Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot (Hoover Institution Press Publication Book 431)

by James B. Stockdale

Father O’Malley asked that I talk about ethical notions of the sort that would qualify as growing within a person’s interior self and not simply a set of lessons learned from without. Be assured that I’m not just building a set of guideposts for prison or for a more general military setting. My conclusions are infinitely general. From this eight-year experience, I distilled one all-purpose idea, plus a few corollaries. It is a simple idea, an idea as old as the scriptures, an idea that is the epitome of high-mindedness, an idea that naturally and spontaneously comes to men under pressure. If the pressure is intense enough or of long enough duration, this idea spreads without even the need for its enunciation. It just takes root naturally. It is an idea that, in this big easy world of yakety yak, seems to violate the rules of game theory, if not of reason. It violates the idea of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, our ideas of human nature, and probably the second law of thermodynamics. That idea is you are your brother’s keeper. That’s the flip side of What’s in it for me? If you recognize the first as an expression of virtue and the second as an expression of vice, as I’m sure any student of Father O’Malley would, let Bacon’s distinction add relevance to my concentration on adversity on this graduation day of joy: “Adversity doth best induce virtue . . . while luxury doth best induce vice.”