For years I’ve been claiming to be an OODA Buddha without explaining precisely what I mean by that. Let’s get into it.
The genius John Boyd is that architect of American fighter pilot doctrine. He is the originator of the OODA loop.
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
Once you’ve acted, you need a new observation and the loop continues. Strategically, in any complex or dynamic environment, the faster you can get though this loop, the greater the advantage you have over your adversary. You can think of it in terms of the old adage that some people are still fighting WW2 in their heads. Their model of reality cannot keep up with the new reality - and sometimes people are so deranged that they refuse to make new observations and reorient themselves. They’ve just decided what actions they’re going to take. Stale ideas. Ineffective actions.
Stoic observation implies that you make as unbiased an observation as you can make. The stoic aspect relates to how you orient yourself to what appears to be a threat and what you can do about that threat. Confrontation is not a given. Sometimes it SERE. Survival. Evasion. Resistance. Escape.
So an OODA Buddha is one committed to constant observation, reorientation, decisionmaking and action. But there is a Taoist component which for me starts with the observation. I am not observing simply for the sake of identifying threats, rather I am looking for the center of gravity, as it were, for every situation. I want to know what would happen if all parties were to stop putting energy into their current actions. Where would the pieces fall? What is the natural arrangement of things? When you understand how far people are pushing in order to force a new balance it allows you to decide with more foresight. It allows you to understand if the current situation is sustainable or if there are unique outliers that can be discounted. So you might be able to reorient yourself in such a way that your action requires little or no energy - or perhaps even align yourself with some other motion that is on a similar trajectory in the moment.
Ultimately, the OODA Buddha must believe there is order in the universe and that certain laws of motion and energy are not all random and spontaneous. So it is important to have the context of history. That context gives perspective to the continua of wisdom and foolishness, of intelligence and stupidity, of faith and of reason, of virtue and viciousness, of industry and of sloth. Examination of all this might lead one to believe that humanity is doomed. I considered that option in The Pessimist’s Edge.
The Pessimist's Edge
As long as I have been writing here at Stoic Observations, I have emphasized what I consider to be a generally constructive outlook in the context of what to see, how to interpret it and what are practical actions that follow. Mostly, I’d say, this is done in the interest of individual mental health. My major
It turns out that I have not bothered to study any more of the pessimist John Gray. I think that if I were not a Taoist, but strictly a Stoic, then I would be more of a pessimist and cynic than I am. I simply don’t believe that the powers of certainty in this world are so correct that they foreclose our future. That includes the Definite Pessimism of the Chinese who have personal and institutional memories of mass starvation and cultural revolution. I don’t believe the Chinese can or will take over the world. So I am not a prepper, nor a particularly identifiable species of political hawk.
War is still the enemy. Humans continue to survive wars. So perhaps that’s all the pessimism we need to sustain. We work not to fall casually into kinetic conflict.
The Barbell Strategy
For the longest time, perhaps characterizing my own middle age, my primary quote was by John Boyd.
The most important thing in life is to be free to do things. There are only two ways to insure that freedom — you can be rich or you can you reduce your needs to zero.
I found a great deal of joy in reducing my needs to zero. Perhaps this is the reason why the story about the wealthy Roman Sextius who woke up first thing in the morning to ask if all of his ships had been lost at sea appealed to me in my first introduction to Stoicism.
“What evil has befallen one of my friends? What loss have I suffered? What ship has foundered?”
The OODA Buddha
Observes the balance of things, but not necessarily to seek competitive advantage
Orients himself to be settled but not carried away by energetic positions
Decides based on a presumption of natural order
Acts flexibly with self-improvement in mind
I taught this for years to would-be leaders at various levels in the technical/corporate world. How well the concept was grasped became one of the indicators on how well someone would succeed as a leader. The tendency was to run the OODA part without the loop and call it a day.
The multiplying factor is when one understands and rolls with all kinds of simultaneous OODA loops. There are long-term OODA loops. There can be loops that need to be completed in seconds. The time on nodes within loops can be long, short, or a combination. There can be loops within loops. The loop can go backward - where the decision is to go back and get better data and re-orient. Loops revolve around something. What is that "something?" Is "that" still there? If not, bail out of the loop because you've lost the center and are probably about to get your ass shot off.
My pedagogic was martial arts, specifically Aikido, and the belt color ranking. OODA and Done thinkers - white belt. Could improve if they wanted to but often don't. The master at threat or opportunity evaluation - black belt. Good with the model while recognizing their limits and where to improve. I think "looking for the center of gravity" and tracking the pieces are spot on in this regard.
I have to think some more on the Buddha part of this. I'm wondering if it elevates the model too far, takes it to a place where it isn't fit for purpose, so to speak. If I think back to the time I spent in retreat at various Buddhist monasteries, I was running all sorts of crazy loops while perched on my zafu, but OODA wasn't one of them.
Also, props for the still from "Crossroads" (1986) in "The Pessimist's Edge."
If we all could reduce our needs to zero, that would be a state of post-abundance. No more hunger and no more war as the Kanamits promised in To Serve Man (The Twilight Zone, Season 3, Episode 24) A nice aspiration short of being rich.