Lauryn Hill once sang: "Adam lives in theory". In Hebrew, Adam means "the human being", all of us.
And Queen Lauryn is right, most humans today live exactly there... in "theory".
I decided to write this spontaneous piece because a few days ago, I received a note from an "economist" teaching me about what deterrence is and how war is "lived". So this article is a reply to all the "adams" out there.
How would you actually know what deterrence is?
How would you know what WAR is from your quiet and stable country?
How would you know what it FEELS like when your body understands danger before your mind does?
How would you know what it means to "sleep" fully dressed because you might need to run at 3AM?
How would you know the difference between a distant blast and the one that changes your life?
How would you know what it is to feel DEATH impulses turning into LIFE impulses, the urge to kiss someone and make love, to hold a stranger in a bunker, to scream and cry your despair, your pain, to run, to stay?
How would you know what it feels like when adults you thought were "strong" suddenly freeze in front of their kids, because their nervous system reaches a limit?
How would you know what it feels like to receive not one, but two, three, ten phone calls telling you that someone you loved, you grew up with, was just killed?
How would you know the way courage and terror can coexist in the same breath?
How would you know that deterrence is not a clever theory, but the raw understanding that if you are not truly ready to lose something, no one will ever believe you?
How would you know any of this, if you've only lived in theory?
We discuss the world as if analysis were experience.
We debate realities we've never touched.
We confuse information with knowledge, and opinion with understanding.
But the REAL WORLD doesn't reveal itself from a distance.
It reveals itself on contact, through friction, risk, failure, consequence. Through moments that cut and clarify.
My work comes from that place, unfortunately or fortunately.
I write from the field, from what I saw, negotiated, endured, failed, understood under pressure.
My way to cope with the world is now to extract the structures behind it.
Not inventing theories about how it could and should be, but how it is truly lived and experienced from a raw human point of view... and how to deal with this terrain full of ambiguity.
That's what the Grey Zone Protocol delivers: a way of thinking built from reality to insight, from insight to action. With my mental models, grids of analysis, tools and protocols of action.
A method to stop living in theory, and start seeing the world as it is.
And if you don't know that song by Lauryn Hill, do yourself a favor on this Sunday morning...
Stay lucid,
Oriane