Juxtaposition Observed: Comparing Orthodoxy and Extreme Ownership

“This, then, is a king's materials and his tools to reign with: that he have his land well peopled; he must have prayer-men, and soldiers, and workmen.”~Alfred the Great, Anglo-Saxon Boethius

There are times when I suspect myself to be a cynical, bitter elitist.  Such has been the feeling while toiling through Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win by Jocko Willick and Leif Babin.  Had I to sum up the book in a sentence: “This could have been an email.”  The fault is likely my own, considering that I have only ever cracked the cover on three leadership books (the other two were Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last and Jim Mattis’s Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead) and in no case have I progressed beyond the first couple of chapters.  In some the narrative is plodding or the diction is amateur; in no case does the subject matter inspire interest.  But this time is the first that I can admit to having experienced an epiphany—though this happy circumstance has less to do Mr. Willick or Mr. Babin and everything to do with GK Chesterton.

For all that I have seen the light while reading Extreme Ownership (here my protestation shall be that I am reading it at the boss’s behest), it is safe to say that it is by far the least admirable of my trifold leadership library.  Where Sinek was uninspiring and Mattis condescending, Willick and Babin are so much fluff— excellent leadership principles bookended by protracted and redundant adventure stories alongside corporate-American business vignettes that showcase the authors executing principles-ju-jitsu on incompetent and immature vice presidents and CEOs, in prose that vacillates between inoffensively correct and inexplicably horrendous.  According to one of the effusive reviews quoted on the back cover, its author is “Rereading again, and this time I’m taking notes.”  My own marginal notes are in the vein of “Non sequitur,” “Useful observation but does not advance the theme,” and “Why is this paragraph here?  Either move to the top of the page or cut.”  At least Willick’s chapters offer some mild entertainment; one wishes that the editors had possessed courage enough to edit Babin’s contributions:

“Now, the two of us—the EOD operator and I—were in a hell of a tight spot.  The subdued Iraqi man and possible terrorist we were holding had not yet been searched, a situation that carried huge risks.  We needed to fall back and link up with the rest of our force.  Now, with a larger enemy force maneuvering on us with heavier firepower, the two of us were outnumbered and outgunned.  Finally, I desperately needed to resume my role as ground force commander, dispense with handling prisoners, and get back to my job of command and control for the assault force, our vehicles, and coordination with our distant supporting assets.  All this had to be accomplished immediately.”

As the kids used to say, I can’t even.

My friends and coworkers, being more generous readers than I, have lauded the work to me as tremendously useful while acknowledging its shortcomings; a assessment of “necessary evil” that accords with the more discerning reviews online that praise the intent without endorsing the faults.  In search of something positive to say, I am reminded of the maxim that common sense is not common; some people really do need to be taught what others have come to learn though effective mentorship and demanding fields of work.

But I was also struck by a curious realization: what some people prize as useful literature are predominantly works of leadership and mindset—the one to earn success and to make it out in one piece, the latter to survive the mental game—with some Sun Tzu and Thucydides thrown in for esoterica.  Yet as Willink and Babin themselves point out, we need first to believe in what we are about in order to justify the rest.  A marine officer told me once that the Corps is a religious organization: they have their saints and their holy days, their founding myths and sacred traditions and incantations.  The common parlance of their having “drunk the Cool-Aid” is to say that they truly believe.  

Which is where I believe that GK Chesterton has more to say about the matter than either Willink or Babin.

Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is something of a spiritual autobiography that bears resemblance to CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity in that these two set out a series of arguments for Christian faith from intellect and pagan tradition.  Where Lewis grounds his structure in humanity’s universal appeal to standards, Chesterton argues that fairytales teach children about reality.

Consider what Chesterton calls the Doctrine of Conditional Joy: “according to elfin ethics all virtue is in an ‘if.’ The note of the fairy utterance always is, ‘You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word “cow”’; or ‘You may live happily with the King's daughter, if you do not show her an onion.’ The vision always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden … the true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.”

He continues, “Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat … Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on not doing something which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is that to me this did not seem unjust. If the miller's third son said to the fairy, ‘Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace,’ the other might fairly reply, ‘Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace.’ If Cinderella says, ‘How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?’ her godmother might answer, ‘How is it that you are going there till twelve?’ … it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.”

These words sent me back to Lewis’s other work, The Abolition of Man, which begins with the assertion that a child’s earliest reading will lay the groundwork for the rest of his life, that the truths—whether actually truthful, or damnable lies from the pit of Hell—will become the foundation for the whole of his worldview.  

Then, from Lewis’s and Chesterton’s wholesome arguments I returned to the utilitarianism—wearisome Spartans!—of Sinek and Mattis, and Willick and Babin.  For shame that I should so bemoan their earnest contributions (or in the cases of Willick and Babin, at least their strident self-promotion) to the self-improvement of warriors, laborers, and teams struggling in the everyday labors of life.  And yet to what end, I wondered, do their readers labor?  For what titanic and awesome outcome do we each strive so, while employing principles that promise sunny successes?  Do we not have an equal or greater need of stories about the real world, more so than narratives on mindset and leadership?  While the one helps to keep a healthy head and the other shepherds the team to victory, it is stories that teach us why we should be doing any of that, and they teach us to love and to reverence that which we work towards or defend against.  I suppose that’s why Mattis, Willick, and Babin ground their principles in nests of contextually convenient war stories; yet it is somewhat difficult for me to relate to tales of SEAL teams in the distant Battle of Ramadi, much easier to learn from the selfless heroism of Sir Gawain, or even the simple devotion of Carrot Ironfoundersson.

As Chesterton mystically observes, “I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.”

The Mutants: The X-Men and the Twilight of the Gods (Part 1)

“And what’s he, then, that says I play the villain?” 

~William Shakespeare, Othello

“What have they done?  She was a hero, she was purity and courage and flame and she’s been undone.  I must know more!”

Such was my reaction to the rewriting of Dr. Moira MacTaggart.  A long-time X-Men supporting actor, she suddenly reappeared after a hiatus to dominate the House of X run, first as a manipulative key-player in the machiavellian superstructure of the series’ character-hierarchy, more antihero than paragon of virtue, then suddenly transmogrifying into a terrifying arch-villainess with murder in her heart.  What had they done?

Literary interests come and go, and I have lately been reading a lot of X-Men.  The itch has always lingered in the back of my mind and from time to time I’ve picked up a comic or two—or a multi-volume series, at one point collecting the entire Age of Apocalypse run, only to shelve it perpetually for one unfortunate reason: I am a completionist.  To miss out on a story or series is deep irritation to me, and I cannot name the number of perfectly good titles—comics, novels, movies—that I’ve put off for the sake of not having access to the earlier material.  Compound this with the tens of thousands of issues of X-Men comics extant and one is faced with a herculean task equal parts horrific and tantalizing.  It is a dilemma reminiscent of Bilbo’s on his doorstep; less “Then again why not?  Why shouldn’t I keep it?” and instead, “Why shouldn’t I just read them all!”

And so the task remained unfinished—nay! unaddressed—for many years, whole catalogues of comics on my shelf awaiting the simplest of reading pleasures, yet put off for the imaginary-yet-real agony of lost context.  Two events stirred me from this nonsensical stupor; the first was the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s run with Endgame, the second was the rediscovery of Dr. Moira MacTaggart.  

Of Endgame there’s little enough to say: the theatrical release of Infinity Wars left me in a daze of astonished euphoria (“The mad bastards actually did it!”), which led to viewing the sequel with total relish.  (To say that the MCU’s stupefying decline in later years was bewildering after the unbelievable success of its first run would be a tragic understatement; insofar as I am concerned, what began with Ironman ended with Spiderman: No Way Home; the rest is so much bedazzled window dressing).  Fresh from Endgame, I immediately acquired a copy of the trade paperback of Infinity Gauntlet (1991) that inspired it all.  From there I made the leap to other major Marvel Comics events like Secret Wars (2015) and its namesake primogenitor, also titled Secret Wars (1984).  Of the X-Men, there was little sign, but the point here is that I was spurred to action at long last with the realization that having greatly enjoyed the movies, my appreciation would only deepen by reading the original comics.

What drove me back to the Mutants was the discovery of House of X (2019).  A limited series, it began what appeared to be a fresh narrative arc for Xavier and his acolytes.  There were new costumes, new villains, a whole new nation-state exclusive to mutant-kind, all under the forbidding headline that Charles Xavier’s dream (of human and mutant co-existence) was dead.  But lacking all context, I was as confused as I was intrigued, and the now-habitual turn to Google offered more questions than answers: Why is a genocidal monster like Apocalypse one of the good guys?  Wasn’t Destiny dead—no, she was dead, but now she’s back?    And what’s the deal with Dr. Moira MacTaggart—wait, she was dead too, but also resurrected?  And now she’s evil?

My vague memories of the no-nonsense scotswoman resurfaced in a jumble.  Her brief cameo appearance in X-Men: The Last Stand barely registered, while her role as free-thinking American CIA agent in the X-Men: First Class series did not figure at all.  I remembered that she was a longtime ally and ran an isolated scientific institute complimentary to Professor Xavier’s high school; that both were the faces of secret facilities hosting various mutant superhero teams.  So what was her role in this new milieu, and why was she a villain—and for that matter, a primary threat?  

On I read, and my head spun: here was the wholesome and courageous female scientist, maternal counterpoint to Xavier’s paternal professor, reimagined not merely as some brainwashed toady en route to the Big Bad, but a true believer with real blood on her hands and plans to kill every single mutant on earth—to include her own son and her adopted daughter.   What was going on?

My immediate questions were somewhat answered in finishing the House of X miniseries and dabbling in some of its follow-on comics.  In short, a new cadre of writers were on the scene, eager to make their mark on a franchise fifty-six years old and (so I discovered to mild surprise) recently struggling with multiple cancellations and false-starts.  It seemed to me that poor Moira was one of the sacrificial lambs to their ambitions, her recasting a sort of shock to the system to galvanize eager readers (like myself, I may shamelessly admit) into purchasing new comics.  Nor was she alone in catching my eye.  As stated above, new villains, old villains as new allies, and other character redrafts held my attention, especially the nigh-damnable line put in the mouth of Magneto toward the end of the earliest chapters: In a meeting with international delegates to their fledgling mutant nation, Magneto—first and greatest villain-turned-antihero—outlines a plan for mutant-international relations that concludes with the ominous ultimatum:

As a Christian, I was offended.  As a reader, fascinated.  

Magneto’s defining trait has always been hubris, one that I had thought mollified in recent storylines.  Here, evidently, the new writers sought to return to him his first impulses, restoring in their hero his most villainous characteristic.  Would they erroneously intend to validate Magneto’s blasphemy in the ensuing series, to see it accepted and lauded by fans of the “Mutant Metaphor” (that of the mutants as mouthpiece for intersectional oppression, so pervasive in recent years), or was Magneto’s pronouncement the foreshadowing to a Greek tragedy in the making?

And there it was for me: echoes of Oedipus, of Achilles, of Xerxes upon his throne; of the queen-mother become the mother-of-monsters, threatening to eat her own young.  I had to know more.  

I had to go back to the beginning.

Remember that Roman Empire trend?  While guys were/are thinking about the Roman Empire, I’m pretty sure the ladies are pondering Regency England.

Looking Back At Neanderthal Ancestry

"What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor."

~Psalm 8:4-5

It may have been while I was in college that the news dropped that Europeans, Asians, and American natives are descended in part from neanderthals. At least, that's when I first heard of it, and the people talking it over seemed to think it was somehow earth shattering. I thought, "huh, I guess that would make sense."

I'm not caught up on my Ancient Ancestors lore, so I can't speak with any authority on what has or has not been determined based on the genomes and other scientific studies. But the news that select humans had "bred" with their genetic cousins appears to elicit different reactions depending on the audience - not all of them nice. A quick google offers suggested-searches of "does White come from Neanderthals?" and "what percent of Neanderthal does each race have?" Even the idea that "all peoples outside Africa have got a little in 'em," though maybe grounded in the data, lends itself easily to narrative spin. The official word appears to be, "Humans moved out of Africa and got it on with the neanderthals," yet based on the suggested searches above, there's a predisposition to lean into the "all races except the Africans."

One assumes (but look where assumptions get us!) that maybe there's a desire for non-Africans to have a little of the degenerate "race" in our genes. And from what I know of popular culture at least, there's the idea that the neanderthals were all killed off in an ancient genocide by their more intelligent human neighbors. One hopes that I am wrong is supposing this, but I suppose that such thought would lend itself to teleological lines of reasoning that elevate certain "races" over others.

Yet I also suppose (unsophisticated luddite that I am) that an alternate view is permissible: that we're all one race, and that our neanderthal cousins were simply another branch in the genetic tree that came out of Eden. We weren't breeding with the most genetically compatible ape-men; our forefathers (of the non-neanderthal sort) gave their daughters in marriage and took to themselves wives from other human neighbors, whom modern science has unkindly labeled "neanderthal." They worshipped God, or didn't, raised children, waged war, and mourned their dead. I should like to have met one, just to see what sort of Man he was and to hear his thoughts about the state of things. One imagines he could educate me a great deal in the ways of the hunt. Probably in architecture, too, and maybe introduce me to a surprising depth of philosophy. 

As GK Chesterton wrote about the primitive cave painters: all we can really say about them as people, is that they were artists.

 This photo brought to you courtesy of Google image search.

American G.O.D.S.

"Whom do you worship and to what lengths will you go to appease your god?"

These are the most significant questions asked in Jonathan Hickman's G.O.D.S., which is less a Marvel mini-series or event and more a collection of eight stories that are intricately linked.  Other reviews have lamented how the story is just a "sandbox playground" for Hickman's "vanity project" and I can see why: the multiple plots seeded throughout; self-referential world-building; worst of all, the inconclusive catastrophe-of-the-week that serves as the catalyst for the first issue, but is resolved off-screen somewhere between issues Seven and Eight.  Yet I think that this perceived narrative weakness is in spite of the story, not because of any lack of story.

What readers expect of limited series like G.O.D.S. is an event: the status-quo-upset seeded in the beginning, with the threat building up and escalating through the ensuing issues, and then fully realized and either averted or serving to springboard into another series.  G.O.D.S. delivers none of these, instead shoving that comfortable outline into the background and using it as a framing devise for the real story: the estranged romance of Reddwyn and Aiko (and to a lesser extent, the goals of their respective sidekicks Dimitri and Mia).  This romance in turn asks the questions "Whom/what do you worship" and "to what lengths will you go to either appease your god or to achieve your own ends?"

The source of Wyn and Aiko's estrangement is their allegiance to two different divinities of the Marvel pantheon.  But those loyalties are only surface level; Wyn's real allegiance is to Aiko, while her allegiance is to herself.  This plays out through the eight chapters as Wyn and Dimitri, Aiko and Mia each grapple with the overt stakes of various cosmic adventures, while indirectly dealing with the consequences of their own motivations.  On the surface, Aiko's machiavellian actions render great rewards: she is affluent and influential, always standing at the shoulder of the most important person in the room or else first through the breach to conquer some new frontier.  Wyn's actions, or inactions, seem to have the opposite result: he's a cosmic fixer in the tradition of Dr. Who, jovially relying on wits and intuition when resources are not readily available.  

But the facade is exposed in the details.  Aiko is a ranking member of an ancient and powerful illuminati and goes surrounded by people and resources, operating from a private cubicle in a glitzy and pristine workspace, but she is entirely friendless; in the only scene showing her interact with others of her organization, they curse her out for her laze-fair distain for the god that she really doesn't reverence.  As the story progresses, the only friendship she does develop ends in tragedy.  Wyn, meanwhile, blundering about like an eldritch hobo, knows everyone by name, easily befriends newcomers, and demonstrates genuine empathy.  Though sometimes expressing nihilistic anxieties, he places a premium on truthfulness and decency, virtues that Aiko flippantly regards as tools in her arsenal.  It's a shakespearean tragedy that leaves readers rooting for Wyn, admonishing and pitying Aiko, and shedding a tear for the ruination that comes of hubris.  Even the time skip in the eighth chapter, which suggests that some things have been set right, really only serves to show the brokenness of everything; that even with repentance, the consequences are lasting.

I suppose those are the final questions that Hickman broaches: what place has repentance in the Greek tragedy; what place has forgiveness?  And if you could go back and do it all again, would you? 

“Hey, Algorithm, I enjoy reading and illustration, painting miniature soldiers, and hiking, as well as learning about foreign cultures.”

The Algorithm selecting ads for my social media feed: “Good to know! But have you considered SPORTSBALL?”