Foxes, Hedgehogs, and Love

The extremely wise Professor Gaddis claims that the grandness of grand strategy has to do with what's at stake. If this is true, there is no grander strategy than the strategy of love. No matter the size of its swarm, shoal, or army, every living organism will ultimately succumb to death. Our only hope of breaking through the bounds of mortality is through our children. To extend our DNA across time, space, and scale – the fabric of strategy – we must go forth and multiply. So, the stakes of love, the thing that convinces two people to conceive, are existential. And it can cause us to do wild things. Cougars can travel 1000 miles for mates, and John Hinckley tried to kill a president he didn't know for the attention of a Yalie he didn't know.

Because the lover is a strategist, his methods can mimic those of politicians, generals, or kings. Like nations, man is endowed with limited resources – IQ, personality, frame, attractiveness, wealth, and social status – but often has unlimited romantic aspirations. Genghis Kahn, forefather to 0.5% of the world's population, exemplifies man's unlimited physical aspirations. The aspirations of the hopeless romantic are similarly unbounded; he searches for the perfect woman, who he might someday realize does not exist.

In class, we began the semester by attempting to peg history's strategists as foxes or hedgehogs: those who know many things or those who know one big thing. We quickly learned that the best strategists wear both hats. Like hedgehogs, they are guided by an inexorable truth, but like foxes, they adjust to the reality in front of them. However, at moments, the demands of the inexorable and the particular conflict. Machiavelli's recognition of this fact earns him Berlin's praise. In Berlin's words, Machiavelli "helped to cause men to become aware of the necessity of having to make agonizing choices between incompatible alternatives."

Looking back on my short love life, I have played the part of both a pure fox and a pure hedgehog. As the historian might expect, neither of these strategies worked. When I fell in love for the first time a year ago, I learned that loving requires being a fox and a hedgehog, practical and romantic. But at moments, the practical is not romantic, and the romantic is not practical. Today is one of those moments for me; I face one of Machiavelli's "agonizing choices." Hopefully, examining my past failures will make the way forward less blurry and, perhaps, less agonizing.

Part 1: The Fox

There are two kinds of foxes: the fox that cannot afford to believe in anything and the fox that cannot be bothered to believe in anything. The difference is a difference of power. The powerless fox, the one that cannot afford to believe, is paralyzed by the threats he sees everywhere. And so, he confines himself in a cell of impotence. The powerful fox can have it all but declines to choose. He will confine himself nowhere, not even in a mansion of pleasure.

The powerless fox is a rare sight on the silver screen or the stage because his life is simply dull. On the contrary, a paralyzed fox later driven to belief and action, à la Hamlet, makes an interesting character. In tragedy, the audience sympathizes with the story's Hamlet because of what might have been if he had acted earlier. In feel-good blockbusters, the audience is inspired by the character's transformation from paralysis to success, whether he is Harry Potter or Rocky Balboa. However, the fox that does nothing at all is delegated to a tertiary role. He may be a tragic symbol like Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway, or he may provide comedic relief like Jason Alexandar in Seinfeld. But, because plot is driven by action, the impotent fox will never be more than a distraction from plot. Similarly, the powerless fox is usually unimpressive enough to evade the history books.

The fox that willingly eschews conviction is more interesting. He is often a psychopath. For example, Patrick Bateman in American Psycho has it all – women, money, and power – but is interested in none of it. His solution is to act purely in his own interest, seeing the world and those around him as means to his ends. The powerful fox's detachment from both ideology and anxiety makes it impossible for the audience to look away. This awe is what makes The Stranger's opening line so captivating. Meursault writes, "Maman died today. Or yesterday, maybe, I don't know." How can one be so heartless? We cannot look away. History is full of powerful foxes, real or imagined. One convincing reading of Mao was that he was a powerful, rash fox. Not having read more than a few pages of Marx, Mao was never entirely faithful to a single idea or plan. He split with Kruschev over, some would argue, personal dislike and was quick to exile his closest allies.

What is true in anything is true in love, and both types of foxes are regulars in the game of love. The impotent fox does not talk to the opposite sex. He is a dork, a virgin, and, sometimes, a masochist. Today the internet calls him an "incel" or involuntarily celibate. While his existence is usually forgotten, it is glorified in T. S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Despite the poem's length, it has no plot. Prufrock fantasizes about a woman he sees until she leaves the room. Internally, the prospect of talking to her tortured him. He questions everything from his bald spot to his value as a human. As an anxious fox, talking to the woman is existential:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.[1]

In the end, Alfred cowers, as powerless foxes do. Daring is not their forte.

In love, the powerful fox is a strain of womanizer. Milan Kundra calls this type an "epic womanizer." The epic womanizer "projects no subjective ideal on women, and since everything interests him, nothing can disappoint him. This inability to be disappointed has something scandalous about it." Unattached to their numerous partners and uninterested in love, they "inevitably end up as curiosity collectors."[2] Like Mao or Patrick Bateman, these foxes don't concern themselves with the hurt they have caused people through their endeavors. Instead, they remember each partner with fascination as an entomologist might look at the preserved butterflies pinned onto his wall. Like Kundra's epic womanizer, Tomas, the powerful fox always puts his interests first. He lives where he wants to live and works where he wants to work, unencumbered by the desires and needs of his lover(s).

Like most middle school boys, when I first took an interest in the opposite sex, I was a powerless fox. My small frame, cystic acne, and everpresent insecurity made me terrified of talking to my female peers. It didn't help that my hobbies – magic, rubics cubes, and unicycling – convinced most women I was a clown. When performing magic, men in the audience often told me, "I bet the ladies love this." Nothing was further from the truth. At my first high school party, I spent about ten minutes – this was a record for me – talking to a girl from the grade above me. After I ran out of things to say, I leaned on the crutch of magic. While safer than the drugs and alcohol my friends relied on, it was certainly not as effective. With a big grin, I asked Rebecca if she wanted to see a magic trick. She liked it the first time but then asked me to perform it again and again. I quickly realized she was not watching but was instead buying time to make her escape. Rebecca was not interested.

My transition from powerless to heartless fox occurred after I emerged from the dark cave of puberty. Suddenly, I was no longer entirely undesirable to women. But, like a bear who leaves his cave after a long winter, I was deprived and depraved. My undeveloped prefrontal cortex had a difficult time understanding that women had feelings just like mine, and so I became the entomologist, disinterestedly pinning hearts to my wall. The details are uninteresting and unbecoming. What was interesting was the unbearable boredom I felt. Like Tolstoy, I so badly wanted to believe in something.

I tried dating and tried even harder to fall in love. While the relationships that followed appeared more civil than my salacious escapades, their essences remained the same. Each relationship was entirely self-serving – the moment I had to give something up, I was out. I dumped my high-school girlfriend because she suggested I apply to Harvard (God forbid) instead of Yale. I was a fox, shrewd and unwilling to ignore my partners' flaws or let them interfere with my fate. A partner would be a piece of my puzzle; when she no longer fit, I would find a new one. Sometimes, I knew early on that things would not work. But, if it was convenient for me, I would see through the relationship like it was a bad mystery novel – only continuing to see how it would end.

During my sophomore year, my girlfriend at the time, Sophie, brought me chocolate chip waffles while I was in COVID quarantine. It was a sweet gesture, both literally and figuratively. I had mentioned months before that my mom made me chocolate chip waffles when I was sick, and Sophie had miraculously remembered. But for the first time in my life, waffles made me sad. In the face of a loving act, I felt nothing. I could not muster gratitude or joy and definitely not love. That winter break, I cried to my mom and confided in her that I was incapable of love.

Part 2: The Hedgehog

Like history's hedgehogs who promised salvation through Christ, communism, or democracy, love's hedgehogs believe that, in the words of the Beatles, "Love is all you need." Their 'love conquers all' attitude dominates our FM airwaves, greeting cards, and fairytales; they need no introduction. Shakespeare convincingly delivers the hedgehogs' conviction:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.[3]

When I read Sonnet 116 in high school, I was disappointed that such a wise man could succumb to such foolishness.

A little over a year ago, I was similarly disappointed by my father's foolishness when he told me that I was going to fall in love. A child of the 70s and a self-proclaimed Daoist, my dad begins each day with a long meditation and, on occasion, claims to have prophetic visions. And so came his prediction about my love life. Two weeks later, having written off his hippy-dippy conclusion, I was sitting on the steps in Branford courtyard with a framed portrait of Sun Yat-sen in my lap when a soft voice asked me, "Who is that?" I don't remember what we talked about for the next 15 minutes, but I remember running back to my room and calling my dad after she left. "Her name is Anna. I found her. We're going to get married."

I asked Anna to coffee the next time I saw her, and we were dating by the end of the week. To Anna's surprise and consternation, I told her I loved her a week later and that I wanted to marry her a month after that. In 15 minutes, she changed how I thought about the world. Love songs I had heard and disliked hundreds of times before filled every playlist on my phone. I had trouble focusing in class because I could only think about her. She was intelligent and patient and kind and pationate and beautiful and curious. For the first time in my life, I could not think about myself. The following few months were the happiest of my life.

While I was completely unaware, Anna had already begun to shape the rest of my life. Since 10th grade, I dreamed of joining the ranks of the Air Force's Combat Rescue Officers. I hung their poster beside my bed and taped their motto to my mirror. When I met Anna, I was preparing to go to combat rescue selection, but I knew the career had a divorce rate of nearly 90%. On our first date, Anna asked me what I wanted to do after school. "I don't know," I said, confused by my response. I had thrown away my compass – the aspirations that guided me – for a girl I had just met. By the power of love, something I didn't believe in a week prior, Anna became my compass.

My interests began to take a back seat. I spent the little money I had showering Anna with flowers and gifts, a phenomenon that had confounded me before meeting her. I waited outside of her classes for hours and changed vacation plans to surprise her. Anything was worth making her smile. It was incredibly freeing, living for something that was not myself. Like Philip II, I was serving my God, and as long as she was happy, I thought that heaven and earth were on my side.

But, about six months in, the temples I had built came crashing down. I had to submit my Air Force career selection, which would determine where I lived after college. This time, I thought, I would talk it over with Anna so we could decide together. I was ready to do any job that put me near her. However, Anna did not want me to plan around her, seemingly because she did not want me to expect the same from her. The result was our first fight, vicious and previously unimaginable. The God I had so piously submitted to would not move heaven and earth for me, and instead, through fiery jabs and icy stares, Anna brought hell upon me. Had I deluded myself into worshiping a false idol? Or was I not worthy of God's love? I remembered that Shakespeare's Sonnets weren't all so rosy:

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.[4]

At a loss, I called Andrew DeWeese, who had already made his way through love's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. I rambled and ranted, telling him about my love for Anna and my solitary wish to be with her. Still unaware of the spell I was under, I confessed my devotion to him, "I would sell fruit on the side of the road for the rest of my life if it meant I could be with her." After listening attentively, he responded with his usual pith and wisdom, perhaps gained from Foxes and Hedgehogs, "This is no good."

Part 3: love

Uppercase Love is a noun, an idea. It perplexes the fox and brings ruin to the hedgehog. Lowercase love is a verb. It is an admission of the real and the ideal and a willingness to search for overlap between the two. To love, one must be a fox and a hedgehog; he must reconcile the irreconcilable.

Berlin's reading of Machiavelli provides another framing of this tension. My early selfishness was what Berlin calls civic virtue. I owed it to myself, my family, and my country to be as useful as possible. If Love distracted me from this mission, it was a waste. The Love I saw in Anna's eyes was what Berlin calls Christian virtue. Truth and Goodness were apparent, and I was unwilling to accept anything else. Machiavelli tells us these virtues do not always overlap: "God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us."

So, for the last six months, I have searched for compromise. The first step has been honesty with myself. As Machiavelli's honesty about politics and God disgusted Elizibethians, my honesty about work and Love would have disgusted my former selves. I admit that Anna and I will not live out the love story I told myself the day I met her. I also acknowledge that I will not become the Secretary of Defense. Each pursuit must give and take from the other.

Now, I face a new choice. Recently, an Air Force reserve unit offered me a job. Serving in the reserves would allow me to live a normal life with Anna after college but would cost my longtime plan of a military career. This time, I will try not to decide based on principle – Anna vs. Self – but on weighing principles with details. My answer will not depend on how much I love Anna but on what civilian jobs I find. Surely, there exists a world where we can be together, and I can contribute to my country.

New decisions bring new anxieties. Whenever I approach a final decision, I worry it is either too pragmatic or too idealistic. When I tend toward idealism, accepting career uncertainty to be with Anna, I fear doing so from a place of weakness. Perhaps, I tell myself, I am scared that if I strive for civic greatness, I will fail. Love is merely an excuse I use to avoid making myself vulnerable to failure. And so I hear myself in Prufrock again:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.[5]

Might I decide to be a hedgehog in my personal life because I am an insecure fox in my public life? Tolstoy could not deal with unfortunate realities and the unbearable lightness of being, so he turned to religious zealotry. At what point does devotion to Anna amount to Tolstoy's bad faith?

When I tend towards shrewd realism, I fear a life of loneliness. This summer, my boss told me a story of his commanding officer's retirement. The unnamed general had a successful career, and his retirement filled hundreds of seats. But he, a stoic man, cried uncontrollably. Nowhere in the seats were his three ex-wives or their children. Like Gatsby's funeral or Napoleon's letters to Josephine, the General's tears prove that no amount of success is worth living for without love.

So, I move forward, haunted by the ghosts of my future and past. But, most days, I try to ignore them. Love requires presence, a sense of humor, and fun. These are all difficult to attain if you bog yourself down in heaviness. There are, as Reagan would have it, times for choosing, but there are also times for not choosing. No amount of thinking will give me an answer for a problem as difficult as love. Thinking may, however, drive me to insanity. So I peacefully wait for the time to choose. When the time comes, I must rely on my reflexes. With enough mistakes, reflection, and good friends, my reflexes may suffice one day.