Chapter 9
Strategic Creation
While the study of military philosophy inevitably involves the science of war, the abstraction of conflict, comprehensive theoretical equations of conflict, and the scientific aspects of the limitations involved in the realization of strategy, the attainment of purpose in strategic determination, victory, remains essentially within the realm of the art of war, achieved by the individual, operating alone throughout the military system. Despite all the technical assistance available, by automation and staffs and the use of the science of war, strategic success rests ultimately on the shoulders of the individual.
From the abstraction of conflict to the realization of strategy there is a gulf that has yet to be filled by military philosophy. None of the philosophical perspectives are relevant except as they are relative to the point of view of the observer, the human participant, and it is this crucial human relationship which forms the basis for the duality which underlies military philosophy, a duality resulting from dichotomization by the military mind between the ends and the means, between subject and object, between the men and the mission. So far what has been dealt with is science and its applications and pseudo science and its erroneous fronts. The means of transcending the dichotomy, of solving the problem of the essential duality of military philosophy, is by integration in the human observers mind, in the military mind and throughout military philosophy of the fundamental dilemma it presents. Integration is a very personal, creative process, one that cannot be duplicated by any military staff nor by the whole military system. It exists primarily in the realm of artistic applications in the art of war. Successful strategists have successfully integrated and creatively applied themselves to the realization of strategy. A comprehensive strategy is the aim in military philosophy, a strategy which borrows both the impeccable logic of the abstraction of conflict, a process which alone is only a sterile, unviable mental exercise and the reality of strategic determination with operational variables, of practical application to changing place and time. Such strategy issues only creatively from the lone mind of the individual. The aim of such creation is a perfect, infallible, and comprehensive strategy that may be successfully applied to any situation, an aim which ultimately is unattainable but which must be constantly striven for by both science and art. Such theorization for military philosophy remains still primarily with the art of war, a very qualitative and human practice. Creativity underlies the art of war, bridges the gap between the abstraction of conflict and the realization of strategy and is the key to strategic success and theoretical verity in military philosophy. Creativity is still little understood by science. Its complete analytical scientific application in military philosophy must wait. The goal of military philosophy , so far only imperfectly attained is strategic creation.
The conduct of war or more properly human conflict, is an art not a science, but its successful practice is based on a secure knowledge of science. While art uses science, art departs deliberately and knowingly from scientific principles from time to time. So, while the military art cannot depend exclusively on science, it must use science, not only in the development of weapons and forces, but in the more complex areas where the organization of people and the employment of forces are concerned.
The tactical conflict of force is the reflection of more abstract conflict of strategic determination occurring between the individual and the collective mind of command. The command structure has a hierarchical nature reflecting the subordinate nature of strategic determination and decision making occurring at all command levels throughout the military system. This hierarchy of command is interlinked by the communication of information, by which unified control over the use of destructive force is maintained and coordination of action necessary to strategic realization is established. Despite unrelenting tactical success derived from enemy tactical weakness, a weak or failing command structure results in at best minimal success and at worst in strategic disaster in the final outcome.
This abstracted form of conflict implies an analytical process occurring within the command structure. This aspect of command in strategic determination consists of a similar dichotomic nature that is found throughout military philosophy and forms the abstracted essence of the offensive defensive duality of inter-human conflict. This duality is recognizable in several complementary decision versus set piece decisions, puzzles versus difficulties, capabilities versus intentions, means versus the ends and men versus the mission. An encounter decision occurs when a situation develops in which immediate response in necessary. The set piece decision occurs in situations in which time exists to plan out a course of action. These two general types of decisions are not unrelated. Set piece decisions frequently condition what can or cannot be done in an encounter situation, and encounter decisions are often necessary in the course of developing set piece decisions. A puzzle is an uncertainty that can be solved correctly in one way, always having an absolute solution. A difficulty is an uncertainty which cannot be solved in an absolute sense, only surmounted, overcome or reduced. There is no demonstrably correct method of solving only more efficient courses of action. These two types of problems are not always distinct in strategic determination, but involve a mixture of difficult choices and puzzle solving responses. In dealing with uncertain situations, which in war is inevitably an uncertainty created by the presence of an enemy, there are two types of uncertainties which occur: those arising from enemy capabilities and uncertainty arising from enemy intentions. The decision making process simultaneously takes into consideration enemy capabilities and intentions. There is a human tendency to organize the possibilities of a situation from the available information and then to invariably consider the probabilities of intentions before deciding. This dualistic nature of strategic analysis falls into two general types of strategic determination, possibilist and probabilistic, the former being essentially defensive, the latter offensive. This dualism inevitably mixes and blends throughout the levels of strategic determination. Weighting of the two sets of factors differ from situation to situation and between command levels.
This abstract conflict of strategic analysis occurring between command structures is a reflection of an even more subtle and indefinable conflict of strength of will power and morale in the direction of force, craft and sagacity in the manipulation of power, and efficacy and verity in a contest of values. Motivations play a crucial role in the creation of strategy. While both the individual and the collective military mind should employ analytical methods, the fog of war habitually makes the decision making process in combat more intuitional than analytical, requiring individual decision making which is much more lonely, hazardous and rewarding. A decision is not a problem of simple arithmetic but a complicated mental process in which the commander's temperament, intuition and perception find expression. The process of strategic determination remains an art based on an intuition. While analytic and intuitive thinking are complementary, strategic creation remains a test of individual character involving matters of life and death. Strategic creation is the most crucial role of command.
However great the difficulty a decision must be reached even if it is a shot in the dark. Regulations, methods and principles never prescribe how a decision is to be reached, they may only make it easier to reach and realize a decision. However great and complete the degree of automation of the system, strategic creation remains in the final analysis a human problem.
There must exist a two way integrity of command throughput the system involving conceptual unity, trust, professionalism and a sense of mutual responsibility. Conflict is ultimately the conflict of the individual's soul, resonating throughout all levels and areas of the system. Weakness of which in any one of the levels or areas cold result in a failure of the system in successful strategic determination. It is toward the purpose of clearer resolution of this abstract conflict that the following set of concepts are proffered as a general description of the process and qualities involved in strategic creation. Unlike the principles of war, attaining simplicity in single word descriptions, increasing in complexity and disunity in definition, actually describing single and separate conceptual ingredients of success, the following interrelated set of concepts describes a broad unified perspective of a closed feedback loop operating in a time continuum with unlimited bonds, with the mind as the origin. Alone these concepts are disjointed, together they provide a unity of thought. They are meant to describe vague abstract meanings, they are not accurately definable descriptions. They have limitations. They may mean something different to different people, but implications of these concepts has been recurrent throughout military philosophy. They are together a synergistic perspective of strategic creation in military philosophy.
1. The concept of leadership: All other traits of successful management in the military are subsequent to successful leadership. Individuality and initiative are corollaries. Leadership involves inspirational creativity, setting the example in thought and action, in all aspects of living. It is a trait of solitude that can be shared. It implies proficiency of judgment, efficiency and technical effectiveness and professionalism. It also implies moral courage and integrity. It involves the concept of command. The object strategy, embodying both human leadership and management of available resources. The human is the center of his universe. All strategic creations are egocentrically oriented. Strategic determination and conflict ultimately are a part of this subjective world. The individual's creative intelligence is the soul of all strategy. Strategy can never be successfully divorced from this individual human element. Leadership is the individual's responsibility.
2. The concept of universality: However limited is man's subjective universe, it is part of a larger comprehensive universe, a completely and perfectly integrated entity, which however unknown or unlimited contains all elements of reality, tangible and intangible, physical and metaphysical. The universe is the expression of an ultimate grand strategy of omniprise and omniscience which is never to be perfectly realized not abstracted by the individual. All elements of man's subjective universe are subordinate to the immutable laws of behavior and patterns of existence. It contains the a-priori metaphysical truth by which the individual may discover theoretical strategic creation through integration of the dichotomic realities in military philosophy. It is at once the most difficult puzzle and the most pressing difficulty confronting the human.
3. The concept of abstraction: In order to enable him to overcome his natural physical limitations and to achieve some degree of comprehensive unity of the past, present and future, men's intelligence allows him to simplify into single word concepts the vast multitude of information perceived by his sense. Abstraction enables theoretical creation and strategically determination, but it is not specifically proposed to it. The principles of war are military abstractions. Conflict is abstracted into general comprehensive theoretical patterns, equations, cause and effect relationships to enable greater degrees of coordination of strategic control. These concepts are abstractions. Pure abstraction is mental integration and the resultant comprehension of truth, which in its absolute form is nonverbal, indefinable, illogical and intuitive. The concept of spirit conveys this pure form of abstraction. Abstraction provides direction and strategic purpose for action, and unites all relationships, past, present and future into a comprehensive pattern of relevancy.
4. The concept of abstraction: The past and the future are the abstractions of the mind, nonexistent figments of the imagination. Only the present is real. Words, concepts and abstractions have limitations in reality and are relevant only if capable of influencing reality through human endeavor. Conceptions ultimately are prisons for the mind in trying to convey reality. First hand experience of the moment is reality. Strategy leads to the corollary concept of the now. It forms the contextual framework for abstraction, the texture, limiting all that is and all that can be. Strategic creation is relevant only if it leads to successful realization of strategy.
5. The concept of essential duality: The interrelationship of the universal and the individual, of abstraction and realization, of the physical and the metaphysical forms a duality which underlies military philosophy. This dualism occurs throughout the perspectives in the form of a dichotomic nature, of offensive-defensive behavior patterns, subjective-objective relationships and meanings, of conflict between ends and means, the science of art and war, the human valuation of men and mission, possibilist and probabilistic modes of analysis and the resultant cumulative and sequential patterns of behavior. All problems encountered in military philosophy, including strategic determination, ultimately resolve themselves down to solving the dilemmas created by this essential duality. It is a fundamental problem, which is often dichotomized consciously or unwittingly directly or indirectly by the collective military mind in military philosophy. The problem which this essential duality creates can never be resolved so long as they are dichotomized in the military mind. It can only be solved in military philosophy by creative theoretical integration. It is part of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy which related military philosophy to all other philosophies as a general product of man.
6. The concept of moderation: Moderation is a term in military culture which might imply a weakness of effort. This implication is dangerous to strategic creation. Moderation implies instead of a spirit of compromise of the human to his situation in the resolution of the problem of duality in integrating ends and means, in achieving a functional optimum response instead of striving for unattainable ideals. The concept of moderation implies establishing a conflict pattern which is neither too much nor too little, too fast nor too slow. A continuous moderation of strategic creation instead of fluctuating application. It implies economy and efficiency in operational patterning.
A deeper truth to which Foch and other disciples of Clauseqitz did not penetrate fully is that in war every problem and every principle is a duality. Like a coin, it has two faces. Hence the need for a well calculated compromise as a means to reconciliation. This is the inevitable consequence of the fact that war is a two party affair, so imposing the need that while hitting one must guard. Its corollary is that, in order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard. Effective concentration can only be obtained when the opposing forces are dispersed and usually in order to ensure this, one's forces must be widely distributed. Thus by an outward paradox, true concentration is the product of dispersion.
Moderation implies attaining a realistic golden mean. Moderation and the corollary of compromise is the realizable goal of strategic creation. Moderation must be reflected throughout the perspectives of military philosophy. A failure to compromise leads to inevitable strategic failure. Compromise is solving the dichotomic problem of duality, a blending of offense and defense, of analytic methods and strategic synthesis. The basis of uncertainty in war is the human element. Because of the uncertainty in warfare truly perfect adjustment and absolute strategic determination cannot be achieved. Success lies in the closest approximation to truth. Leadership management is a two way link, not one way, starting neither at the top nor bottom but initiating from both directions simultaneously, achieving the harmonic balance of a cyclical net of operation. Success lies not only in shoring up weakness but also on strengths. Discipline is not negatively reinforced but also be balanced by positive reinforcement.
7. The concept of fluidity: All things are subject to temporal dimension and the laws of entropy. All things within the universe are constantly changing. Reality is fluid within the time continuum. All values of all relationships of all inter-human conflict reflect this fluidity and are constantly changing. Only nonphysical entities that are nonexistent are not fluid. All compromise must reflect this essential fluidity of reality, in order to remain functional in terms of present and future relationships and not stagnate into unrealistic, nonfunctional past values. In strategic compromise there is a need for constant reevaluation of all values discernible.
8. The concept of creative adaptability: Strategic determination must be consistently and creatively adapted to the fluidity. Adaptability implies positive, purposeful, volitional and directional response, instead of mere automatic change and compensation. It implies a plasticity mind, flexibility, mobility fitting to the situation at hand, derived from the essential creativity of human intellectual ability. Strategy must be creatively adaptable to changing values of reality in order to be successful.
…In any problem where an opposing force exists, and cannot be regulated, one must foresee and provide for alternative courses. Adaptability is the law which governs survival in war as in life, war but being a concentrated form of human struggle against environment.
9. The concept of comprehensive relevancy: All adaptations must be relevant not only in local and immediate context but to the overall comprehensive unity and grand strategy. All responses which are irrelevant, too much force or not enough, are nonfunctional to strategic creation. Relevancy implies the principles of unity and economy of force, of balancing and optimum levels of response, which are of prime importance to strategic determination. Abstraction must be comprehensively relevant for theoretical creation and successful realization of strategy. It implies the proper strategic perspective in the direction of destructive force, manipulation of power and determination of values.
"Strategy depends for success first and most on a sound calculation and coordination of the end and the means. The end must be proportioned to the total means, and the means used in gaining each intermediate end which contributes to the ultimate must be proportioned to the value and needs of that intermediate end--whether it be to gain an objective or to fulfilled a contributory purpose. An excess may be as harmful as a deficiency."
Comprehensive relevancy is essential to resolving the dilemma of the essential duality and to the proper understanding of military philosophy. Comprehensive relevancy is the goal of theoretical creation. All compromise, adaptation, abstraction, realization must have comprehensive relevancy. Ultimately, the measure of relevancy is the decisiveness of the strategic results. In military philosophy and strategic creation it is the verity or efficacy of the proper abstractions. It implies the proper role of tenacity and will power, of firmness in strategic creation, neither being too immediate and superfluous in result nor too inflexible or long lasting in effects. Important in terms of relevancy is learning to understand, behave, think and become like the opponent in strategic determination , of making one's own initiation and responses relevant to the enemy's valuations along this lines. It is to make the enemy predictable.
10. The concept of transcendence: Spiritual, moral, intellectual, emotional coolness and a superiority to enemy conditions. It implies previous successful integration and transcending and overcoming the immediate situational problem of reality. All strategy must be oriented towards transcendence over the opponent's strategy/ in establishing a pattern of conflict this pattern must be transcendent to the immediate contextual basis. Emotional transcendence over the opponent is to become unpredictable by relinquishing predictable behavior patterns, overcoming fears, relinquishing emotional desires and characteristic valuations, keeping cool headed in the midst of turmoil, of attaining strategic nirvana through philosophical mediation. Value nothing relative to the opponent's evaluations and he cannot predict your subsequent actions and motivations. Want nothing and they cannot manipulate your actions through your valuations. Verification of creativity, the success of strategic creation is the measure of the degree of transcendence achieved in the realization of strategy. Transcendence implies an evolution and growth essential to strategic realization, the essence of life and creation. An ephemeralization process of doing more with less and an intensification of resultant effects through integration.
11. The concept of potentiality: Unrecognized potentialities by the human in the realization of strategy. No matter what the degree of adaptability, of relevancy and of transcendence there will always exist unrecognized potentials within the universe and within the human which might affect the realization of strategy in strategic creation. Potential advantages and dangers, unrecognized influences and outcomes in the realization which have ultimate affects of uncertainty in strategic determination. Transcendence implies evolution describing a closed feedback loop of upward regeneration and growth. Unrecognized potentialities exists within and outside that loop, igniting and influencing the evolution of strategy and military philosophy.
12. The concept of fulfillment: This is the natural attainment of the individual, of the military system, of all strategy, to achieve success. It implies self expression in objective terms in the fullest possible dimensions. It implies needs, purposes, aims and the object of strategic creation. It implies the decisive success of the realization of strategy.
13. The concept of negativity: All uncertainty may be reduced to the human element. Conflict remains primarily a human activity, therefore it is subject to all weaknesses, vicissitudes and imperfections of human nature. This concept has its basis in the human variability factor influencing strategic creation, ultimately in the intrinsic, irreducible human vulnerability to death. Man is the subjective basis of vulnerability. This concept reflects itself in human tendencies of uncertainty and imperfection, incompetency which inhibits successful strategic creation, tendencies towards the negative anti-thesis of all previous concepts. Human tendency toward irrationality, unpredictability, imperfection and resistance in the application of force and in transcendence. Negativity must be reduced to a minimum influence in strategic creation. It is impossible to eradicate its influence completely.
"In strategy, however, calculation is simpler and a closer approximation to truth possible than in tactics. For in war the chief incalculable is the human will, which manifests itself in resistance, which in turn lies in the province of tactics. Strategy has not to overcome resistance, except from nature. Its purpose is to diminish the possibility of resistance…"
These concepts are but brief glimpses of the possible essence of truth in military philosophy. From truth to reality there is a grand stretch of mind. They are one level beyond inspiration, as such they are meant to provide only an alternative direction of thought in military philosophy, a direction suggested strongly throughout this chapter. They are not meant to be an accurate well defined nor a complete set of principles meant to describe the process of successful strategic creation. They are only an incomplete, limited and limiting set of vague intuitions. All these concepts begin with the concept of creativity, the source of all human achievement and underlying each of the other concepts.
It is a difficult paradox for the military mind to correlate with winning war an essential sprit of aesthetic appreciation, a common source for talent in strategic success and artistic expression. At first glance strategy seems to be a denial of aesthetic quality, requiring foremost base meanness, brutish hatred and even a cold clinical neglect. How can the military mind correlate the semantic contradictions implied by destruction and construction, hatred and love, war and peace? Yet this paradox is itself a part of the comprehensive dilemma created by a misunderstanding and dichotomization of the essential duality of war, a viewing of war as a separate and distinct interruption rather than as a related intensified continuance of peace sharing many similarities. Resolution of this dilemma lies in the comprehensive understanding of war in its proper perspective of essential duality which resonates like a bell throughout military philosophy. The human tendency towards militarism has created this essential bias towards war--the dichotomization of the military mind, leading this to unresolved dilemma in military philosophy. One must temporarily suspend all prejudiced preconceptions of warfare, of its horrors, vileness, and brutishness and consider war objectively in a most casual manner. There exists a very tenable theory of the essential human creativity responsible for strategic victory, a theory which offers a profound insight into the process of abstract creativity as it applies to military philosophy. This theory has been elaborated in the book "The Art of Winning Wars" by James E. Mrazek, which is an important contribution of theory to military philosophy in general. It is here briefly summarized.
The title of the art of war is usually misleading. While artists elaborate on the creative process, military philosophers usually do not. They are unsuspecting victims of tradition formulating maxims, dogmas, rigid formulas and nebulous sayings which limit and channel the military mind, leading to the common practice of warfare emphasizing slaughter. Famous works of military philosophy on the art of war fall short of their purpose, describing only methodology rather than artistic process. The ability to defeat an enemy has remained an enigma, either being classed as historical accident or explained in terms of principles of war, which lead to the distortion of truth to justify "immutable" tradition. The belief that war can be reduced to rules and that the source of power is in weapons is a delusion ignoring the simple concept of the first importance of mind. The idea must always be conceived in the mind of the commander before it is tested in battle. It is a quality that lurk deep in the recesses of the subconscious mind that makes victory. The ability to defeat an enemy is the common denominator of great military leaders. There is a singular quality existing in every victory, in every successful commander. It is the quality of creativity. Victory is essentially an aesthetic exercise. Man is inherently creative. Creativity does not spring from groups or systems, it springs from the individual. Mass has inertia that must be broken to inspire creativity. It is an individual characteristic, a determinant of strategic success. The responsible leader must in the final decision act alone.
Creative intellect is the most important and neglected aspect of command. The idea of art in military command is unpalatable for four reasons:
Art is considered to be the opposite of science. That war is a science rather than an art is a widely held belief if the military profession.
Art is beautiful and creative. War is grim and destructive. Because of this contrast man is confronted with a thought provoking question: How can a military leader be a creator, when one of his objectives is not creation but destruction?
Art implies the aesthetic. It is associated with immortal works of music or with great paintings. Professional military man seldom associate art with the blare of bugles and the roll of drums, with a cavalry charge, with ominous mottled gray ships bristling with guns and missiles, or with silver sleek jets.
Creativity is dangerous to disciplines. There is a fear in the military mind that to permit creativity is to allow anarchy, which is utterly incompatible with the idea of a smooth functioning, hard hitting military force. This fear, like most fears, is nourished by ignorance and is completely unwarranted. There can be freedom under laws--this is the philosophy of or form of government and under it this nation has flourished.
This reasons are mainly due to a general ignorance about creativity. It is an individual characteristic, a determinant of strategic success. The reasons are mainly due to a general ignorance about creativity. Study of the creative element in the thought processes of leaders offers a plausible explanation for consistent victory.
Intellectual creativity is a vital moving process. True art is a revelation sensed but not proven. Most creative ideas occur in the form of intuition which is hard to identify. The mechanism of the creative process is generally agreed to be primarily rapid and spontaneous. It is the enemy of logical reasoning, requiring diversions and a fallow mind. All types of people are potentially creative when motivation and self discipline is intense in the right environment. Freedom, which is a very personal feeling, related to one's surroundings is an important ingredient to the environment stimulating creativity. The conscious state of mind has little or nothing to do with original conception. Many artists lives have been plagued with problems.
There has been no development of the artistry of creative combat, only a rigid adherence to tradition to the expense of initiative and innovation. It is an inward freedom, the free operation of the intellect, viewed by man an non-conforming and leading to obstructionism by the system. It is the individual's rejection of the modes of the system, an attempt to throw off those modes which confine creativity. While creative people are inclined to be extremely flexible to intellectual change, they are usually less adjustable to the physical environment…Much effort is required by the less conscious activities of acquiring and mastering new knowledge, observation, exploration, experimentation, development of skill and techniques, to prepare the mind for its creative role. Beautiful ideas untutored by skill seldom have influence on the future.
There are recognized two types of creativity. Deductive creativity is the marshaling of the widest possible array of ideas, searching for unrecognized relationships to channel thought into productive patterns. This is analytical substitution for the actual, subconscious creative process. It is an expensive process. Dynamic creativity resembles intuition. These are new spontaneous ideas arising from seemingly from nowhere, with a feel for hunches and dream like thinking.
The source of creativity is the enormous power of the subconscious mind. Creativity may require a temporary suspension of logical reasoning to permit free play of the imagination. Creative people value accurate observation express part truths vividly, seeking to point to the unrecognized by displacement and disproportion, by exaggeration of logic and information. They see things as others do not. They have an exceptionally reserve of psychic energy. They lead complex lives in a complex universe and are often more in contact with fantasy and imagination and with reality than others. There are many problems and uncertainties which reason alone cannot resolve, forcing the adoption of an irrational approach. The fog of war is such a situation requiring resolution by intuition and the moral courage to do so.
Successful leaders do not fit easy patterns of characterization. Superior intelligence, education, training, experience, and courage do not fit all equally well. The only common denominator left is creative genius. Creativity is the long unrecognized essential ingredient to military competence. War remains a matter of human beings being directed by their minds, regardless of its operating mechanisms. Creativity is ahead of the time, setting the patterns of war. The only things great leaders have had in common are intuition and a sufficiently free environment from the fetters of tradition. Rejection by intransigent authority has been the fuel of history.
Modern weapons offers new scope to warfare which is best to be realized by the creative commander. Creativity thrives on war, never losing the opportunity to profit by the surprises of which war is composed. The battlefield environment is conducive to creativity in consideration of the essential ingredients of man and his environment. The battlefield gives back to men certain freedoms. Laws become meaningless. As conventional restrictions decrease frustration diminishes and freedom to achieve original creation increases. War offers ideal conditions for the creative. These ideal conditions and the preparation of the soldier for creativity has never been exploited. There has never been an explanation or general comprehension of the battlefield as a creative environment.
The lack of understanding of dynamic creativity by the military mind fosters the problem of making soldiers aware of their own creativity and to exploit it in combat. The development process of an idea of dynamic creativity is: (1) Preparation by acquiring background information, either intensely brief or a long process of gradual accumulation. (2) Incubation which is the digesting and development of information. The absorption of experience over time, varying in duration, lying fallow and related to the particular problem. As pressure for solution develops, ideas increase activity, two ideas collide and become a single concept, a solution. The mind can create with rapidity, the quality of the results may be improved under the stress of danger. (3) Inspiration which is a sudden illumination of an intuitively creative idea. (4) Communication is the bridge of transmission of the idea from the leader to the followers. It requires a creative idea grown to maturity in the mind and objectively expressed. If an idea is unexpressed in objective terms, it is worthless. The transmission must have the quality of the idea and must have a receptacle for it, the minds of the constituency who must be receptive in understanding and capable of utilizing the idea. This implies a common basis for mutual understanding. (5) verification is the victory of the creative idea, the essential end product of the creative process.
The great leaders are an unharmonious group except in the emission of dynamic ideas. No universal answer shows how they have been successful as a group. If it were known it would establish foundations for the selection of leaders. Educational background and intelligence are not absolutely important criteria. Military professionalism does not necessarily enhance or inspire creativity. There are uniformity of character and situation slanting toward creativity: nonconformity, independence, irascibility, eccentricity, remote austerity. Past experience is more important than preparatory education. Intellectual independence and freedom from patterned behavior is a common factor. The physical environment plays an important part in creativity. The environment must be conducive to creativity, where the individual enjoys freedom to manipulate total resources at his disposal including staff, intelligence, logistical supplies, tactical forces, local indigenous populations. War offers an ideal environment, particularly in a breakthrough in enemy lines in which the commander gains psychological independence from the homeland.
Peacetime commanders whose ability to conform often leads then to the top, often become ineffective in wartime in which their patterned behavior becomes nonfunctional, to be replaced by other commanders of independent ambition, efficiently using intelligence, perceptive, original and rebellious. A creative person resents pressure to conformity. Creativity is a common attribute requiring motivation to do the required work, sustained effort and aggressive courage. If willing to let the mind function naturally, free from fear, it is possible to follow and be disciplined by rules and yet remain able to receive stimuli from the unconscious. The creative person has a constantly growing fund of his capabilities, a wealth of background information.
The source of many frustrations, neurosis and combat fatigue stems from suppression of normal intellectual functioning. There can be physical conformity with mental freedom. One can demand the former by stimulating the latter. The solution to the problem of releasing creativity from the ranks lies within the command, by discerning creativity, requirements of creative release, and by acting to meet these requirements. The military "system" should cultivate creative intelligence rather than militaristic obedience.
Consideration of this theory of creativity as being the key to the success of strategic realization leads directly to another theory--"The Indirect Approach" formulated in the book "Strategy" by B.H. Liddell Hart, which describes an important theoretical contribution--a general recipe for strategic victory--to military philosophy. The indirect approach has general validity. Any other theoretical statements of general validity must be compatible and complementary to it. The concept of indirection relates well in military philosophy with strategic creation, intuition, unpredictability, the art of indirection with temporary suspension of logic to enable the little understood creative process to predominate.
Strategy has not to overcome resistance, except from nature. Its purpose is to diminish the possibility of resistance and it seeks to fulfill this purpose by exploiting the elements of movement and surprise…
Movement lies in the physical sphere and depends on a calculation of the conditions of time, topography and transport capacity…
Surprise lies in the psychological sphere…
Tactics lies in and fills the province of fighting. Strategy not only stops on the frontier but has for its purpose the reduction of fighting to the slenderest possible proportions…
…For even if decisive battle be the goal, the aim of strategy must be to bring this battle under the most advantageous circumstances. And the more advantageous the circumstances, the less proportionately will be the fighting…
The perfection of strategy would be, therefore, to produce a decision without any serious fighting. While such bloodless victories have been exceptional, their rarity enhances rather than detracts from their value--as an indication of latent potentialities in strategy and Grand Strategy…
…Just as the military means is only one of the means to the end of grand strategy…so battle is the only one means to the end of strategy. If the conditions are suitable it is usually the quickest in effect, but if the conditions are unfavorable it is folly to use it.
…Hence his true aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not by itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this. In other words, dislocation is the aim of strategy, its sequel may be either the enemy's dissolution or his easier disruption in battle. Dissolution may involve some partial measure of fighting but this has not the character of battle.
How is the strategic location produced? In the physical or logistical sphere it is the result of a move which (a) upsets the enemy's disposition and by compelling a sudden change of "front", dislocates the distribution and organization of his forces (b) separates his forces (c) endangers his supplies (d) menaces the route or routes by which he could retreat in case of need and reestablish himself in his base or homeland.
A dislocation may be produced by one of these effects, but is more often the consequence of several. Differentiation indeed is difficult because a move towards the enemy's rear tends to combine these effects. Their respective influence, however, varies and has varied throughout history according to the site of armies and the complexity of their organization. With armies which "live on the country" drawing their supplies locally by plunder or requisition, the line of communication has negligible importance. Even in a higher stage of military development, the smaller a force the less dependent it is on the line of communication for supplies. The larger an army and the more complex its organization, the more prompt and serious in effect is a menace to its line of communication.
In the psychological sphere, dislocation is the result of the impression on the commander's mind of the physical effects which we have listed. The impression is strongly accentuated if his realization of his being at a disadvantage is sudden and if he feels that he is unable to counter the enemy's move. Psychological dislocation fundamentally springs from this sense of being trapped.
This is the reason why it has most frequently followed a physical move on the enemy's rear. An army like a man, cannot properly defend its back from a blow without turning around to use its arms in the new direction. "Turning" temporarily unbalances an army as it does a man and with the former the period of instability is inevitably much longer. In consequence, the brain is much more sensitive to any menace to its back.
In contrast, to move directly on an opponent consolidates his balance, physical and psychological, and by consolidating it increases his resisting power. For in the case of an army it rolls the enemy back towards their reserves, supplies and reinforcements, so that as the original front is driven back and worn thin, new layers are added to the back. At the most it imposes a strain rather than producing a shock.
Thus a move around the enemy's front against his rear has the aim not only of avoiding resistance on its way but in its issue. In the profoundest sense, it takes the line of least resistance. The equivalent is the psychological sphere is the line of least expectation…
In studying the physical aspect we must never lose sight of the psychological and only when both are combined is the strategy truly an indirect approach, calculated to dislocate the opponent's balance.
Because of the risk the enemy may achieve such a change of front, it is usually necessary for the dislocating move to be preceded by a move, or moves, which can best be defined by the term "distract" in its literal sense of "to draw asunder". The purpose of this "distraction" is to deprive the enemy of his freedom of action and it should operate in both the physical and psychological spheres…
A more profound appreciation of hoe the psychological permeates and dominates the physical sphere has an indirect value. For it warns us of the fallacy and shallowness of attempting to analyze and theorize about strategy in terms of mathematics. To treat it quantitatively, as if the issue turned merely on a superior concentration of force at a selected place is as faulty as to treat it geometrically as a matter of lines and angles.
In general, the nearer to the force that the cut is made, the more immediate the effect, the nearer to the base, the greater the effect. In either case, the effect becomes much greater and more quickly felt if made against a force that is in motion and in course of carrying out an operation.
Instead of the simple idea of a concentrated stroke by a concentrated force, we should choose according to circumstance between these variants:
(i) Dispersed advance with concentrated single aim i.e. against one objective.
(ii) Dispersed advance with concentrated serial aim i.e. against successive
objectives.
(These will each demand preliminary moves to distract the enemy's attention and forces, unless the possibility of taking alternative objectives enables us to rely on such distracting effect being produced already by the enemy's perplexity.)
(iii) Dispersed advance with distributed aim i.e. against a number of objectives
simultaneously.
(Under the new conditions of warfare, the cumulative effect of partial success or even mere threat at a number of points may be greater than the effect of complete success at one point.)
The effectiveness of armies depends on the development of such new methods--methods which aim at permeating and dominating areas rather than capturing lines, at the practicable object of paralyzing the enemy's action rather than the theoretical object of crushing his forces. Fluidity of force may succeed where concentration of force merely entails a perilous rigidity.
The above mentioned axioms (here expressed as maxims) cannot be condensed into a single word, but they can be put into the fewest words necessary to be practical. Eight in all, so far--six are positive and two negative. They apply to tactics as well as strategy, unless otherwise indicated.
Positive:
1. Adjust your ends to your means…
2. Keep your object always in mind, while adapting your plan to circumstances…
3. Choose the line of least resistance…
4. Exploit the line of least resistance…
5. Take a line of operation which offers alternative objectives…
6. Ensure that both plan and disposition are flexible--adaptable to
circumstance…
Negative:
7. Do not throw your weight into a stroke whilst your opponent is on guard--
whilst he is well placed to parry or evade it…
8. Do not renew an attack along the same line (or in the same form) after it has
once failed…
The essential truth underlying these maxims is that, for success, two major problems must be solved--dislocation and exploitation. One precedes and one follows the actual blow--which in comparison is a simple act. You cannot hit the enemy with effect unless you have first created the opportunity, you cannot make that effect decisive unless you exploit the second opportunity that comes before he can recover…
Although war is contrary to reason, since it is a means of deciding issues by force when discussion fails to produce an agreed solution, the conduct of war must be controlled by reason if its object is to be fulfilled.
For:
(1) While fighting is a physical act, its direction is a mental process. The better the strategy the easier you will gain the upper hand, and the less it will cost you.
(2) Conversely, the more strength you waste the more increase the risk of the scales turning against you and even if you succeed in winning the victory, the less strength you will have to profit by peace.
(3) The more brutal your methods, the more bitter you will make your opponents, with the natural result of hardening the resistance you are trying to overcome, thus the more evenly the two sides are matched the wiser it will be to avoid extremes of violence which tend to consolidate the enemy's troops and people behind their leaders.
(4) These calculations extend further. The more intent you appear to impose a peace entirely of your own choosing, by conquest, the stiffer the obstacles you will raise in your own path.
(5) Furthermore, if and when you reach your military goal, the more you ask of the defeated side the more trouble you will have and the more cause you will provide for an ultimate attempt to reverse the settlement achieved by the war.
Force is a vicious circle--or rather a spiral--unless its application is controlled by the most carefully reasoned calculation. Thus war which begins by denying reason, comes to vindicate it--throughout all phases of the struggle…
We must plan for decisive warfare, for the eventuality of war, closing the gap between the men of policy and military commanders, and plan decisively for a world without war, creating a world political organization based on the realities of power, outlawing war, denouncing war in all national constitutions. Aggressive nations cannot be bought off, but can be curbed in their aggressiveness. Their very belief in the use of force makes them more susceptible to the deterrent effect of a formidable opposing force. Force dependency is a vicious cycle unless its application is controlled by the most reasoned calculations. Militarism can be cured only during a cessation of war. War strengthens it, fueling the fire. Nuclear war is indecisive. Reliance on the use of force is a dead end. It is the responsibility of all to critically reexamine our traditional values in the face of radical changes caused by the exponential expansion of technological civilization and of war fighting capabilities. In our plans we must take care to recognize or true enemy and in seeking to overcome him to not become our own enemy, overcoming ourselves in the final results. Relinquishing overall responsibility is becoming a dangerous human tendency. We must learn to operated on the belief that in the final judgment, if there is ever to be one, it is not only all that has been said and done that will be weighed in strategic consideration but that it will be balanced by all that has been left unsaid and undone. Leadership is becoming a rare and precious commodity, frequently substituted by cheap imitations. It is the untapped potential within ourselves that is the key to the future. All the equivocations of military philosophy cannot obscure this essential truth.
It is appropriate at this point to include a survey of what the science of psychology has revealed about the nature of creativity. Yet this will have to wait. I believe it to be beyond the scope of this work to do justice to the whole story of creativity. Science has given little so far to the theory, psychology, physiology and knowledge of creativity. It has recently become recognized for its real importance. When science has revealed the whole story of creativity military technology won't be very far behind. Personal observations and conclusions not claiming scientific validity in the least, must suffice. It is here that I frame my so called "General Theory of Creativity" as being a crucial heretofore unrecognized realm to the understanding of human nature with vital social consequences. I hold creativity to be the key to happiness, success and health, not only for the lone individual but for society in general.
The creative person is a lone individual, one who operates best alone. He values his independence as much as he values other people. Perhaps he has a central weakness about his personality, a divided fear of death and reverence for life more profound than the "normal" human has, which is the source of the tremendous compensatory motivation of expression. The typical social stereotype and formulas for normality do not fit and don't often work with the creative person. Perhaps the most characteristic mark about the creative person is that he defies characterization. Individuality is an important mark of the creative person. He affiliates himself to no outside entity beside himself. Indeed, individuality with all the ramifications of unique differences is possibly the only common characteristic manifest about creative people. The individual has an acute affiliation of awareness for contradictions between the perceived world of operational reality and how the world is "supposed" to be, by his own standards. Creative personalities are fundamentally perfectionist, an underlying perfectionism which demands expression in every aspect of living. The creative person's mind is always functioning in two levels, one is a conscious awareness and responsiveness to the environment, the other is a pre-conscious awareness, a listening inwardly to the dictates of the soul, a serious fantasizing about unique possibilities which is usually unresponsive to the immediate environment, more times than not. The first is socially compatible while the second is usually socially incompatible. The latter is isolated, incompatible, always seeding signs of compatibility, snatching almost reflexively from the on flow of current stimuli relevant bits of information with which to feed and to build. It sometimes break into the realm of the first, into full conscious awareness resulting in a heightened awareness, an intensification noticeably different from the usual. Indeed it must ultimately do so to achieve successful expression and self validation. At other times it might subside to a level never to be touched by conscious awareness, to be revealed only in dreams or in vague nebulous indefinable feelings.
Creative people are not just passive purely subjective recipients of environmental stimuli nor are they equally objective oriented robots, they are active, alive participants who not only think, breath, feel and live their lives. They believe in what they do. They don’t just talk about life, they attempt to live the life that they feel inside they want, what most comfortable with, that they feel is most right, inspite of external contradictions and restrictions. The creator lives for his creation, in a sense very abstract and at the same time very practical, instead of just for himself, the fulfillment of his needs.
The creative process occurs mostly unconsciously, over an extended period of time, during which much rumination over conflicting and nonsensical conceptions fleet through the mind. There are moments of intense inspiration breakthroughs suddenly revealing themselves to the consciousness, yet there are also large gulfs of non-creative waiting, of frontal assaults for insights and alternatives, a groping for understanding, a vague feeling "something is not right" and "this must have something to do with it" and a continual frustration of seemingly logical conclusions. The right time and place, relativity may have a decisive influence to the creative process. It can almost be one of chance occurrence and unnatural selection. It is not a static process, it is dynamic, fluid, stoppable and accelerative. The creative process is temporal, an episodic process with an initiation, an "I will" power and stubborn persistence, a direction and purpose, a reservoir of energy, a resource material, rumination, preconception, dichotomization of thought and ideas, contradiction, dilemma, integration, paradox, simplification, application, realization, creation--it is a continual cyclical process.
The creative process involves the whole human psyche, not just a part of it, in a growth process of the personality, subtle and mostly subconscious, like an iceberg adrift. The creative process is a natural growth process, one of going somewhere, of direction. It is not a static quality, it can either progressively develop in a very gradual manner or it can stop developing and result in a general regression of the personality. The growth process is not a straight line, a single sequential development. Rather it is a cyclical process of regenerative development, with its ups and downs, repetition and revolution of something new. It is one of upward spiral movement. The creative process as a part of human personality development is a spontaneous, healthy, natural, good growth process of positive tendencies. The creative process is at the apex of the need satisfaction hierarchy of human endeavor, it is not just a part of the self, rather it involves the whole self. The really creative process consumes virtually the whole of the creator's life, waking and sleeping, physical, emotional and intellectual.
It is important to understand that the communicable form creativity finalizes in is its ultimate form of expression, the end product of the creative process. The creative process consists of the creator, the means of creation and development of the means, a growing together of life and work in a kind of mutual symbiosis, each extending and intensifying the other. It is a subtle growth of creative talent which might go unnoticed except for the fact that it ultimately requires some form of objective as expression which provides continuity of past, present and future. The final objective creation is the realization in concrete objective form, if limited and imperfect, one that gives rationality to irrationality. It must be communicably expressible of the creators subjective feelings and creative discoveries. The success of the process depends on how well that subjectivity has been communicated to the recipients or the audience, the end utility value, which is also dependent on subjective interpretation. The final creation must transcend the relativity of place and time to become universally applicable. The ends of the creator, what he wants to create, and the means, what resources he has and doesn't have, and the result of the individual's mating of means to ends, the individual style of how he is going to express his creation. Creation is in the process as much as it is in the end result. The style determines and is determined by individuality. Creative growth is primarily and most importantly a lonely one, one that is done by the individual operating independently of others, it is only secondarily a form of expression or reflection of the environment. Yet it requires original expression. Originality is an important criteria, having its origin from within the creator, a fully intrinsic value, determining the superlative quality of the work. There are many unoriginal monotonous copies of original creation, repetition in form.
Creativity requires revolution against dogma, authority, rationality, and common sense, against logic to break into a new school hitherto unexplored, of un-trespassed, un-violated ground. It requires pioneer spirit, irrational, illogical and original. It is at once critical of everything but most critical of oneself. The self, neither selfish nor selfless in the altruistic sense. It requires self centeredness, being together but not narcissism, a form of ego eccentricity transcending both selfishness and selflessness in the traditional sense. The self is a human personality matrix, a hierarchy of needs that requires satisfaction for growth. The normative needs are the conscious, rational, gradually developing process of creativity. It is also the objective realization of the underlying subjectivity, which requires conscious rationalization for expression.
The creator must be critical, un-accepting, un-content, and evaluative. He must insulate himself to some extent yet simultaneously expose himself in a search for new resources. He must be open minded. Creativity requires a dichotomy of both solitude and solidarity. Creation arises from satisfaction of human normative decision making needs and requires in its final expression an objective form of communicable expression which can be freely built upon and altered to satisfy the creator's normative needs. It requires objective cultivation in which it can develop. It requires the proper motivation, the creative energy that arises from the power of the human emotional psyche. It requires freedom both in the release of this energy, an inward form, and of objective environment in which the individual can arbitrarily and autonomously apply himself to the task. It requires social independence from the thoughts, needs, responses, actions, decisions and authority of a prerequisite bombardment of almost free interchange of ideas, information negative and positive, which acts as the fuel for the fire of imagination. Creativity requires self discipline and individual leadership. Creativity requires renunciation of trivia, an intensification of life along concentrated lines of development. One cannot play games with temporary results, living vicariously from moment to moment without continuity or contextual relevancy. One cannot worry about one's appearance, sex, money and be successfully creative at the same time. Creativity requires self discipline and courage to be alone. It requires hard work, long hours, concentration and rain checks on banal indulgences. Creativity requires integration of lifestyle. It represents the integration of metaphysical subjective reality and physical objective reality.
Creation seems to arise almost from nowhere, indeed it is the conceptual formulation of something from apparently nothing. It is apparently forged synthetically, almost antithetically from analysis, in which a feel for the objective arises out of dialectical conflict of conceptions and perceptions, from unresolved dilemmas and paradoxes. Intelligence in the traditional sense of analytical ability, is not necessarily a determinant of creativity, though it may lead scope to its potential development, it extent and intent, even though it may also inhibit its potential by being overly analytical, too rational without imagination. Intelligence is basically considered by traditional schools of thought as analytical, mathematical, logical, with a good command of conscious memory and preconscious recall. Yet there might be another kind of intellectual capability, a synthetic one, relying on the power of the subconscious imagination, intuition, irrationality, possibility, one that has gone mostly undeveloped, unrecognized of true potential worth and even repressed deliberately and unintentionally. Intelligence might better be conceived as larger than heretofore understood, incorporating both analytical and synthetic in some more one way than in others, most a blend of both for a few a higher form of extremes of gifted talent, people who are at once simultaneously and alternatively creative and analytically intelligent.
Creativity is not an unlimited potential, it has its weaknesses and limitations. Alone it means nothing, unless it can be objectively realized in some socially communicable form of expression of the creator's inspiration and leadership. It requires a specific media or set of mediums for expression. Creativity has two fundamental limitations. One is an inward intensive margin, of the creator's individual weakness, limited energy reservoir, of the amount of negativistic substitution that must be overcome. Indeed creativity is a process of transcending these limitations to internal resources, of creating in spite of them and because of them. The other fundamental limitation is the extensive margin, the outside physical limitations which frustrate external freedom and autonomy, of limited external resources of material and time, and most importantly of other people. The medium of expression forms a crucial limitation to expression. It is through the recognition, integration, compromise and transcendence of these media limitations that the power and freedom of expression is attained. Often the simpler the medium is to work with the less restriction in the intrinsic limitations of the medium. The more complex the medium the less well the creator's personality and style communicated being more restricted to the technical processes of expression more alienated from the communication with the soul. It is learning to work within the limits of the medium, overcome its weaknesses, to create in spite of them that the creator achieve transcendence in expression. There is another limitation of external nature, the limitation of comprehensive relevancy, of truth of metaphysical reality. The creation must be practicable in principle, not just unusually abstract. Between these two sets of limitations there is a wide, virtually unlimited potential of content, of combinations of intent and extent, of possibilities of forms and designs with which to express the creation.
How much of creativity is genetically influenced and how much is a product of environmental circumstances is a crucial question that may never be adequately answered it seems that the environment plays a major role yet sociological statistics might well bear out a key decisive influence of genetic origin in the transmission of personality type, knowledge, talent, capability. There is something to be said of the tremendous repetition and recurrent correlation of cultural symbolization issuing from different individuals of different cultures and from different periods of time, the collective unconscious. Yet this can probably be readily explained as being a product of a common human nature universally prevalent, than as a proof of genetic origin, a common character type which transcends the relativity of culture, race or age. Neither gene type nor phenotype explanations alone account for the whole story. It is better to view the genetic influence as providing a vessel, a fundamental blueprint for structure, which is filled by the experience of phenomenological growth, or at least presents the potential for general fulfillment which experience and environmental circumstances may either reinforce or else inhibit. It is spontaneous growth process which can either occur naturally in a healthy way if the environmental circumstances are adequate, or it may be restricted and repressed resulting in an atrophied alienated personality development. The vessel can be fully filled or half filled or remain empty. Neither explanation can fully account for creativity without the other, creativity is a common trait of universal human nature which transcends both genotype and phenotype. There seems to be a duality of personality traits, a duality of preponderant dependence on left or right hemispheres of the brain, of aggressive and repressive personalities types, of amina and animus, of analytical and synthetic, of dreamers and non-dreamers, of authoritarian and revolutionary, of extroverts and introverts, of optimists and pessimists, of good and bad symbolism. There is a definite biological and a definite environmental origin for creativity. Creativity, as a means of transcendence, seeks to overcome the conceptual dichotomy of preconceived notions of truth which are unquestioned and taken for granted, falsehoods present to critical attention. Creativity transcends this essential quality recurrent in all human relationships, a duality of previous dichotomy, through subsequent integration to form a higher trinity or a unity, or an entity, from seemingly un-conceived truth, illogical, irrational, from the void of the previously unknown and inexperienced.
I believe that creativity is not just a talent of a gifted few, quite the contrary it is a natural, spontaneous process of integration of universal human nature, a latent unrealized potentiality of every human being. All humans are natural integrators of their world. Creativity forms their sense of life and their individual personality. Creativity, natural human spontaneity, is manifest in every human activity, taking on an infinitude of forms. It is not just limited to art or cultural expression the traditional sense of the term. It is the natural result of spontaneous compensatory response to environmental conditions. It can be suppressed yet it must be channeled and concentrated in expression to attain successful expression. Every human is potentially creative but many never come to realize their fullest potential, nor are capable of being creative, being sufficiently pathologized beyond the point the self help. Creativity can be frustrated very early by external limitations, social dependencies, enforced by situational circumstances. Society maintains social cohesion, conformity to operational doctrines and ideologies, and insures predictability patterned behavior through manipulation of human normative needs, through violation of natural human rights, through deprivation of these needs for automatic decision making and a shot gunning repression and substitution of individual creative energies. Most of this control process occurs at a preconscious level and is counterproductive to the long term health of either the individual constituent or the social system as a whole. The socialization process of the personality is almost antithetical to the creative process. It is most influential in the tender most flexible ages of youth. It serves to repress the natural outflow of psychic energy into channeled and limited back flows of socially acceptable standards of individual development.
This socialization process in human development is a critical factor of creativity, as it is ultimately a reflection of the individual's personality. Society is a reflection of the sum of its constituents. The purpose of socialization is the interchange, communication and transmission of means and ends in the satisfaction of individual needs. Yet society becomes something more than a mere reflection, something unique in itself, an entity of its own, which can either most pathological or a primarily healthy one, in the latter mode a progressive technological civilization, a commonwealth of humanity serving itself rather than the individual, resulting in a subordination of individual needs.
There is a collective social unconscious, an inheritance of culture, tradition, rationality, irrationality, in short of socially patterned normative behavior which must influence creativity. Humans are a blend of both good and bad, healthy and unhealthy, positive and negative developmental tendencies. Some may at one moment e more one direction than the other either permanently or temporarily. Societies are also blends, tendencies in either direction of development. There are no perfect clinical examples. Society has predominantly relied on the negativistic course of development, the subordination of the individual to the system, more often than not.
There is no need to speak of the operational results, malevolent or benevolent, of the manipulation of creativity. It has been the thesis of this whole text to describe its most malevolent manifestation, militarism and war. What is not naturally creative, if frustrated, soon becomes unhealthily and unnaturally destructive. The human potential and society as its overall reflection is a growth process one of spontaneous compensation to the physical realizations encountered. If sufficiently frustrated, it becomes regressive with past oriented substitutions of no longer relevantly functional mechanisms. Yet this negativity, the pathologization of the human normative growth is negativistic only relative to the point of view of positive growth, in hindsight-so to speak-of potential development. It is a static process of stagnate non-growth, a going nowhere in a continued state of being without relevant motion not change. Change is an important influence and determinant of human normative needs, too much change or too little change will result in a pathologization of development, of becoming stagnation, yet too fast change is relative only to too slow change, to the less than normal, negativistic tendencies towards no change, of just being. Humans naturally adjust to their own rates of change. The human almost needs to spontaneously dictate change in his environment, social or otherwise. Creativity is a crucial means and form of this dictation and control. Destructiveness is the symptom of its pathologization.
The pathology of substitution is also the affliction of all human beings as social animals just as creativity is a universal potentiality. Substitution is a dichotomization and subsequent regression, a negativistic tendency which affects all humans. Both positive and negative tendencies work against each other and in spite each other in contention, dividing the "whole" self or integrity, into a duality of opposing directions. As a reflection of this two directional tendency, human society as a whole, also has a positive social structure and a negative social structure always in contention, producing much superfluous and irrelevant noise. No human and social system is immune.
Psychology and sociology as two interrelated sciences, unlike the other natural sciences must deal with human nature which is very unpredictable and transient, very hard to find quantifiable data and formulate immutable principles and laws about it. They are self restricting in a sense in dealing primarily with pathological behavior, diversified symptoms, or with just "behavior" without attempting to attach any qualitative standards of description in the traditional methodology of scientific objectivity: the validity of unbiased and empirically provable data. These sciences consequently suffer a limiting dilemma, they are in a sense starting out on a limited and biased premises of understanding about human nature. In one instance these sciences deal with behavior principally as a byproduct of environmental stimuli, physical, biological, and psychological, a mere responsiveness in which volition and rational motivation play a small if any roles, the motivations of behavior as being extraneous to intrinsic normative functioning of the individual. In a second instance they describe and define pathological conditions on a comparative basis with at least an implicit acknowledgment of some "normal" standard for human behavior, even though they rarely elaborate to any constructive extent on what these normative standards of normality might be, such elaboration being held as essentially unscientific, outside the jurisdiction and validation of scientific method. Such is the dilemma of the behavioral sciences. Psychology and sociology have as "traditional" schools of scientific authority shied away from the often contradictory very subjective and apparently biased study of normative behavior, of normative science by which neglect it maintains its potential scope on safe controversial grounds. They do well in description of pathology, compared to a un-stated "normal" behavior standard which is less well defined, glossed over, or ignored completely. It does not do well in describing healthy potential human behavior. While psychology has been recently revolutionizing, sociology still remains locked into profiles of "just" different behavior without deep normative perspectives, theory or definition. I believe this crucial limitation to these human behavioral sciences is a single manifestation of that deeper subject object dichotomy afflicting all human philosophy. Here operational scientific methodology falls short in obvious contradiction to naturally normative human sciences, psychology and sociology.
Perhaps psychology and sociology could attempt to begin restructuring the general orientation of epistemological development on the complementary premises of a normative subjective evidence. In the first instance it accepts only the negativistic materially and quantifiable objective evidence; the hard scientific proof which is empirically tenable, leaving no question of hypothetical validity. The negativistic circumstantial evidence of definition around the humanitarian normative subjective process falls short of the more delicate and controversial areas of human behavior. One is in the blatant ignorance of the role of purpose and volition and not just subconscious, uncontrollable motivations. A new positive form of proof is available, the subjective evidence of individual human rationality and subjectivity in dealing with normative behavior. Positive proof of a subjective theory. What would be the nature of such proof? Proof is in the pudding, if it is subjectively good, if it is found to be applicable and functional for all humans and in all social systems, then why not scientific truth? If past and current theoretically generalizable models of healthy individual and social behavior patterns seem to be beneficial in application and to complement the pathological negativistic, circumstantial, "hard" objective evidence then why not a normative science of psychology and sociology? And then is not psychology and sociology in such normative application and not just a cognitive logical application intruding into the proper domain of philosophy and ideology, very relative, subjective and unscientific points of view? And when hasn't any endeavor to understand human nature been implicitly a normative science of psychology and sociology, or vice versa, any psychology or sociology not been a fundamental human philosophy or ideology?
And what might such a new outgrowth of sociology and psychology, a new appendage to the normative science of philosophy and ideology look like? One positive application which may have much potential is the formulation of a model of healthy, natural, rational, universally applicable human nature. Such a general model must be comprehensively viewed both as a process of time as well as intensively and extensively a process of environment. It must be founded on intercultural and inter-human similarities and be applicable to all people. Sociology could extend this application in the definition of a healthy humanly natural, normatively right, model social structure that would also be universally applicable. Beyond the present capabilities of psychology and sociology? Not necessarily so. Why not start now, so that tomorrow the chances for potential improvement in both the models and their applications will be realized. Why wait for hard evidence to be accumulated from disconcerted objective efforts that do not make such a comprehensive purpose? Why the blind groping for potentiality when positive subjective but scientifically "unverifiable" evidence abounds in many obvious manifestations.
What would be possible positive criteria for such a model of universal human nature and a model social structure? I believe that creativity is the key, the point of departure from traditional psychology and sociology, the starting point of a more comprehensive and powerful normative science of human nature, the fundamental material for the construction of such models. Creativity is found in all human activity, whether healthy or pathological and is crucial to reform, a recurring characteristic of constructive development. It deals with satiation of and the growth of human normative, decision making needs, not just with cognitive needs. It deals with conscionable rational behavior. It deals with socially communicable, objective expression. It dictates freedom, independence, autonomy and it is extensible to formulation of a sociological model. What would such a social model be like? It would probably be an open society of free communication, a highly democratized political structure teetering on anarchy, with the widest decision making capacity technologically feasible. It would be a social structure which allows for the widest possible means for the satiation of natural human needs and the realization of individual human creativity. It would probably call for free enterprise but not capitalistic slavery, for commonwealth social programs but not for a single authoritarian communist party and a state directed economy. What if criminal behavior, alcoholism and all manners of social reforms and individual educational reforms can be initiated and successful on the basis of the subjective normative scientific models? And what is the possibility of constructing from the already early abundant evidence of antithetical objective scientific proof negativistic pathological individual and social models?
There must be some scientific basis on which to initiate reform for a "better" world, a normative description at best. All scientific progress in the world is useless unless it can be teleologically, practicably and operationally realizable for the good of humanity. What is the purpose of integration and comprehensiveness. The subjective objective dichotomy underlying that larger analytic synthetic dichotomy recurrent throughout philosophy. It requires integration to a new trinity or unity for a more powerful tool of rational behavior. These have only been personal pseudo-scientific observations and conclusions. I do not attempt to claim scientific validity. Creativity does not explain the whole human story, but it explains a very crucial small part to the comprehensive understanding of human nature. These observations and conclusions about creativity must be received with only the most general skepticism. They must await scientific validation or invalidation. What is the proper function of theory in psychology and sociology? Why the diversification and divisive disunity of psychological and sociological theory? Government subsidies and paychecks, financial and social security, official and unofficial resentment and criticism, fear of persecution and imprisonment may be no negligible influence to the future of scientific advancement.
And what would be the role of philosophy and ideology of political theory and religious doctrine in view of such a possible normative "science"? They can only be further improved from their present condition. The dichotomy evident in psychology, the essential dichotomy evident in military philosophy and the analytic-synthetic dichotomy of general philosophy stems from a common source of affliction of human normative behavior. In the overcoming of this prevalent dichotomized duality we can see the joining of the humanities, of art, of literature and music with the sciences, of psychology with philosophy. The humanities-science dichotomy can then be transcended through integration. Art serves a central exemplary function of direction, communication, inspiration and revolution of normative behavior which serves a practical utilitarian purpose in guiding not only humanity but science as well. It is not just a nice cultural superfluity that can be foregone without side effects, it plays a vital and crucial role to the health of civilization, the normative health that stems from universal human creativity. And what of philosophy? The metaphysical-physical dichotomy that so divides the universe of human reality must be transcended. Metaphysical truth is its ultimate sense directly undiscernable, unknowable without form given to it by physical reality. Humanity can never know the absolute truth,, but can only approach understanding in a negativistic physical sense, toward more accurate approximation of its definition. Truth transcends the physical metaphysical split of reality. Humanity can only know truth through the integration of these two realities. We can never claim to know absolute truth nor can we ever desist from trying to discover it through ever better definition. Truth is a-priori. It exists as part of our integrated reality. It has been before us and will come after us. Our creativity so revolutionary and original as it may seem, may be in act only the discovery of a better formulation of the reflection of truth. The creative process is one of exploration experimentation, experience and discovery of truth. It is a paradoxical normative need of humanity to try to discover that what cannot be known in its absolute sense, truth. Human purpose? Creation, the technological evolutionary advancement of civilization of the whole of humanity, and the personal fulfillment of every individual. The anti-entropy of doing more with less through integration and mental exploration of a-priori and absolute truth. To live in peace and not to die in war.
Military philosophy is by no means exempt from the essential dichotomy which afflicts all philosophy. Perhaps military philosophy reveals in clearest exemplification in most crucial disheartening reality the effects of pathological development if normative behavior. It is not exempt from integration. Creativity and the valuation of the human element in military theory, so long neglected can become a powerful and possibly dangerous weapon once science and technology master it. Yet I do not believe this will be so.
This theory forms a very simplifying explanation for all the dilemmas which confront not only the military mind, but the collective human mind as well. It is most elegant and powerful. It is beautiful in a sense that art is beautiful. If one is to accept the essential validity of the general theory of creativity of universal human nature and social structure, one would eventually have to reject war and the military, as an unnecessary pathological antithesis. This theory might be revolutionary to the military field not in the sense of the communist political revolution, the Mao theory as a new strategic tool for world domination, but transcending politics as well as transcending military. It might well be likened to a religious revolution not too different in aim than those of the prophets. Its aim is worldwide pacifism, not military conquest. Yet it does not predict the coming of the Messiah nor the dictates of an anthromorphological divinity. It merely necessitates redefinition of human valuation. Let me state another powerful military conclusion that is also elegantly simplifying. It is the source of much paradox. This general theory of creativity concludes that the most rational strategy for war is also the most economically feasible method of its execution and is ultimately the only just means and end for war. It lies in the minimization of destructive force and of tactical conflict. Ultimately it lies in no war at all. The best strategy is in its truest form a strategy for peace, not a strategy of war. These simple conclusions cannot be reiterated enough.
I do not even believe that these personal conclusions might change the military mind. I only hope that it has flexed it a little with consideration of alternative perspectives. Most people involved in the military are involved with the operational perspective, a very a theoretical practical and non-intellectual world. Ninety nine percent of these people do not even seriously question not ever doubt their world. They depend on it for their livelihood and for their future. They accept unwittingly unconsciously presumptions and limited premises of thought which limit their views and conclusion about the military. Even the so called professional elite of the military, its high official authorities, who claim to be the "experts" spend most of their time wasted on the operational functions, time consuming and temporary details, activities without questioning their comprehensive validity. These are again conclusions of personal experience. I have found military life very limited and disintegrating and I have rejected on philosophical grounds its operational presumptions but only after I have learned first hand, quite subjectively, what they were realistically and what they might be potentially. I have military literature self limiting. I found military philosophy self limiting. I do not claim truth, only a small imperfect part of truth. To understand military comprehensively it must be viewed from every angle, from outside looking in, from the inside looking out. One must balance many alternative perspectives. One must transcend the military problem and view it ultimately as a limited part of some more general comprehensive problem. Finally to know the military problem fully one must view it from the perspective of pacifism. But that is a task beyond the scope of this book. No amount of military philosophizing can be of any use unless it influences in a very realistic and practical manner the operational concepts of comprehensive relevancy and transcendency that I will continue. It is at this point in closing with military philosophy midway in this book that the "purely" military problem is transcended and some alternative perspective are proffered. I hope that I have not completely atrophied the military mind from continuing.
1. "Military Concepts and Philosophy" Henry E. Eccles, Rear Admiral USN (ret.) Rutgers Universal Press
2. "Strategy" B.H. Liddell Hart, Frederick A. Praeger Inc., Publishers
3. "The Art of Winning Wars" Colonel James Mrazek, Walker Publishing Company 1968
Military Dimensions
1979-80
Hugh M. Lewis
Blanket Copyright, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.
Last Updated: 03/17/05