Our Public Shaming of Admiral Stockdale, Stoic Sage

James Bond Stockdale was inspired by Stoicism as a young man. He was inspired to the point that he memorized The Enchiridion by Epictetus, which was a good move because it would allow him to survive seven and a half years of brutal torture and emerge with his sanity.

Admiral Stockdale flew A-4 Skyhawks over North Vietnam. He was shot down, captured and tortured. At one point he slashed his own scalp with an improvised razor so that the North Vietnamese wouldn't be able to exploit him on television. Seven and a half years later he came home to teach philosophy at Stanford. If I had known then what I know now I might have applied to that august institution.

Here is his take on the experience of surviving as a POW. He could laugh about it. That's incredible. What an incredible human being. I think that he might be the closest thing to a Stoic sage we've seen in the modern age. In fact I think that he was a sage. I think that he earned the title.

Before I learned of Admiral Stockdale's Stoicism, and before I knew his history, I thought of him as a doddering old fool (to my great shame). I thought that because as a young man I watched him perform poorly in a vice presidential debate, and then I laughed as he was lampooned on Saturday Night Live by Phil Hartman. Now I've read a lot about Mr. Hartman. His friends loved him and said that he was a gentle, kind human being. I don't think that Mr. Hartman wanted to personally injure Admiral Stockdale (not that he could, if seven years of torture couldn't). Still, Phil Hartman wasn't fit to shine Admiral Stockdale's boots. Neither am I. This is a person who we should treat as the national hero that he was.

In this excellent article by Eric Black another comedian and SNL alumnus is quoted:

"Comedian Dennis Miller captured this small tragedy well, when he said:

"Now I know [Stockdale's name has] become a buzzword in this culture for doddering old man, but let's look at the record, folks. The guy was the first guy in and the last guy out of Vietnam, a war that many Americans, including our present president, did not want to dirty their hands with. The reason he had to turn his hearing aid on at that debate is because those f***ing animals knocked his eardrums out when he wouldn't spill his guts. He teaches philosophy at Stanford University, he's a brilliant, sensitive, courageous man. And yet he committed the one unpardonable sin in our culture: he was bad on television."

Admiral Stockdale wrote about Epictetus in "Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior." I can't seem to link to it but if you google the title it'll come up at the top of the list. It's well known in Stoic circles, so I'm not pioneering any new territory by posting the link here, but if you haven't read it do yourself a favor. It's improving.

Thank you for your service, Admiral Stockdale, and thank you for continuing to serve beyond your own lifespan.

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The image of a bust of Admiral Stockdale, by Master Chief Larry Nowell, is not public domain... I've put in a request to Mike Lambert at "I Like The Cut of His Jib" to use it... I can't imagine that he or Chief Nowell would have a problem with it, though.