Murphy’s Laws of Combat, Part 2

Murphy’s Laws of Combat, Part 2

· Remember, a retreating enemy is probably just falling back and regrouping.

I’ve already mentioned “don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance instead.” However, in those cases when someone wishes to vindictively do you harm you’d be best not to surmise their retreat as a retreat: Just a regroup.

· If at first you don't succeed call in an air-strike.

I have a saying that I use when problem-solving: Try graceful, intelligent, creative tactics first…but if that doesn’t work use the brute force approach.

· Exceptions prove the rule, and destroy the battle plan.

This is a tricky one. When I first joined the military I served as a combat engineer: Trained in demolitions, minefields, other combat obstacles, it was instilled in us that we needed to be detail-oriented in things to the letter. When I was in personnel administration this notion was reinforced doubly. However, when I was in recruiting…I was trained to think in exceptions: Ninety-five percent of the rules were flexible and had exceptions; there were only a select few that couldn’t be bent.

· Everything always works in your HQ, everything always fails in the colonel's HQ.

Ever plan something within the confines of your own environment, but when you take it to someone else (such as your boss) for approval it fails? No plan survives combat—or the “real world—“ intact.

· The enemy never watches until you make a mistake.

You could be doing everything perfect all the time, but that one time you make a mistake—bet your hind quarters that someone is watching.

· One enemy soldier is never enough, but two is entirely too many.

Obstacles stack up quickly. Don’t “bite off more than you can chew.”

· A clean (and dry) set of BDUs is a magnet for mud and rain.

BDUs, or the Battle Dress Uniform (since replaced with a newer acronym for the Army and Marine’s digital camouflage uniform), is the standard uniform that you see anyone in the military wearing in the field. Few things—if anything—survive the real world intact.

· Whenever you have plenty of ammo, you never miss. Whenever you are low on ammo, you can't hit the broad side of a barn.

Isn’t this the truth. It’s like crackers: When you have one can of soup around, you have plenty of crackers, but the reciprocal—plenty of soup by few crackers—also tends to be true.

· The more a weapon costs, the farther you will have to send it away to be repaired.

Value and utility—usefulness—works the same way throughout the entire chain of manufacture to your hands: The more something is worth to you the greater ends you’ll go to fix it not only because it means that much to you, it’s because that’s simply what it takes to get it repaired.

· Field experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

It is difficult to learn from books what good old-fashioned experience, “trial by fire” can offer you. Experience teaches you how not to panic. Experience teaches you the full depth and breadth of the situational dynamics. Unfortunately, you have to experience it in order to get it.

· Interchangeable parts aren't.

I grew up in a family where my great grandfather was a top-notch automobile mechanic, as is my grandfather, my father, and my brother. Though I don’t proclaim to be one, I can do many of the basic things and have a fundamental understanding of how the combustion engine works from combustion to drive train and exhaust. What I didn’t learn in my youth, however, was what the Army taught me: Hundreds of different people will be able to offer thousands of different solutions to mechanical problems. I’ve seen Army mechanics need to completely undo something that someone else before them engineered in order to properly fix the piece of equipment. Be ready to adapt, because no one else is going to adapt for you.

· No matter which way you have to march, it is always uphill.

Nothing good comes without some trials and tribulations. Life often will force you to march uphill…both ways.

· If enough data is collected, a board of inquiry can prove anything.

People will often look for data in a given situation that they are searching for…in other words, inquiries can become self-fulfilling prophecies in the sense that an individual will put a bias on the information that they are seeking in order to prove the point they want to make.

· For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism (especially in boot camp).

No matter what you do, someone will have a criticism for it that is opposite and equal to the value that you place in your action. Don’t allow criticism to hold you back from what you want to do or take away from the self-worth you derive from doing it.

· The one item you need is always in short supply.

Isn’t this the very definition of modern economics?

· The worse the weather, the more you are required to be out in it.

There is an old saying that we are never put into a situation that we are not meant to be able to handle. Even if we are faring our way through poor weather, we are probably meant to learn something from it.

· The complexity of a weapon is inversely proportional to the IQ of the weapon's operator.

This reminds me very much of what we used to call the “Engineer’s Axiom:” Your IQ should be 10 percent higher than that piece of equipment which you are trying to operate. Otherwise you’re likely to run into exactly what the individual finding them in the above situation will find themselves.

· Airstrikes always overshoot the target, artillery always falls short.

A trap that a manager or a leader often runs into is the trap of unwillingness to delegate. Many of these types of people have been engrained with the belief that they can do things better than someone else. However, this does not allow for the opportunity to learn, to train, and to coach. Artillery that falls short, airstrikes that overshoot, and support that fails to properly hit the mark can be overcome with enough preparation of those people that are required to see to these sorts of tasks.

· When reviewing the radio frequencies that you just wrote down, the most important ones are always illegible.

The amount that a person is prone to panic is often directly proportional to the gravity of the situation: Panic does strange things to a person…including not allowing them to write legibly, for instance.

· Those who hesitate under fire usually do not end up KIA or WIA.

I wish I could find text of the original study, but I recall hearing once of such a study in which World War II and subsequent conflicts were studied and it was shown that, of every 10 people, 7 were there to die, 2 were there to reload for the 10^TH individual, and that last person—the 10^TH individual—was there to be the warrior. Although valor and glory are two things that make great men and women greater, recall that discretion is part of the valor equation: Pick your battles and remember that many, many Congressional Medals of Honor are awarded posthumously.

· The tough part about being an officer is that the troops don't know what they want, but they know for certain what they don’t want.

A “glimmering generality” is that people will have the tendency to criticize about what they don’t want, but won’t necessarily know what they want until such time that they see it.

· To steal information from a person is called plagiarism. To steal information from the enemy is called gathering intelligence.

Context is extremely important when looking at any situation.

· The weapon that usually jams when you need it the most is the M60.

The M60 7.62mmGPMG, General Purpose Machine Gun, was employed on a bipod with an effective range of 500 meters or on a tripod with an effective range 1,100 meters. It also was used on vehicles and helicopters in a defensive role. It was gas operated, air cooled and belt fed, with a quick-change barrel to help reduce overheating during a firefight. It has a practical rate of fire of 200 rounds per minute (550 rounds per minute max): Truly a magnificent weapon, a great tool that could mean life or death for the group of soldiers using it. Entropy is the natural process in which things break down unless we put effort into keeping them useful.

· The perfect officer for the job will transfer in the day after that billet is filled by someone else.

Jump on your opportunities quickly, or else they’ll go somewhere else.

· When you have sufficient supplies & ammo, the enemy takes 2 weeks to attack. When you are low on supplies & ammo the enemy decides to attack that night.

Always be prepared for the enemy because you can bet that they will always be prepared for you.

· The newest and least experienced soldier will usually win the Congressional Medal Of Honor.

…Because new, less experienced individuals often have more boldness than their war-hardened, veteran counterparts they are willing to do those things which others aren’t to be awarded those recognitions that others aren’t. Entropy not only makes those things in our lives less useful, they can make us less useful as well.

· A Purple Heart just goes to prove that were you smart enough to think of a plan, stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive.

Success is when preparation meets opportunity. That bears repeating: When preparation meets opportunity. Sometimes this is just a series of factors that happen to fall into place just right, but oftentimes we can do things like decreasing the risk factors involved with our participation in the situation or we can increase our preparation of ourselves and our teams.

· Murphy was a grunt.

I quickly became aware of a practice by officers that I revered to go to the less-ranking troops in an area of operations—junior non-commissioned officers and below—and ask them of their opinions of what was going on. A former non-commissioned officer in-charge that I had the honor of serving under once remarked of a major general that would often approach him for his opinion about the current events within his command.

Experience gains breadth of perspective while knowledge increases depth of perspective. The higher up a chain of command a person goes, the more their perspective changes from a details-of-the-tactics type to a strategic style. If the non-commissioned officer (sergeants) are the daily supervisors of the Army and the commissioned officers manage the resources of it, the privates and specialists are the arms, legs, and hands of it: Those that do the daily grind of the businesses in which we work. There is a good chance that these individuals might have a perspective that is different from our own and, quite possibly, potentially useful to yours.

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Murphy’s Laws of Combat, Part 1

When I first saw these as a private in 1998 the effects were more immediate in my military career than they were in the rest of my life. Within a couple years, however, they began to gain relevance in other aspects of my life.

· If the enemy is in range, so are you.

Simple and stark geometry dictates that if an enemy can hit you with something that can cause harm to you, so can you, and vice versa. More practically, vulnerability often holds with it the same geometry: If someone is vulnerable to you, then there is a likelihood that the reciprocal exists.

· Incoming fire has the right of way.

I’ve heard this put another way in a Demotivators poster: Don’t stand between the competitive jerk and their goals.

· Don't look conspicuous, it draws fire.

If you’re trying not to be spotted, blend in. This also has a strong correlation with “appearing busy.”

· There is always a way, and it usually doesn't work.

Lack of proper preparation or a poorly-placed opportunity can beget bad luck: With enough preparation, bad luck doesn’t exist.

· The problem with the easy way out is that it has already been mined.

Laying a minefield is a military concept called counter-mobility: Maneuvering the enemy through avenues that are more advantageous to you than him or her. In life the easy way is often fraught with problems that are not found in taking the more difficult way.

· Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo

This one goes well with the above law about not looking conspicuous: Attacking takes energy and effort, and if you position yourself in such a way to not be worth being attacked, this can hedge against undesirable things happening.

· Professionals are predictable, it's the amateurs that are dangerous.

I love this one; it is so very useful. Professionals are often well-trained or well-experienced and typically follow stricter regimens in their approach than everyone else. They are often rational, linear and logical in their thinking, and swift and effective in their execution. Amateurs, on the other hand, are typically not this way.

· The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions:

1. When you're ready for them.

2. When you're not ready for them.

Life happens no matter if you’re prepared for it or not, so why don’t follow the Boy Scout motto and “always be prepared.”

· Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at.

There is power and, from the cynical perspective, increased survivability in groups.

· If you can't remember, then the claymore IS pointed at you.

A claymore is a deadly anti-personnel mine that can ruin your day pretty quickly. If you can’t remember how you did something, sometimes it is best to just presume that you need to take another look at it.

· The enemy diversion you have been ignoring will be the main attack.

Learning to devote your awareness to the entire world surrounding you or to the minute details therein may mean the difference between success and failure.

· A "sucking chest wound" is nature's way of telling you to slow down.

For those who aren’t familiar with the realities of battlefield medicine the “sucking chest wound” is the kind that you don’t want to have because the “sucking” part is the pressure compartment in your lungs being unpressurized. Life, just like combat, give us signals to speed up, slow down, and to continue moving forward. Learn to notice the signs and how to manage them before they turn into your very own “sucking chest wound.”

· If your attack is going well, then it's an ambush.

Never underestimate the odds of the situation besting you: Increased knowledge and skills allows you to adapt abilities to circumstances. Not doing so can lead to an “ambush.”

· Never draw fire, it irritates everyone around you.

People don’t like being uncomfortable; if you draw uncomfortable situations, people will have a tendency to be irritated with you.

· Anything you do can get you shot, including nothing.

Apathy is not a virtue, but don’t let everyday life know that.

· If you build yourself a bunker that's tough for the enemy to get into quickly, then you won't be able to get out of it quickly either.

This bears a strong resemblance to “if the enemy is in range, so are you” axiom. Just like you don’t want to corner a wild animal in a situation that you can’t get out of, either, always have an escape route.

· Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself.

In the Army, and the other services I imagine, there is a tendency to take on “battle buddies,” the proverbial “guy you share the foxhole with.” In those metaphorical situations where you find yourself with a companion on the frontlines if they are braver than you are, you could end up in a losing battle.

· If you're short of everything but the enemy, you're in a combat zone.

Have you ever heard that quip about the “calm before the storm?” There is an eerie silence in a combat zone before the “fog of war” and the chaos of battle hits.

· Never forget that your weapon is made by the lowest bidder.

Sometimes the tools that you use are not worth the sum of their parts: Their value is only readily known when you’re using them. If they fail you, you’d better find a way to adapt…quickly.

· Friendly fire isn't.

Don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance: People are often too apathetic than to actually exert the energy to be truly vindictive, but they both can have the same affect.

· Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down, never stay awake when you can sleep.

Use your time wisely, find efficiencies and be effective in everything that you do.

· The most dangerous thing in the world is a second lieutenant with a map and a compass.

Second lieutenant is the rank of a newly-minted commissioned officer. An old wisdom tells that the young rattlesnake is apt to use more venom in an attack than his older counterpart. Remember when you first started your first job, or any other job that you loved? You were probably filled with a fire, a zealousness that could serve to get you into trouble, left unchecked. That’s why second lieutenants get a seasoned non-commissioned officer, a sergeant first class, to help guide his or her actions.

· There is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.

There is a scene in an old war movie, I think it is the Green Berets, where an old veteran sergeant major tells a bunch of younger troops that a battle was imminent and that they had better start praying to whichever god they believed in. Given the right mix of circumstances and enough danger, people need something to believe in—even if that spirituality is a lack thereof, it is replaced with something that the person will believe in.

· A grenade with a seven second fuse will always burn down in four seconds.

Don’t count on what the user’s manual, instructions, specifications, or technical documentation says that the equipment can or will do. There is something said amongst information technology professionals: Bugs and such in programs are cynically referred to as “undocumented features.” Don’t underestimate your circumstances by letting such “undocumented features” sneak up on you.

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Monkey Mondays: Monkey School

Jujitsu Marketing: XM and Sirius Radio.

XM had a bad month in May due to a number of issues from outages to censoring. To a populous accustomed to not paying for radio—whose content is regulated by the federal government—paying for premium radio meant that they could now get uncensored content delivered to them. However, following a stunt from shock jock radio hosts Opie and Anthony the couple was censored for a period of time. I’m not necessarily a fan of such content, but as many as 500,000 subscribers—1/16 of XM’s subscriber base—must be fan enough to drop the service because of XM’s seeming hypocrisy on the matter.

What is a competitor to do?

Sirius jumps in, in wonderfully prompt jujitsu-esque fashion and reminds satellite radio subscribers that they have what the disgruntled XM subscribers want. Filling an unmet need or desire of a competitor’s customers can only lead to one thing: Profit.

Memorial Day 2007

I am a lover of movies depicting military history: Those who do not learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them. At any rate, history tends to repeat itself. This weekend, in Memorial Day spirit, I was watching The Green Berets. The movie recalls the experiences of a Green Beret Detachment dispatched to Vietnam with a naysayer journalist embedded in the team. With overtones of today’s current situation, the media has painted an entirely different picture than what exists in the lives of our fighting men and women in a combat zone.

Prussian General Karl von Clauswitz, in his magnus opus On War, wrote “War is nothing but a continuation of politics by other means.” Regardless of what one thinks of the civilian leadership of the military, wars are fought and won by the soldiers in them: Squads of 8-16 personnel through corps of 20,000-40,000 personnel are made up mostly of soldiers in the rank of staff sergeant (E-6) and below that work towards the end of winning.

A Model for Interpersonal Interactions, Part 2

Everyone (well, most everyone) interacts with other people on a daily basis. When we interact with people the new information allows us the opportunity to deal with the many differences that might exist between how we perceive the world and how the world really is. As individuals that belong to social groups, communities, and other such groups of individuals, we tend to develop shared worldviews based on individuals in the group placing and communicating value on similar objects. These shared views of the world create the environmental construct in which our individual constructs evolve. Things such as the laws we observe, virtues we share with others, and the morals of our communities are the manifestations of groups of worldviews. Because we share, respect, and value the worldviews of the social groups which we reference, we live our lives, in a manner of speaking, in accordance to the social reference group whose collective worldview is most aligned with our own.

Conflicts arise, however, when we add personal meanings to the collective worldview. Because 10 different people will interpret the world through their personality filters in 10 different ways people will be apt to create different construct meanings as part of the greater morality construct. In this sense, worldview meanings will not always translate—and often do not always perfectly translate—into the worldview meaning of the social reference group. In this environment where the fusion of individual and group beliefs is non-existent conflict becomes highly probable: We’ll start seeing conflicts not only between individuals in specific groups, but also between different groups. These groups of interactions are, in the more common vernacular, as relationships.

Relationships allow us to seek awareness in our patterns of thinking: The comparison of our closely held beliefs through emotions and concepts with the events that are transpiring in our interactions, our relationships. Which beliefs, concepts, and values are reflected in our behaviors? Each of these behaviors that reflect our beliefs, concepts, and values are partly caused by our interactions with our environment and partly the manifestation of our genetics.

Throughout our past we learn and evolve an understanding of how to be from the framework which we are working in at that time: This is why awareness is a key leadership trait at all levels—from self-awareness to awareness of one’s environment—if one’s perceptions are broad and understanding of circumstances deep, an individual can seize this epiphany of conditioning and make the most of one’s evolution. We go through this constant process, being most apt and searching for it in our youth, to fulfill the need to search for meaning in oneself and the world around them. If the past has had a dominant “punishment model,” the search for meaning created mechanisms for defense within the construct; in a nurturing atmosphere, self-expression becomes dominant. At any rate, the experiences of your past manifest themselves as the patterns of your today. The earlier that these experiences shape your construct, the stronger the tendencies and patterns become…the more inertia they have…and the more energy is require to overcome them.

The patterns that we use throughout our daily lives embody the truths in our world: We interpret, process, and mold the world to meet our specifications, our worldview. Conflicts in relationships are simply two worldviews that lack congruence with one another. In his book “Ways of Worldmaking” Nelson Goodman says: “Not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature of agreement between a version and a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous.” In other words, the truths of each individual differ, but the reconciliation of our truth from someone else’s is infamously indistinct.

The logical conclusion for all of this is that we should strive for three things: Heightened self-awareness, a deeper understanding of our relationships, and a thoughtful understanding the individuals in our relationships.

A Model for Interpersonal Interactions, Part 1

Each person is but the sum of their experiences, or so we are told. Every experience which you have, every interaction which you make leaves you changed (unless we’ve been desensitized of it). Deep inside we have conscious awareness, unconscious unawareness, and everything in between that forms the construct of the person we are, the fabric of our being.

An individual construct, however complex, can be deduced to series of areas that combine in special ways:

Ontological component: The study of being and what constitutes objective and subjective existence, and what it means to exist.

Theological component: A particular system or school of religious or spiritual beliefs and teachings.

Cosmological component: The study of the structure, origin, and evolution of the universe.

Axiological component: The study of values and value judgments.

Epistemological component: The study of what is meant by "knowledge". What does it mean to "know" something as opposed to merely having an opinion?

Ethical component: The principles of right and wrong that are accepted by an individual or a social group.

Take 10 different people and ask them, for instance, “What constitutes your objective and subjective existence and what does it mean to exist,” or…if you didn’t want to be so long-winded, one could simply ask “what is the meaning of life for you?” You would likely get 10 different answers. Because things like the theological, cosmological, and ethical components have a tendency to be more discrete in nature (“What are your theological beliefs?” “I’m Lutheran” or “what is your belief about the structure, origin, and evolution of the universe?” “The standard model of cosmology, thank you very much!”). Ethics tend to vary between social groups, societies, and civilizations: What is an accepted belief in Western Philosophy, for example, isn’t necessarily something that one would find in Eastern Philosophy: The paradigms between cultures vary in context and, therefore, meaning.

How these various components interact comprise the objective versus subjective within the individual. Objective things are those that can be proven by fact, whereas subjective matters are often interpreted by the individual to fit into their individual world. The sum of accumulated learning goes through the “filters” of the individual—the ontology, theology, cosmology, axiology, epistemology, and ethics filters. Each person’s perception of the world is unique in that how they pass new information through these filters to change something.

Worldviews, supported by personal values, are a framework for interacting with others: More on that in the next post.

Personality and Intelligence: A Brief Contrast and Comparison

Personality: The complex of all the attributes--behavioral, temperamental, emotional and mental--that characterize a unique individual; "their different reactions reflected their very different personalities"; "it is his nature to help others"

Intelligence: The ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience.

Many people have been conditioned to think that one of the above can be changed while the other is concrete for life. The ability to comprehend and apply lessons to one’s experiences to their benefit and the benefit of others is something that is not constant: This is a reason why intelligence quotient tests can be used as a metric of change in intelligence. Given a specific demographic the knowledge, skills, and the ability to apply them to a series of problems is charted across peers in that demographic. As we grow older we may learn more or we may learn less, but at any rate maturity tends to bring with it increased judiciousness and a changing attitude towards risk.

By contrast, personality is the underlying construct to intelligence: Just like an operating system controls the functions of a computer or the framework of a house determines how large the house can be or where walls, rooms, and doors can go, personality instructs how we learn and how our intellect interacts with the rest of the world. Just as new information can change our intelligence if we are receptive to it—just as it is that a house can have an addition added or rooms taken away—what is to say that personality, the underlying construct of who we are, cannot be just as malleable?

Research by developmental psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck at Stanford University suggests that this is, in fact, the case. An article recently published in Newsweek overviews the old way of thinking and the empirical data that suggests otherwise:

“The old thinking was that our personality—the sum total of our human qualities—was an inherited legacy, fixed at birth and unchanging through life. So we had adventurous people and timid people; competitive Type As and laid-back Type Bs; conscientious, truthful types and—well, scoundrels and liars.”

Instead:

“The new thinking is that these traits are not fixed but in flux, and there are many ideas about why personality might change. Dweck's theory is that our beliefs about ourselves and the world—our "self theories," in the jargon—are a powerful influence on who we become in life. In other words, our own lay theories about personality and aptitude actually shape our character.”

Years ago when I was in a special leadership development course we were taught that “People see the world how they want to see it.” This correlates strongly with the adage that “someone convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.” My friend Rick once counseled me with the following advice: Whenever we have problems with someone it behooves us to look inside. It stands to reason, then, that the best way to change our world and how we interact with it is to look inside and change our worldview.

In Dr. Dweck’s research hundreds of pre-teens were given a standard IQ test. Most of them scored “OK” on the test but different groups were praised differently on the test: Some were praised for their natural talent (“What a great score! You're so smart!”), while others were praised for their hard work (“What a great score! You must have worked very hard!”). The first message was crafted to convey people’s abilities as a fixed personal asset and the second message meant to convey a person’s abilities as something that can be changed.

As they say, “the proof is in the pudding:” Where results are the things that matter, the children who were told that they were smart were less apt to expose themselves to more circumstances that would possibly offer evidence to themselves that would take away this worldview, this perception, that they had. The pre-teens that were told that they had worked hard, however, were more apt to expose themselves to new challenges more because it allowed them the opportunity for growth.

To prove the point, the pre-teens were subsequently given very difficult problems to solve. When they failed, the children that were told that they were “so smart” saw it as a blow to their self-worth. Those that were told that they had worked “very hard” just “dug in more.”

The story gets better.

After all the testing Dr. Dweck gave the kids the opportunity write down their thoughts about the test, leaving a space to record their grade on the test under the auspices that it would be for those that took the test in the future. Those that scored badly inflated their test scores in order to improve their own self-perception of their own self-worth. In other words they justified their actions by lying to themselves in order to make themselves feel better instead of expending the effort to actually do better.

In the end the research has proven that undesirable personality traits need not be permanent or be allowed to affect our lives for the worse: As long as we don’t allow our self-perceptions to be negative and look at problems as opportunities, exerting enough good old-fashioned effort, each of us should be able to overcome anything in our path.

Of Mankind

"Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain."

Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince"

Don't allow yourself to be generalized into this statement. Be someone else.

Murphy's Lesser-Known Laws

If you are reading this then there is a good chance that you came here seeking pearls of wisdom by which to enrich your life. Today I will present something slightly different than the usual fare: They say that variety is the “spice of life,” so let’s look at some long-held common wisdom and pick it apart to see what makes it truly tick.

Murphy's Lesser-Known Laws

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

A good friend of mine, Rick, should like this one because it is reminiscent of a quote of which he is fond. If you can look smarter than you might sound, reconsider saying anything.

2. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

Thinking quickly is sometimes something people are born with. The rest of us learn how to think more quickly.

3. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

In other words, don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. When confronted with an opportunity, use the best tool for the job.

4. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

When you’re not attributing to malice what you can attribute to ignorance, people tend to have dumb luck in the face of foolproof methods which you have implemented.

5. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

I’d like to look into the probabilities of this, but I know this: When you’re faced with too much information, you tend to choose the wrong one. In circumstances as such you should “use your heart.” What tends otherwise is that you will over-analyze, panic, or both: Neither allows for a good probability for a good decision.

6. The things that come to those who wait will be the things left by those who got there first.

Boldness! Speed! Simplicity!

7. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll sit in a boat all day, drinking beer.

What can I say about this? There are people out there that work only to live and will choose laziness above productivity and contribution to society.

8. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

…And my shins can prove it.

9. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

…This is what is wrong with the American tax system. When you get enough wealth people will tend to attack you in some way or another and you’ll be targeted to redistribute that wealth to others that aren’t motivated enough to make the wealth themselves.

10. When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Although it is a bit cynical…justice through the judgment of your “peers” has its benefits…and it’s drawbacks.

Cynical

“Today don't look so bad, compared to tomorrow
if time is all we have, then we're living on borrowed”
—Extreme “Cynical”

Once upon a time there was a group of philosophers that clung to the belief that virtue was the only necessity and was entirely sufficient to be happy. They believed in this philosophy to a fault: Neglecting everything else that would further their perfection of a virtuous existence. They neglected everything from their own personal hygiene and their family obligations to society. Nearly naked and devoid of provisions, a Greek by the name of Diogenes traveled the land and frivolously enjoyed the sun and the beaches, gathering thousands of people to listen to him sarcastically talk about society. Alexander the Great curiously sought him out, Diogenes suggesting that he renounce his conquests. Alexander, however, was apt to decline because he firmly believed that his destiny had already been written. Diogenes belonged to a group that history would recall as the cynics. In fact, Diogenes had the symbol of the cynic placed onto his tombstone.

Alexander the Great, mind you, conquered most of the known world by the time he turned 30.

Would you rather be a cynic or a conqueror? Are you satisfied with the habits of Diogenes and the cynics or molding and shaping your own world?

I once recall reading a piece on reducing the amount of cynicism in your life by reducing one’s hostility. It started by asking oneself the question “My philosophy in life is based on:” The follow-up question was then “Are these beliefs irrational? If they are, which rational beliefs could replace them?” You would then make a table whereas alongside the left-hand side there would be a list of those beliefs and along the right-hand side would be the replacement beliefs: Left side irrational, right side rational (this would also be a great exercise for individuals exhibiting maladaptive behaviors). Of course, the entire point of this exercise is to see the logical substitution of the rational version of irrational “cynical” beliefs then integrate the new belief system into one’s emotional responses. Changing your emotional responses, in turn, changes your behaviors and thus how you fundamentally interact with the world. The key to this sort of behavioral modification, as I’m sure it is with others, is internal motivation and/or finding some method of reinforcing behaviors when one begins to “slip.”

Of course, if you continue to feel the effects of this cynicism and hostility via tried and true warning signs:

· People seeking your companionship or advice infrequently

· Feeling of lacking motivation or desire for personal growth, wellness, and success

· You hurt other people’s feelings and don’t understand why they’re hurt

These are just an indicative few, but if they begin to manifest themselves again, the results of the technique need to be re-applied. I’ve often heard that habit is what you call something after you’ve done it 21 times: An average to be certain, but the underlying thought is that each person will develop a pattern after doing something so many times: Force of habit begotten by the momentum of having done the routine so many times…inertia makes it more difficult to stop a pattern of behavior unless sufficient energy is applied and there is enough self awareness to guide a person along.

Overcoming cynicism is not easy, but success is the manifestation of sacrifice and perseverance. If you can become truly motivated enough to be the person that you want to be then you needn’t let anyone stand in your way.

Monkey Mondays: Death Wish

Signs

“People break down into two groups when the experience something lucky. Group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck: Just a happy turn of chance. I'm sure the people in Group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in very suspicious way. For them, the situation isn't fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they're on their own. And that fills them with fear.”
—Mel Gibson’s character Father Graham Hess from the movie “Signs”

Sometimes things happen which are particularly poignant to the current events in our lives. After having not seen it for many years it was a welcome contribution to the wisdom which helped reveal thoughts and feelings that I was having about some things in particular.

Which group are you in? For the longest time I’ve been in “there-is-no-such-thing-as-coincidence” group, but sometimes there are series of events in a person’s life, patterns, that offer a person the opportunity to change their mind. What if a person’s life lacks those things to give her confidence, to give him faith? What if there is no reason to have these things? When the absence of anything meaningful in a person’s life leaves them as an empty shell of their former selves, what is there to be, what is there to do, what is there to strive to?

About 15 years ago I started my foray into journaling, analyzing my thoughts and feelings against the benchmark of everything happening around me. In that turbulent world, this activity brought me solace. In these years with the advent of the technologies that allow information to be a ubiquitous feature in anyone’s life that desires it I am able to pass on those things which I have learned over the years: Philosophies that I have thought about at great lengths, pearls of truth which have been presented to me, everything forged in the fire of the meandering path of my own life across half the world and to meet many thousands of people.

“Some people are probably thinking that this is the end of the world,” Remarks the younger Merrill Hess.

“That’s true.” The older Graham Hess replies.

“Do you think it could be?”

“Yes”

“How could you say that?” Merrill is visibly taken aback.

“That wasn’t the answer that you wanted?”

Losing your faith is the quickest road to cynicism. In the above exchange, M Night Shyamahan accurately portrays the man, whose job it once was to be the most faithful, losing his faith: All that he is, that which once defined him. The death of his wife shattered this paradigm making him lose the balance between faith and reason. There are multiple paragraphs here that can be applied dealing with the process of loss or change through the stages of grieving, but that is not the scope of this entry. He tries to comfort Merrill by stating the quote with which this blog entry began. At the end of the greater exchange:

“I’m a miracle man. Those lights are a miracle,” Merrill mentioned.

“There you go.” Graham replies.

“Which type are you?” The younger Hess asks his older brother.

“Do you feel comforted?”

After a brief moment of process and analysis, “yeah, I do.”

“Then what does it matter?” Graham finishes.

Although the underlying character of the man—the honor and the staunch values to which he holds—he had no faith but still saw to it that he could offer comfort when he had nothing to offer.

Loss can do seemingly crazy things to a person, those things that in the mind of this person are not crazy: They are just par for the course.

People are the way that people are: Those things which I discuss in greater detail in the broader scope of this blog, largely because it is what interests me.

Instead of allowing humanity to degrade into a large group of self-centered narcissistic buffoons, go out and prove the greater trend wrong today.