Facing Defeat Builds Character
If you’re like me, you’re still enjoying the excuse from my last article to talk about Star Trek with anyone and everyone you come across. Ask anyone who knew me in high school, if I can turn the conversation to Star Trek, I will leap at the opportunity faster than Picard at a cup of Earl Grey. (Hot, of course.) With that in mind, I’d like to once again trek through the stars and feature an aspect of Starfleet Academy training that is steeped in legend and mystery, the Kobayashi Maru test.
The Kobayashi Maru is a training exercise designed to test the character of Starfleet cadets in a no-win scenario. The exercise puts cadets in command of a ship and they are charged with rescuing a vessel (The Kobayashi Maru) and its civilian crew which has been disabled in the Klingon neutral zone. Any Starfleet ship entering the zone would cause an interstellar border incident. The cadet can leave the vessel to its own fate, (guaranteed destruction,) or attempt a rescue in which case the simulation ensures the loss of the cadet’s ship and all crew aboard.
Within Star Trek lore, the test is usually brought up to illustrate how impressive Captain Kirk is as he was the only cadet to defeat the “no-win scenario.” Kirk reprogramed the simulator, effectively rewriting the test so that victory was possible. We, as loyal disciples of Kirk are supposed to see this as a metaphor for always thinking around problems and not accepting defeat. If you have enough determination, grit, and a halted speech pattern, you never have to truly face defeat. Here’s something I never thought I’d put into print: Kirk’s wrong.
Kirk is chastised for what is essentially cheating on the test and rightly so. The point of the test isn’t to win, but to reveal character. How does one accept and confront being defeated? Kirk, like a teenager who just got his license, ignores the objection and continues to stubbornly move through the plot assuming he’s untouchable. And we are supposed to applaud Kirk for that brazenness because we love a winner. There is value in defeat though. If you never accept defeat, you’ll never know your whole self.
I’m not talking about a moment of defeat that turned out to be a good thing like not getting that job that turned out you would have hated anyway. That’s reframing the situation, (like Kirk did.) That’s looking through rose-tinted glasses. That’s tricking yourself into thinking defeat is winning. That technique has its place but it’s not truly accepting defeat; it’s protecting us from defeat.
Accepting defeat is about knowing yourself and behaving honorably in defeat. In defeat you have nothing but yourself. There is nothing to hide behind and nothing to hold up as a consolation prize. You have nothing. We can all think of examples of individuals who have been defeated and could not accept it. They claim that in defeat they actually won or try to put a spin on it, but we know better. That test of defeat reveals their character, just like the Kobayashi Maru is supposed to.
Defeat isn’t a pleasurable experience. Defeat is emptiness in your chest, bile in your mouth, and fog in your head. It’s in how we bring ourselves out of that place that we reveal our true character. There will be unavoidable, no-win scenarios. Accepting that is to open yourself up to the back-to-basics opportunity presented by defeat. So as school, work, and activities start up after summer, I’d like to wish all of you the taste of defeat.
