Deserve victory

Meditation upon a Wizard’s Rule

I’ve previously quoted from Terry Goodkind’s Naked Empire; I’m doing so again. For those who haven’t read Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series—a) check it out, even if sword-and-sorcery fantasy isn’t your thing, and b) each book contains a Wizard’s Rule. Each Rule is a maxim with broad application and, often, many interpretations.¹ While each book generally explains and applies one interpretation of one Rule, the reader is tacitly invited to explore others.

This post contains spoilers.

The Rule in Naked Empire is “deserve victory”.

The main protagonist in the Sword of Truth series is Richard, a “war wizard”, which means exactly what it sounds like: he has magic powers and he kills a lot of people. During the course of Naked Empire, Richard starts to lose his powers. He believes it’s because of all the killing he does, so he tries to balance it out by not eating meat, hoping that this will restore his magic.

In fact, it was the other way around. Because he had come to think that all the killing was a bad thing and that he needed to atone for it, his powers started to fade; he no longer believed, deep down, that what he was doing was right. It wasn’t until he came to understand that everything he did, including the violence, was not only right but the only right choice under the circumstances—and stopped his atonement rituals, like not eating meat—that his powers came back.

So the primary meaning of “deserve victory” in this book is “use your mind to determine the right course of action, be sure of your own righteousness, and then stop second-guessing yourself”.

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Another interpretation is that we ought not to feel obligated to compensate the rest of the world for our own gifts. Yes, of course we should help the less fortunate when we can, as long as we don’t harm ourselves in the process. However, we do not owe anyone anything if we happen to encounter good fortune, any more than anyone else owes us if we encounter bad fortune.²

I’ve got a pretty good life. Some of it was pure luck, but I would say that most of it was luck that I, and my parents before me, made for ourselves. When an opportunity presented itself, I was in a position to take it.

• My father worked hard to get an education and a good job back in the USSR; when his then-employer needed someone to go to the US, my father was in a position to take that opportunity (and bring his family with him). Had he not been ready when the opportunity came up, I wouldn’t be living in the US right now.

• I was only vaguely aware of the Special Operations community when the opportunity to apply came up. But I had worked hard and excelled at my then-job, so my boss supported my application even though he didn’t have to. I had kept myself in good physical shape, even though I was working harder than I needed to—harder than most of my peers, many of whom only did enough to meet basic military fitness standards; so I made it through the physical screening while other applicants failed. If it hadn’t been for these and a few similar factors (which I won’t go into), I would have failed in my application, or would not have been able to apply at all.

My father didn’t know he would have a chance to move to the US. I didn’t know I’d be applying for a SOF job. We weren’t deliberately preparing ourselves for these opportunities, and neither were we offered opportunities that weren’t offered to anyone else. But when we had our shot, we were ready to take it whereas others were not.

Of course, a lot of other factors also had to come together to present those opportunities to us—many outside of our control. But neither my father nor I ever felt that we should turn down our respective opportunities when they arose, simply because our opportunities were the result of some twist of fate.

So another meaning of “deserve victory” is “know that you have been given what you’ve been given, and use it; it’s up to you to be worthy of the moment when it comes”.

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Bringing it back to The Sword of Truth…

The temptation, of course, is to think of myself as Richard—the strong, virtuous protagonist of the series. But just as Jules Winnfield struggled with Ezekiel 25:17, so did I have to figure out my place within the metaphor behind the Rule.

A friend and former colleague, in a conversation about my disillusionment with today’s military, asked if I didn’t feel a sense of duty to try and fix the system from the inside. The argument being that now that I’ve made it to a fairly senior rank and may actually be in a position to makes some changes, it is incumbent on me to try to fix the problems I see—for the benefit of all the junior personnel coming up behind me.

The image that occurs to me in response is that of an addict. The exact nature of the addiction doesn’t matter; the important trait here is the destructive power of the addict’s behavior. Friends and family desperately want the addict to recover—but if they enable his behavior, he’s just going to drink / gamble / smoke away everything they give him. The addict first has to decide, sincerely and completely, that he wants to recover; only then can friends and family truly help.

And it occurs to me that the addict is the DoD (or if you prefer, the government in general); America is the friends and family; and we—me, you, America’s young men and women—are the help that America so desperately wants to give.

Until the Sick Man of America hits rock bottom, realizes that he needs to change, and sincerely and completely resolves to make himself worthy of help—that help will and must remain out of reach.

I’ll throw in a couple more maxims:

1. Pain creates change. Until the DoD really feels the pain, it won’t be motivated to change.

2. Sometimes, you have to let the system break so you can fix it afterward. As long as we just slap on more duct tape to keep the machine rolling a little longer, we are denying the basic reality that the situation is untenable—and we’re only making the inevitable failure that much worse when it finally does happen.

To tie this to a specific situation: military recruiting is in the dumps and getting worse. The proper response from America is not to throw more of its sons and daughters at the military. No, the only rational and righteous response is to withhold our support until the military is once again worthy of our trust.

There is no guarantee of victory just because we are America. As a wise man once said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance³. Well, our vigilance is down, and we collectively need to wake the hell up or pass into history.

So the third and final meaning of “deserve victory” is “the universe makes no promises; you need to fight to prove your worth every day, because otherwise someone else will take your place—and it will be right that they do!”

And yes—I am, in fact, saying that the DoD doesn’t deserve me. Maybe I need to check my ego. But I think that it’s not just a matter of ego; it’s a matter of relative power. As one person, I can’t make meaningful change in an enormous organization that doesn’t itself want to change. My only hope—our only hope—is that enough of us say “no more!”

1. Words with multiple interpretation, especially prophecy, is a major theme in Sword of Truth.

2. For a deeper examination of this, see Faith of the Fallen, also from the Sword of Truth series.

3. https://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/01/eternal-vigilance-is-price-of-liberty.html