John Boyd was a United States Air Force officer, most notable for developing the OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act), which has seeped into broad aspects of culture from law enforcement training, to business strategy, to “man” blogs. What has not seeped into popular culture is the fact that OODA is a peripheral, and largely misunderstood by-product of Boyd’s lifelong study in epistemology: a fascination with how we comprehend an uncertain world.
Boyd was
unconventional, both as a military officer and philosopher. He never wrote out
his philosophy in a single full-length work, but rather offered it in short
“briefings.” Because of this, much of Boyd’s work is freely available online. This
article engages with “Destruction and Creation,” Boyd’s nine-page
brief on how we form and maintain our relationships, ideas, and mental
frameworks of the world around us. To my knowledge, a theological evaluation of
Boyd has not yet been offered. This work takes a tentative step in that
direction.
Boyd states that a
basic desire of humanity is “the ability to act relatively free or independent
of any debilitating external influences.” The goal of human striving is to
increase the capacity for this free-independent action.[1] However, the
real world is one of uncertainty and limited resources. Rather than being a
given state of affairs, free-independent action is achieved with difficulty. If
we believe that we cannot attain it through our own efforts, humans will
collaborate, accepting some constraints on our free-independent action to
overcome a perceived greater barrier through cooperative effort.[2] Thus,
we have the basic conceptual impetus for families, corporations, nations, and
alliances. These cooperative organizations are in constant transition, as
individuals and groups reassess the current structure of their collaborative
relationships in regards to the free-independent capacity versus debilitating
constraint balance.[3]
Beyond the desire for
ever-increasing independence, a driving force behind the constant restructuring
of relationships, organizations, and even ideas is the fact that no such
organization of thought and life has the capacity to prove its own integrity
and consistency.[4] Relying
on Kurt Godel’s logic of whole numbers, Boyd shows that we cannot evaluate the
consistency of our conceptual structures with the tools contained within that
structure. We assume our logic makes sense because it correlates to reality,
and we assume our understanding of reality is accurate because our logic makes
sense.[5] To that
internal inconsistency, Boyd adds Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: as the
distinction between observer and observed decreases, so does the ability to
make accurate observations.[6] In
plain English, we can’t fix our dysfunction with our own dysfunction, and the
closer we are to our own mess the less likely we are to understand our own
mess.
If our relational and
conceptual structures remain closed, the attempt to make sense with tools that
cannot make sense creates growing entropy. Referring to the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, Boyd defines entropy as an increasing level of disorder paired with
a decreasing capacity for work and action. Left to its own devices, a system
attempting to evaluate itself will experience increasing entropy until its
structure is no longer sustainable and it fractures into a chaotic cluster of
its constituent parts.[7] As Boyd
explains it, the result of trying to fix ourselves with ourselves is hopeless,
“Unless some kind of relief is available, we can expect confusion to increase
until disorder approaches chaos - death.”[8] We are
left with the options of self-destruction or the infusion of new material and
ideas from an outside source.
The power of Boyd’s
work is its scale-ability. The potency and structure of the argument remains
equally valid whether applied at the microscopic, individual, or cosmic level.
What Heisenberg discovered about the inability to accurately observe atoms with
atoms is equally true of my personal inability to address my arrogance with my
own arrogance. The basic principle that a married couple would be wise to seek
financial advice to address their spending habits is equally applicable to a
government attempting to adjust its economy.
Although Boyd does
not explicitly make the observation, his thoughts on the constant creation,
destruction, and recreation of relationships and thought patterns exposes the
reality that free-independent action is a myth. None of us, no person,
corporation, nation, or celestial configuration of bodies, operates free from
constraints placed upon it by its relationships with others. Cognitively, there
is no such thing as a “free thinker.” We all operate within the ideas and
structures given by others. Within this reality, the human outlook is somewhat
futile. We are destined to constantly create, destroy, and recreate
relationships and ideas in the quest for what cannot be obtained. This applies
not only to the internal process within the system, but to the larger goal and
practice of the system itself. If we merely strive for mythical “freedom” over
and over again, eventually that striving falls apart.
The biblical book of
Isaiah makes the same observation. In the 6th century BC, the Assyrian empire
expanded westward, toppling state after state; eventually, conquering Israel,
much to the horror of its southern neighbor, Judah. The rulers of Judah watched
the approaching juggernaut with increasing anxiety. As peer after peer
succumbed, Judah found itself cast back and forth between a variety of possible
alliances: with neighbors against Assyria, with Assyria as a vassal state,
finally with Egypt in rebellion against Assyria. As each proposed structure
fell apart, and Judah’s leaders struggled to create a new alliance, Isaiah mocked
the effort, and the supposed wisdom which lay behind it. Isaiah 29:14-15 and
30:3-5 read:
Therefore, once more
I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder,
the wisdom of the
wise will perish,
the intelligence of
the intelligent will vanish.
Woe to those who go
to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord,
who do their work in
darkness and think,
‘Who sees us?’ ‘Who
knows us?’
But Pharaoh’s
protection will be to your shame,
Egypt’s shade will
bring you disgrace.
Though they have
officials in Zoan and their envoys have arrived in Hanes,
everyone will be put
to shame because of a people useless to them,
who bring neither
help nor advantage,
but only shame and
disgrace.
Isaiah 29:14-15;
30:3-5 (NIV)
The attempts by the
wisest in Judah to create secret alliances, the attempts to concede to
acceptable constraints to achieve desired free-independent action, are
foolishness, the equivalent of hiding in a hole and believing no one can see
them. Judah’s efforts to move outside of their collapsing system and bring
fresh life from Egypt fail, because Egypt is also part of the failing system.
Boyd’s thoughts are scale-able.
Entropy is not only an individual, organizational, or geo-political reality;
entropy is a universal reality. We do not escape it by reaching outside of our
current systems, we only delay it. We create small organized structures within
a massive system trending toward chaos and death. This is Isaiah’s point. Judah
was correct in understanding that it could not survive on its own terms. No one
can. Judah failed by looking within the current geo-political configuration for
a remedy, when God, who exists outside of that configuration, was offering
assistance.
The universe is a
closed system bound by entropy. Confusion, chaos, and disorder will increase.
The capacity for work and action will decrease. Attempts to resolve the
problems of the system, no matter how brilliant from the human perspective, are
foolish bumbling. A closed system cannot resolve itself. It needs external
intervention. From a theological perspective, we have seen just such
interventions throughout history. The structuring of matter in the phrase “Let
there be light;” or divine intervention transforming a race of slaves into a
nation. Most notable is the paradigm shifting incarnation, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ which subverts the human calculus surrounding power,
life, death, and planes of existence; inviting us to embrace the constraints of
the Gospel in order to achieve free-independent action as servants of one who
exists outside of the closed system.
[1]Boyd, John R. 1976. “Destruction and Creation,” 1.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a3add7e3df28d9fbff4501/t/58a4a32ce4fcb5d8f00b7243/1487184684871/Destruction+and+Creation_3+Sep+1976.pdf.
[2]Boyd, “Destruction and Creation,” 1.
[3]Boyd, “Destruction and Creation,” 1.
[4]Boyd, “Destruction and Creation,” 4–5.
[5]Boyd, “Destruction and Creation,” 5.
[6]Boyd, “Destruction and Creation,” 5–6.
[7]Boyd, “Destruction and Creation,” 6–7.
[8]Boyd, “Destruction and Creation,” 7.
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