T OUGHNESS #6: H ISTORICAL S ENSE

MIST SPRAY CASCADING OFF THE WATERFALL

It would be foolish to aim for toughness purely alone, failing to notice all the world can offer us, and all that we can offer in return.

Mental Toughness, Physical Toughness, and Religio — one’s overarching philosophy at the deepest level as to what we ought to be doing in the universe — these are very personal, first-person type things. 

Water runs downhill, surely; but where does this water flow?

Isolation is death in conflict; we explored this question last chapter, in “Integration” — Colonel John Boyd believed that all conflict is about interaction and isolation; we want to be integrated with good institutions and good people; we must avoid being isolated.

Our example of someone brilliant who was unable to achieve integration?

Vincent van Gogh.

Those brilliant hands and eyes and mind, that powerful animating force inside him, so lofty at times, and then fallen... 

Van Gogh is haunting; his legacy is haunting; reflecting on this tragic figure — tragic in the classical Greek sense — is haunting.

We need to linger somewhat longer on this ground. 

***

PAPERING OVER THE HAUNTING

I think it is not so bad to be haunted; to feel a chill shiver along the spine, and when a swift cold breeze blows, to feel the first hints of moisture along the eyes.

There is little room for slow musing and haunting in much of today’s busy world — athletics are reduced to shots of triumph and the years of sweat and strain are swept away; we see confetti floating to the ground at the Championship Game, and we see great moments, and perhaps we see heartbreak on the grandest stage…

…but we do not linger so long on it, do we?

Would it profitable to?

Will we have to deal with heartbreak and isolation at various times?

Let’s be haunted then, just for a moment, to see if it is profitable.

***

WASHINGTON’S SPEECH: UNEQUAL TO THE COMMAND

We already know how the story ends.

He would be the victorious commander.

Not so long after, in 1781 at Yorktown, the British band would play “The World Turned Upside Down” as General Cornwallis surrendered.

Who could have imagined? The world was shocked. Nothing of the kind had been seen in long ages.

The commander-in-chief would go on to the First President of the new American Republic.

The young Republic would grow from “sea to shining sea”; Manifest Destiny.

The Americans would largely abstain from being involved in Europe’s affairs for 130 years.

The World Wars came next, and suddenly, America was the most powerful nation in the world.

We already know how this story ends.

In May of 1775, he didn’t know.

No one knew.

We must bear this in mind.

He did not know how the story would end.

If you read Washington’s brief acceptance speech taking charge of the newly formed Continental Army, it is a haunting moment.

Well, it is not a haunting moment if you know how the story ends.

But imagine you didn’t  know.

When I read this speech and try to place myself in Philadelphia in the Spring of 1775, I see a man, a flesh and blood man, who could not see the future, and who was, perhaps, terrified.

Washington’s acceptance speech began —

“I beg they will accept my cordial thanks for this distinguished testimony of their approbation. But lest some unlucky event should happen, unfavorable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I this declare with the utmost sincerity I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with...”

Chills.

***

EISENHOWER’S LETTER: THE BLAME OR FAULT IS MINE ALONE

Would the weather break?

It is June of 1944.

Hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers are massing on the South Coast of England for the largest amphibious invasion of all-time.

The go-day is June 4th.

It’s raining and storming heavily.

No-go.

Would the weather break?

If the weather breaks, can the invasion succeed?

Again, we know the end of this story.

Ike didn’t know the end of the story.

Ten months later, Nazi Berlin would be in flames.

We know this.

Eisenhower could not know this.

Eisenhower did know about the last large-scale amphibious invasion — 

Gallipoli.

An unmitigated disaster, the worst military defeat in British history.

Operation Overlord — the Invasion of Normandy — would be the largest of its type.

The weather was still bad, but forecasted to improve — very, very slightly — on June 6th.

General Eisenhower’s outward demeanor was solid, professional, and mildly friendly.

Before Operational Overlord began, Eisenhower wrote the speech he would give if the invasion failed —

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

***

IT SHALL MAKE SENSE LOOKING BACKWARDS

History feels like a cruel joke at times.

In Ancient Times, not understanding the natural world and confused and anxious about the randomness of life, the Greeks created stories and mythology to make it make sense.

I find myself occasionally thinking of Cassandra. The mythology goes, she was gifted with the ability to see the future, but cursed so that no one would believe what she said.

When the Trojan Horse arrived, she knew there were Greeks inside, and the city would fall.

“There’s enemies inside! It’s a trick! It’s a trap! Don’t bring it in!”

Alas.

If the Ancient Greeks had to make sense of our modern world, there would perhaps be Zeus appearing, and cursing us as such —

“It shall make sense looking backwards!”

In the moment, we are plagued by uncertainties and confusions. Seemingly random events and movements and trends gather power and momentum, unseen for long periods of time, and then bursting to the surface unexpectedly.

It will, of course, all make sense in 100 years as the historians mull through it.

But for those of us in the moment, we are often forced to ask,

“What the hell is going on here?”

History feels like a cruel joke at times.

It will make perfect sense after it is complete, but the blinders are on our eyes in the present.

***

COULD THE NAZIS HAVE WON WORLD WAR II?

It certainly looks like it.

Draw up a map of Nazi power right before Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

From that map, who could have predicted the entire collapse and destruction of the Nazi Empire?

If the Nazis had successfully taken or destroyed either of Stalingrad or Moscow — and they came close to doing both — it’s very possible the Soviets are knocked out of the war.

A mere generation beforehand, the Russian Empire was knocked out of the First World War, and straightaway, all those German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers on the Eastern Front were redeployed to the West, almost turning the tide against France.

Nazi Germany’s power at the start of Barbarossa was much, much higher than Imperial Germany’s power when the Russians were knocked out of the First World War.

In our mythology of the happenings, Josef Stalin is not really a man; he’s this quasi-mystical creature, seemingly a force of nature. We don’t think of Stalin as a man who got up to go to the bathroom, who smoked a little tobacco, who secretly liked to watch American cowboy movies when he had some free time.

Stalin had liquidated and killed so many of his own side; if Moscow had been overrun, could his fate have been like Mussolini’s later became? Would Josef have been captured by his countrymen, summarily executed, and hung upside down from a bridge?

Looking backwards, well, of course not.

We know what happened.

In the moment, this was not so.

***

WHICH DIRECTION DOES THE STAIRCASE SPIRAL?

Let’s step away from a poetic exploration, and put things in more plain terms.

There are a number of known factors that naturally work against someone on a lonely path in times of uncertainty.

1. Emotional contagion.
2. Self-reinforcing moods.
3. Natural isolation.
4. Anxiety and perhaps paralysis.
5. Downward spiral.

***

EMOTIONAL CONTAGION

The psychologists have a term — emotional contagion.

When other people are acting a certain way around you, you tend to absorb some of those emotions.

This has been known in less-fancy less-sophisticated terms for just about forever. Victories and triumphs lead to smiling and cheering amongst one’s group, pessimism is likely infectious.

You see the range of confidence and emotions in stock markets; you see it in the culture of companies; you see it in the morale of armies. 

***

SELF-REINFORCING MOODS

When you are in a certain mood, it tends to promote being more in that mood.

This is actually rather obvious if you sit and think on it.

When you’re cheerful and in a mood, you go around smiling, skipping a little, put on your favorite music.

Other people see you cheerful, they smile back

When you’re in a particularly great mood, little stupid slights and nonsense have less effect on you; you shrug them off.

In a great mood with lots of energy, you also tend to do the right things that make your life better — eat well, get your work done, appreciate the people around you.

Upward spiral — under those conditions.

(The opposite is also true.)

***

NATURAL ISOLATION

Those first two points are uncontroversial and known — we move towards the emotional states of the people around us that we are intimate with, and moods tend to reinforce themselves and promote more of the same.

Uncontroversial stuff.

Pretty obvious, too, when you think about it.

Herein lies the problem — lonely paths are given to natural isolation.

This is obvious enough when reading the memoirs of anyone who leads into the unknown — when they be a soldier or statesman on one hand, or an artist or inventor on another.

I originally was going to quote the Emperor Napoleon here — he has a number of quotes about how he was never happy upon the Throne of the Empire, and how his life was dictated by circumstances beyond his control — but no, we could go even further back in time.

Even as far back as 300 BC, there was the parable of the Sword of Damocles.

The young courtier, Damocles, was remarking on how wonderful the life of King Dionysius was: all the splendor, servants, and power.

The King offered trade places with Damocles so that the young man could see how it was to be King. Damocles enthusiastically accepted.

The King then set up Damocles on the throne, surrounded by servants bearing food and drink, others coming to pay him homage.

With one other little detail.

King Dionysius instructed one of his soldiers to hang a heavy sword over Damocles’s head, hung by a single hair from a horse’s tail.

To sit on the King’s Throne was to have a sword hanging over one’s head.

Damocles politely asked to step down from his role on the king’s throne.

***

ANXIETY, AND PERHAPS, PARALYSIS

“The Sword of Damocles” was meant to symbolize how precarious and dangerous power was; the outward trappings of splendor and grandeur are visible; the dangers are often invisible — but nevertheless ever-present.

Things have changed a little bit in 2,300 years. 

It is not quite as dangerous to pursue the highest paths and roles.

And yet, nevertheless, lonely paths aiming at ascent have some of this character even now.

To walk a lonely path — whether it be Vincent van Gogh’s, or General Washington’s, or anything where your hands guide your destiny — this is prone to anxiety and anxiousness.

I dare say that anxiety is a natural and inevitable characteristic of pursuing this way in the world; I dare say it’s nearly unavoidable to experience at least some anxiety if you’re to make up any ground in the grand stretches of the world.

Certainly, Charles Darwin was terribly afraid that his new views would cause ostracism and hatred towards him; certainly, though now largely forgotten, Albert Einstein often had to deal with accusations of being a crank and he had his detractors; certainly, Abraham Lincoln had a number of great friends, but certainly a number of enemies and detractors (one of them, Booth, acted on his malice in the closing acts of the American Civil War — to our great loss).

Enemies, to some extent, make things easier — what does Stalin need to do? Stalin needs to defeat the Nazis. 

It can be harder still for someone like a Van Gogh or Nietzsche; what does one need to do to survive and endure in this world if you’re of that temperament, no clear enemies in sight?

The anxiety, I dare say, comes with the territory.

It paralyzes some — though unlike the anxiety, the paralysis is not automatic, and then...

***

THE SPIRAL

The more alone you are, the harder it is to take emotional succor from your environment. There are less people like you.

Meanwhile, the greater the uncertainty and confusion in what you’re doing, the more you’re going to have reflected back to you feelings of uncertainty and doubt.

Emotional contagion can rise from that.

The natural anxiety, the Sword of Damocles, can easily spiral into one’s actions and moods.

The effects of this are poison.

The question is whether they give way to breakdown and paralysis, and eventually destruction.

It’s little-known among non-historians that General Washington was almost killed after the British re-conquered New York. He stood on the battlefield, dumb and flat-footed, with Redcoats advancing on him. Feeling spent in every single way, he did not flee or make his way off the battlefield — if his aides-de-camp had not literally grabbed him and hurried him off the battlefield, Washington would have met his end.

And Washington was one of the better cases!

He dealt with the anxieties of command better than most!

It’s haunting to read Eisenhower’s letter.

Of course, we know what happened to the Allied forces — they won complete and total victory over Nazi Germany.

Eisenhower could not know that when he wrote those fateful words, when he had to imagine those young men he sent into battle dying on the shores of France if Operation Overlord had failed to dislodge the Nazis from the beaches of Normandy.

Stalin... we need not even address Stalin much more — he endured, the Russians endured, such remarkable endurance to survive on the Eastern Front — but at what cost, what dreadful cost to himself, his friends, his countrymen, the world...

***

THE PROBLEM, THUS

Here is our problem, then, if on lonely paths —

1. Emotional contagion is real, and there is more potential for negative emotional contain than positive for a leader or innovator who is walking a lonely path.

2. Moods are self-reinforcing; when negative moods grip us, they tend to be self-reinforcing.

3. The natural isolation of leaders and innovators, people who do things in lonely fashions, leads naturally to feelings of potential isolation and danger, the Sword of Damocles hanging over one’s head. 

4. Altogether, this leads to almost inevitable anxiety; anxiety which, following the above points, can tend to be self-reinforcing and hard to break free from.

5. Not managed, this can lead to downward spirals — all the way down for Van Gogh, much of the way down for Nietzsche... even people who are relatively unscathed by the spiral’s grip — Eisenhower, Washington — still have to live and endure through tumultuous and anxious times.

***

TOUGHNESS #6: HISTORICAL SENSE

Well, this chapter is heavy!

How could it not be?

Last chapter, we covered “Integration” — the first two paths we discussed were integrating into a society during a Golden Age, or joining a meritorious group or faction and cultivating your courtesy and skill so you are well-accepted and thrive in that group.

Those are straightforward enough paths; not necessarily easy depending on where you’re at, but relatively straightforward.

Now, then — what if you are on a lonely path?

We’ve outlined the problem already. It’s a, umm, somewhat vicious problem.

Is there a solution? I believe so.

***

(FITNESS, GRATITUDE, ETC)

We’d be remiss not to mention physical fitness, eating well, practicing gratitude, and getting time in nature.

We know those work.

We’re not discussing those today, because you can get those anywhere and everywhere.

That’s not to trivialize them — they’re critical and frankly must be done to give yourself the best chance at long-term endurance and sustaining yourself — but you can read good guides on these elsewhere.

I want to cover something that’s not covered elsewhere, and yet, is ultimately true and a large piece of the puzzle — a historical sense.

***

WALKING WITH NAPOLEON

Napoleon famously advocated to, “Read and re-read the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene, and Frederick; take them as your model, that is the only way of becoming a great captain, to obtain the secrets of the art of war.”

When you study the campaigns of military commanders, of course, you can perhaps gain some perspective in that art.

But something else happens you read good biographies, histories, and memoirs.

In our own lives and on our own paths, so many of the trials we face seem absurd, stupid, ridiculous. Constantly, there is a question of, “This  is what I have to deal with?”

When you read a good account like Ron Chernow’s “ Washington: A Life ,” you realize what the terrific man had to deal with —

“One great blow to Washington’s sense of well-being was the steady deterioration of his teeth. While in the eyes of posterity his dental problems rank among his best-known attributes, he did everything he could to screen the trouble from contemporaries. An air of extreme secrecy shrouded his dealings with dentists, as if he were dabbling in a dark, shameful art. Perhaps he sensed that nothing could subvert his heroic image more unalterably than derisory sniggers about his teeth.”

Chernow goes on to detail the measures Washington took with dentists, with sponge toothbrushes and toothache medicines, with dentists, bone and ivory dentures wound together with wires.

It’s not, on a glance, heroic stuff.

But then, as you read more of the accounts of how Washington grew from boy to man, from surveyor to military officer, from military officer to statesmen — something slowly happens.

Pioneering greatness can be terrifically lonely, something like a cold and starless night.

But as you come to understand Washington-the-man, the stern figure in the paintings; the coldened visage carved in marble; this starts to give way to more color and movement.

Washington was flesh and blood. He dealt with all he dealt with — and gave his stately guidance to the young Republic at the same time.

George Washington — George Washington who was in petty squabbles over how much he would be paid for his Virginia military service, George Washington who fought to keep his farmlands productive and went into debt while away performing military service, George Washington who dealt with problems with his teeth, George Washington who had to fight off petty jealousies and rivalries from others who wanted his office as their own — George Washington was all the greatness that we now so rightly revere in marble statues and stately paintings, but more than that, Washington was a man who had to deal with the anxieties and problems and nonsense that we all have to deal with.

George Washington was Great, truly Great, in so many senses — and yet, he was flesh and blood, like us.

Something changes when this truly sets in; for me, at least, as I realized Washington’s mortality, his humanity, his humanness... something stirs as this realization sets in.

If you have seen a sunrise over the mountains, it is a little like that.

At first, it is entirely dark.

But slowly, gradually, the darkness begins to recede. The world becomes brighter. You cannot yet see the Sun’s light — what is chasing this darkness away? — it is not obvious.

But it grows brighter.

Lincoln, Lincoln too had his problems. 

Anyone who tries to do bold things will sooner-or-later overreach, and wind up in a regrettable position.

In the summer of 1842, Lincoln had insulted a political rival in a newspaper, semi-anonymously, and when the rival found out, he challenged him in a duel to the death.

We think of the Lincoln Memorial, that towering figure of that epic statesman, again, he seems otherworldly — superhuman, perhaps.

He didn’t feel that way in 1842, heading off to “Bloody Island” in Missouri — where dueling was still legal, to face James Shield to the death.

Shields was a better shot than he; Lincoln knew it, and didn’t want to die, but felt trapped; honor’s consideration, in that era, meant serious repercussions if he did not accept the duel.

Broadswords. Cavalry broadswords.

The challenged in a duel gets to specify the weapon — Abraham Lincoln chose the largest, heaviest melee he could think of — cavalry broadswords.

“I didn’t want the damned fellow to kill me, which I think he would have done if we had selected pistols.”

Lincoln! Abraham Lincoln, trying to figure out a way to disentangle himself from a fight he’d talked his way into it.

When the parties arrived on Bloody Island, Shields, seeing the obvious disadvantage in using the heavy swords against the taller and longer-armed man, reconciled.

Lincoln! Lincoln, trying to figure out how not to get himself shot to death by a rival, facing a challenge that he did not wish to fight, but felt he had no option but to accept under the customs of the day.

The Sun rises a little higher, still behind the mountains, and the world is a little brighter and warmer.

“Read and re-read the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene, and Frederick; take them as your model, that is the only way of becoming a great captain, to obtain the secrets of the art of war.”

Aye, indeed; and more than that, we can deal with their agonies as we study their lives, as they become human to us — Frederick’s close friend being executed by his father, Alexander’s grief at drunkenly slaying one of his close companions, Caesar being forced to fight his old friend and the former husband of his daughter due to circumstances, Hannibal’s Carthaginian Senate refusing to send him much-needed money and reinforcements out of jealousy and civil strife at home as he fought his desperate campaign against the Romans.

Add Napoleon’s name to his own list, indeed — his genius at Austerlitz, dealing with his own greedy overreaches in Spain, his tragedies in Russia, Josephine’s mixed loyalties, dealing with the treacherous Talleyrand and Fouche.

Indeed, study his campaign and learn his art — but also have him dissolve from the epic painting of him crossing the Alps into something flesh, something blood, something still great — but undoubtedly human.

Dawn breaks.

***

MARCHING WITH XENOPHON

We know Lincoln and Washington; they are fresh in our memories and traditions.

Who knows Xenophon?

Xenophon was a young observer and companion of a mercenary expedition into Persia, backing Cyrus the Younger against his brother Artaxerxes II in a Persian Civil War.

The Persian/Greek invading force won the initial engagement, but the point was mooted when Cyrus died in a personal charge against Artaxerxes’s position.

The Greeks were suddenly stranded in Persia, the toughest fighters on the field, but leaderless and with no more purpose.

Rejecting the Persian call for unconditional surrender, they began to fight their way out of Persia.

Finally, Persian messengers came and offered peace terms: Leave Persia peacefully, their forces will escort the Greeks out, do not lay waste to the countryside, and there would be no more fighting.

These were reasonable terms, and duly accepted.

Betrayal.

Not immediately.

After the march out of Persia started uneventfully, the Persian satrap Tissaphernes invited the leaders of the Greek mercenaries to a banquet.

There, he betrayed, captured, and executed them.

Suddenly, the Greeks were leaderless and about to be slaughtered.

Xenophon, still a very young man, took command of the company, and led a fighting retreat out of Persia that took more than a year.

This was over 2,400 years ago, but Xenophon’s writing in “ Anabasis ” — the tale of the march — it still speaks to me, personally.

Xenophon had his epic and heroic moments — but he additionally dealt with the same nonsense that everyone deals with. In times of extreme danger, he acted as well as he could.

As soon as danger seemed to pass, rivals started attacking him politically, claiming he had done a bad job, trying to rally the other soldiers against him.

The patterns that emerge from our humanness — the good and the bad parts — happen again and again in history.

24 centuries later, we’re much more sophisticated than those Athenians and Spartans that fought desperately to go home.

But we’re broadly the same genetics of them; those are our great-great-grandfathers; their DNA has come down to us; for all that’s changed, human nature has not changed all that  much.

Reading and re-reading Anabasis will, of course, teach you about leadership, about improvisation, about how people will break their word when it is expedient, about cruelty, about valor, about endurance.

But more than that, it is possible to march with Xenophon, some 2400 years later, and weariness is lightened by the march.

***

THE COUNSEL AND COMPANY OF THE ANCIENTS

Some diseases can be cured; others can only be managed.

Anxiety and strife are perhaps incurable side effects of an ambition and will to make this world into something different and better.

You’ll recall our five point syllogism, that which anyone walking a lonely path is up against —

1. Emotional contagion.
2. Self-reinforcing moods.
3. Natural isolation.
4. Anxiety and perhaps paralysis.
5. Downward spiral.

And an answer, an incomplete and partial answer, but an answer worth invoking and seizing, is to cultivate a historical sense.

What would Washington do here?

How did Lincoln do in this type of situation?

How would Xenophon deal with this?

By all means, by every means, please do everything we know works — do fitness, do nutrition, find good friends, spend time in nature.

And then over and beyond that, start cultivating the counsel and company of the ancients — it seems to manage the diseases of ambition and will.

It takes time. It takes work. But it is pleasurable work, and time well spent.

And suddenly, once the realization truly sets in — these men were just like me — suddenly, we can start to feel their emotions through the pages of history.

That syllogism starts to break — we can benefit from understanding and resonating to the moods of Theodore Roosevelt, or Abraham Lincoln, or whichever figure we like and relate to.

They go from being figures worthy of abstract praise, to figures we can relate to and understand.

And then,

1. We’re able to gain succor and resonance from understanding and feeling deeply the emotions of those who came before us.

2. This leads to a self-reinforcing sense of triumph and endurance.

3. The oh-so-natural isolation is broken you realize you are descended from those greats who came before us.

4. The pressures remain, but there is action to break through.

5. And we spiral upwards.

Cultivate a historical sense, a personal sense of history and those who came before us; gather them close to you, keep their counsel faithfully, and know you’re not alone.