This past week I wrote about The Stockdale Paradox, coined by Jim Collins in his seminal business book, Good to Great. The Stockdale Paradox is based on the experiences of Vice Admiral James Stockdale during his time as a POW in the Vietnam War. In the past couple of days I’ve thought quite a bit about Admiral Stockdale and his profound experience as a POW, so I decided to dive deeper into some of his writings and speeches.

Stockdale was a modern living example of the power of Stoicism. What attracted me to Stoicism initially was based on how Stoics approached philosophy as an actual way of life, as a set of guiding principles and spiritual techniques to build character and overcome the obstacles that we all face. On the surface the idea of meeting adversity with calm dignity makes sense, but in practice it is much more difficult because it requires significant effort and discipline to not be enslaved by false beliefs. I’ve battled this for years and continue to battle daily. It’s arguable that today the biggest challenges that many of us face are psychological in how we deal with our perceptions of reality. A big part of that reality is the biggest thing that is out of our control— the past. All too often our minds constantly go back to negative thoughts related to events that have already occurred. We can’t control what happened in the past and we surely can’t change it, yet we often let it control our relationships, mindset and emotions.

I find inspiration in stories like Admiral Stockdale. Sure, his story is truly remarkable and very few people will ever have to deal with the hardships he faced. Why I feel his story resonates with so many people is he overcame the ultimate hardships, including mental and physical torture, all the while separated from his family and loved ones. The lesson of stories like this is that anything can be conquered, and the huge obstacles that we build up in our heads can be overcome, provided we recognize them for what the really are— temporary barriers. The beauty of Stoicism and it’s use as a personal philosophy is the realization that getting out of our circumstances and overcoming obstacles is solely up to us, and if anything is dependent on someone else or external circumstances it is not up— thus pointless for us to obsess over.

One particular speech that stood out for me was delivered by Admiral Stockdale to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April of 1987. The speech, titled “Our Personal and National Resolve”, was delivered towards the end of the Cold War, but prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and was entered into the congressional record by Representative Robert H. Michel of Illinois. Michel felt the speech had historical significance due to “what he (Stockdale) has to say about the necessity for resolve— in human beings and in nations.

Stockdale talks about resolve in itself, in his words “its nature, how expensive it is (what it takes out of you), what it takes to generate a reliable quantity of it, how it must be selectively focused, how indispensable it is to prolonged, competitive campaigns of human will, personal and national.”

A big part of that resolve is the acceptance of his own mortality, a major theme in Stoic philosophy, the idea that death is inevitable, as are certain misfortunes that may happen, that are all out of our control. Once we understand that these things out of our control are inevitable, there is no need to worry about them. Death is the only certainty in life, and according to the Stoics there was no reason to fear it as a result. In the modern sense this is very hard to grasp, since tragedy and death are seen as overly emotional events, with good reason. The Stoics realized that people we love will die and we will die ourselves. This theme was so persistent in the ancient world that the practice of remembering ones mortality, memento mori, evolved as a method to reflect on mortality as a way to consider how life can be full of vanity and aimless pursuits. According to the Daily Stoic, this concept kept death in mind and a reminder about how limited our time on earth is.

in examining what kept him going during his time in the POW camp Stockdale uses the example of author Glenn Grey, a professor of philosophy at Colorado College who spent World War II on the battlefields interrogating German POW’s as a counter-intelligence officer. Gray would later publish a book titled Warriors: Reflections of Men in Battle, which Stockdale found to be an accurate assessment of the rapport that men of disparate backgrounds develop in the shared experience of combat.

From Stockdale:

“He (Gray) talks of the mysterious growth of comradeship among men who would never be friends and have nothing in common but common danger. Not often, but occasionally in prison, I would get a relayed tap code message from a new shootdown: “I’ve got to have something to hang on to. What do you think I should hold as my highest value in here?”

Stockdale’s answer? The guy next door.

“Protest him. Love him. He is precious.”

The brotherhood that these soldiers developed was recognized by Epictetus and is central to how the ancients looked at Memento Mori. Epictetus told his students that when kissing their child, brother, or friend, they should remind themselves that they are mortal, as do “those who stand behind men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal.”

This sense of fatalism is uncommon today and the modern lens can interpret an ancient world too obsessed with death and morbidity, but their is wisdom in approaching life this way. It’s not about trying to avoid emotions, but more of a philosophy designed to teach one to face your grief, struggles and emotions head on, versus avoiding them and wishing they go away.

Stockdale and the other brave pilots in the POW camps were dealing with a different type of grief, not personal loss in the traditional sense, instead the loss of their personal freedoms as they were tossed into a dangerous environment full of pain and suffering and the unknown. According to Stockdale the POW’s created their own world in the POW camp, with new rules and ways of communication, largely non-verbal. According to Stockdale every soldier developed their own resolve, but it was the unity of the shared experience that brought them together.

“Everyone has their own way of working through things, of dealing with complex and stressful situations, but it’s the sense of common purpose that kept us close.”

So what did Stockdale develop? In his mind, what was the ultimate characteristic that allowed him to persist through nearly eight years of torture? He defined it was “moral leverage”:

“Moral leverage is sort of like a very clean conscience, except it’s active, not passive. It’s a power source. It is nothing modern or sophisticated; rather it is the simple, even primal, power source of human nature. It is a gut feeling that you develop that tells you that your are clean and you are right and that you are ready to carry your mission to the ends of the earth.”

This moral leverage was defined by what psychologists call adversarial growth or post-traumatic growth. According to “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger is not a cliché but fact. The struggle against an obstacle inevitably propels the fighter to a new level of functioning. The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth. The obstacle is an advantage, not adversity. The enemy is any perception that prevents us from seeing this.”

The POW’s in Hanoi had shared experience of adversity. They were all in it together, which is significant and is the unique characteristic that made such a disparate group of people bond together in the most terrible situation imaginable. Critical was the leadership of Stockdale as the most senior officer and the de facto commander of the POW’s. As I wrote last week, the “world” Stockdale created was greatly influenced by this time as a graduate student in Philosophy at Stanford University and his reading of the Enchiridion by Epictetus. The term Enchiridion translates to “ready at hand”, a practical guidebook for navigating through life.

Everything I know about Epictetus I've developed myself over the years. It's been a one-on-one relationship. He's been in combat with me, leg irons with me, spent month-long stretches in blindfolds with me, has been in the ropes with me, has taught me that my true business is maintaining control over my moral purpose, in fact that my moral purpose is who I am. He taught me that I am totally responsible for everything I do and say; and that it is I who decides on and controls my own destruction and own deliverance. Not even God will intercede if He sees me throwing my life away. He wants me to be autonomous. He put me in charge of me. "It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

A major theme of the Enchiridion and one of the key overarching tenets of Stoicism is the idea it’s not the event that creates a positive or negative response, it’s how we interpret the event. In Epictetus’s words, “Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things.”

From Stockdale:

“Epictetus was telling his students that there can be no such thing as being the "victim" of another. You can only be a "victim" of yourself. It's all in how you discipline your mind. Who is your master? "He who has authority over any of the things on which you have set your heart. ...What is the result at which all virtue aims? Serenity. ...Show me a man who though sick is happy, who though in danger is happy, who though in prison is happy, and I'II show you a Stoic."

It was this philosophy that helped Stockdale survive Hanoi, a philosophy that became the guiding principle of his life. Reading about the horrible experience of the POW camp it’s unfathomable that Stockdale would come out of that experience a stronger person, but he did.

Quote Epictetus:

“What would have become of Hercules, do you think, if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar? — and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules. And even if he had, what good would it have done him? What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir him into action?”

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