Understanding the "Victory Disease"

Major Timothy Karcher, US Army wrote Understanding the “Victory Disease,” From the Little Bighorn to Mogadishu and Beyond in 2004. He warns against using past success as a predictor of future success especially as it leads to the three (3) deadly conditions of "Victory Disease":

1. Arrogance
2. Complacency
3. Using Established Patterns

What is interesting about this book is how relevant the philosophy is to the non-military realm. This is especially so in regards to the "Design Patterns" and "Agile" movements within computing.

If there is ever a way of dulling the intellect, then these two (2) movements are it. For more ranting, see Lefties and Conservatives.

The remedy Maj. Karcher is reading of history and always questioning assumptions. But, as Maj.Gen. J.F.C.Fuller says in Generalship: Its Diseases and their Cure - A Study of the Personal Factor in Command:

The first of these two problems depends upon a remodelling of our system of discipline, which is still largely eighteenth - century. In war, as in peace, individuality Is far more important than uniformity; personality than congruity, and originality than conventionality. 'War', writes Clausewitz, 'is the province of chance. In no sphere of human activity is such a margin to be left for this intruder.'1 As this is largely true, no regulations and no rules can cover the art of generalship. Like the great artist the general should possess genius, and if he does not, then no effort should be spared to develop his natural abilities, in place of suppressing them. Our existing system is, so I think, based on suppression, suppression to a large extent of an unconscious order. The old are often suspicious of the young and do not welcome criticism, yet without criticism, both destructive and constructive, there can be no progress. As I have already mentioned, the easiest course to adopt is to lay down rules and regulations which must be implicitly obeyed; yet chance knows no compulsion, and such rules and regulations are apt to cramp intelligence and originality. This is seen clearly from the frequent use with which 'Bolshevik' is applied to anyone who dares to think independently; yet if this 'vice' will teach us how to rely upon our common sense and how to speak frankly and without fear, what matters a name if common sense and self-reliance will help us win the next war. In place, so it seems to me, our present system of discipline, which is so truly Prussian and so untruly English, is responsible for creating what I will call the 'Cringe-viki', those knock-kneed persuasive tact-ticians who gut an army not with a knife but with a honeyed word.

Emphasis Mine

How true is this of anything under Capitalism - the sin of thinking marks one as a revolutionary!

How long can an economic and political system survive when original and non-conformist thought and action is suppressed? Not very long as the fall of the USSR shows!

The problem then becomes how we manage the transition to either Socialism or Barbarism. We have to choose the future - not let the future be chosen for us.