Would we wield such unprecedented power responsibly? Worryingly, the pursuit of value lock-in has been common throughout history. We saw that when the Qin took control of China, they undertook a programme to systematically eradicate competing schools of thought; similarly, the Han systematized Confucian teachings to the detriment of competing schools. The Mohists, too, desired to lock in their own values indefinitely, if only they had the power. They saw moral disagreement as the biggest problem in the world and thought that the solution was to ensure that everyone had the same values.

14. The Stockdale paradox

Obliquity was forced on Stockdale and Churchill. But it is forced on all of us. The illusion that we have more control over our lives than we possess, that we understand more about the world and the future than we do or can, is pervasive. No position in the modern world carries more power and authority and greater scope to determine the environment within which the holder operates than the presidency of the United States. Surely presidents don’t have to be oblique.

But they do. When Stockdale was captured, Lyndon Johnson was president. As senate Majority leader, Johnson had been a master of obliquity, displaying Machiavellian aptitude in his ability to handle people and secure agreement.

The most successful twentieth-century US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, understood very well that goals and actions must constantly be revised if high-level objectives are to be achieved. Roosevelt described his approach as one of ‘bold, persistent experimentation’. ‘Try something,’ Roosevelt went on. ‘If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another.’

Roosevelt’s achievement was based on combining a strong general sense of high-level objectives with an equally marked absence of commitment to any specific intermediate or basic goals or actions.

The managers and financiers who destroyed great businesses in the unsuccessful pursuit of shareholder value. The architects and planners who believed that buildings could be designed from first principles, that vibrant cities could be drawn on a blank sheet of paper, and that expressways should be driven through the hearts of communities. The politicians who believed they could improve public services by the imposition of multiple targets. Acknowledging the complexity of the systems for which they were responsible and the multiple needs of the individuals who operated these systems would have avoided these errors.

After World War II, the United States commissioned David Lilienthal to head the new Atomic Energy Commission. Lilienthal brought together a group of people who were highly influential—celebrities in their own right—disciples, as it were, of their own frames of reference. This very diverse group of individuals had an extremely heavy agenda, and they were impatient to get at it. In addition, the press was pushing them.