ON MORAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE

Steve at ERMB has already commented on the most recent post* by Wiggins at OSD, entitled “ Of Moral Resilience and Technical Resilience” where Wiggins wrote:

“There are two related ideas here. One way to understand them is as two aspects of resilience. The first issue is resilience on what Boyd would call the moral level. The second issue is resilience on a technical level. There is a complex feedback loop between these two aspects of resilience; it leads to both excitement and confusion. This is my attempt to explore that relationship. Be warned, my enthusaism might overwhelm my clarity.

Moral resilience is what Boyd focused upon late in his life and a topic that Chet Richards has expanded upon in Certain to Win. The issue they consider is why certain organizations have been able to consistently prevail against adversity. They have concluded that success depends upon maintaining internal cohesion while disrupting the cohesion of your adversaries. When Mark discusses the importance of consilience, I see him implicitly recognizing this. It is not sufficient to just bounce back quickly, because such a strategy is inherently reactive. It abdicates iniative, conceeding the most important factor to one’s competitors. “

Very much in agreement. Moreover, Wiggins direct reference to Colonel John Boyd’s ideas allows us to move the resilience ball further down the field from the organization or group (moral resilience) to the individual(psychological resilience). In Patterns of Conflict, Boyd summarized the “Essence of Moral Conflict” which relates directly to a group’s resiliency:

Essence of Moral Conflict

Negative factors

* Menace:

Impressions of danger to one’s well being and survival

*Uncertainty:

Impressions, or atmosphere, generated by events that appear ambiguous, erratic, contradictory, unfamiliar, chaotic, etc.

*Mistrust:

Atmosphere of doubt and suspicion that loosens human bonds among members of an organic whole or between organic wholes

Counterweights

*Initiative:

Internal drive to think and take action without being urged

*Adaptability:

Power to adjust or change in order to cope with new or unforeseen circumstances

*Harmony:

Interaction of apparently disconnected events or entities in a connected way

As a military theorist, Colonel Boyd was concerned primarily with collectives – the enemy, one’s own forces, the uncommitted civilian population – into which individuals and their behavior were perforce subsumed. However, Boyd’s elements of moral conflict and some of his other ideas can also help explain an individual’s psychological resiliency or lack thereof, being affected by extrinsic factors like social relationships and shared values.

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