The Stockdale Paradox

Stolen from lifehacker.com (who stole it from  Deliberate living blog Disrupting the Rabblement):

 :

 Admiral James Stockdale  was held as a prisoner of war for eight years during the Vietnam War and was tortured in excess of twenty times by his captors. He was able to withstand all of this without losing his mind by employing two seemingly contradictory views: faith that he would prevail in the end no matter the difficulty and facing that he must confront the worst aspects of his current reality.

Then comes the paradox: While Stockdale had remarkable faith in the unknowable, he noted that it was always the most optimistic of his prisonmates who failed to make it out of there alive. "They 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."

What the optimists failed to do was confront the reality of their situation. They preferred the ostrich approach, sticking their heads in the sand and hoping for the difficulties to go away. That self-delusion might have made it easier on them in the short-term, but when they were eventually forced to face reality, it had become too much and they couldn't handle it.

Then comes the paradox: While Stockdale had remarkable faith in the unknowable, he noted that it was always the most optimistic of his prisonmates who failed to make it out of there alive. "They 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."

What the optimists failed to do was confront the reality of their situation. They preferred the ostrich approach, sticking their heads in the sand and hoping for the difficulties to go away. That self-delusion might have made it easier on them in the short-term, but when they were eventually forced to face reality, it had become too much and they couldn't handle it.

Rubbish on the shore

Tuesday night someone dumped his household garbage on the miniscule rocky beach of the shoreline park where I walk the dog, one of only three spots there in between the large boulders and slabs of demolition concrete where water is approachable. Mostly dried leaves, but plenty of household refuse, plastic and paper junk food wrappers, bags  and cups, a spent gay looking disposable fag lighter, an airline bottle of E&J VSOP Brandy  (Ernest and Julio Gallo, known primarily as the makers of such fine skidrow libations as Thunderbird, and Night Train), an empty container of a dietary  supplement called Chromium Polynicotinate, blue and red crushed aluminum can of some energy drink. The leaves floated in the water along the shore 100 yards in each direction. Quick inventory of the refuse easily identified the social position in this classless society of the culprit - most likely, I figured, one of those evil, greedy, corrupt bankers that the saintly Wall Street protesters are sacrificing their squeaky clean lives against this week. By Friday, the misguided communards still occupying Wall Street, and here, the sea digested all the magnolia tree leaves in the water, and the next high tide will perhaps swallow  the rest of them, but the rubbish remains. I thought of bringing a large plastic trash bag (manufactured by one of those evil profit seeking corporations) that I would actually have to purchase in a pack of twelve, to pick up the mess, before remembering my and my mates' life experiences and the admonishments of wise men that: (1) No good deed goes unpunished, and (2) Doing good for no credit and no personal gain is nowadays a fool's errand. On Saturday morning, today, I snapped a few photos and I pocketed the empty container of the Chromium Whatchamacallit tabs to decipher its peeling label at home. I'll return it to the place where I found it tomorrow.  Let it rot.