Double Quote: The Man or The Uniform
The Beauty of Irreverence
What follows are two quotes that constitute a sobering reminder and call to action for all those who wear a uniform.
“Boyd had left a long line of enemies in his wake, and it was thus no great surprise that he was ultimately passed over for promotion to general. Having offended so many of them, they refused to allow him to join their rarefied ranks. Boyd was deeply disappointed. But he was proud of the course he had chosen. When he had gotten to the crossroad where institutional success and doing the right thing diverge, he chose to do what was right. It was a philosophy he would espouse to his Acolytes (a group of his mentees) as they weighed whether to work for him and help do something important, but have their careers retarded for the association, or to keep their nose down and work their way up the ranks.
‘Tiger,’ he would say, “one day you will come to a fork in the road. And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.’ He raised his hand and pointed. ‘If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.’ Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed another direction. ‘Or you can go that way and you can do something — something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?’”
2. Richard Feynman recounts that at a very early age his father taught him the difference between the uniform and the man:
“One of the things that my father taught me besides physics, whether it’s correct or not, was a disrespect…for certain kinds of things. For example, when I was a little boy…he used to sit me again on his knee and he’d open…a picture of the Pope and everybody bowing in front of him. And he’d say, ‘Now look at these humans. Here is one human standing here, and all these others are bowing. Now what is the difference? This one is the Pope’ — he hated the Pope anyway — and he’d say, ‘the difference is epaulets’ — of course not in the case of the Pope, but if he was a general — it was always the uniform, the position, ‘but this man has the same human problems, he eats dinner like anybody else, he goes to the bathroom, he has the same kind of problems as everybody, he’s a human being. Why are they all bowing to him? Only because of his name and his position, because of his uniform, not because of something special he did, or his honor, or something like that.’ He, by the way, was in the uniform business, so he knew what the difference was between the man with the uniform off and the uniform on; it’s the same man for him…
…I don’t know anything about the Nobel Prize, I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y, or z wins the Nobel Prize then so be it. I won’t have anything to do with the Nobel Prize … it’s a pain in the ... I don’t like honors. I appreciate it for the work that I did, and for people who appreciate it, and I know there’s a lot of physicists who use my work, I don’t need anything else, I don’t think there’s any sense to anything else. I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize — I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it [my work] — those are the real things, the honors are unreal to me. I don’t believe in honors, it bothers me, honors bother, honors is epaulettes, honors is uniforms.”
Synthesis: Never look to the uniform to find the man. The man makes the uniform, not the other way around. A uniform confers no knowledge, no excellence, it is the person underneath that adds value to the trappings. Honors or uniforms — they are a costume designed to broadcast a message, regardless of whether that message is true or not. A man’s actions, his contributions define him. This is an exhortation to never forget that who you are doesn’t matter, only what you do matters. So chase the beauty of accomplishment, do something rather than try to be something, and never evaluate a man by his epaulets.
-LM
