In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on January 14, 2009

There is a very interesting round-table discussion going on over at Chicago Boyz on Clausewitz (with a big hat tip to SWC colleague and friend Zenpundit).  Possibly the most interesting (to me at least) entry so far is on Military Genius by Nathaniel T. Lauterbach.  Outside of it being a truly great post, it carries some very eerie resonances with Roman military manuals, specifically with one of the major uses of the “exempla” in them (illustrative stories; e,g, Book IV of Frontinus’ Strategmata [Latin, English])).

I find this resonance “eerie” not because of the subject matter, the qualities of “leadership” in a military environment, but because it points towards certain patterns that, if not universal, are at least strongly linked with core Western cultural perceptions going back at least 2500 years.  As such, they seem to me to indicate some very deep-seated perceptions about the qualities (and characteristics) that we associate with leadership, regardless of the specific applied field. I thought it would be interesting to see which qualities are identified and which ones (if any) are specific to the military (the list is from Nathaniel’s post).

Courage: is this solely a military virtue?  I don’t believe so.  Colloquially, we can define courage as doing something you “know” is “right” even though you may well get hurt.  Taken a step or two deeper, it is following your internal perception of right and taking an action that you believe must be taken regardless of personal cost.  Courage, then, might be viewed as the bill one pays for making ethical choices.

Strength of Body and Soul: again, this is not solely a military virtue.  All actions (including inaction) have a physical and psychological cost associated with them.  “Strength”, at least in the way it is used here, refers to the physical and psychological ability to pay that cost.

Power of the intellect: this one should be self-evident

Coup d’oeil (p. 102). Coup d’oeil (“koo-dwee”) is, “an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth.”  Nowadays, we might use a phrase like “terminal optimism” or “charisma” to describe this.  It is the mental (perceptual? spiritual?) quality of being able to perceive some form of “solution” to a current situation.

Determination: again, another “self-evident” quality

Presence of mind: defined as “the increased capacity of dealing with the unexpected” is certainly applicable to fields other than the military (the financial sector comes to mind…).

Psychological strength: from Nathaniels description, “endurence” might be a better word thatn “strength”.  In many ways, this goes hand and glove with “Determination”; the will and the endurence to deal with problem situations.

Energy: refering more to what I would term “passion” or “strength of belief”, energy refers more to the “drive” deriving from the source of perception (intellect, belief, etc.).  In this sense, it might also be termed as “power”, but power that has to be harnessed and focused otherwise it may be destructive.

longing for honour and reknown: It is a curious observation that many people will work for less money if they are given respect and treated well in other ways.  I say “curious” because it goes against the orthodoxy of economists that humans are maximizing creatures, which just goes to show, once again, that economists really don’t understand human motivations at all.  But the longing for honour and reknown also has one other kicker in it, and this one is missed by many child psychologists: you have to believe that you have earned that honour and reknown.

Staunchness and endurance: Clausewitz appears to have used these in a purely physical sense, although he covered their mental equivalents elsewhere.  Again, these should be obvious as applying in any area.

Strength of mind or “character”: Nathaniel discusses this in some detail (as does Clausewitz) and the model comes very close to some of the current business leadership models based on Jungian psychology (see below; image from Nathaniel’s post).

Clausewitz assigns “genius” to those who fall into Quandrant II.  This is probably correct when it comes to the sphere of military operations or, indeed, any operations within a chaotic operational environment.  It may be less correct in other situations such as high tech start-ups (many CEOs in this area would, probably, fall into Quadrant I).

Understanding of the nature of warfare and terrain: while clearly military focused, this is actually a specific version of the more general statement of “understand your operational reality”.

What is fascinating in many ways is that every quality discussed is applicable outside of a military context.  Furthermore, if you go through the list carefully, most of these qualities are mental, psychological and “spiritual”, and they all require a thorough understanding of one’s own self and an alignment of ones actions with that understanding.  Shakespear knew this when he wrote:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

What, then, does this say about societies (and occupations / professions) that concentrate on the material and external, on “training” rather than “education”?

Nathaniel finishes his post with a plea for “creativity” as a core quality of military genius; “creativity” in the sense of not being controlled by past actions, but being able to improvise as the current situation demands.  I have to agree with him and, further, extend this out to leadership in general.

Over the years, I have worked with a number of people who claimed to be leaders – most of them were leaders only in the sense of seeing which way the mob was running, pushing to the front and yelling “Follow me!”  True leaders are much rarer in my experience, but of the ones I have encountered, they all had a core quality of “creativity” guided, but not throttled, by their training.

The other common quality I have noticed about them is that they all use the term “discipline” in its 19th century sense – a technology or collection of techniques that allows you to focus on a problem set.  Furthermore, they all consider that mastery of a discipline is crucial to get you to the point where you can “improvise” well.

In a round about way, this ties back in with the quality of longing for honour and reknown, and the requirement that you have to earn it.  It’s one of those paradoxes of life: you have to know and understand constraints in order to exercise free will but, once you do, you have achieved a dynamic balance in that area.

Category: Epistemology, Ethics
Tags: Character, Virtue