Stoicism As A Warrior Philosophy: William Spears On Morality And Military Life

Today, I sit down with William Spears, an active-duty Navy commander, former enlisted sailor, submarine officer, and author of the upcoming book Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy. 

Mr. Spears shares his journey from enlisting just months before 9/11, to serving on submarines as an officer, to becoming an executive officer responsible for leading and shaping command culture. His story combines experience in nuclear power, submarine operations, and philosophy—offering a unique perspective on military life and leadership.

In our conversation, Mr. Spears and I discuss the challenges of Navy bureaucracy, shipyard culture, and the mental health struggles service members face in high-pressure environments. He opens up about his time as an XO, where he balanced accountability, morale, and mission success, while also emphasizing the importance of communication and transparency with the crew. We also examine the culture of “hurry up and wait,” the ripple effects of poor processes, and how good leadership can prevent burnout, misconduct, and declining morale.

Mr. Spears dives into the philosophy of stoicism—what it really means beyond social media clichés—and explains how its principles apply to military leadership, mental health, and everyday life. He highlights Vice Admiral James Stockdale’s legacy, the connection between stoicism and cognitive behavioral therapy, and how philosophy can equip service members to face challenges with resilience. 

https://www.amazon.com/Stoicism-Warrior-Philosophy-Insights-Morality/dp/1636246230

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm here with Mr. Whiskey, but not as always. Is this actually a couple of nukes nuke power, as we like to say when we pt It is a couple of nukes. I've got another nuclear operator here and uh, he didn't get the memo to wear the, uh, mock turtleneck sweater, which I only do when I record with other nukes because, um.

I don't know who, who in the military one day said we need to add mock turtlenecks to the uniform. 'cause you wear it with the camouflage and then you just have, it doesn't make sense. But, uh, it's, uh, it's about 565 ranking when I'm wearing this for those who want to do the conversion. But, um, yeah, we're here, we're gonna get into a lot of stuff.

We're gonna get into some nuke power, as in the nuclear community in the Navy. Talk about some of the mental health stuff, the military lifestyle. Get into some submarine stuff, which I love talking submarines. I almost went on a submarine just as, just as people will tell me they almost enlisted. I say I almost went on a submarine.

And so yeah, we're here with someone who did actually go on a submarine. And Mr. William Spears, great to have you here. We're, we're gonna get into a lot and I'd love for you to just give a brief overview about yourself as we begin here. Thank you so much, Mr. Whiskey. But first, do you, do they really say nuke power when you PT now?

Is that, is that a thing? So. So some people will, right? What happens is you get, you get to nuke school and like the first a PT, you've got a chief in charge and he reads all the things you're supposed to say and then one of you gets picked to be in charge and you don't say that again. But we would say, oh my goodness, I can't believe I'm gonna say this.

When you would swap, if you were doing an exercise in one direction and then you had to go in the other direction, you would say like, who ya witch swoosh? Like you had to say the stupidest stuff like pt, but I remember good grief, what is the world coming to? Yeah. It was be like, um, we always had some kind of stupidest thing going on, you know, like every time our RDC and bootcamp would make us do something, we'd say, well, petty officer killers need sleep too.

And, you know, stuff like that. And, um, yeah, we had, um. We would do, we had our nuclear gang signs that we would do at each other and stuff like that. Yeah, right hand, right hand rule man. Yeah. All used to do gang sign. And, um, I gotta say, I real quick ask you to introduce yourself and here I am on tangent, but the power thing became like a, no one wanted to say it right?

Because whenever you try to like do some kind of cool morale thing, most people hate it. And, um, especially 'cause it, people found new power, very corny. Um, and I won't, I kind of thought it was funny, you know, it used to be kind of like the model of the show for, for a while. And, um, we were in the hangar bay for an all hands call and each division would like cheer and shout something.

You know, like aviation guys would go screaming when the captain called into division and reactor all agreed. When the captain calls on us, not a word will be said. We want everyone to know that we are overworked, we are tired, we are underpaid, and we hate our lies. Nuke life is not it. And the captain calls on us, he goes, reactor.

And the whole hangar bay is just silent. And so of course I scream at the top of my lungs, nuke power, and it just echoes throughout the whole hangar bay. And everyone turns and looks at me like, you gotta be kidding me. But I, I couldn't help myself. I love it. You know what? I don't care. You know, people, there's so many things in the military that people, you broke ranks man.

Yeah. People just like get, uh, we were standing at ease. Yeah. You know, people get, so, I don't know. People are just like, too, there's a lot of ego going on in the military. There's a lot of like, I don't know. You look at the amount of sailors who don't do Mando fun events or don't take advantage of the MWR because of their masculinity, and it's just really dumb.

We'll get into that conversation, but. Mr. Spears, please. Who are you? All right. Well, before we get too far down track, I, you know, I, I, first thing I need to say is I'm just here as Will Spears, you know, like, uh, I am not speaking on behalf of the Navy, you know, and all opinions here are my own, uh, even though I am actively serving, you know, anything I say doesn't constitute a, you know, endorsement of a service or a hyperlink or anything like that.

Uh, you know, if I say Nickelback sucks, it's, it's, it's my opinion, uh, even though it's a scientifically proven fact. Um, anyway, so I am, uh, I am a active duty, uh, commander in the submarine force. Uh, I am after my XO tour. Uh, you know, I hope to be a CO someday, but like right now I'm on Sure. Duty after xo. I am.

Um. Uh, I'm prior enlisted, so I enlisted in the Navy right after, uh, uh, graduating high school, uh, before September 11th, uh, in 2001. It was in June, June of 2001. So I was actually in a school whenever, uh, the September 11th attacks occurred, which was a very formative time as it was interesting. So, uh, and I've kind of lived by the rule of just apply for everything and anytime the Navy offers to send me to school, uh, I take it.

And so I've been to a lot of school, but, uh, you know, I was a, um, I ended up going back, coming back to, you know, I was a new electrician like you, uh, when I, I went through and basically finished, uh, finished prototype and then, you know, went to the academy after that, uh, went and did engineering from there and came back into nuclear power.

And, uh, I ended up, um. Yeah, I, I went submarine Forest, did a, uh, Jo tour and a, a fast attack outta Guam and did a webs tour on a fast attack out of Hawaii, and then XO on a, uh, SSBN out of Washington. And that's, that's basically been my, my career. I also do a lot of writing on the side, and so I'm in the process of publishing a book right now on stoicism, uh, that's ba basically for a military audience, but it's a pretty academic kind of investigation of, uh, it's a, it's a deep dive into stoicism, how it applies to military service books called Stoicism as a Warrior philosophy.

Yeah. So when you say you were enlisted first in, uh, military terms, what that means, ladies and gentlemen, is that he's one of the good ones. He's one of the good guys and, uh, oh, it doesn't mean that I'm totally the enemy. Yeah. And, um. Speaking of schooling, you mentioned a lot of schooling. I am an alumni, uh, a DD two 14 alumni.

Yeah. And what that means is everything I say, I gotta give my disclaimer, uh, is bitter and salty and, uh, not always positive. And it is just, you reminded me of opportunities, right? There are a lot of opportunities for education in the military, and I remember they had mentioned like, stay 21 and other opportunities to go to college and go officer side, nuclear officer.

And I just, you know, I was never like, no, no, no. And then prototype. I was like, you know what? I, I do want, because I wanted to do 20 when I was in prototype, I wanted to do 20 years and, and most people who listen to the show know why I chose not to do 20 years. And it was actually because of prototype stuff that happened.

But at that time I was like, super, who ya, Navy spirit, like let's do this new power. And when I went to the admin guy in the window, I was like, Hey, I know I missed a, there was like a meeting a week ago on like stay 21 and stuff. And I, I, you know, I happened to be on leave. I went home and surprised my sister for her birthday.

I'd really like to get that paperwork and caught up on stuff I'd really like to apply. And there was plenty of time to do so. And the guy at the window was just like, well, why didn't you do it in a school? Why didn't you do it in power school? Why did you wait till now? And I was like, well that's really none of your concern.

There's a window right now to apply and I wanna apply. He's like. I, he just like gave me so much a attitude for no reason. And this wasn't new. This was new. Yeah. And you just, you just gotta do it. You just, you gotta spam all those programs. I'm like, your job is to gimme the paperwork, not ask questions.

Like I just gimme the wonderful Yeah. You're gonna meet people like that. Like whatever. That's everywhere you go. Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to share that 'cause I've never been able to vent that out on the podcast. Yeah. Um, no. Yeah. Let it out, man. Trust me. I'm sure you've had your experience with yeoman's and, and admin stuff because, um, one time I was stuck in personnel for like an hour trying to get into nips and the, one of the Yeomen had put a little clear piece of tape over the chip on the cat cart of my yeomen.

And so he could not get it to work, but he didn't see the piece of tape nor did I, 'cause it was just this little, it was just playing a joke on him. Yes. But it cost me my whole afternoon in my lunch and it wasn't even to prank meat. You know, yeoman, I feel like personnel is always at lunch or pranking each other 'cause a different time.

A Youngman was like, where's my cat card? And someone hands him a giant block of ice in a bucket and his cat card's frozen in the middle of it. Oh man. They filled it with water, put his cat card on top, froze it, and then filled it on water again and froze it again. Now, so one of the, one of the things that I figured out, one, you know, once I kind of got to the XO level and you're trying to run a ship, is that there are certain divisions, uh, in the ship that are, are there for customer service or have a, have a huge customer service role.

The yeomen are the, are the biggest version of that, but also supply supply department or supply division, or LS division, whatever you wanna call 'em on ship. Those are your allies. They'll get you stuff. If you do favors for them, they'll scratch your back. The, and the, the, its too, you know, its, and for certain divisions, you know, radio, uh, you know, or communications, anyone where you to do your job are depending on this other division to do your job.

Those guys, how well they're doing their jobs of, of taking care of other people has a huge impact on morale, uh, on the, on the crew. And so, you know, at the leadership level, you really gotta pay attention and make sure that those guys kind of inculcate a, a, a customer service culture. Because if you just let it be, you know, and, and you got one grumpy dude that doesn't wanna process people's paperwork or wants to give people crap every time he does that'll, that'll seriously like.

Effect a lot of people's quality of life and, and you know, dramatically, especially when you're underway and everything's kind of magnified and the emotions, the emotions get crazy, you know? So that's, that's a big, big deal. I, fortunately, I've had, I had a really good experience with my, my yeomen. Uh, as, as xo you really, really depend on the, on the yeomen a lot, and they can totally make or break you.

And, uh, I had, I had some really good ones. So, you know, I lucked out there, you know, for, for me as well, it was, we were in shipyard and so personnel and all these other offices were never there. It's like, you know, chief would be like, did you get it done today? They weren't here today. I'll check again tomorrow.

You check again tomorrow, they're at lunch. You check the next day they're at the dentist. Like it's just somehow, yeah, that's unsat like, whenever, whenever that's happening have to, a lot of them early in shipyard, you just go home, like aviation left at 10:00 AM every day. Sometimes, sometimes 12 was a long day for them.

Meanwhile, you've got Nuke staying there till 2000. You know, it just. That shipyard Freedom can kind of, um, when that bug bites some of the, of the divisions, it's like they're always going home. And then it got, it got to the point, in some places I've seen it where division was really not pulling their weight during shipyard.

And then you get out to sea and the port call gets canceled because this division failed their test. 'cause they were goofing off in Shipyard. Like that happened to my friend. They were supposed to go to Hawaii. Oh. Aviation was not ready at all. They failed their flight test because, and then guess what?

We knew that aviation was leaving 1,000 or 12 in the afternoon every day. You never saw them pass 1300. So that directly affected everyone later on. So it's just, it is, but you know what the worst part is? You can't control other divisions. Right? You can barely. Handle stuff in your own division. That's right.

Sometimes it's like you, you, you, you handle what you can control and, and that's, that's where your mental health is gonna be found. Yeah. You know, is doing that well. Yeah. So don't expect the haz, hazmat, uh, office line to not be along because Yeah, I know at least for our ship, if we sent someone to get something from hazmat, like paint or chemicals or something, they'd be gone for like an hour, you know, or more just waiting in line.

You know, it's, it's rough when people are never, I remember like one day we, we needed to go to the ship store to get something and, or, or maybe it was even the barber shop and they weren't open on time, and then they gave us attitude when they showed up late, they're like, why are you here on time so early, relax, shipmate, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, well, okay, well we're reactor and we've been working since midnight or 5:00 AM and it's like, this is the milit. Like I did get into a big beef with one of the barbers or like the next door people on the ship because it's like. This isn't like you're walking casually, oh, I just run a shop on the ship.

It's like, yes, but it's a moving part of a huge system of a billion dollar system, right? And everyone relies on one another, right? It's like, what is it? One team, one fight. As much as I hate that saying sometimes that's also very true and it's like all my stuff has to be done on time and it's just ridiculous to not see other divisions be held accountable sometimes.

'cause like I know at least in reactor, like if it wasn't done on time, like there are major consequences. Not just reactor side, but just like command wise and like what's going to happen to to you, right? You're going to get talked to at minimum, right? Meanwhile, these guys are just showing up to the barbershop or, or the other shop or whatever it is.

Sometimes personnel, nonchalantly, it's like you've got a line of people waiting and now all their stuff is pushed back. So now their watch bill, their maintenance is pushed back and then their, yeah, it's funny. Watch is pushed back now. Someone else who was standing in the watch didn't get relieved on time.

Like there's a big ripple effect. Yeah, the, the way you mentioned accountability, like that, that was a big leadership lesson for me kind of coming up in the ranks. 'cause like, as a, as a jo you think like, man, whenever I make it up to a, you know, higher rank, I, I, I, you know, I, I don't believe in mass and, you know, I don't want to ever punish anyone.

And you think that that's gonna be your route to high morale. And it's the opposite because you're gonna have dirt bags, you know, hundred percent. And whenever there's a dirt bag being a dirt bag and everyone can see it and they get away with it and, and we say, ah, let's give 'em a second chance. Ah, let's give 'em a fifth chance.

Ah, you know, and I don't wanna really want to do it. Uh, we don't really wanna punish him, you know, he means, well everyone. That is doing their job right. Gets pissed off. And, and you know, ultimately they wanna live in a just world. You know, people want to, to know that they can come and do their jobs and that people who are not doing their jobs are gonna, there's gonna be some, some kind of accountability there.

And so getting over your, you know, uh, aversion to conflict or aversion to negativity is kind of a necessary part of growing up as a leader is being able to, to get over those natural human, human inclinations. So, you know, as a, as a, as a young officer, I, you, you look at it, you think that leadership is all just social skill and being able to, you know, get along with everyone and make everyone like you.

And that's not gonna work for very long. And if you're not effective and things are falling apart because you're not holding people accountable or not running the schedule right. They're not gonna like you either. 'cause their lives are gonna suck, you know? Yeah. So that, that's a, that was a big kind of growing point for me growing up as a leader there.

I actually really appreciate that perspective because I think, you know, we, we do definitely judge harshly how leadership is handling things. And trust me, I've seen a lot of, uh, terrible leadership, but I really like your point of, right, if you let people get away with stuff, you're too lenient. It does have that huge ripple effect and affect everyone.

And that, that was the thing too, that like really pissed off. All the sailors and shipyard were that. The shipyard workers, so many of them were always sitting around on their phone eating a sandwich, talking about disability and divorce, and it's like, we can't do our maintenance until these people work, but we can't poke them.

We're not in charge of them. Right. Yeah. And then it's like, where are their leaders? We don't know. It's like they got their own custom bathrooms with thick toilet paper by the, by the way, we had the thinnest toilet paper mill made by, by blind people. Like actually quite literally, skill craft made by blind and then.

Surface side. The, uh, shipyard workers had their own portable bathroom on the ship and they had the thick toilet paper. They had a good toilet paper. It's amazing the things that are like symbolic and will make all the difference in the world and just really piss people off if you're, if you don't, if you don't pay attention to it.

Yeah. And the, the, one of the things that I, I've observed, uh, kind of growing up is, is that generally leadership is that it's very rare that someone's actually nefarious and, and actually evil. Uh, you know, you have your nefarious or overly lazy people, you have your bad leaders, but, uh, at most people. Are fundamentally good and the effects of bureaucracy are, are kind of a dehumanizing effect.

And so as a, as a enlisted sailor, I, I'm looking at officers and ah, these damn officers and their academy rings and their, and their, you know, big citadel ring judgment and their, their haughtiness and all this thing. And then you become an officer and you're, you're like, well, I don't want anyone to think that of me and neither do most of the other officers.

You, you, you'll have the one smug guy who ruins it for everybody. Mm-hmm. But most, most people, you're just, you're just trying to do your job. And, and, and then, you know, as an, as a, as a junior officer, I'm looking and I'm, I'm thinking, oh, those senior officers, they're such jerks. You know, I'm never gonna be like that.

And then you get, you get to that level and you're, you're trying to run a ship and you're trying to keep everyone happy and you're trying to, to, to, and you, you realize that if the ship is not achieving its purpose, it's not doing its job, then, then life is gonna suck real bad. Uh, squadron's gonna send all these people down.

They're gonna send a lot of help. The inspectors are gonna come, you're gonna fail inspections, and then you're gonna get all this extra help. And it's gonna be awful for everyone. And everyone's morale is gonna suffer. And so you, you've got these, these tight tightrope to walk and then. But I can, when I'm a senior officer on a ship and I'm looking out at the, the, the Pentagon.

Oh, those people in dc they're so awful. They don't, they don't fund the thing that I think is important. The thing that I want, and now guess where I work? I work at the Pentagon. Yeah. And I, what do I do? I look at spreadsheets all day, and I look at, I look at how expensive everything is, and I work in a, a part of the Pentagon.

You know, I, I work for civilians. Um, I'm just a, uh, uh, one of the uniforms that's kind of sprinkled around the office. But what my, my office does is we cut funding to stuff that, that, uh, shouldn't be funded and give it to us. Stuff that should be, and that's, those are like really hard decisions to make.

Really what we do is we put together recommendations that they, they go all the way up to the, you know, the deputy and the, the secretary, and they make the decisions. But the, the point is that at all these levels are human beings. Are doing their best with their, with their, uh, what incentives they have in front of them and what they, they think is their job to do.

And you're gonna have your, uh, occasional nefarious actor, but usually what's at fault are the, you know, the dehumanizing aspects of bureaucracy and just the complexity of the organization. I wish I heard what you said, but there was that one nefarious officer in my mind who would purposely get in your face and demand to be saluted.

And so, oh, that did not actually happen. My, my former ship bait was on the fan tail, the back of the aircraft carrier. This an outdoor space. And, uh, he was actively on a phone call after working hours. And this officer walks out and he glances over, but he's on the phone, he's looking away. Officer literally walks over, cuts between him and the railing to get in his face, and he says, you're really not gonna salute me.

And my friend was so pissed and he wouldn't always tell this story because like, I knew the officer too because, um, he walked in one time and I was at a watch station and I had just sat down. Like, we literally, like the guy I relieved was walking out and I had just sat down and he um, he looked at me, he was like, oh, sleeping on watch.

I guess you want to go to Mast. And I was like, what? I just sat down like my, I don't like, and he was always like going around like one goes and then, you know, saying we had a ma on the ship who thought he was a Marine, you know, cut all his hair off, was like, stand outta attention and yell the sailor's creed right now.

I'm a ma, you know, and he actually got put onto the ma mean Facebook page that my ship made of all the. Hoy, Toti, you know, MAs who were just over the top. So, wow. Look, there was plenty of great one. These, these are some real winners that, that, that you've encountered. Now, were most people like that? No. No.

Of course. Like I said, couple, right? So they're like, these are the people that stick with you, you know? And they, and I, I guarantee you, these people, like all the other people around are seeing and just rolling their eyes saying like, oh, there he goes again. He's gonna get, every other officer I knew was like.

We walk away and try not to get saluted. Uh, because yeah, so, so that's the thing. This is the thing, like there's all these little anecdotes about the, the salute and like, like anyone particularly desires to be saluted, like it's a pain. You know, once you, you know, once you, once you go from being enlisted to officer, you go from saluting about one in every four people to saluting, literally everyone you pass and it's a pain.

You know, what's the pain? And so if I'm, if I'm walking, you know, up the, up the. Path or something, and a guy's like looking down at, at something, looking away or looking at his phone or something, I'm like thinking like, please notice that I'm here and salute me so that I don't have to say anything to you because if I don't say anything to you and you don't salute me, I'm gonna get crap from the master chief that's behind me.

And it says, Hey sir, you know, you're really supposed to enforce the standards, you know, or some crap, like, yeah. Like, I don't wanna deal with all this. Like, I just, it's a pain, you know? Yeah. It's, I'm not, I don't feel personally disrespected. I just, you know, I, I don't want to deal with it. Well, and that's, that's the thing too, you find, uh, you talk about personally disrespected, uh, there's a lot of things that are taken personally in the military that, um, aren't personal, obviously.

No. That's not even just the military man. That's, that's life. That's everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, um, we could talk about workplace culture forever, but I, I, I will say, you know, at nuke school, when I went through, uh, the officer's lunch was a different time than ours. And so when all the officers were standing in line to get back into the school building, all enlisted would walk out.

They would purposely salute the officers. 'cause like when they were all standing in line, most of the higher ups were like, it's fine, you don't have to salute them. They were like, no. They wanted to make every single officer salute. They would make sure they stopped and saluted everyone. And it would be, they'd be like, good morning, sir.

You know, like super obnoxious about it. Yeah. And we have one guy who would be, he, he had like read through the rule book and found out that you could say aloha as a salute, uh, because it was like allowed in, in Hawaii basically. So he'd be like, aha, sir. And it'd be like 1:00 AM in the morning. And, and of course no one knows that.

So you're gonna have the one officer that's like, what? You can't say Aloha. And then he's gonna pull out, you know, and then they pull out the, of course he's a nuke. He's got the manual in his and you he is got the reference in his pocket. Yeah. He's got the photographic memory. Yeah. Yeah. Well that's, that's the nuke way actually here on page, you know.

And so, um, yeah, leadership lessons. We've, we've brought out up a, a few times and you talked about. Yeah, kind of. The grass is always greener slash you understand the, it's all about, you know, when I was going through the Navy, they always said like, perception is everything. You know that. Yeah. Like truth matters.

But you know, perception comes first in the military. Especially if you're leader sees you doing something that seems like you're not supposed to. Right. Of course they're immediately gonna reprimand you and then whatever it may be. And so talk about being an xo, which could you kind of explain that position for, for civilians or people in other branches who don't know what, what that means and like how high ranking that is.

Yeah, well, I mean, other branches have XOs and they're generally whatever your organization is, the XO is the second in command usually. Uh, and, and, you know, you've got, you're gonna have a commanding officer and you're gonna have an executive officer right under that person whose job is, is you're not responsible for any one specific department.

You're kind of responsible to execute whatever the, the commanding officer wants. So in addition to being the second in command, you know, responsible to step up at any moment and kind of interpret what the CO wants or, or, or step in his place if, if you need to, you also have, uh, all these administrative duties that basically any administration that is at a command level that needs to be handled by the organization, which in our case we're in the Navy.

So it's a, it's a ship, uh, any administration that needs to be handled at the, at the level of the commanding officer, it all goes through the xo. And so all of the. Personnel, admin, all the medical concerns, all the, uh, you know, uh, disciplinary concerns, all that stuff is kind of in your, in your, in your bag of stuff to deal with.

So it's a ton of, uh, it, like every piece of paperwork comes through you, but, uh, you're, you're also, you have this huge piece and kind of setting the tone and communicating, uh, to the command kind of the priorities and what. You know, you don't get to set the priorities as the xo that you can certainly influence them.

But if, if the CO wants to go one direction, you want to go another, you know, you go behind a closed door and you say, Hey, hey Captain, this is what I think we should do. And sometimes you get your way, sometimes you don't. But when you come out, you, you're, you're in alignment and then you're gonna execute.

And, uh, that's why it's called the executive officer, 'cause you, you execute the commands direction. So, uh, it, but it, it's basically the second in command, you know, so Denzel Washington, you know, and, and, uh, Crimson Tide and, and yes, all executive officers are as good looking as Denzel Washington. It's a pretty much a rule.

So. How was your relationship with the captain, where you were, the xo? Did you have a lot of disagreements? Were you two kind of on the same page? And if you had disagreements, what did you kind of learn or what did you implement to kind of be on the same page? Yeah, dude, I was so lucky because, uh, my CO and I were diametrically opposed and personality type, but we all, we, we figured that out and we just happened to get along really well.

So, those two things, you know, you can, you can have a personality conflict or you can recognize. You know, opposite strengths and, uh, and, and get along and find a way to make it work. So I'm, I was a weapons officer and I was just a very, what was it? You, you could say I was a very wey weps. You know, I, I'm just very, like, I'm into, I'm into combat.

I'm into killing stuff. I want to talk about tactics. I don't want to talk about the plant, you know, and I, I want to talk about tactics and operations and training and, and just, and I'm, I've got a lot of personality. I want to interact with the sailors and everything. My CEO was like a nukes, nuke, you know, just super nuclear.

He just wanted to talk about what the reactor plant manual said. And if we were talking, you know, about tactics or, or talking about what's gonna be for dinner, he wanted to talk about what the reactor plant manual said. And, and that's just the kind of dude he is. Okay. I get what you're saying. And, uh.

Just very, but we figured out that, uh, I, I was particularly good at delivering certain messages to the crew and communicating, kind of translating. Uh, if, if there was something that he, he was, he, it was a priority of his, but he was struggling to, to get it out in the way that the crew, you know, that would resonate with the crew.

I'd, I'd say like, Hey, I, captain, I can see that, that that's gonna, that's gonna piss people off if we say it the wrong way. Like, I'd like to deliver that message. And you'd be like, yeah, you, you'd be great. Great for that. I'm sure you'll, you'll, you'll handle that. Well, you know, I really believed a lot in communicating.

Uh, more than was necessary and making it clear that it was important to communicate everything that I could basically, uh, you know, crew, I'm gonna tell you everything I know about our schedule that I'm allowed to tell you. And I will, you know, my door's always open and if you wanna just talk about freaking working out or playing video games, like I want to talk to you, like let's talk and, uh, you know, I will tell you everything I know when I know it as soon as I can, and making sure that the crew understands that and, you know, basically do it and let the English see you do it.

As William Wallace says, you know, making sure that they see that it, it is important to me to communicate to them, uh, that I think makes people feel valued. You know, their opinions are valued and, and, and their, that, that makes them feel respected. And I, I think that was very important. Yeah. You know, you talk about, so I'm, I'm sorry.

You, you asked like, how, you know, how do we handle disagreements? Disagreements, you know, we'd go behind a closed door and I'd say like, Hey, captain, you know, I think we're going the wrong way on this. You know, I, I, I, I don't think that this is what we should do. Uh, or I, I don't think this should be the priority.

And sometimes I'd win and sometimes I'd lose. And after the fact, sometimes it'd turn out that I was right. And sometimes it turned out that I was wrong. And you know, you never want a nuke to be have the, uh, I told you so party. Then they, well, so that's, that's one thing that, you know, I, I never would do.

And he would never do either, you know, because I mean, ultimately he, you know, he, he, when he loses, you lose, and when you lose, he loses. Okay. Yeah. Once a play, and, you know, we learn, but, you know, I'm, I'm never gonna play. I told you so because, you know, he, he, he, he has the right to be wrong. And that's, that's one of the things about, you know, whoever's in command has the right to be wrong and you gotta execute, you know, uh, unless it's an unlawful order, uh, or violates reactor safety or something like that.

You've, you have, you need to execute. And, and that, that's just how the organization runs well, and that's what ultimately makes everyone function better and makes 'em happier. So you just gave me my next t-shirt idea, walk and reactor safety violation. I'm gonna make that a t-shirt, but, um, yeah. You know, well, I gotta say.

Were you that kind of guy who loved General Quarters, you're like, let's do it. Let's run all the drills. Let's like act like we're, you know, under attack, let's do firefighting and stuff. Like were you, when you talk about loving tactics in combat and that kind of stuff, did you love like initiating like that?

Um, you know, like physically doing stuff, like going through the drills. Yeah, so, so as XO for drills, uh, you have a special role as the, the CO is gonna stay in, and I don't know if carriers are anything like this, but on a, on a, on a, on a submarine, like everyone's a firefighter and the CO is the one guy who, like, his job is to go to control and just be in control and, and, and make sure the ship's safe from that standpoint.

And the XO always goes to the scene. And so fire drills were just became, I got really good at putting on A FFE fast, you know, and, and, uh, and going and clumping through with my, with my, uh, you know, like Darth Vader going, you know. But, uh. Basically drill days were always hard on me, but they were, they were definitely fun.

But the thing about the drill days is that you don't just say like, alright, let's go run drills now. Like, you gotta plan that crap. And it's a lot of work to plan it, to do, to do it well. Uh, because the, at least on a submarine, like you're, the safety of your ship is, uh, if you screw it up, like you can, it can get very dangerous, very fast.

Like just, just sim like, let's go simulate a torpedo evasion and go fast and well, you're gonna go fast and you're gonna start putting on rudders. And when you start putting on, first of all, going fast out of nowhere, like that's a, you know, do I really want to hit flank all the way and, uh, do I wanna ring up all head flank caviate?

Like, with this, this watch team hasn't, hasn't stood on a critical reactor in, you know, months or, you know, I gotta think about that, right? I'm gonna go as fast as I can and put on a hard rudder. Okay, I gotta think about my depth control. 'cause I can put my ship into a snap roll pretty quickly like that.

Like, you gotta think about it and you gotta plan all, all that stuff out so you don't just do that stuff willy-nilly. Uh, and so, but uh, do I, I love doing drills. Absolutely. I do. Uh, mainly I love getting effective training out of it. So, uh, it's very easy to just run the true the crew ragged and not really get any effective training out of it.

And that always really frustrated me. What frustrated me the most is whenever you, uh, don't have your drills planned out well, uh, or you don't react to disruptions to the plan. Well, and you just have the crew hanging around waiting for the next drill forever and just wasting everyone's time. Everyone's losing sleep.

And, uh, that drives me crazy. Uh, so having all that stuff planned out and then executed well is, is what, that's a good day to me. So, yeah. And. Going back to the communication with, with the crew. And I really like, you know, how you look at that perspective of making sure that the drills are set up so that the crew's not burned out.

That they're not just dragging that out and around. Like I think that's really important because, you know, and I had Mark Kohler on, on the show before as a submarine officer as well, and he, he talked about, you know, some submarine sayings and one of them was like. I, I'm gonna butcher it, but it was like, either we all make it to the surface or we all sink or something like that.

And, um, one of them was run toward the fire, uh, and he talked about how everyone is, uh, a firefighting. And then all my, my only good commentary was just that never do your laundry on a submarine. You know, that was all I could say, uh, was clean the Lin trap. Um, that's, that was my expertise on it as a Yeah.

But, uh, well, the, the, you know, talking about wasting people's time, like that is a huge morale driver and it's, it's morale killer. Mm-hmm. Uh, and you, you know all about it. And, and people think about like, well, how do I get good morale in my organization? And they're, they're worried about, oh, well we need to do.

Command pt, and we need to do a command picnic. That's what's gonna, uh, fix my morale. How about you fix your processes so you don't waste people's time? Have people standing around waiting to start maintenance or have people, you know, waiting in line for an hour to do a tagout to change a light bulb.

Like how about that? Yeah. What does that do for your morale? That and that, that that's the stuff that makes all the difference in the world. Uh, like for me, uh, it's freaking it. Okay. Uh, like bad IT problems, you know, missing my kids growing up and, and going through mortal danger. I can deal with all that, but like, just bad computers, you know, that's what makes, oh, that was the most frustrating more than anything, makes me wanna just flip the table and say like, all right, I'm done with this.

I'm gonna go make money. Military grade equipment. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but I mean, those are all just, those are the frustrations, you know? No, I, I completely agree. You know, we had, um, and that was part of general quarters, like when inside when we were running drills, it's like you've got one division. Who has not set their doors to whatever condition and has taken them an hour and every other division did it in 10 minutes or five minutes or whatever time, you know, we had a man overboard once, uh, a drill an hour and a half or like an hour because one division didn't mark that.

A sailor went home to see a civilian doctor and we were just waiting on that sailor for like an hour and especially if it's in the middle of the night. Oh my goodness. You know, that is just, like you said, instant morale killer. And, and the amount of times I heard complaints I'm waiting on, on someone to sign a piece of paper, especially with medical people, were waiting months for a piece of paper to get signed.

People were waiting, um, for PT stuff to get signed for months for, for tag outs for like you said, for a single light bulb, you know? Yeah. And then what happens is if, if morale doesn't decline, um. How do I, how do I say it? Like workplace compliance declines where, all right, you know what, I'm just gonna change this light bulb.

Screw it. I'm not waiting for all this tagout procedure. And then you get caught and then it becomes this huge issue. And it's like the sailor's the issue because I've, I've seen that where people are like, Hey, I can change this fuse for you, you know, so and so, but it's gonna take me like three days on the paperwork because of the rotation of the shift now and the way things are dragging out, well, I can just go ahead and replace this fuse in five minutes right now.

You know? So it's, it's a balance of not only just morale, but keeping people doing their job the proper way. You know, because when the proper way takes too long, when there's too much red tape that takes forever, people are gonna try to circumvent it and, and take shortcuts. You know, and, and the, one of the functions of, or, or just, just kind of effects of bureaucracies that you'll, you'll see, and I, I did a lot of reading on this.

Uh, when I'm studying businesses and everything, whatever the organization is in the militaries. It's got its own special conditions, but any organization, you know, more complex than a lemonade stand, as it gets bigger, you're gonna, your percentage of doing, uh, of like the amount of people that are actually doing work versus the amount of people that are spending time watching the work or, or making sure that we're doing the work.

Right. That percentage of your overall company effort going into watching the work grows. And if you're not careful, it will, it will consume everything and it'll just drag everything down. And then, so like businesses have all these kind of, uh, procedures in place. They, they have a profit motive, so time is money for them.

And so they have all these effects in place to try to drive efficiency and kind of root that out. The military kind of doesn't have that, you know, the military instead has risk aversion. And so kind of our, and, and the Navy is, uh, particularly, uh, egregious about this because the Navy has the effect where all the procedures are written in shore commands, uh, somewhere to be executed by people far away, uh, and to keep everything safe and procedurally compliant from, from a million miles away.

And so the procedures are written completely with that in mind. With, with without really, uh, in my mind sufficient, uh, pressure. To keep the, the manpower tax of all of the procedural compliance, enforcing mechanisms of all the monitoring and, and all that that you do to kind of keep that under control. So that just becomes a leadership imperative because the procedures are not gonna, gonna, not gonna do that for you.

Right. And if you, and if you just tried to, uh, follow what you think the priorities are, or you would, you would think the priorities are, you know, based on the way things are written, the, the whole purpose of ships would be to drive around command monitor programs to far places and, you know, training and, and command monitor programs to deliver them to far places across the world.

And, uh, so that, that's just a leadership imperative to keep that stuff under control. Yeah, for sure. You know, and, and it, it just, it can really spiral into something terrible. For example, at least at a, at a shore command or in a shipyards, if we had stuff that could be done by Friday. But because people took too long, whether, well, for whatever reason, and now they say, Hey, you gotta come in on the weekend and do it now.

You know, that's, that's terrible. Or the amount of people who, you know, delayed things until Friday afternoon, Thursday evening, and now instead of going home early on Friday, now we gotta stay and do this stuff that could have been done three days ago. Oh. I mean, that makes, that makes people pissed off when, 'cause the military, uh, at least in, in the very beginning as young enlisted, you don't have a lot of free time depending on, on where you're at.

And so anyone taking away any of that free time, I mean that just, you know, kills morale instantly. And what I will say is, on the contrary, everything you and I are saying just kind of goes against the military saying of hurry up and wait. I mean, the whole motto of the military is hurry up and wait. You know, ever since I got to bootcamp, that was one of the first phrases I heard.

Um, you know, that's not actually what the Navy puts for, that's what all the sailors say. It was like, hurry up and wait. And, uh, the very old saying, man. Yeah, yeah. And it's not just the Navy, that that's, that's just the military culture of being ready to execute is gonna involve that. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I definitely get it.

And, um, going back to communication, uh, I really respected and admired the captain on my ship because mm-hmm. He was always transparent with us, told us as much as he could, and he was real with us. Now, what I'm gonna share, you know, some people would say was, was bad leadership. Some men would say it was good leadership, um, how it works with stoicism, we'll get into in a little bit.

But, uh, he cried in front of us multiple times when we had suicides on our ship, when we had a murder, um, uh, military on military, two members of our ship. You, you know, he cried and, and he, he, he had no problem crying when he spoke to us and he was. The reason I loved him is 'cause he felt like a real human being.

And he was the same way. He would sit down with us at lunch, Hey, how you doing? You know, what do you think about this ship and this and stuff. He was personable. Come, come talk to me. You know, there was still that level of respect, you know, he's the captain. Same with you, right? People can come and talk to you, but still respect me as the xo.

But that Personableness meant a lot. And he could raise, he was assigned to a ship that had been, it was going under investigation for, for suicide epidemic, you know, three in a single week. Multiple, multiple in a year. You know, stuck in the shipyards two years longer than any other ship. So COVID on top of it, right?

He was given basically a, a failing sinking project. And he was able, I remember every time he gave a speech, it was like my, my heart started to glow. Like at least I felt that fire inside when he spoke. Uh, and so I really admire and respected him as that. Of course, that's hard to maintain, right? If you had the captains doing the best job he can, communication-wise.

But then every, uh, chain of command below him isn't upholding what he's promising or saying, obviously it dies out. So that's why it's important that, I'm sure you felt this as an Excel, that everyone underneath you, you know, the command master chief, all the division, you know, CEOs and all that were, you know, alignment with what you and a captain were doing, you know, so what would you, what would you say, what role does stoicism play in military leadership?

You know, like we kind of talked about being cold and iron fisted in a degree of accountability, but in, in terms of connection and in terms of communication. And it's like how, how real and honest do you get with your sailors? What's the right level to have everyone's respect but not be taken advantage of?

Like, how did you balance it all and how have you seen good leaders in military balance it? Well that, so that's a, a lot of different questions at once. Yeah. So, uh, I mean, you gotta be a human, you know, before we even talk about stoicism, like being a good human is kind of the, the center of it all, and recognizing that there, there's nothing that is so, so Socrates made the observation that, you know, something is not, cannot be.

Honorable that is, uh, not expedient or something cannot be expedient. That is not honorable. And of course, these are, these are translations. But the, the basic idea is that what is good is what is right and what is right is what is good. And that applies at multiple levels. And finding that the consistency in things, uh, is, is how you, you maintain coherency and, and direction.

So recognizing that succeeding in the mission requires. Positive morale, and you're not gonna have positive morale if you're not succeeding in the mission. So those, those things are related, right? So if you want positive morale, you need to succeed in the mission. And if you wanna succeed in the mission, you need to have positive, you need to have morale.

Uh, and so you need to attend to all of those things. You know, I can't just not worry about my cooks and focus on my engine room, you know, all of the, I have to, I have to worry about all the things. Uh, so, so that's kind of a little bit of a parallel with, uh, with philosophy and maintaining the, the priorities and maintaining morale and, and, uh, leading.

Well, I think that, so you, you said, okay, what does stoicism have to do with that? Well. We, we haven't talked about stoicism at all, and we could, you know, their, their entire podcasts dedicated to it. But it, it'd be worth saying something about what it is. Okay. What it, it's not is just being emotionless.

Okay? So stoicism is an ancient philosophy from the, you know, Hellenistic grease. The same, the same period that you had the, the cynics, the academic skeptics, the Aristo, Italians, the Platonics and the Epicureans. You had all these different schools of Athens that kind of, kind of popped up after the period of Socrates, you know, but they, they're, you know, you, you study some of them in high school and college and stuff like that is kind of the, the fundamentals of, of Western philosophy.

Well, the reason we still study. Ancient philosophers, uh, is because most of the, stu, it's the same reason we still study, study Shakespeare, is because the stuff that was good about what they had to say cuts to the heart of human existence and will still be good 2000 years from now. Okay. Because it is, it is a signal in the noise.

It is just something that is always true about being a human being. And they talked about lots of stuff that does not meet that standard. And we don't talk about that. You know, we don't talk about those things. It's the, it's, it's survivorship bias. It's the same reason people say, man, all the classic rock songs were so good.

Why does, why does. You know, none of the music today is any, is any good. Well, there's plenty of good music today. You're gonna be hearing it in 40 years. It's just, it's just getting dominated by all the garbage. It turns out that all the, during the period that all those classic rock songs were happening, there was a lot of bad music then too.

You don't talk about it anymore because it sucked, you know? So, yeah. The good stuff is, is, is kind of what, what sticks. That's, that's survivorship bias. And it works and it applies to ideas about, uh, humanity and life. So the stoics in particular. Uh, we're, we're very much focused on emotional control, and that is why the word stoic kind of has become an adjective that people think means, uh, you know, emotionless.

And, and you can, it can be used that way as, as if say someone is, is very stoical, uh, they, that would mean that they are unemotional or at least unex expressive of emotions. But, so social media paints stoicism at at least a lot of the, uh, one end of social media from what I've seen, especially on the, on the male side, the young male side, they really idolize certain characters from fiction and really paints stoicism as this emotionless, you know, I'm gonna use some Gen Z words here, Sigma male energy.

Yeah. You know, and I think, um. Classic stoicism, you know, philosophical stoicism and what a lot of the new generations are putting forward are. Not the sta same type of stoicism. It may stem off of some ideas from it, but I think that's why like defining the word and what you're sharing right now is important because people have a very twisted idea of it.

Yeah. And you know, I don't worry too much about, like, there's, there's a lot of distorted, silly ideas about stom out there and, you know, a lot of people who are really into stoicism will get upset about that, which is not a very stoic thing to do. You know, I, and, and the, the stoic thing to do is to say, okay, well, you know, people have the wrong idea about things.

People don't really understand it, and then you just put out better information. So, uh, you know what, what I write on is basically, I. I, I discovered the, the philosophy, the actual philosophy of stoicism through, uh, vice Admiral Stockdale, which is a, is a very important figure in, uh, in modern naval history.

He was just an absolute awesome hero of, uh, of a prisoner of war situation where he was, he was, have you ever heard of Stockdale? Is that, does that name ring a bell to you at all? Maybe I've heard, I, I guarantee your, your leader, your, your, your listeners have not all heard of him. So just to, to give you a, uh, just kind of a preview.

So basically he was a fighter pilot that was shot down in North Vietnam and was captured and found himself. And, and, but he was the air group commander flying missions, you know, uh, and was shot down. And so whenever he landed in that prison system, he was the senior officer there. And so his, immediately, his responsibility was to, to be the, be the senior officer there, to be in command of that prison colony.

And kind of his responsibility was to ensure everyone survived with, with their honor intact, which was very hard because they were being tortured. Okay. And the, uh, the North Vietnamese, their, their system was, what their game was, was to, to torture you into confessing war crimes and all those things. Get on camera and say, my, my country's uh, war effort is, is criminal, and we should stop.

And, you know, I, I begged the, the, uh, the government to abandon this war effort. And then they would air that stuff on tv and it was basically attacking the will to fight at home. Okay. And so, without saying anything about whether the the war was justified or not, you know, that that was a very effective, uh, that was a very effective strategy, right?

And so, uh, Stockdale in particular was just particularly, uh, difficult. For them to break. Uh, they recognized that and he was, he was just somehow extremely resilient. And what turned out later and, uh, basically after he was, eventually, he stayed there for seven years. He was, he was in that, uh, that prison camp Wow.

Before everyone was, was released and he went on and became a vice admiral. Uh, he, he went, he went back into the Navy after seven years in, in prison. Like good grief. Wow. Uh, and he eventually became the, uh, the president of the Naval War College as a three star admiral and as the president of the Naval War College, he started teaching philosophy, which, like, what President of a war college is gonna go teach philosophy themselves.

Well, Stockdale did, because, you know, he, he was really believed deeply in the, the, the fundamentals of the, of the ideas. And he was particularly vocal about. Uh, stoicism. And it turned out that before he had ever gone into that prisoner of war situation, he learned, uh, uh, and, and read a lot of stoic philosophy and got really into it at a serious level, not the, not the kind of superficial level that you see on Facebook and stuff like that.

So the superficial level that, you know, I'm, I'm now talking about today that you see bouncing around and kind of internet culture and the, the people who fancy themselves as seriously into stoicism are, you know, have a problem with. I don't think it's a problem. Uh. I don't like misinformation, but the only, the only counter to it is to put out better information so that, you know, that's what I, I try to do.

But, uh, what it I find is that, that the popular doses and the kind of, the kind of weak, weak stuff that, that's just a bunch of motivational quotes really, that attracts some people to dig further into philosophy. And you find that that philosophy itself is, you know, what's valuable about it is, uh, is ex extremely valuable.

And, uh, the reason. A lot of young guys are attracted to it is because it's all about being tough and strong and wise and all those things. Uh, and what I think is often missed is that that is morality. So people don't want to talk about morality. You know, if, if I go in front of a bunch of dudes and I say, I'm, I'm here to talk to you about morals, they're gonna roll their eyes and say like, this is the last thing I want to hear right now.

Because, you know, they, they, they think morals. They're thinking, you know, helping little old ladies across the street and, you know, saving yourself for marriage and all these things that don't sound very tough. You know, they think that those things sound soft. I've, I've, that's from my childhood. No, I want to be a, you know, tell me how to be brave.

Tell me how to be industrious, you know? Yeah. Tell me, tell me how to be, uh, you know, how to be a good guy that people want to, want to hang out with. You know, all those things. But those things are morality. And the reason people want to be those things is 'cause they've got it in their heads at some level, that that's what a human being is supposed to be.

And they're right. It is what a human being is supposed to be. A human being is supposed to be all those things. So the ancient stoics basically broke down virtue. Which is being what a human is supposed to be into four cardinal virtues. And then you see these cardinal virtues, uh, taken up and incorporated into Christianity, uh, and, and other, other kinds of later, later philosophies.

Again, like the, the stoics. These, these guys were around, you know, hundred, hundreds of years before, you know Jesus was born. So, uh, a lot of their ideas got, got kind of bounced around and taken up into, into, into other things later. Uh, but the, those four cardinal virtues or wisdom, courage, uh, temperance or, or moderation, what, you know, depending on how it's translated, but basically self-control and justice or, or justness being a good person.

Being a just person. And the idea what makes the cardinal virtues. Special is that they don't break down into anything else. They don't reduce into anything else. It's kinda like the primary colors, you know, red, yellow, and, and uh, blue, where everything else, every other quality of a good person is some derivative or some mixture.

Combination of those for. Qualities. And I think that's a very good way to think of it, uh, is, is those, those virtues are what a person is supposed to be. And so if you want to be a, you know, Mr. Tough guy, there's a reason you want to be that. It's because you think that's what a man's supposed to be. And it is, you know, but it's, but a distorted version of it is thinking that, you know, I've gotta be a jerk or, you know, I've gotta go around and put down women or, or, or some, some things like that.

And so the, the kinda worst parts of, of bro culture and, and, and the, you know, all the, the red pill stuff that you see that captures a lot of attention. A lot of that, like all the badness of it just kind of dissolves if you get rid of grievance and victimhood and, and just, you know, whining about how bad I've been, I've been treated.

And that's what stoicism like whenever you actually read past the surface level is all about, is kind of rejecting any form of victimhood or any form of anyone else being responsible for how I feel. So the, the STOs would say if, you know, someone cuts me off in traffic or says something that insults me, uh, alright, now I'm really pissed off.

Well, it's not that person. That has pissed me off. It is my opinion about what they have said. You know, and I don't necessarily have absolute control over my emotions, but at least recognizing that that emotion is originating within me and my judgment about this event, uh, that is a very powerful disarming mechanism to kind of get control of my emotions.

And so that's why stoics have a reputation for being unemotional is because they're all about self-control. So does that help? It does. And I think, you know, for people who aren't understanding why, like victimization and, and self-pity are kind of leading to the bad aspects of some of this red pill culture, uh, based on, you know, a lot of the experts I've had on my show, I would say is because a victimization leads to projection and to projecting stuff onto other people.

And yeah, I mean, you look at a lot of. You know, bad stuff. Like I've done a lot of sexual assault awareness and, and stuff like that. And a lot of it is about power more than sex. It's about power and authority, victimization and, and projection. And, you know, I don't know, I was thinking of like, when you brought up, you know, the helping the old lady across the street and stuff and talking about stoicism, you know, being the emotionally unavailable versus the choosing how you react.

I, I thought of like Batman and Superman, right? Two, two characters that both do good, both help others, uh, but very different personality types. And, um, we could do a whole episode just analyzing stoicism and Batman versus Superman, right? I'm not gonna bring that up, but like, you know, no one would say that Superman's a weak guy, even though he helps people out.

But they also, you know, focus on, uh, his physical qualities more than his actions in, in terms of like that kind of stuff. But you mentioned stoicism. Being like a means of getting more people attracted to morality, uh, in, in some sense. And so I, I wanna, I wanna kind of pivot into your, your book now that you're gonna be publishing soon, because you mentioned stoicism, morality and warfare, you know, a warrior philosophy.

So I want to get into all of that. 'cause I think a lot of what you just said plays into that. So, uh, the, basically what, what led to to writing, uh, a lot of it is when stoicism was blowing up, uh, online and a lot of people were discovering it and finding it. That, that, that it, uh, helps them. To stay sane in various ways.

You had, you immediately have kind of all the things that spring up where everyone wants to draw their battle lines and say like, well, the real stoics would think this, and the real stoics wouldn't think that. And that it's just like, it's like taking the, the worst. I I I, I, I hate that impulse because it, it's basically taking the negative aspects of religion and, and, and glomming it on to somewhere where it, it, it, it doesn't, doesn't belong.

It doesn't belong in religion either. You know, it's just, it's just basically immediately dr. Naming enemies instead of, instead of just presenting the right information, you know? But one of those battle lines that got drawn very quickly is you had the people that say like, well, the people who try to apply STOs into military culture are really, uh, abusing sto.

They're, they're misinterpreting it because of stoic, you know, the stoics were into a cosmopolitan philosophy of, of, of. Piece every, everyone's a a universal, you know, shared members of the universal species, and so the stokes would not be down with military service. And, uh, they're right that the stokes were, uh, believers that everyone is a shared member of a universal species.

But a lot of people think that, and yet war is sometimes necessary. And so, uh, you know, kind of what, uh, I, I very quickly detected is what's happening is you had people who are into stoicism, but they have a certain political alignment. And part of their political alignment is just thinking that everyone in the military is bad and that anything the military might do is necessarily evil.

And that, and that all war, uh, is, and anything that would be a party to war is, is some form of murder. And basically those things aren't very thought through. Okay. Those, those, those opinions are, have been said since the beginning of time, but they don't really stand up to very much moral reasoning. But it's, it's just kind of a, a disposition that some people have.

And so when the people were saying. Okay. Well, stoics would, would basically agree with me politically, uh, and anyone who disagrees is, is distorting stoicism. That's where I kinda had to say, wait, wait a minute. Okay. Hold up. Uh, Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome, you know, and, you know, he was pretty much, he wrote everything that he wrote from the battlefield.

So, yeah, I was about to say what okay. You know, was, was he just a hypocrite or are you just imposing your politics on stoicism? Mm-hmm. Let's see what they actually said. And so I pulled out my, my nuclear, uh, mentality and I said, what does the book say? And so that, that's what my book is, is basically, I. Me digging into the, the, what the ancient stoics actually said and what their opinions would be about military service.

Now, about 80% of the book, 80 or 90% of the book is just breaking down stoicism, and it's kind of explaining it like a military person. So I'm not gonna dumb it down. Uh, I refuse to dumb things down. Uh, like that's the way I operate professionally as well. I'm not gonna put everything into video game analogies and sports analogies.

I'm gonna tell it like it is and expect you to keep up, you know? And, uh, so that's the way the book's written. But, uh, I'm also gonna explain it in plain language and I find a lot of, uh, academic philosophy is just indecipherable. It's, it's unreadable. Often, and yeah, you know, the academics will say like, well that's because it has to be written that way to explain their terms.

And sometimes that's true, but more often than not, it's just bad writing. And, uh, if you can't explain yourself well, you're just, you're just writing poorly and you need to do better, you know? And so part of being in the military is you need to be able to explain yourself well. And so the book's written that way to just to explain stoicism as deeply as we can go without getting into, you know, the, the just indecipherable academic garbage and, you know, but at, as, at a deep but practical level and explaining it thoroughly.

And then kind of in the last chapters I get into, into what's called just War Theory. And we think about the morality of war from a stoic perspective and basically get at the question of would, would stoic be a warrior? Or would stoic think that warriors are inherently evil? And, and we get it all that so.

Do you, so it sounds like a lot of historical context. Do you analyze and apply it to any modern day situations or recent wars, or that's, um, it's not really commentary, but more so a guidebook or like, what, what would you say is the purpose of the book? Yeah, so the, the, uh, what there, there are a handful of anecdotes that I use to kind of explain, uh, the morality of a situation, like disobey, you know, should I disobey this order to destroy this building that I think has a lot of civilians in it, you know, or something like that.

Like, so I, I, I use modern day scenarios to, to kind of get at those things. Okay. There are a few historical examples that I cite, but it's really the, the kind of a. The audience that I expect to, uh, most gravitate toward are, are, are junior officers, you know, but it's, it's not written just for officers.

It's, it's just kind of written at that level, uh, you know, academically. But I definitely, like, I remember being a, a young enlisted dude and having a officer stand in front of me and, and basically have something to say, but then like, well, let put this in terms that, you know, so you guys can understand it.

And then like gimme video game analogies and, and sports analogies. And I just remember thinking like, I'm almost insulting. Yeah. Like, Hey, try me tough guy. You know? And, and like, maybe, maybe I don't quite have the, you know, haven't been to the same classes that you have, but, uh, you know, try me and I, I bet I can keep up.

And, and that's kind of the way I write it. And so, you know, like there's nothing special about officers, you know, that they just may have had more classes. You know, I, I went into. You know, I came out of, uh, you know, the academy knowing how to do advanced, you know, thermodynamics stuff that I didn't necessarily know whenever I was, you know, an enlisted guy.

But the basic moral concepts of what it means to be a human being, like that stuff's universal. You know, that's, there's, there's nothing special that happened that made me able to understand that, uh, because we're talking about stuff that guys were talking about before there was electricity. So, uh, yeah.

So it's not just, but I guess my point of that is that the book's not necessarily for everyone. It's not written to be at a simplified level. There are other books for that. You know, it's, it's not, it's not stoicism simplified or easy reading. Something you pick up in the airport and just, and just pick up and put down real fast.

Like, it, it's, it's, it's kind of deep, you know, uh, it's meant to be a little bit challenging. It's not meant to be hard, but it's meant to be thorough and to actually get at what. Does the book say and what did they say? And you know, so big surprise. My conclusion is that, you know, the stoics, like most moral philosophers through time believe that war is justified in some conditions.

And that's just war theory. And you know, we can go into that if you like, you know? Yeah. So my thing is, like you said, it's not STOs and 1 0 1, it's kind of focused on this big question about, about war. And so what do you hope the impact will be? Just that people will. Have a better understanding of, of war?

And if so, what will that do long term? What's the big picture? Yeah, no, I mean, don't get me wrong, it, the, the, the war piece, the, the just war theory, that's just the last chapter. But I think the whole book, uh, will help someone fully understand. I think you, if you read it from beginning to end, you, you can go from knowing nothing about stoicism to, you know, knowing more than pretty much anyone you know, that's not a college professor.

So that, that's the, that was the intent is like you be, you, you can read this book and you, you fully understand this philosophy. Uh. And so what I want, I think that whenever you interact with knowledge, you are altered in some way. So like, we're, we're not static creatures, you know, we are constantly changing.

Every time I eat a hamburger, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm changed in some way. You know, a profound way of altering me as a human is to teach me something, uh, or to learn something. Yeah. And so, uh, that, you know, and, and incurs a, uh, huge responsibility on people who would. Put ideas into the world. Uh, so whenever we interact with an idea, are we altered in a good way or not?

So this is moral philosophy. This is ancient, uh, philosophy about ideas of right and wrong and how to be an ideal human being as conceived. And, you know, an i particularly an ideal man as conceived by the ancient Romans and the ancient Greeks, and these ideas, you know, cut to the, the heart of, of being a human.

I think that you cannot help but be altered in a positive way and be improved by interaction with that kind of knowledge. And, uh, so my hope is to basically nudge the culture of the military, uh, you know, young men in particular, uh, military or not, but uh, you know, overall, you know, basically with a focus on, on the military into a, a positive direction.

Right. And that's available for pre-order now coming out pretty soon here at the time of this. Yeah. Episode release, and we're gonna have the link in description below for that. And then something I do want to ask you, because, you know, uh, again, we all have our, our biases and, and also I was at the enlisted level looking up.

Right. And then you're at the XO level looking down. So all the issues I saw on the ship, you know, I take to people higher up. You're the guy who receives all of them. So what I want to ask is, you know, you were kind of in charge of the overall command climate a along with a captain and, and everyone underneath you.

When people came to you with issues, whether they were young, enlisted or some of the leaders like chiefs, senior chiefs, master chiefs, what were some of the overlapping main issues that kept getting brought up or, or things that really shocked you that, you know, every military leader or workplace leader in general should consider in terms of mental health, morale and kind of like everything going on?

Well, the first thing to know, you know, about mental health that, that I, I can say in the military is we don't have enough resources for it. Yeah. Um, and you basically have, and, and we don't, we don't have our arms around it yet. Uh, as a leader, you're gonna have people who are going to seek treatment that really need treatment.

You're gonna have people seek treatment. That just want to get off the boat and don't wanna do their jobs, hundred and those people will piss you off. The thing is, you can't tell the difference. That's the dilemma. And it's not your job to tell the difference. So kind of like the, the, the first thing I'd say to, to military leaders there at, at any level, and you're a, you're a military leader, the moment that you're senior enough to be put in charge of a cleaning detail.

So the thing I would say to military leaders about that particular aspect of mental health is yes, some people will abuse the mental health system. You are not qualified to make the decision. You need to get them to a doctor. If they're seeking treatment, you need to make sure that, uh, your job is to get them treatment.

Uh, and the other piece of that is that these things can coexist. So you might have a guy who is seeking treatment specifically 'cause he wants to get off the boat and doesn't wanna do his job. He also very well might need that treatment. You know, it's very likely in fact that. That if a guy is actually, uh, you know, is having mental struggles and needs treatment, it's very likely that he's gonna be trying to get outta work too, because he, he's, he's fallen apart as a human being.

And if you don't, uh, and if, and if you mishandle that, that can be fatal, you know? Uh, and so that's something that, that I, you know, I never want on, on my conscience. Uh, but it's very frustrating whenever people quit and you suddenly see everyone else. Struggling and everyone else has to pick up that burden.

Everyone else has to do the job that that other person did before. So recognizing that, what do you do about that as a leader? Well, what you do is you do everything you can to run an, uh, an organization and run a culture where people don't wanna quit. And that's gonna be very hard when the nature of the job is just brutal.

And it's a, and it's a meat grinder. And the Navy, Navy always, always is gonna be that because it's an industrial environment, it's very hard on human beings. And, uh, the resources, you know, are always gonna get cut. There's always gonna be less resources. There's always gonna be less manning. There's always gonna be less everything than what you need to do your job.

And you gotta figure out how to make it work, you know? Um. You can get a lot of miles out of not being a jerk and running a culture where not being a jerk is the expectation. And, uh, so you, you, you identify that and you say that and you say like, Hey, you know, don't be a jerk. And, and, and, and don't necessarily do it for any other reason than you're a good dude.

You know? And we just want to be good dudes here. And, and that's, that's just like, forget how the ship works. Forget the mission. Forget anything other than just being a good dude because you're a good dude. And you, and you'll, you'll sleep better at night, you know? And. Basically cultivating that culture, uh, and encouraging it and encouraging other people to be that way.

And recognizing that whenever you're run down, at the end of the day, you're, you're, you're grumpy, you're frustrated, and then some, you know, some, some sailor has some problem, uh, or has something negative report or screwed something up. Uh, you can handle that in a good or bad way. And how you handle that has an outsized impact on that guy's day.

And that, that guy's perception, uh, and like your interaction on that day might just be. Nothing to you, but it might be how he remembers the Navy for the rest of his life, or it could, it could totally ruin that guy's year. Yeah. Uh, and, and that's, that's one of those things that, uh, it's, it's hard to be sensitive to.

Um, so that kind of goes back to nothing is expedient, that's not honorable and nothing's honorable that is, is not expedient, you know, doing the right thing because it's the right thing is good for the mission and it's good for morale, and it's good for all those things. It's all coherent. And that's, that's the idea of having a coherent philosophy is these, these effects are mutually reinforcing.

They're not counterproductive, uh, whenever they're done. Right. I agree. Exactly with what you said about the, it could be how they remember you as a leader, how they remember the Navy, because I have said many times on this show that chain of command is what will make or break you because you could be in the worst place in the Navy to be stationed, in my opinion, in a.

Historical opinion, Newport News, you know, and you could have an amazing chain of command and be like, I'm reenlisting, like I love these people I serve with. They are like a family to me. Or you could be somewhere beautiful, let's say Hawaii. 'cause most people think Hawaii's beautiful until they actually live there.

And then you, you're having a great time. It's beautiful sandy beaches. You're on a shore tour and then your chain of command is so awful that you're like, I don't wanna do another day of this. I am getting out. Uh, so, you know, you really have a big impact on retention and, you know, reenlistment and like you said, all the, all the mental health issues, you know, because, uh, kind of, you know, the chicken egg with, is the mental health affecting the job?

Is the job affecting mental health or both? Right. And, you know, I don't wanna address too much on, on the, you could call them malingers, where, uh, people were faking ailments to get out. Uh, the nuke program probably has the highest rate of that from, from what I personally experienced. Um, because. Like you said, it's not your decision to make.

Right. But I know people, right? Who, who I, I've seen it, right? Where one nuke is living with five other nukes in, in the house during, in prototype or power school or whatever it may be, and they get out for mental health. And then the other five all do the same exact thing. I've seen full groups, I mean, out of my PowerSchool class, I was one of only maybe five people who actually made it to the fleet.

You know, we, we lost so many people along the way. Uh, we, when I was going through the program, we had about one to three suicides a month or attempts on suicide a month. Like we, it was a high dropout rate, high stress rate. But at the same time, like you said, if, if you assume someone is faking it and then something happens, well, there, there's that.

Right? So. I think the issue is that, again, the Navy doesn't have the resources to comb through all of these people to actually sit down, have individualized care and treatment and actually, you know, spend the time. Because like, like I said in a previous episode, you know, if you have hundreds of people on aircraft care or all rushing into medical for mental health, and then you only have three or two head officers who are, you know, licensed in psychology and whatever else is needed for mental health treatment, per navy standards, and then you have hundreds of sailors, you've got, you know, all the schedules going on.

So now that, you know, lieutenant or whoever it is can only see each sailor for like 30 minutes, it's hard to have individualized care. So, as much as I complain that the Navy doesn't have that, the resources are, are, are, are, are not there because we're, we're, it's understaffed. You have hundreds of people.

Right. I mean most, most people in the military in general. Need to talk to someone just because of the lifestyle, because of what, what people go through. And so many civilians have this misconception that it's like combat zone, combat zone combat deployed that is such a small fraction of the military.

The military life itself takes a toll. Now, of course, combat guys and gals definitely have a lot more that they deal with, but just being in the yards or being on deployment is stressful. I mean, we've, I mean you, you know, you understand it's not just about seeing combat and having combat. PTSD, it's about the sleep.

It's about the interactions with people. It's about the workload, it's about the stress, the isolation from the outside world, not just on a submarine, but even on a shore tour. The communication can get difficult between you and your family, especially if you're in a rate or a position in the Navy where, or whatever branch where you can't have your phone for extended periods of time or it's, you can't talk about work to, you know, people outside of it.

So I think people forget that like. Yeah, everyone in the military is dealing with their mental health to a degree just because of the lifestyle. And so I think it is so difficult, and I know they're making changes to push for more third party resources, to have MFLs, to have civilians on board who can see people.

But again, you've got one mflc for 3000 people. It's a hard time, and I say 3000, not. Because it's under the assumption that, yeah, everyone on the ship may, not everyone is going to need to talk to someone at some point, but a majority of them are going to experience hardship in the service. Yeah. The thing is, is like all of the psychologists in the world that, that you can hire will still not meet the demand.

Uh, especially if you're just grinding people into the dirt. And especially if you've got a culture where people just sit in their cars and, and, and have to psych themselves up to get out of their car and, you know, and come into work in the day because they're gonna be so stressed and they're gonna get, just get beaten and yelled at all day.

And so that, that, you know, that's where you can make a difference. Uh, and you can make a difference as, you know, a co or an xo or you can make a difference as an LPO or, you know, just a, a detail lead. Like just being the, being a bro, being a good dude, uh, that. That is where an actual difference, an actual human being can make, uh, is made.

Now, uh, there's an interesting interaction between philosophy, specifically stoic philosophy and mental health. Mm-hmm. So if, uh, and, and that this is worth talking about. So if you go to a psychologist, uh, and, and get therapy, what they're going to put you through is a regimen called cognitive behavioral therapy.

And so cognitive behavioral therapy has been around since, you know, 1920s or so. Uh, it's been continuously refined through clinical studies and everything like that. But it, it, it's, you know, you've got different methods of psychotherapy, uh, and you got the drug based ones. We're gonna give you antidepressants and stuff like that.

But cognitive behavioral therapy is, is the non-drug based version of. Of this stuff. And, and often you don't need the drugs, you need, you need, you need therapy. And that's where we'll talk about things. Uh, we'll, we'll talk about why we think the things that we think we'll talk, we'll identify the underlying beliefs that lead to certain emotions.

We'll learn, mitigating, uh, uh, techniques to identify the emotions and kind of stop them before we start ruminating on them and get more destructive, uh, and interrupt them. And interrupt the negative thoughts. Interrupt, interrupt the, the emotions that ruin us. So, uh, the, a real interesting thing that's kind of undersold in the popular stoicism movement.

Is that cognitive behavioral therapy was developed by kind of a handful of psychologists in, uh, the early 20th century who happened to be deeply read in the stoics and their techniques that, uh, they developed, uh, called cognitive, you know, cognitive and rational emotive behavioral therapy. Uh, uh, the techniques that they use, uh, whether they're, you know, emotive imagery or deca de catastrophizing or all these, you know, they have all these academic turns for them.

They're actually just modified versions of techniques that the stoics taught and the stoics used. And they, they're, you know, for a, um, therapist, they're a mitigation, they're a technique. Uh. For a ancient stoic, they're just the way you should think about things as just a pattern of thinking. And so having that philosophical, and that's kind of part of my, part of my, my thesis, is that if you have this kind of philosophical grounding and understanding of how they, how the ancient philosophers would think about things, it's a, it's kind of a background routine of, of therapy.

That, that is self therapy. And that's what a therapist will do, is they teach you self therapy. You know, they, they don't want to have to give you therapy forever. They want to teach you, uh, mitigating techniques that you can, you can do yourself, uh, and, and try to, you know, fix your own, uh, negative thoughts and your, your own, uh, destructive tendencies.

Well, that's what the ancient philosophers did too. And I think that this is largely why, uh, popular stoicism is taking off right now is because we have. A mental health crisis, uh, largely due to, to the environment that we're in, the disappearance of third spaces and the prevalence of social media and all the stressors that, that come with that.

And, and, and it's just kind of an unnatural environment. And so people are sick, you know, and, but, uh, they're finding here is a way of thinking that inculcates, that naturally inculcates all these, uh, psychological techniques that a therapist would otherwise teach me. Uh, but they, they, they teach them as kind of an automatic behavior and automatic way of thinking, and that that's why they say it.

It helps keep them sane. So it's not just about being a tough guy and, you know, being unemotional and being fearless and all those things, although that's a part of it, you know, it's also about not being depressed, you know, and you know, not being. Overly emotional or not getting too broken up about events of the world and, and whatever thing, terrible thing is happening in the news that, that vexes me.

And recognizing I have no power over that. It doesn't affect me morally. Uh, therefore it's, it's irrelevant to, you know, who I am as a human being. Uh, you know, what my, uh, my responsibility is in this situation is to, is to do the right thing. You know, I'm not gonna get angry at the weather. It's weather. It is, you know, it's beyond my power.

Uh, that is a very mentally healthy way to think about things. And, uh, I think that that's why stoicism is taken off. So it's not necessarily to say that therapists are doing stoicism, uh, because therapists are doing therapy. They're doing something that has been refined through experimentation and, uh, and, and continuously developed.

Uh, but what it's more like is that the, the stoicism piece of it is, is like a foundation. It's like a natural cure. Okay. It's kind of like we discovered how to make wine before we discovered a microscope and understood anything about fermentation. We just knew it. We just figured out it worked. You know, or we, we knew how.

We knew that I could chew on the bark of a willow tree and cure a headache. You know, uh, before I had any idea that what was in that bark was salicylic acid, which I could refine and turn into aspirin, you know, uh, that, that it's a, it's a natural thing that just worked and became the way that they do things.

And it's a very healthy, uh, kind of pattern of thinking to have in the background and helps people stay sane. So, uh, that's definitely something that I want my service members to have in their, in their toolkit if they can. Yeah, and I definitely recommend everyone would read your book to get a lot more information on it.

Like you said, you're trying to put out better information, good information among the list of all the bad information. And I think to your point of the. You could have all the psychologists and therapists in the world, but if the environment is bad, you're still gonna have all these people coming in. It goes to the idea of pre prevention, over intervention and recovery.

If you can have a lot of prevention where people aren't getting to that state, well then that's better than recovery or intervention because now you don't have all these people showing up. So I totally agree and I think you've given us a lot of great advice throughout this episode, uh, for both military leaders, regular leaders, and then also just in general.

I hope that it's piqued people's curiosity into stoicism and given them a better understanding if they had a misunderstanding. And I definitely recommend your book. Again, pre-orders are available now and it'll be coming out soon. And then, um, we'll see if you make stoicism too for submariners or something like that.

And uh, I'll be back on. But I wanna thank you for your time today and for your service to this country. Of course, dude, thank you so much for having me aboard.