I love to synthesize. It’s one of my favorite things. I enjoy bringing together bits of wisdom across seemingly separate disciplines, seeing where they transcend contexts and domains. I like to read others who are synthetic thinkers (Jim Rutt, Daniel Schmachtenberger, EO Wilson, and too many others to name or this would quickly become boring). I also love synth in music, which is a whole other rabbit hole (Obviously this means that I am all in on Stranger Things). I think these are connected in some fashion, but I haven’t quite worked it out yet. Here’s a definition from Merriam Webster:
Synthesis: The composition or combination of parts or elements to form a whole; The combining of often diverse conceptions into a coherent whole; Dialectic combination of thesis and antithesis into a higher stage of truth.
This essay has been nagging me in the back of my mind for the last year or so, and I finally had take a knee on novel revision and let it come out. I want to examine where the ideas of two great synthesizers—Shawn Coyne and John Boyd, intersect. Both have integrated large volumes of scholarship from a vast array of sources—psychology, cognitive science, literature, history, anthropology, physics, chemistry, biology, cybernetics, and an astute understanding of the growing field of complexity science. In particular, they both employ systems thinking to frame their ideas, and both refer to autopoiesis (An agent in a system that engages in self-creation, self-repair, and self-destruction). I’m certain I’m omitting many other subjects each explored while developing their theories. From Coyne, we will examine the Planes of Perception, a key component of his Heroic Journey 2.0, and the Five Commandments of Story. From Boyd, we will look at the Spheres of Conflict, his seminal paper, Destruction and Creation, and of course, OODA. Let’s get started.
Coyne and Boyd
Shawn Coyne is an editor with over twenty-five years of experience in New York publishing. He ascended the dominance hierarchy at the Big Five publishers before creating his own publishing company, Black Irish Publishing, with author Stephen Pressfield. In addition, he is the creator of Story Grid, a ground-breaking tool for understanding story and editing books. He trains writers and editors in what it takes to write a story that works at storygrid.com and through the Story Grid Guild, a group of writers working on improving their craft.
John Boyd (January 23, 1927–March 9, 1997) was a United States Air Force fighter pilot and Pentagon consultant. His theories have been highly influential in military, business, and planning. His work helped to create the F-16 Fighting Falcon, and the Energy-Maneuverability theory of aerial combat. As a strategist, his thinking has been credited with some of the United States’ military decisions in the first Gulf War, and his imprint looms large in MCDP-1, the United States Marine Corps’ premier document on Warfighting.
I. Trinities and Triads: The Planes of Perception and The Spheres of Conflict
Aligning ideas according to 3’s has a long history in humankind. There’s something intuitively appealing about it. Both Story Grid and Boyd’s conceptions about conflict employ trinities and triads in order to characterize reality and then act upon that reality to achieve your chosen objective.
Coyne has a concept known as the “Planes of Perception,” which illustrates the multiple dimensions upon which story operates. On the Surface concerns literal energetic actions “on the page,” so speak (How to Survive), Above the Surface relates to information processing models of reality (How to Thrive), while Beyond the Surface relates to the search for timeless patterns of meaning in the human condition (How to Derive). These planes assist the writer in crafting a story that can stand the test of changing time and place through the skillful integration of elements on each plane.
Story Grid—The Planes of Perception
For Boyd, the “Spheres of Conflict” are a product of his intense analysis and synthesis of battles and strategists throughout history. He divides conflict into Physical (The Domain of Things and Technology), Mental (The Domain of Thinking and Ideas), and Moral (The Domain of People, or more accurately, what makes humans fight). “People, Ideas, and Things—In that Order!” is one of his most famous admonishments. This is an idea first popularized by JFC Fuller in “The Foundations of the Science of War.” The Marine Corps officer B.A. Friedman takes this framework and aligns what he terms “Tenets” to each sphere in his work, “On Tactics.” Those tenets are interesting to explore in their own right, but beyond the scope of this essay.
Boyd’s Spheres of Conflict, with Friedman’s Tactical Tenets
Using a trio or trinity of domains takes a very messy, amorphous, ill-defined arena and makes it tractable for both Storyteller and Strategist alike. It becomes possible to reduce a problem space into components, address them, and recombine the parts into a holistic approach. Whether crafting a good story or prosecuting a conflict in business or war effectively, the skillful, nonlinear integration of this triad creates an outcome much larger than the sum of its parts. At present, Coyne is working out how to describe how to synchronize these different arenas. And not surprisingly, he’s using a trinity to do it.
· Relevance Realization: Understanding what things in the environment that we should attend to (On the Surface, corresponds to Boyd’s Physical domain).
· Resonance Realization: Understanding that there are key components out in the world which are dynamically changing, and essential to our ability to make sense of the world (Above the Surface, corresponds to Boyd’s Mental domain).
· Reverence Realization: Understanding that a particular element of the environment is transforming our ways of meaning creation (Beyond the Surface, corresponds to Boyd’s Moral domain).
These two are so nonlinear
II. Heroic Journey 2.0 and Destruction and Creation
As part of his body of work within the Story Grid universe, Coyne developed the Heroic Journey 2.0, which is an advancement and extension of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. While Boyd left little formal writing, his “Destruction and Creation” is a classic, years ahead of its time. Both employ a method similar to the creative problem-solving model’s use of divergent and convergent thinking.
Coyne, Solve et Coagula from Prima Material (Heroic Journey 2.0)
Coyne uses the metaphor of alchemy to describe crafting a true masterwork of literature to stand the test of time. Take the Prima Material (original substance) and put it into a solution. This is the Solve, or dissolving of impurities within the substance. You apply heat in the form of obstacles and conflict within the narrative, the ordeals a character (Note: Story Grid uses the term “Avatar” to denote Characters. Their reasoning is that the word “Character” is what is revealed as Avatars enact their choices in the story and want to reserve it for that purpose.) undergoes over the course of a story. Then, after surviving the trials, the hero emerges triumphant at the end, as Coagula, best depicted in this amazing United States Marine Corps commercial from the 80s.
I want to run through a brick wall after watching this video- the power of story
For Boyd in Destruction and Creation, he deliberately makes the case through the use of science, humans must constantly destroy and then create. He deploys Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and Entropy with the Second Law of Thermodynamics to construct his argument. In what is likely Boyd’s most famous example, he instructs audiences to imagine someone skiing, someone power boating, someone bicycling, and a boy playing with a toy tank. When analyzed in their respective domains, they bear little relationship with one another. But from the skier, take the skis; from boating, the motor; from bicycling, the handlebars; and from the boy with his toy tank, the treads. What do these have to do with one another? At first, it appears to be nothing — because we still conceive of them in their original domains. But amalgamate the parts together and use human ingenuity to build … a snowmobile!
“A winner is someone who can build snowmobiles when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change.” -Boyd
This is the conclusion of the short and concise paper:
“However, once again, when we turn inward and use the new concept—within its own pattern of ideas and interactions—to produce a finer grain match with observed reality we note that the new concept and its match-up with observed reality begins to self-destruct just as before. The dialectic cycle of destruction and creation repeats itself once again. As suggested by Gödel’s Proof of Incompleteness, we imply that the process of Structure, Unstructure, Restructure, Unstructure, Restructure is repeated endlessly in moving to higher and broader levels of elaboration. In this unfolding drama, the alternating cycle of entropy increase toward more and more disorder and the entropy decrease toward more and more order appears to be one part of a control mechanism that literally seems to drive and regulate this alternating cycle of destruction and creation toward higher and broader levels of elaboration.”
III. The Five Commandments of Story and OODA
The last interesting point of connection I want to look at is between what Coyne terms “the five commandments of story” and Boyd defines as “OODA.” Briefly, Coyne defines story as a “psycho-technology” (think a software-type tool, rather than a physical object) designed by humans to help us survive, thrive, and derive meaning about the world. In his characterization, stories are fractal, meaning they scale from the smallest subcomponent to overall gestalt. These are Beat (stimulus and response between characters or environment within a scene), Trope (several beats), Scene, Sequence (several scenes), Quadrant (Story Grid uses a four-quadrant structure rather than the traditional three acts to add granularity to what happens at this level), and Global Story. Each of these nested Russian dolls contains the five commandments of story. These are: Inciting Incident (The event which perturbs the status quo and kicks things off, Turning Point Progressive Complication (When the primary character realizes their tactic or course of action is not working), the Crisis (The dramatic question), the Climax (Actually making the crisis choice, and the Resolution (The outcome of the choice, which sows the seeds for the next set of commandments).
Boyd developed OODA (We shall not call it the OODA Loop, lest we risk the wrath of the OODA Police, who are ruthless in the execution of their edicts.) to describe a framework for humans to “improve their capability for free and independent action.” It is a continuous cycle of Observation (Sensory inputs), Orientation (Sense-Making within the mind), Decision (What to do) and Action (Enacting that decision in the world). For Boyd, observation, orientation, and action are continuous flows, with new decisions made only as circumstances dictate. The entire cycle feeds forward and backward in order to better harmonize itself to the context.
According to Coyne, story is a tool designed by humankind eons ago to enable us to properly attune ourselves to and live within a complex reality. When humans told tales around the campfire, we increased our probability of making it to the next season, improved our communities, and better understood the numinous through the vicarious experience of others. Stories are antifragile (something that gains from disorder and stress) and can bend and flow over long durations to increase their fittedness to a given environ. For Boyd, OODA also represented a template for humans and organizational groupings to prevail amid a dynamic reality, which included plenty of adversarial forces. It is an iterative, constantly updating way of being. Just as our stories reinvent themselves to apply to a given age, OODA morphs and shifts to properly adapt humans to a changing reality. Heraclitus never stepped in the same river twice, because both he and the river changed over time. Coyne’s framing of Story and Boyd’s OODA each provide a scaffolding to optimize human flourishing and freedom within complexity.
For each of these iterative flows, the critical point, or Schwerpunkt, is located at roughly the same position. For the five commandments of story, the Crisis is regarded the critical portion, the place where the protagonist of a tale is faced with choice. In the face of adversity, true character is revealed, as the old adage goes. For OODA, Orientation is considered the most important part. Boyd views proper sense-making, with veils of bias stripped away and the baggage of cultural and institutional blinders knocked off, as the most important step. Once your sense-making apparatus is sound, the decision should be clear. However, you’re still faced with choices and tradeoffs for the Climax/Decision — picking your poison, paying your money and taking your chance. And it’s worth mentioning briefly, the “mind” involved in the Coyne’s Crisis and Boyd’s Orientation phase is much larger than just the gray matter between our skulls. See references to “4E Cognition” or “Distributed Cognition” to explore this idea further.
Crossing the Streams — Story Grid in OODA, OODA is in Story Grid
I believe these two schemas or cycles are doing something similar — conveying a curated depiction of reality, designed to spread beneficial conduct in the world. Both are aiming toward the cultivation of what the ancient Greeks termed Eudaemonia, or human flourishing. For Coyne, stories are either prescriptive or cautionary tales, meant to point toward the good life. For Boyd, this good life is found in increasing the capability of free and independent action for humans and their groupings. Both are focused on what Cognitive Scientist John Vervaeke calls Relevance Realization within a Salience Landscape — emphasizing the high percentage places to put our precious attention in the uncertain environment in order to endure and prevail. It’s in this key moment—for Story Grid roughly between Turning Point and Crisis, and for OODA in the Orientation, that the path forward through the darkness is revealed. So weirdly, Story Grid is within OODA, and OODA is within Story Grid. Let me try to explain that.
Story Grid is in OODA: Story is used to pass on advantageous ways of being in the world, through either prescriptive or cautionary tales. These stories – they aggregate in the form of the key components Boyd identified within Orientation: Cultural Traditions, Analysis and Synthesis, Previous Experiences, and New Information of a grouping and serve as a component of the Orientation phase of OODA. Effective transmission of story allows for faster Orientation, and better chances of survival. When you learn the story of the wolf down in the valley by the red tree from your friend, you walk more carefully the next time your are there, and you’re able to respond to it faster.
OODA is in Story Grid: Conversely, in a story, each character employs their own OODA map to make sense of their struggles within the world. As they navigate and make sense of that environment (which most critically occurs at the turning point and crisis of the five commandments), the characters employ OODA to come to terms with the situation they are faced with and enact their agency. The characters in stories must process the events, conversations, and circumstances within them, to make the right (if prescriptive tales ) or wrong (if cautionary ones) choices. These choices reveal their character, and teach the lessons of the story. Within the mind of the story characters, their use of OODA mental maps makes the difference in whether they achieve their objectives or fall short.
How do we live? How do we interact with reality? How do we keep from getting bogged down in nonsense, sift the wheat from the chaff, and have a life of impact and meaning? Both Coyne and Boyd are gesturing toward the answers to these questions. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that this is just a surface level skim over both of these thinkers. Consider it a brief introduction.
Key Takeaways:
· Trinities and Triads can make a complex, ill-defined problem space more understandable, but don’t forget that it’s in the synergies between the parts, the interrelationships, that the magic happens.
· To create, you must destroy. Like the Bob Dylan line, “If you aren’t busy being born, you’re busy dying.”
· Analyze, Synthesize. Unstructure, Structure. Repeat.
· Identify mismatches, create unconventional connections, and bring something new into the world. This is what artists do, no matter the canvas.
· Attunement to an ever-flowing reality requires constant orientation to the specifics of the environment.
· While that orientation plays out in accordance with your experience, genetics, culture, and new information, choices will present themselves. How you choose — what and when you choose, will determine the next part of the story.
In their quest for greater understanding of the world, Shawn Coyne and John Boyd have come from very different places, but converged upon interestingly similar insights about how to be in the world. Both the Story Grid methodology and OODA provide actionable frameworks with which to learn and make sense of the world. In the relentless and at times overwhelming churn of our interconnected reality, these scaffolds point humanity towards ways to endure and flourish.
**Special thanks to Mark McGrath for providing feedback on this piece, while my children screamed murderously in the background, during the time of day my mother refers to as “the arsenic hour.”**
Works Cited
Science, Strategy, and War, Frans Osinga
On Tactics, BA Friedman
A Discourse on Winning and Losing, John Boyd
No Way-Out Podcast, Mark McGrath & Brian Rivera
Master Playlist of Boyd’s Lectures on YouTube
Story Grid, Shawn Coyne
Heroic Journey 2.0, Story Grid
Architecture of a Masterwork, Story Grid