle he isn’t sure of winning.  ~John Eldridge, Wild At Heart

1:06 a.m. . . . Only ten minutes later than the last time I looked.  It’s been another night of fighting the deafening silence, the smothering air, and the stench of meaninglessness.  Used to hunting demons in the darkness, my mind is distracted by the return of my most recent essay A Perfect Imperfection and the praises from my mentors that were disappointingly mild.

How do I express with clumsy words what fate has dealt to me, reconcile the powerlessness of “God,” and tolerate “justice” ordained by a legal system equally immoral?  What do I live by now when all that I once believed has been proven terribly wrong, when those that I trusted most were the least worthy?  John F. Kennedy must have felt my same frustration when he observed: “The enemy of truth is not the lie, but the myth.”  Myths are lies veiled in religious-type dogmas and then “ordained” as the absolute to the unsuspecting.

My collection of thoughts appear, at first, disconnected and even unfounded.  Contrasting enigmatic themes of valor against ancient martial aphorisms and then comparing those to iconoclastic philosophies cannot, as one of my mentors remarked, “be taken as credible.”  Nevertheless I persist.  Listen quietly with me, for just a moment, as these paradoxes whisper the distinctions separating a hero from a coward.

Valor is not in the words, per se.  Its meaning, its essence, hides behind the words, spoken in a language that rings true, swells us inside, and inspires a few to be more than mediocre.  This is why archetypes must be used to portray what ‘should’ be, instead of what is.  For a hero to exist there must first be a villain.  For every Chimera — the horrible beast that plagued the ancient world — there must also be a Bellerophon — the hero who risked all for a good cause.

Fate and her Unknowns, the “evils” that dwell in the mists of our imaginations, wait in ambush for the unprepared.  Risk is all that is guaranteed when facing them, except in children’s fairy tales meant to calm the fears that we all share.  What aides a warrior before he marches onto her battlefield is the quality of his preparation fueled by the hero that he aspires to become.  It resides in his attitude, like the Spartan spirit at Thermopylae: “for Sparta, it is not dying but fleeing that is death.”

Therefore we must ask ourselves what makes our heroes heroic?  Are they perfect?  Hardly.  What makes a hero so heroic isn’t that he’s perfect, but that he is imperfect.  A hero is a person who overcomes his own limitations, transcends his weaknesses, and stands his ground when most retreat to excuses.  He becomes, in effect, a perfect imperfection, just as a perfect storm achieves its terrifying strength through a perfect combination of imperfect — that is to say, disorderly — elements.  Valor can only be found in these most imperfect of places, confusing places, that leave behind clues of “how” the few performed, and more importantly “why.”  These characteristics conceal themselves; they hide within enigmas and paradoxes — buried inside legends, lore, and myths.  And the cardinal paradox that cloaks itself within the imperfect chaos of battle is a pure and relentless allegiance to a sacred cause, a meaning so perfect that the warrior “performs the ordinary under extraordinary conditions.”

Juxtaposed to ancient warriors’ creeds of purpose and their blood-soaked battlefields of honor, Fate’s Unknowns are rarely acknowledged; they’re referred to as “Randomness.”  Though they have no blood, we face them at the point of collision between two lines of battle, what the Greeks called the “othismos.”  Like a perfect storm, the tempest of blood and iron upon the battlefield is a combination of all that is imperfect.  But here, in the most horrible of places, the mettle of will is tested, the steel of resolve measured, and, if he is fortunate, the warrior finds something within himself that is greater than the sum of his imperfect parts.  Valor.

In the early 1900’s, Captain Shackleton found it when he led an expedition crew of 27 who found themselves marooned on the ice in the Antarctic.  For seventeen months they battled seemingly impossible foes: subzero temperatures, scarce provisions, no hope of rescue, and the circling fear named “Death.”  Yet all survived!  Why?

Captured in his book Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, the enigmatic whispers offer clues: “One of the finest days we have ever had. . . . a pleasure to be alive.” In some ways they had come to know themselves better.  In this lonely world of ice and emptiness, they had achieved at least a limited kind of contentment.  They had been tested and found not wanting. . . . Shackleton “believed completely in his own invincibility, and to whom defeat was a reflection of personal inadequacy.  What might have been an act of reasonable caution to the average person was to Shackleton a detestable admission that failure was a possibility.”  His indomitable self-confidence took the form of optimism.  They felt that special kind of pride of a person who in a a foolish moment accepts an impossible dare — then pulls it off to perfection.

Shackleton’s emblematic leadership was drawn from his treasured Latin motto: “Fortitudine Vincimus” (By Endurance We Conquer), the attitude also apparent in William Henley’s INVICTUS (Latin: Invincible):

Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud;
Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

It’s the same paradox whispered by G. K. Chesterton his book Orthodoxy:

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.  Valor means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.  “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes.  It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors and mountaineers.  It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book.  The paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage.  A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.  He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it.  A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying.  He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape.  He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape.  He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life life water and yet drink death like wine.

What lesson are we to grasp from these diametrically opposed concepts: to “desire life like water and yet drink death like wine” and “a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying”?  Baptism by fire, or running head first into overwhelming risks, feels illogical — even insane — to the rational.  But it’s required, if a man is to prove himself worthy.  He must face what he fears most!  The blunt measurement is what it takes to stop him.  Or, as in Gates of Fire, Pressfield says: “The real test comes when all your strength has fled and you must produce victory on will alone.”

5:49 a.m. . . .When the bloodstained hurricane of Randomness breaks a man’s horizon, his valor will be revealed by the mettle to remain undaunted within the “heart of the storm.”  The Spartans revered this most unusual of places, the othismos, the sacred collision point of two lines of battle.  The perfect imperfection.

{read Enigma of Valor next}

GEO-ARBITRAGE

June 2013 by Steven Moreland

Arbitrage: the risk-free trading of the same commodity where it is bought and sold simultaneously in two different markets.

An entrepreneur’s dream is cheaper labor cost for better skills.  Now, due to the internet’s ubiquity, this is no longer a fantasy.  Not only are pre-trained armies of talent standing by to work at a fraction of the US costs but the savings include reduction in “soft” cost such as social benefit taxes, training, benefit packages, vacation time, office space, equipment, utilities, regulatory (nightmare) compliance, and workplace liabilities (i.e., sexual harassment suits, etc.).  Tim Ferriss’ 2006 book The 4-Hour Workweek announced geo-arbitraging for the small guy and startups now followed by other evangelists like Daven Michael in his recent Outsource Smart.  The corporate outsourcing bible, The Black Book of Outsourcing, demonstrates that this industry is no longer a hidden secret of major transnational corporations but, in fact, the tool that your competition will use to push you into bankruptcy.

The cost of labor, more than any other expense, determines profitability for the service-oriented business sector.  For decades the Fortune 500 have relied upon — and actually constructed — business process outsourcing (“BPO”), utilizing highly-educated workers in countries like India to achieve profits in the ever-competitive global marketplace.  And more recently, The Philippines has eclipsed India due to their accent-neutral English speaking skills in the inbound and outbound Call Center industry.  Both countries now book more than $7 billion annually in revenues from BPO.

Geo-arbitraging (geographical arbitraging) secures personnel with the best skill-sets at the lowest cost, regardless of geographical location or distance.  It’s often referred to as “economies of skill” (not to be confused with “economies of scale”).  Outsourcing a business process (BPO), for example, could be GM contracting EDS for its IT data management.  GM could just as easily have outsourced that work “offshore” to Tata Consulting, InfoSys or WiPro in Bangalore and achieved the identical results or better while saving a bundle.  Business should be about profit, not politics!

To better understand this concept, let’s categorize BPO into different tiers of operators.  Tier I firms like InfoSys, WiPro and Tata support multi-national juggernauts with extremely capable workforces based in less expensive labor zones; their operations are very IBM-ish.  Tier II includes firms like Brickwork or possibly 123Employee that cater to intermediate sized firms down to entrepreneurial startups.  Both tiers house virtual contractors at their secure facilities — ready, willing, trained and capable to support a myriad of support tasks.

Tier III players aggregate freelancers from the world over through web platforms that monitor their work and bill you on an hourly basis: oDesk, YourManInIndia, FiveRR, Guru, GettingThingsDone, ScriptLance, GetFriday, and eLance.  (Even Amazon has entered the game with their new Mechanical Turk service.)  These virtual assistants often operate from their homes via the internet and offer the best bargain pricewise.

Geo-arbitraging also makes sense because the of the leveraging between currencies.  It reflects the arbitraged advantage gained between the rate that the employer earns for services rendered in one currency versus its cost of labor in its contractors’ home currency.  For example, 65 Indian rupees converts to 1 US dollar.  This does mean a 65:1 advantage but it does translate to something like $4 per hour for the cost of $14+ in the US for a comparable assistant (and this does not include the soft costs explained above).  What this equates to is immediate profits for a struggling company or needed speed to others.  Imagine being able to afford “three” 8-hour shifts, working around the clock, each day, or, being able to focus on new customers instead of chasing your tail on a minor customer service issue?

“Scalability” is the next advantage, also known as workforce agility.  Business demands fluctuate.  Therefore, labor costs “should” adjust up and down accordingly.  However, conventional practice accounts for labor as a fixed expense because it is maintained on a constant basis though demands are variable (i.e., seasonal or between contracts).  Tier II and III facilities provide this virtual army on standby, ready to duplicate tasks already performed by their peers.  And when business slows, simply reduce the number of virtual contractors.  Major firms depend upon this ability heavily to dynamically optimize their expenses.  And now, savvy small to mid-sized firms may use it as well.

And while we’re discussing virtual, it’s important to understand that whether it’s a virtual assistant or virtual outsourcing — it symbolizes connectivity via the internet.  Embracing geo-arbitrage not only transforms your local employees into international contractors but your workplace evolves as well.  “Cloud computing” utilizes the server farms available now through Google, Amazon, Box or DropBox to access your data on their hardware.  Virtual data access not only ensures redundancy and increased security monitoring by IT professionals but your data becomes accessible from anywhere / any time by each of your virtual contractors.  And, your operation remains functional in the cloud regardless of local network difficulties or unexpected physical disasters like a fire or extreme weather.  It’s the ultimate backup plan run in real-time!

This virtual environment includes communication benefits.  Microsoft’s SKYPE or Citrix’s GoToMeeting.com eliminates long distance phone charges as well as expensive traveling.  Via VoIP (voice over internet protocol), your receptionist can now answer calls to your “virtual office” in Makati while your accounting department handles a customer billing problem in Mumbai — all in real-time and without extra expense.  Your customers will never know that you got smart and implemented a BPO model to help them save money and you to enjoy more stable profits!  (Other inner-office communications include intranets outsourced to “unified collaboration” services like Jason Fried’s 37signals.com.  Files of any type or size can be discussed and even marked-up real-time throughout your workforce that resides globally.  It’s as efficient as everyone officing in the same location but without the lost profits.)

So where do you begin?  I started by studying Ferriss’ book and his http://www.fourhourworkweek.com.  I also studied The Black Book of Outsourcing and http://www.TheBlackBookofOutsourcing.com.  Anything that you are doing now in-house — and those things you should be doing but cannot afford to — can be implemented cost-effectively.  Then, Google offshore outsourcing, and read everything.

Secondly, get past the nationalistic propaganda that you must hire your fellow countrymen or be “unpatriotic.”  Imagine if you try to compete against a savvy, global competitor who just focuses on delivering the best price to the marketplace.  Who will succeed and who will end in bankruptcy? In The Prince, the military strategist Niccolo’ Machiavelli makes business very simple: “… Therefore, a prudent [man] ought not to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist.  If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them.”

Now, consider Daven Michael’s army of 350+ virtual contractors at 123Employee in Makati, Philippines.  It represents a Tier II accent-neutral Call Center and BPO resource pool.  Capable of both inbound and outbound marketing and customer support, his trained agents stand ready to prioritize your emails, schedule your appointments, research concepts or competition, write reports, track expenses, create spreadsheets, or organize events.  Others could be updating your web site, ghostwriting your blog, or “trolling” forums to ensure that your company is listening to customers’ comments before their tone changes to complaints.  Others should be managing your SEO (search engine optimization) to ensure customers find you while still others could be managing your SMM (social media marketing) to keep your company current (remember, if you’re not interacting with customers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or the other relative platforms, your competition is!). Whatever task that you’d delegate to a staff member of your company can be tasked to a virtual assistant, for less cost.

Google: virtualoutsourcing.org, worldwidecallcenters.com, voip-info.org, 123employee.com

MEDIOCRISTAN

January 2014 by Steven Moreland

Democracy is the worst form of government… except for all the rest.  ~Winston Churchill

Obviously the British PM wasn’t blinded by the romanticized ideal of poli-sci majors who fawn over the Greek’s experiment of demos – “the power of the people.”  Democracy is rule by the many instead of the few; the often poorer, ill-educated, and inexperienced versus the wealthier, better educated, and more experienced.  The experiment was aimed at preventing the common civic epitaph — power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  For too long the misery of the many benefited the few or the one.  Something had to be done.

In his Politics, Aristotle saw democracy without Plato’s “utopian” vision.  As Churchill remarked above, it was more of a lesser evil contrasted against monarchies (rule by the one), oligarchies (rule by the few wealthy), and even aristocracies (rule by the few “best”).  Each form had its unique purpose: virtue for aristocrats, wealth for oligarchs, and freedom for democrats.  But notice his intentional aim was not virtue but freedom.  In other words, Aristotle knew the many only desired freedom (from misery and abuse) but cared little about virtue.

Instability, the cause for the collapse of societies and their governments, is seldom explored.  Fear… of abuse or the loss of life is at the root.  Freedom, the solution, is the desire to be free from misery, hunger, and harm.  But if government provides this to all a complex problem arises similar to a bucket with a hole in the bottom.  Providing “enough” is appreciated seldom, if at all, and then only temporarily.  Entitlement ensues.  The removal of all strivings for a worthy goal robs oneself of a raison de etre, noted Dr. Vicktor Frankl in his Man’s Search For Meaning.  Aristotle purposed to convince the many with less that the “good life” necessitated “civic participation.”  He had only limited success.

Realizing this, Aristotle constructed a compromise aimed at stability.  He discarded what would later be called Arthurian meritocracy (“the best”) for something more plebeian: common and ordinary (ie, his “good life”).  And in so doing he distinguished the “good citizen” from the “good man”: only the “ruled” can be a good citizen.  The explanation stemmed from the relationships between a husband/wife, father/child, and master/slave.  This analogy symbolized that women, children, and slaves must be ruled because they cannot think for themselves.  Good citizens obeyed the “correct opinions” (the “popular prejudices”) of their rulers because they possessed no practical wisdom.  And this submission purportedly ensured the luxury of survival and safety.

This riskless group received what was referred to as “good enough” which included “justice and equality.”  But both were (and still are) very misunderstood.  Most know only of the quantitative perspective of equality: an equal division of all things regardless of one’s quality of performance (also known as entitlement or that bucket with the hole in the bottom!).  Qualitative equality presents only an opportunity to a division of all things, but relative to one’s performance.  In the former, bums with bottomless buckets eventually break a country’s finances because their hands are always out (read: modern day Greece).  The latter ensures everyone gets their just desserts!

This “good enough” also included justice.  And like equality, justice was not an absolute.  Members of a democracy believed their “correct opinion” of what was “just” and fair.  But both ideals were nothing more than manufactured interpretations rooted in popular prejudices.  And most often it was propaganda designed to misdirect the many away from the cruel (but arguably necessary) reality: the game of pacification.

Understanding this, Aristotle crafted a hybrid — a representative democracy governed by elected aristocrats.  The many would believe they had done their civic duty by voting and then aimlessly return to their tolerable and comfortable existences doing the unfulfilling.  The government would pretend it cared about their perspectives and curtail its blatant abuse… in order to keep the peace.  As terrible as this was (and still is), this hybrid facilitated more stability than other attempts.

But through all these political masquerades Aristotle left behind the hidden value of democracy: a brutal measurement of the caliber of the many: “… when all are reasonable enough… democracy is the worst [form of government]; but when all are bad, democracy is the best.”  In his Republic, Plato recounts Socrates’ lesson about the Cave of Ananke, a place of democratic freedom.  Within this cave of miserable averageness, one man rebelled against the accepted “correct opinions” of the many, liberated himself, risked extinction from a monster named Unknown, and escaped to a world called Uncertainty.

In the Greek, Ananke meant the tolerable status quo: a place of extreme sameness with minimal differentiation.  Kairos meant opportunity or possibility; the willingness to rebel, to risk the common to sample the uncommon.  It’s a choice of remaining voluntarily imprisoned in the familiar place of freedom defined as Certainty where justice and equality means whatever is popular.  Or seeking liberty in the unfamiliar frontier of Uncertainty.

So what was Aristotle leaving unsaid?  His hybrid promised much: freedom from physical misery and abuse most often perpetrated by the few or the one, the “good life,” and stability.  The “good life” was merely “good citizens” submitting to the “correct opinions” of their elected.  In exchange, survival and safety through subjectively prejudicial forms of justice and equality prevailed.  And, the myth called Unknown would be restrained.

But what about the “best life” of virtue?  How did Aristotle predict that the many did NOT prefer this?  Could it be that virtue necessitated liberty to be substituted for freedom… and liberty meant self-responsibility and self-restraint by way of self-rule?!  Ah yes, only those who performed like women, children, and slaves could become “good citizens.”  Those that thought for themselves by developing their own opinions — who refused to fear the Unknown and instead courageously embraced the risks of Uncertainty — could become “good men.”

Question: was Aristotle leaving a litmus test for you and I, to measure our mettle?  Would we choose to live bravely like Kairos or remain a slave in Ananke’s Cave of democratic mediocrity called Mediocri-stan?

For alternatives, Google:
InternationalLiving.com
FourHourWorkWeek.com
GettingOutOfAmerica.com
DigitalNomad.com
LiveAndInvestOverseas.com
OverseasDigest.com
PathfinderInternational.net
PTclub.com
OxfordClub.com