On Creeds, Mottoes, Ethea, Bumper Stickers, And The Like
So I was in the Navy when a big wall of scandals came around. I was a junior pup. About the same time as that came the attempted cleanup of various unsavory practices real or perceived, and all of a sudden Navy acquired some words from the front office that supposedly were what we were all about. Nowadays you might have heard of it as “Honor, Courage, Commitment.” Before that, though, the words were different, and other words went down the memory hole. I’m sure there was good reason for at least one change, as one of those words in earlier decrees–”tradition”–could have been an escape hatch for some of those unsavory practices. Never mind that; the important thing was that one day I was told from on high that X was The Way Things Would Be, and the next day it was Not X. Coincidentally, it was about the time we had a “sexual harassment stand down” that essentially involved all hands being put in a room and fed power point slides–narrated by some direct input limited duty officer cracking jokes about gays and who the night before had been out all night with enlisted guys at a strip joint fraternizing in rather notable ways.
This is a good way to become cynical.
Me, I don’t dig the bumper sticker kind of change. Part of my reaction is a character flaw on my part. I don’t like to be told how I will think, especially by some nameless staffie who thought up something that looked good to a flag somewhere. The character flaw part is that I am too loud at inopportune times if not careful. But “honor/courage/commitment” has been around long enough that it’s no longer the flavor of the month and thus less in-your-face.
Something had to show up to maintain my sense of pique, and it was creed recitations. I attended a formation at a schools command. They recite the Sailor’s Creed at formation. Everybody. It’s in the plan of the week. Every week. I know of no naval tradition that resulted in such a creed, nor do I know of the value such creed-saying actually has. I do know that the creed goes against something I was taught long ago by the Army officer corps, that it is the moral obligation of a commissioned officer to not follow orders in rare and significant cases in order to follow the oath they took, and if this is so then an officer reciting such a creed is either lying or ineffective in extremis.
As I heard the students reciting their memorized creed led by a junior sailor at the microphone, I felt as though I was in some foreign church. Then I remembered this:
At the Datong coal mine in Chongqing Province, as in mines all over China, they are working around the clock. At least a couple of times a week, (and certainly with an American reporter preparing to join a crew of miners at the coal face) the shift begins with a safety briefing and a chorus of safety slogans, punctuated by the men punching their fists in the air.
“I am proud to be a coal miner here,” the men chant. “We have only one life to live and safety is the most important thing.”
Yeah, that’s where I hear creeds and daily required group affirmations: socialist tyrannies and militaristic corporate monocultures. Welcome, salarymen, and get in line.
Actually, China has the worst coal mine safety record in the world. Only two months ago, 105 men were killed in one mine. Last year, approximately 3,800 miners were killed in accidents.
Well. Now we have this new “ethos” thing to deal with. The Yank Sailor has some commentary–he thinks perhaps this new bumper sticker will help make the old bumper sticker go away. (Yank, we’re still supposed to capitalize “Sailor” and will for a long time.) CDR Salamander is on the governor ready for electrical loading after nearly overspeeding a couple of times. I know of the action officer listed on the message; when I knew of him he was not a bad guy, and he may not even be the stuckee for this particular action. Lex distills his own creed down to that actual oath we take, and personally follows three words, all of which are actually printable. Last I heard, he wasn’t directing formations to recite them.
Me, I wonder why we’re spending so much time on things like this, with official websites and “blogs” and surveys and the like. Makes me wonder what the main thing is, on which we’re supposed to be focused.
7 Responses to “On Creeds, Mottoes, Ethea, Bumper Stickers, And The Like”
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May 6th, 2008 at 8:59 am
[...] Yankee Sailor & Phib (especially the comments) Update: See Chap’s and Lex’s posts – Mike weighs in as well. We think we see a trend – wonder if the E-ring [...]
May 6th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Give me a freakin’ BREAK! We need to waste our folks’ time with this? Ok, I remember swearing my oath when joining up, but this creed business. . .sounds more like what are we trying to distract you away from? If we’re focusing over here, then we’re trying to keep you from looking here. I’m thinking this is a bad office-bound-never-been-out-in-the-real-Navy idea to “boost morale”? Encourage loyalty? Clarify why the folks are there? I’m really not understanding the bigger picture of what this recitation serves. And while I appreciate the opinions on why this doesn’t make sense and why it’s mostly contrary to the true purpose and mission of the U.S. Navy, I’d appreciate someone’s insight into WHY this is being put into practice.
And frankly, Chap, I don’t think it’s a character flaw to have the instinct or intelligence to question motive and purpose. I would hope that the officers charged with directing Sailors underneath them would think first instead of blindly acting – such has saved many a life before. Yours seems more an issue of politicking (NEVER political correctness). Which brings to mind several quotes which seem appropriate, all from E.M. Forster:
Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s. (I’m sure our Navy could use a few new ideas, so keep talking)
Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say? (As opposed to “Think how I say or else it is rubbish”)
So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. (If your input were unwelcome, it would be somewhere in the UCMJ).
Keep up the good work-
-Tu
May 6th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I hadn’t noticed that bit about the Sailor’s Creed the first couple of times I read through it. Thanks to you (and Lex) for pointing that out. Like you both said, there’s a very good reason why officers don’t have that phrase in their oath of commissioning. It’s why
wethey (for another year, anyway) get paid the big bucks.As for the rest of it, spot on. I’ve got some thoughts up at my place drawing a distinction between how the Navy is apparently using their creed and how the Air Force is, in my experience, using ours. I like our way a lot better. Course, I like our creed a lot better too, since it doesn’t, you know, suck, so I imagine that helps.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Chap, et al.
1. Lighten up. At least little. Take a (really) big view.
2. Creeds AND oaths are both necessary and serve useful institutional purposes. Look at what the Nicene Creed did for the Catholic Church. Say what you want about it, it is probably the longest-lived formal institution in history (or at least Western history).
3. Just because communist coal miners use them and recite them hourly or so does not make them bad or suspect.
The efforts (I refer also to the note about ’shipmate’ essays) are not bad, it is the implementation and vector on which said creeds and ‘vocabulary manipulation’ place the institution that are most important. “How and where the ship is being navigated”, to use a metaphor.
that is where the ‘beef’ with leadership is (should be?), not with the effort to develop, define, revise and implement usage of a/the creed, per se.
I think Lex’s excerpted creed from the other blog is pretty cool. Very, very, cool. Perhaps that gent ought to ‘leverage the power of the internet’ (and maybe some email) to do something with it.
Best,
John
May 8th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
In looking at your point, I think I see a main, and fundemental difference here. I had to say the Sailor’s Creed every day in boot, and that was 13 years ago. So, i went to m-w.com and pulled up the following to see if the words themselves lent anything to the arguement:
Main Entry: creed
Pronunciation: \ˈkrēd\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English crede, from Old English crÄ“da, from Latin credo (first word of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds), from credere to believe, trust, entrust; akin to Old Irish cretid he believes, Sanskrit Å›rad-dadhÄti
Date: before 12th century
1: a brief authoritative formula of religious belief
2: a set of fundamental beliefs; also : a guiding principle
Main Entry: oath
Pronunciation: \ˈÅth\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural oaths \ˈÅthz, ˈÅths\
Etymology: Middle English ooth, from Old English Äth; akin to Old High German eid oath, Middle Irish oeth
Date: before 12th century
1 a (1): a solemn usually formal calling upon God or a god to witness to the truth of what one says or to witness that one sincerely intends to do what one says (2): a solemn attestation of the truth or inviolability of one’s words b: something (as a promise) corroborated by an oath
2: an irreverent or careless use of a sacred name; broadly : swearword
It seems to me that the Creed is a “want” situation, where the Oath is a “will do” situation. The creed being a soft order- is ultimately countermanded by the Officer’s oath. Since I had the Creed in boot drilled into my noggin, is it possible that they are attempting to give enlisted a same sense of duty that most officers take? Sure, when you enlist you say the same Oath, but AS an enlisted, you are NOT repsonsible to effectually “judge” which orders are right or just. As an E man, you do what you are ordered to do.
Of course, I could totally be off base.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:27 am
This came to me from another direction last night. After some reflection, how is this for a thought:
Ethos is not defined, it is created. Over time. A long time.
then somebody tries to write it down. Occasionally they are successful.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Haven’t had much time to respond recently–stealing from time I should be doing something else now, but what the heck.
The POC on the listing is a post-command submariner, and if he’s at CFFC he’s got someone working with him on an action. So I am speculating that with salaries and contractor money for websites and messages and so forth that they’ve spent multiples of the price of my house for this bumper sticker. The poor AO was a smart guy last I heard of him; it may be that this effort is the staff level equivalent of getting assigned to one of the little projects JOs do on boomer offcrews because senior officers can get some free labor to work on a wild hair for a couple of months. Hint: Most of those projects are oversold and disappear not long after.
And that’s all it is from what I can see, a bumper sticker. I’ve got several categories of “not lightening up” to deal with, some not rationally entered into:
–The oath is what matters.
–Where was this ethos in the Battle of (insert history here)? Why was it decisive?
–Why am I going to be forced into reciting something like this? This ain’t like church where I can walk out if I don’t like the cut of the jib of the staff-generated hooh hah. Thems what like the Council of Nicea, have at it; I don’t have to follow it if I don’t believe it. The very comparison to a religious creed is indicative of the problem I have with an “ethos”.
–If we’re paying NAVADMIN-level attention to this, then we’re not paying attention to something else. We’re paying a lot of attention to matters that at best are indirectly helping the raison d’etre for our service. This ethos thing feels to me, when combined with other initiatives with similar heft and focus, like the Navy about the time I enlisted: lots of focus on the appearance while ignoring the actual. That’s the really big view: look at our trendlines.
–Is this what we get when we go from ~100 SSNs to <50 but more squadrons, from ~600 ships to something much smaller but more admirals? That’s a stretch and not worth hanging on this one data point but there are enough data points to fair a curve. Do we fail not with a bang but with a whimper and another O6 assigned to staff a feel-good initiative? Who’s prioritized this effort and why is this the priority? If it’s a small feel good thing, why is it rolled out with such pomp? Anybody actually measured the effectiveness of rolling out something like this using a CAC card website to build (oh help me) a “blog” behind an NMCI firewall, or is this cargo-cult imitating the last couple of contractor-surveys which look good on power point?
But hey, sing the “battle anthem” while sitting in an office doing the “battle” rhythm. What do I know; I’m just a staff weenie.