The Deviation Spiral

On November 12, 2022, at the Wings Over Dallas air show in Dallas, Texas, there was a completely avoidable and tragic accident. Billed as “the nation’s premier World War II airshow,” Wings Over Dallas is a three-day event with opportunities to see vintage aircraft both in the air and in static displays.

 

During one segment on the second day of the event, there were five bombers and three fighter aircraft airborne and participating in the show. The individual responsible for planning and coordinating the aircraft is called an air boss. A “daily participant safety briefing” is one of the air boss’s responsibilities, and in that meeting the air boss is supposed to give each pilot a hard copy plan for that day’s show. One of the details to be included is the plan for de-escalation, a technical term for the plan to keep the planes separated while flying.

 

Surprisingly, the plan that the air boss gave out that morning contained no details for de-escalation nor did the pilots question the air boss about it. By the time Wings Over Dallas 2022 arrived, the air boss had already done sixteen shows that year and over three hundred shows in his career—all without incident or mishap.

 

As the three fighters made a banking turn to the left in single file to set up a flyby of the grandstands, the third fighter in line, a P-63 Kingcobra, didn’t see the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on his right. To the horror of all the onlookers, as the P-63 came banking in he flew right into the B-17 sending both planes crashing to the ground. In an instant, six men with over eighty-five thousand hours of flying experience between them, were dead.

 

An investigation soon followed, and one of the questions the air boss was asked had to do with de-escalation. Only then was it exposed that the air boss never gave pilots a de-escalation plan—that day or in any of his previous shows. His explanation was, “we do it [no de-escalation plan] all the time . . . it’s never a problem.”

 

There’s a captivating breakdown of this incident on Pilot Debrief, a YouTube channel hosted by Hoover, his callsign as a former Air Force F-15 pilot. You can watch the video here (24:32). At the 11:23 mark of the video, Hoover explains the deadly failure of the air boss as “the normalization of deviance,” or “the deviation spiral.” Think of a dot on the center of a piece of paper, and then begin to draw an ever-expanding spiral going out and around.

 

The starting point of a process is called the “original normal.” In the case of the air boss for the Wings Over Dallas air show, we can go back to his very first show in which he deviated from the original normal by not giving the pilots a detailed plan for de-escalation. That’s one trip out and around the spiral. And because he got away it, that first deviation became his new normal. Then he had his second show, which was another deviation away from the original normal. And again, he got away with it. We then get all the way out to the air boss’s two hundred ninety-ninth show, all without incident. It all worked until it didn’t.

 

At the macro level, we could apply the normalization of deviance to all kinds of domains, from organizations and institutions, all the way up to cultures and governments. If it seems to you like things are slipping away at a large scale these days, there you go.

 

However, I work at the micro level and my interest at Grace Harbor is primarily marriage and family relationships. I witness the deviation spiral at work not infrequently. Here are two generalized, stereotypical marital examples of deviation from the original norm.

 

Stuart marries Debbie. During the honeymoon, Stuart gets frustrated over the rental car and vents on Debbie. This catches Debbie off guard since she never saw that anger in Stuart while they were dating. She’s a little hurt and confused but she doesn’t say anything. Over the years, Stuart’s anger has not only persisted but gotten worse. Early on, Debbie would summon some courage to speak up. But she quickly learned that speaking up only provoked Stuart and made it worse for her and the children. Maddeningly, Debbie counted the immediate cost and kept her mouth shut.

 

Can you see where this is going? Stuart doesn’t. Stuart is completely caught off guard when he gets home from work one day and Debbie tells him he needs to move out. She’s done. Stuart is shocked and confused. He knew things weren’t great, but he did think they were ok. She was, after all, still having sex him. Stuart got away with it for a long time, but now they’ve crashed.

 

Flipping this dynamic around, let’s say Frank marries Macy. Macy turns out to have the dominant personality and Frank is conflict avoidant. Macy is a no-nonsense kind of person and Frank is afraid of Macy’s emotional intensity. Frank has things to say and feelings to express, but whenever he tried early on Macy either interrupted him because he was taking too long to get it out or she discarded Frank’s thoughts as weak. She’s got things to do. And deep down she has little respect for Frank’s lack of capacity. Macy is then completely shocked one day when she finds out that Frank is deep in a relationship with another woman. And here come the fatalities.

 

There are any number of worthwhile paths we could go down at this point, but there’s one in particular that would bear rich fruit if we gave time and energy to it. That point would be to define the original normal. As in, is there an original normal for marriage? What about all our other relationships? Is there source material to know?

 

Let me suggest using first principles thinking, which is the approach scientists use for problem solving. First principles are the fundamental building blocks of an idea. They are the purest parts that we know to be true and that are then used to build more complex thoughts upon. For example, reducing matter down to the periodic table of elements is first principles thinking. The more intimately a scientist knows each element, the better he can understand why a component breaks down and which elements are best suited to work together.

 

The analogy breaks down, but isn’t the Bible to Christians what the periodic table is to scientists? The truths revealed to us in the Bible are in their purest form and we use those truths to build, and often rebuild, a flourishing life.

 

At the same time, it’s not like simply reading the Bible will produce a strong Christian any more than simply reading over the periodical table will make a good scientist. God inhabits his Word, and we look into his Word to the point that the Word increasingly inhabits us. The first principles of truth and grace, of law and gospel, of love and obedience, of faith and repentance, of confession and forgiveness, of security and identity, of humility and courage—these are examples of building blocks for making healthy marriages and relationships.

 

Because the God who never deviates is loving to give us the original normal so that we don’t have to guess and wing it through life.