Dr.

Robert Hickson

1 December 2015
St. Edmund Campion, S.J. (d.1581)

Those Questions and Insights That Stun and Teach:

The Wisdom of Good Mentors
--Epigraphs-A good leader, not only in the military, knows that intellectuals should not
usually be on top, but they should always be on tap. (The words of Major
General John M. Mickey Finn, a highly decorated Combatant Officer, in his
wise advice to a young Captain Hickson in late 1968 on the island of Okinawa in
the Pacific Ocean.)
***

More than once down the years I have been told by wise men that a good leader knows how to
praise you not so much for what you have done nor for what you are, but, rather, for what he sees that
you could be and for what you ought to be. Mentors I have had, even as a young military officer,
have more than once shown me the good fruits of that inspiring sapience; and they have further taught
me this fruitful insight by their own exemplary actions on my behalf, to include some altogether
embarrassing instances of their deftly expressed trust to include their entirely unfounded deep trust
in my sincere but unmistakable callowness.
In a more jocular manner, moreover, one of my wise team sergeants in Special Forces once
memorably said to me: Sir, no one is completely useless. You can always serve as a bad example.
(He laughed, but I looked at him askance! He still then cheered me up, even as I blushed.)
Several mentors I was blessed to have had, even as a boy, taught me by way of questions apt
and timely and often challenging questions. Such as: What do you mean and how do you know?
Over the years I have learned directly, or sometimes indirectly, from wise mentors certain good
questions with which first to challenge ourselves honestly, and then to do the same with our academic
students and even our advanced military trainees in the intelligence community. (For example, one of
my beloved mentors, Professor Josef Pieper, long ago convinced me that the best translation of the
Concept Academic was Anti-Sophistic. And he also taught me very well about the Concept and
Reality of Sophistry itself as a twofold corruption (blocking access of the intellect to reality, and
blocking the communication of reality to others) also as a permanent temptation to the human
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mind.)
Dr. Pieper once stunned me with these connected questions: When someone is lying to you, is
there communication? And, if so, how so? For, he added, Does not the act of lying itself a
deliberate falsehood deprive another of his access to reality and thus block another's own fertilizing
participation in that fuller reality?
After learning many things from such mentors, I attempted to apply some of their insights in my
own academic classes, such as at the Graduate School of the Joint Military Intelligence College and in
the Department of Philosophy at the U.S. Air Force Academy. At both institutions we usually
distributed a set of questions to learn more about our students and their backgrounds and special
interests. However, on more than a few occasions, I challenged my students to answer, additionally, a
few long-pondered questions which would thereby better enable me to understand their own deeper
world views and maybe also their characters. I never made this request mandatory. It was always
voluntary, and some students always preferred not to answer the questions, or at least not some of
them. Moreover, before I gave them the written questions to take home and consider in their own quiet
reflection and sincerity before returning them in the next class, I read aloud the brief questions and
unfolded their implicitness and purposefulness a little more.
What were those sequenced four questions?
(1.) What are you grateful for and to whom? (This implies the logically prior
question: What do you consider to be a gift? For, example, are you grateful also
for your mere existence, or were you, perhaps, just desultorily, as it were
randomly flung into being?)
(2.) What is this thing called history, and where, if anywhere, is the whole
historical process going to? (For example, is history just one damn thing after
another? And, does history have no purpose and also no conclusion, no end?)
(3.) What is time and what is time for? (For example, is time the measure of the
motion of the body or the measure of the motion of the soul; or is it, perhaps, not
at all a measure of anything not even a measure of the intensity of an
unmistakably ardent experience?)
(4.) What is there finally to hope for, not for what you have or not for what you do, but
for what you are? (For example, is there no possible final fulfilling of one's being; is there
nothing finally to hope for, because all fundamental hope is finally an illusion, and even a
narcotic illusion?)
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What I always emphasized to the students as well as to my colleagues is that these basic questions
come out of a philosophical wonder and reflection over many years, even since my boyhood. And they
were often drawn forth into articulation with the indispensable help of my deeply generous mentors.
Even though the above-cited, deeply searching philosophical questions do not profess or imply
any specific religious, much less an explicitly Christian theological faith, they are not the kind of
questions that the Ancient Greek or Roman World was likely to pose. Even the very concept and
preoccupying matter of Hope (Elpis in Greek, Spes in Latin) was considered to be an unhealthiness
(insania) by Stoic philosophers such a Seneca, because such a dependent orientation towards attaining
an onerous good in the uncertain future was not immediately under a Stoic's prompt and virtuous will,
thus under the control of a strong and enduring and proudly autonomous will.
However, as an example of suddenly stunning religious questions that fruitfully teach and form
our deepening understanding, I would now like to present a few of the acute questions Father John
Hardon, S.J. posed to me over the twenty years I knew him (1980-2000). He often asked these
questions when we were alone together and sometimes after he had just come from teaching a class or
while preparing to write a book or an article. For example, he would ask:
How many theological virtues did Our Incarnate Lord have? And what limits are
thus implied as to our own creaturely Imitatio Christi, and for our consequently
closer bonds with the Blessed Mother, even in her special purity and sinlessness?
What common belief did the Pelagians and the Calvinists have and hold about
the created state of our proto-parents before their Fall?
What is the important distinction between 'Natura Deprivata' and 'Natura
Depravata' as it applies to how Catholicism, as distinct from Protestantism,
considers the effects of the Fall?
Why does Protestantism reject and even abhor the theological concept of
'Merit'?
Why does Protestantism resist, and often deny, the significance between God's
Precepts and God's Counsels and Invitations i.e., things not done that are then
under the pain of sin, as distinct from what we voluntarily perform out of our
answering generosity and our desire to respond even more so to God's
invitations? For, we are not forced to enter the Religious Life, for example, and, if
we don't do it, we are not under the pain of sin, inasmuch as those religious vows
come from our free and fuller generosity with God.
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How is it so that Protestant Christian sects and the Catholic Church are
significantly and largely differentiated by the extent to which they believe that we
can freely co-operate with, and also freely refuse, the Gift of Divine Grace?
To what extent is it so that Protestantism itself in all its varieties is essentially
passive before the Supernatural Order, as such; and what are the implications for
the moral life especially if Grace is not only finally irresistible, but a Divine
Gift that one cannot freely co-operate with either?
Is it not so that the Ancient Pagan World was effectively conquered by Charity
and Chastity by the abiding and permeating manifestations of the Christians'
own Caritas et Castitas?
Father Hardon once told me that, when he asked his Catholic seminarian-graduate students in
New York how many of the three theological virtues Our Lord possessed, most of the students had said
All of them. Though Father was stunned, he then proceeded to tell them that they thus had an
inadequate understanding of the Incarnation. For, Our Lord had Vision, not Faith; and He had
Possession of Beatitude, not Hope. We must now try to understand better the Mystery of the Hypostatic
Union, he added. For, in his Sacred Humanity Christ had only one theological virtue, the infused virtue
of Charity. Mary additionally had also to live by Faith and Hope.
Another instance of Father Hardon's explanatory insight was when he showed in his answer to
his own challenging and paradoxical question how the Pelagian Heretics and the Calvinist Heretics
both denied the existence of Supernatural Grace and of the Preternatural Gifts (infused knowledge,
bodily immortality, and the absence of concupiscence, or disordered desire) in our Proto-Parents, Adam
and Eve, before their Fall. That is to say, in Adam and Eve's state of original justice. Therefore, for the
Calvinists (and other Protestants) the Fall brought about a dark and disordered state of Natura
Depravata, not just Natura Deprivata (a wounded and darkened nature because deprived of Grace and
of the Praeternatural Gifts). Calvinism thus believed in a much more depraved theological
anthropology total depravity because the Fall of Man caused him to fall beneath Nature,
inasmuch as they believed there to be no Grace or Praeternatural Gifts to be there to be lost! The
Catholic view of Man not only saw the manifold generosity of the Creator (the Goods of Created
Nature, of Infused Grace, and of the Praeternatural Gifts) given to him before the Fall, but also that the
Man and Woman wounded and intellectually darkened by the Fall were not deeply depraved thereby,
but, rather, consequently deprived. Moreover, after Christ's sacrificial atonement, He would later
restore to Mankind the Gifts of Supernatural Grace, but not the Praeternatural Gifts. We would have to
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attain and grow in virtue all the virtues but without the aid of the Praeternatural Gifts, hence
always, while in this world or Purgatory, with an abiding and purifying element of suffering.
It may be fitting now also to conclude these reflections with two representative examples of
insights and searching questions that come from secular life largely, indeed from the Military Realm
and from the even larger encompassing Field of National Security Affairs.
First, I propose to consider the words and conduct of a gifted military leader on Okinawa, an
American General Officer who always wanted to learn from others, even and sometimes especially
from his younger officers.
Secondly, I propose to apply to two distinct situations the recurrent and fundamental question:
What do you mean and how do you know? First of all, to what the Military and Interagency
leaders once called RDOs Rapid Decisive Operations. Secondly, to another specious acronym
that was monosyllabically called the GWOT and proclaimed to be The Global War of Terrorism.
In late 1968 (or maybe it was early 1969), Major General Mickey Finn (John M. Finn) came to
my military unit on Okinawa to receive a Briefing. He brought with him Major Morgan Scott Peck,
who was a Medical Doctor (also a Psychiatrist interested in Foreign Cultures and Grand Strategy and
many other remarkable things). After my briefing and my attempts to answer his incisive questions, he
wanted to speak with me and Major Peck privately. General Finn said:
Hickson, most of my General Staff tell me what they think I want to hear. Most of
them are tired colonels who want to get things from their In Box to their Out
Box with minimum impact upon themselves. Along with Major Peck, I want to
gather some young officers around me, and how they are also to be on call, to
give me their views candidly on several things, to include some of my own ideas
and plans before I inspect some of our subordinate military units and their
readiness. For, I do not want to give notice of the time of my visitations, nor the
nature of my inspections. I often want to arrive unannounced, even by night. And
sometimes especially to observe their night training. For, a military unit is not
ready for combat if it does not train at night. And it must train regularly and
thoroughly by night. Especially the Special Forces. Are you willing to be part of
this group of young officers I am forming with Dr. Peck? You should be candid
and prepared to challenge my proposals my assumptions, my evidence, my
argumentation, and my conclusions and the like. But you must also be prepared to
defend your own positions and objections. Is that clear? Are you still interested?
After at once, but somewhat fearfully, accepting this invitation, I was soon to know some of the
most robust and inspiring leadership I have ever been blessed to experience with General Finn
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himself, of course, but also with the profound and sparkling intellect of Major Peck, and our ongoing
and unforgettable discourse, even after Okinawa and the Reversion of Okinawa back to Japan.
General Finn was always after the truth, and he sincerely wanted to know how to apply it with
wisdom, and with growing wisdom if possible. His thought and his language was always fresh and
memorable, and he had little tolerance for vagueness or equivocation, much less sycophancy or
sophistry. With General Finn Mickey Finn one had to be ready to answer his questions, such
as: What do you mean, and how do you know? Or, What are the risks, and then what? As a 1938
Graduate of West Point, he was a man of honor and he brought great credit upon the Corps of Cadets
and the Long Gray Line. Regrettably, I never saw him again after he retired in 1971, and he was to die
on the seacoast of South Carolina, in Beaufort, on 9 April 1979 at almost 66 years of age.
Would that General Finn could have been present to hear the Senior Briefing in 2000 at the Joint
Special Operations University at Hurlburt Field in the Panhandle of Florida near Santa Rosa Island.
For, the Briefing was on Tactical and Strategic Rapid Decisive Operations (RDOs). After the
lengthy Briefing, I asked the trenchant and embarrassing question General Finn would have asked:
namely My question is simple, and only about the 'Decisive' Component of your Acronym ('RDO').
What do you mean, and how do you know? For, I understand the 'Rapid' part of your concept and
how you plan to get in and out of the Mission Area with rapidity; but what about the 'Decisive' part?
For example, by what criteria and standards do you measure and adequately assess that the operation
itself was also decisive, especially strategically, not just tactically? And how so? It was General
Mickey Finn who taught me to think like that, and to ask straightforward questions that unveil the
reality. Would that we had been together then and sitting beside each other. For, I expect General Finn
would have had his own more incisive, followup question, had the Briefers tried to shilly shally about
and duck out of answering the sincere question just put to them!
When I first heard of the putative GWOT on 11 September 2001, I was on the Faculty of the
Joint Special Operations University, and I first heard of that ominous monosyllable as the multiple
raids on New York City and the Pentagon and elsewhere were still going on. We first heard the
repeated words of alarm on the public media of communications, America is under Attack! America is
under Attack! Then we heard of the GWOT of the Global War on Terrorism.
Again thinking of my mentor General Finn, I asked an implicit question first to myself: What do
they mean and how do they know? Who is the enemy and what are we trying to protect, and why?
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Moreover, How does one wage a war against a method; and how does one know whether one is
winning or losing? More and more, I began to ask these kinds of searching questions. How does one
have a war against a method like political warfare or psychological warfare? Or even against the
methods of Neo-Kamikaze Pilots or against Neo-Blitzkrieg Warfare? Who is the enemy, specifically?
What can we afford to lose, and how much will it cost us not only materially, but morally, for
example?
Most importantly now, what are our war aims and peace aims, specifically? We may well be
rapid, but to what extent will we be decisive and how so? To what extent are we taking account and
an adequate measure of the religious factors theirs and ours? Especially the religious motivations
and the vulnerabilities of our own secular liberalism for example?
General Finn, like Father Hardon, also taught us younger men as an indispensable part of
intellectual and moral integrity how to anticipate objections to our own arguments and convictions,
and even to present those worthy objections ourselves clearly and forthrightly, before we should then
attempt to answer them.
These revealing searchlight questions that specifically and cumulatively come from the insights
of our unmistakably wise mentors such as Professor Josef Pieper, Father John A. Hardon, S.J., and
Major General John Mickey Finn may also now better help us to face and to deal with the current
(and often intrusive) unfaithful challenges that have come forth to attack, or slyly and dialectically to
subvert, our beloved Catholic Faith and the Church, especially by way of an abuse of language and a
correlative abuse of power and authority. For, like General Finn (or even a Pope?), those who intend to
lead with integrity must also intend to learn. To learn the truth.

--Finis--

2015 Robert Hickson