Faith Before Progress

Admiral James Stockdale learned a valuable lesson during the seven years he spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam:

“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.”

You’re likely familiar with this quote, or at the very least familiar with the Admiral’s well-known namesake, The Stockdale Paradox, which was popularized in Jim Collins’s book, Good to Great. It’s often cited as a mark against optimism, which Stockdale says did his fellow prisoners no good. “The optimists… were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart…”

I’ve been thinking about the Stockdale Paradox a lot recently. David Brooks wrote a damning piece about the country titled America Is Falling Apart at the Seams, and despite wanting to dismiss his argument, I found it hard to do so. Brooks identifies a handful of indicators that all point to America’s decline: spikes in automotive deaths, abusive behavior in hospitals, airplanes and schools, drug overdoses, murders and hate crimes.

Worse still is a trend we’ve all seen firsthand, of greater disdain for people we disagree with politically, religiously, medically (COVID!) or otherwise. The LA Times published a column titled Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary – I mean come on! Sometimes you need data and figures to tell you something, and other times a simple headline will do. We’re in the midst of something ugly.

But if you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll know that my focus is less on establishing the problem – Brooks and other reporters take care of that – than on asking what each of us can do in the face of such a problem.

Enter the Stockdale Paradox: Have faith but confront reality. If the news is any indication, we might be too good at confronting reality, and not so good at having faith. Think of all the information we consume – much of it negative – about the state of the world, and how quick we are to bemoan where things are headed and to assume they won’t change. We’re over-indexed on one side of the paradox. We’re so fixated on not ending up like the optimists in the camp (who died in the end) that we’ve swung all the way over to the pessimists – and Stockdale doesn’t even talk about the pessimists. How long do you think they lasted?

So we need more faith. And fortunately for us, faith is a choice. It’s within our sphere of control. We can look at things we’re dissatisfied with and think “why bother?” or we can look at them and think “this can get better.”

Easy to say, right? But here’s the thing: We’re highly influenced by what we’re exposed to. If you spend all day reading America Is Falling Apart at the Seams, faith will be hard to come by. But if you do things that tell you otherwise, faith will appear in strange places.

An example from my life is the English classroom, where I’ve taught immigrant students for the last five years and seen firsthand what the U.S. means to the rest of the world. No, it’s not some capitalist paradise. But the country often does represent substantially greater opportunity than elsewhere, and that perspective is a helpful reminder of how good we have it (despite some wear and tear at the seams).

There are countless examples of this, big and small. Acts of generosity and goodwill provoke the same in others and remind us that yes, there are great people and great things all around us. Ask someone how their day is and they’ll ask you right back. Volunteer your time and find yourself suddenly surrounded by other people doing the same thing.

Because here’s the truth about an article like Brooks’s: Almost none of the problems he highlights are within our control. We have the choice to drive safely, be kind to nurses and not murder people. Hopefully we were already doing those things. Beyond that, large, societal trends like “increased drug abuse” or “deteriorating mental health” are outside of our control. We can only influence what we touch in our daily lives: a friend struggling with depression, or the way we normalize substance abuse among peers.

The weight is then shifted from vague, insurmountable challenges – which are realities we should not ignore – to specific, tangible ways that each of us can be the change we want to see in the world. It sounds corny, but if you’ve read this far, take a second and think about how often you’ve done that in the last week. Said “no one says hi to each other in the store anymore,” and then actually gone and said hi to someone in the store! Now think about how often you’ve complained about the state of the world or criticized the way someone else acted. Most of us are deficient in the former and overweight in the latter.

Given that reality, I’m left with irresolute faith in the trajectory of my little pocket of this country. I see people – friends and strangers – doing things each and every day to make this place a good one. As for the things I don’t see? I have a choice: To assume they are the problem and I am unique, or to have faith that there is similar good stuff happening everywhere. If it’s not – which is certainly possible – then so be it. I’ll prepare to accept that reality when it comes. In the meantime, all we can do is focus on holding up our share of the bargain.

– Emmett

What I’m Reading:

A Domineering Father’s Letter to his Son – Ed Turner
“I cannot understand why you should be vitally interested in informing yourself about the influence of the Classics or English literature. It is not necessary to know how to make a gun in order to know how to use it. It would seem to me that it would be enough to learn English literature without going into what influence this or that ancient mythology might have had upon it.”

A Better Truth – Meg Greenfield, Williams College Graduation 1987
“I observe that now, as always in this country, when people speak of a terrible, all embracing decline in ethical standards, they are invariably speaking of the decline in their next door neighbor’s standards, not their own.”

What I’m Listening To:

Whitney Johnson On Building a High-Growth Team – Elevate Podcast
Excellent conversation on learning new skills, staying motivated and changing jobs during The Great Resignation (or Great Aspiration, as they call it)

The Complete History & Strategy of Creative Artists Agency – Acquired Podcast
I knew nothing about CAA but the story of its founding is a good one.

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Semi-regular thoughts on the good life and personal growth.