The Stockdale Paradox

"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

-Admiral James Stockdale

As we continue to face unprecedented challenges these days, we thought it would be worth taking a closer look at the author of “The Stockdale Paradox.”

It’s ironic that Stockdale’s legacy also became a kind of paradox—as the war hero philosopher was reduced to bumbling old fool by American TV audiences. To many Generation Xers, James Stockdale was known principally from the televised US Vice Presidential debate of 1992, where he squared off against Al Gore and Dan Quayle, as the running mate of Billionaire Ross Perot. Stockdale’s opening remarks, unfortunately, became his legacy, as he uttered “Who am I? Why am I here?” and later fumbled to turn his hearing aid on so he could hear a question repeated. He asked those questions as a philosopher and student of philosophy, but the idea was lost on American TV viewers. 

The best defence of Stockdale came from, of all people, Comedian Dennis Miller, on one of his HBO comedy stand-up specials:

“Now I know (Stockdale's name has) become a buzzword in this culture for ‘doddering old man,’ but let's look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including our present President, did not want to dirty their hands with. He had to turn his hearing aid on at that debate because those fucking animals knocked his eardrums out when he wouldn't spill his guts. He teaches philosophy at Stanford University—he's a brilliant, sensitive, courageous man. And yet he committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: He was bad on television.”

Stoicism

Stockdale was a student of our favourite school of philosophy—Stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy that espouses the virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. As described in Courage under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior (1993), when Stockdale’s plane was shot down over Vietnam on September 9, 1965, his thoughts were of Epictetus:  "Five years down there at least—I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus!" He became the highest-ranking officer POW in the Vietnam War, being held captive and tortured for seven years, four of them in solitary confinement, in the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp.

Stockdale credited the stoic philosophy of Epictetus for enabling him to survive his imprisonment—striving to live without fear or hope—as the Stoics taught that fear and hope were flip sides of the same coin—pointless concerns of the future. He recalled in the book how he witnessed other POWs torture themselves with hope—hope of improved conditions, or even of an early release—hoping that they would be rescued next week, next month, next year. “They were the ones,” Stockdale recalled, “that died of a broken heart, and didn’t make it out alive.” He instead focused on accepting the grim conditions exactly as they were, thereby protecting his own mind from the harms of hopeful thinking. “I learned what ‘stoic harm’ meant. A shoulder broken, a bone in my back broken, a leg broken twice, were peanuts by comparison. Epictetus said, ‘Look not for any greater harm than this: Destroying the trustworthy, self-respecting, well-behaved man within you.’” Though he practiced a radical acceptance of his reality in the prison camp, he never lost the belief that he would survive, and turn the experience into the defining event of his life. 

What the World Needs Now

We’ve been thinking that we could all use a bit of this philosophy now. We have heard many that are hopeful of lockdowns ending, of vaccines being distributed speedily, of gyms and businesses quickly opening again—and maybe those things will happen.  But maybe they won’t.  As Michael Ryan, Director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, recently stated, maybe “This is not necessarily the big one.” Perhaps, like Stockdale, we need to accept things exactly as they are. What can we do—things being as they are? How can we stay strong, stay healthy—prepare mentally and physically for a life in a world that may have inexorably changed? To learn from and follow Stockdale’s example is to rescue ourselves from the effects of this pandemic, and rescue his legacy from the “TV dud” garbage heap, and restore it to its rightful place as a leading Stoic philosopher of modern times. 


We think we both deserve that.

Until next time,

Scott and Lennart


Previous
Previous

Preparing to get Coronavirus—A practical review of our philosophy

Next
Next

Extremes