The Shall to Power - Creeds, Communication, and Culture Through a Linguistic Lens: QMN008
Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Friday, 3 May
(Today’s report is an 8 minute read)
BLUF: Words mean things, and in some cases they matter enough to consistently govern behavior. For things that absolutely must be done we have oaths. Oaths remove the element of choice - they’re about being bound by the power of openly spoken words. They still reflect and enforce obligation despite decades of surrounding relativism.
KS here. During a discussion about what separates military culture from corporate culture, Brady and I stumbled onto the topic of creeds and how there really isn’t a civilian counterpart (aside from, perhaps, The Nicene Creed). Businesses may have mission statements or lists of company values, but for most people, a job is something that you’re compelled to go to. As such, those carefully-constructed statements come off more like insipid platitudes, regardless of the original intent or sincerity. Moreover, because businesses tend to become overwhelmed with inefficient processes and bureaucratic nonsense – and that’s not to say the military doesn’t fall into the same traps – companies often fall glaringly and obviously short of their missions, thus further reducing said statements to ironic jokes. The military is different in that it’s 1) voluntary and 2) it possesses a period of cultural indoctrination – which includes rote memorization – that comparatively lengthy to even the most tedious corporate on-boarding process. Creeds, in short, serve to articulate a core set of collective cultural – and even tribal – values.
My interest in creeds has less to do with their inherent utility than with their uses of language, particularly when it comes to word choice. The words we choose to express something say a lot about what we value and how we think: case in point, the words “will” and “shall” as used in The Ranger Creed, written in 1974 by Command Sergeant Major Neal R. Gentry.
According to the Oxford Dictionaries, the decision to use “will” or “shall” to express the future tense hinges on the pronoun form. “The traditional rule,” the lords of language tell us, “is that shall is used with first person pronouns (i.e. I and we) to form the future tense, while will is used with second and third person forms (i.e. you, he, she, it, they).”
This isn’t entirely the case in The Ranger Creed. The word “will” is used nine times with the first person pronoun “I.” The word “shall: is used three times: twice with “I” and once in reference to what amounts to “it” (“My courtesy to superior officers…” in the 4th stanza). None of these uses, however, are incorrect. Oxford adds that “when it comes to expressing a strong determination to do something, the roles are reversed: will is used with the first person, and shall with the second and third.” More importantly, however, the words stem from etymological roots that express exceptionally different ideas, both of which provide a depth of meaning to the creed that isn’t especially transparent at first, though I think most people intuit it.
“Will” evolved, both as a noun and verb, from the Old English word willan or wyllan, which means "to wish, desire; be willing; be used to; be about to." It suggests a psychological state of prepared anticipation, of motive, and of aspiration. It very much reflects a volunteer mindset.
“Shall” comes from a very different place. Beyond being a future tense verb, “shall,” like “will,” is also an imperative, but a more potent and obvious one. Far more powerful than “you will” is “you shall.” If you’ve seen the Peter Jackson version of The Fellowship of the Ring, you’ll note that Gandalf’s imperatives as he meets the Balrog in combat are “go back to the shadows...you shall not pass!”
“Shall” is derived from the Old English sceal, which means “I owe/he owes, will have to, ought to, must,” suggesting a debt or obligation: a sealed and binding promise that transcends “I will,” because it demands more. In the Ranger Creed, those three “shalls” are demands and responsibilities – imperatives – created by vows sworn and owed, by sheer dint of belonging to the Ranger tribe within the Army’s larger culture, to:
Their fellow soldiers: “Never shall I fail my comrades.”
The Army/Regiment, including one’s superiors and peers: “My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress, and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.”
Victory: “Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle...”
Those things must be done: they’re oaths. They remove the element of choice. You already chose to volunteer: here are the incumbent responsibilities. Oaths aren’t about options: they’re about being bound by the power of openly spoken words.
In a world where words no longer seem to matter, it’s reassuring to know that those tasked with defending the country still find words that do. That’s because they make them mean something. (KSA)
Interested in linguistics? Check out James W. Pennebaker’s book The Secret Life of Pronouns and website of the same name.
APPROPRIATION DISCLAIMER: KSA would like to take this opportunity to remind you that he is not himself a veteran, despite some fluency in veteranese from growing up in a veteran neighborhood and having taken a couple years of veteran in high school. (BJM)
PERFIDIOUS POEMS: Google's poetry algorithm automates teen angst (1 min) What could be more narcissistically modern than uploading a selfie, “donating” a word, and then waiting with bated breath for a Google AI to generate a poem based on a "complex statistical model” fueled by 25 million words used by 19th century poets? Another example of how AI novelties continue to pave the way for the rise of benevolent robot dictators through cultural conditioning. (KSA)
TAKING OWNERSHIP: It Took Good Samaritans 2 Hours and $150 To Paint a Crosswalk That DC Ignored for 6 Months (4 min) Signs of hope for us as a people aren’t as rare as we think. “The problem is that we expect the government to fix these problems in the first place. Yet time and again, private citizens have shown they're much more adept at this type of thing. Consider the masked anarchists who took to the streets of Portland in 2017 to patch up potholes. (Amazingly, a transportation bureau spokesperson suggested they might be breaking the law.) And in 2018, Domino's answered the age-old question: Who builds roads in a libertarian society? The pizza chain helped fix roads in numerous states around the country.” (BJM)
SOMEONE JUST SAID THIS: The productivity pit: how Slack is ruining work (17 min) "To be more useful, workplace software will have to get much better at getting us the info we need — surfacing conversations on the same topic that may have happened months ago or helping you find the appropriate channels for your specific needs, for example — without us having to find it." Machine Learning tools are already accomplishing similar tasks in limited fashion all over the place. “Implementing training could require a whole new position, one where a person creates a rule book of how to act and then moderates behavior on workplace software. The person could be charged with deleting unused channels, setting up optimized settings, or reminding others of when work hours are for different teams.” So you’re saying…it takes discipline? (BJM)
IF YOU CAN’T DAZZLE WITH DEXTERITY: The Economy Is Booming, But Young Workers Are Miserable (4 min) “...the mood of employees is far from happy. In fact, the mental well-being of employees hit a five-year low in 2018. That’s what we found when we did a retrospective analysis of data from our digital mental health and well-being platform, Happify, examining almost half a million first-time users of the platform between December 2014 and January 2018 who identified themselves as being employed.” So you mean to tell me that your sample was drawn entirely from people who voluntarily downloaded an app intended to help people “overcome stress and negative thoughts” were stressed out and unhappy? And then you backed that up with studies that confirmed your bias, thus conveniently suggesting a utility for your app? Doesn’t sound like scientific method – and certainly not sound statistics, unless you’re of the “damned lies” school of stats – to me. (KSA)
F FOR EFFORT: Facebook is redesigning its core app around the two parts people actually like to use (5 min) That’s cool and all, but you know what’s not cool? Collecting the email contacts of 1.5 million users and exposing millions more to carefully-constructed Russian propaganda campaigns designed to destabilize western countries. (KSA)
WILL? OR COULD? How Wearable AI Will Amplify Human Intelligence: (6 min) “Arnav Kapur, a PhD student at MIT who leads the AlterEgo project, described their vision in a recent interview: “Speaking is not private, but you are in total control of it. Thinking is completely private, but sometimes you’re not in control of all your thoughts. We’re trying to make something that’s right in between those two ends of the spectrum, but that brings the best of both worlds.” When headlines like this talk about “human intelligence,” who is it that they’re referring to? This kind of technology will likely remain out of the reach of all but the very few who can afford access to it. Given the quote regarding one example, that may not be a bad thing. And scientists wonder why people accuse them of hubris and God complexes. (KSA)
UNSOLICITED ADVICE: From a meme I saw earlier this week: “My price is based on the value of my work, not your budget.” Brand those words on your heart. (KSA)
Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.
KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)