“And I can see no reason why anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still… put to use by reasonable men to reasonable ends, or by madmen to nonsense and disaster.” 
~ Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (1969)  

Part 1: Introduction

As we established in an early article “The New Corporate Governance Paradigm,” leadership education must also encompass a profound comprehension of human nature, behaviors, and factors that drive decision-making of individuals and groups. At Lyceum, our content is rooted in the idea that to lead effectively, one must work with and through the complexities of human and group behavior. This pathway is illuminated by the field of behavioral economics, which has shed new light on the psychological and sociological underpinnings of economic decision-making—insights that are also particularly relevant for boards and CEOs navigating the complexities and uncertainties of today’s business environment.  

Two hundred years before “behavioral economics” was named—before it had Nobel laureates or academic departments—the framers of the Constitution were practicing its core insight: that people do not always act rationally, predictably, or in alignment with the common good. The Constitution was artfully designed with that truth in mind. 

This series is a behavioral reading of their design—not as a civic document, but for its revelations of wisdom in its structure. Among the key concepts introduced is temporal ethics—the idea that leadership must operate within the bounds of human limitation and time, not idealized perfection. There is much that modern boards and executive teams can learn from what they built—and why. The behavioral read of it reminds us that leadership is not about perfection but about aspiration in the face of frailty. Every institution, like every human, is flawed. But worthy leadership requires: 

• Constructing systems that anticipate human bias 
• Serving beyond immediate interests—to broader constituencies and future generations 
• Holding the tension between liberty and order, and the human tendency to favor ease today at the expense of endurance for tomorrow 
• Channeling ambition toward durable structures and collective good 

Future installments in the series are shared exclusively with members of the Lyceum Circle of Leaders—a peer group of executives and directors committed to progress through shared intelligence. If this first piece resonates, please consider joining us. It’s free and no obligation.

Click here to join the Lyceum Circle of Leaders

Why return to the Constitution now?
Because decisions—made in boardrooms, legislatures, and executive suites—continue to produce not only unexpected results, but deeply predictable ones. The difference between wisdom and disaster lies in whether behaviors that lead to folly are recognized and addressed—or left to run wild. 

The Constitution was not written for the best of us. It was written to guard us from the worst in us. It anticipates our impulsiveness, our hunger for control, our factionalism, our forgetfulness. It assumes, as Barbara Tuchman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, warned in The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1984), that even entire governments will sometimes pursue “policies contrary to the self-interest of the state involved.” Not out of ignorance—but knowingly, in full view of better alternatives. Not by accident—but through familiar human failings: ambition, fear, tribalism, rigidity, compliance, emotional reasoning. 

Why look at Government?
Government presents a case that is omnipresent in our collective view. And government is prone to folly on a much larger stage. Tuchman notes that the consequences of folly in government far exceed those in private life:  

 “The reason for concern is that folly in government has more impact on more people than individual follies.”  

This makes the stakes of constitutional and institutional design even higher. But the dynamics that Tuchman outlines—status-seeking, fear, deference, rigidity, inertia—apply equally within corporate boardrooms and executive suites, especially where power is centralized or dissent is muted. 

In both public and private life, group decision-making must reckon with the same behavioral realities. The Constitution’s tools—checks and balances, staggered terms, deliberative friction—are not abstractions. They are structural responses to behavioral risk. 

The Purpose of This Series
This series proceeds from a simple but potent conviction:  

The framers understood us. They knew ambition, envy, fear, apathy, and the hunger for power and control. They didn’t seek to cure human nature. They contained it. We treat the Constitution not as a sacred text, or a civics lesson, but as a behavioral containment system. It is a vessel of restraint—a design built to bear the weight of human frailty. 

Our Framework
Each article in this series will: 

• Present a clause or phrase from the Constitution. 
• Identify the behavioral tendency it was meant to regulate — e.g., ambition, fear, groupthink, vengeance, short-termism. 
• Describe the structural remedy: (e.g. staggered terms, checks and balances, procedural delay, division of powers.) 
• Draw from framer debates on the Constitution and The Federalist Papers for insight into the original reasoning. 
• Translate that insight into modern governance considerations: boardroom and management decision-making, institutional design. 

Our Audience
We write for those who lead — in boardrooms, public institutions, and civic life. These leaders must contend with the very same human dynamics the Constitution was designed to regulate. We analyze it together as a design manual and a guide. 

The View from the Stern
Tuchman quotes Samuel Taylor Coleridge in her epilogue. We offer the fuller version here, from Coleridge’s Table Talk (1831):  

“If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.” 

It’s a sobering image: illuminated wisdom trailing behind us. But the framers did something rare. They looked back clearly—on Athens and Rome, on the English Civil War, on monarchy, rebellion, and dissolution—and applied that wisdom brilliantly in enduring constitutional design. 

The Constitution is not an idealist’s dream or a relic of 1787—it is a systemic response to the predictable missteps of human behavior. It is a behavioral map—drafted by those who did not flatter us but believed we might be governable if we governed ourselves.  

We begin with the Constitution’s overture—the Preamble. Often memorized by schoolchildren but seldom examined, it can, at first glance and in flat intonation, seem merely ceremonial. But on deeper reflection, it reveals the framers’ worldview—and their behavioral diagnosis of the human condition. 

Future installments in the series are shared exclusively with members of the Lyceum Circle of Leaders—a peer group of executives and directors committed to progress through shared intelligence. If this first piece resonates, please consider joining us. It’s free and no obligation.

Click here to join the Lyceum Circle of Leaders

Part 2: Interpreting the Preamble

The Preamble sets the tone for the entire Constitution. It was an act of self-governance not rooted in optimism, but in realism. A realism that sees human nature clearly — and responds not with despair, but with design. 

Text of the Preamble
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” 

Behavioral Interpretation: Aspirations Above Instincts
The Preamble is not law; it is purpose. And that purpose is aspirational. It acknowledges — without stating outright — the imperfect state of human affairs: a fractured Union, injustice, unrest, insecurity, self-interest. The framers understood the baser tendencies of mankind—self-interest, faction, fear, ambition, passion. And so, the Preamble is best understood as a counterweight. 

Each phrase addresses a behavioral vulnerability the Constitution seeks to channel or constrain. 

1. “We the People”
   This bold opening replaces allegiance to sovereign states with a collective identity, an act of psychological integration. It counters the human tendency to fragment into tribes or local loyalties. It is an assertion of unity over faction, essential for national cohesion.
   
   Behavioral flaws addressed: Tribalism, parochialism, and resistance to shared identity.
   Behavioral virtue invoked: Solidarity, shared identity, mutual obligation. 

2. “In Order to form a more perfect Union”
   The phrase concedes that perfection is elusive, and that the Articles of Confederation had failed. By seeking something “more perfect,” the founders show a recognition of fallibility and a willingness to refine and improve.
   
   Behavioral flaws addressed: Inertia, defensiveness, fear of change.
   Behavioral virtue invoked: Humility, improvement, realism. 

3. “Establish Justice”
   Justice is not assumed; it must be established. The Preamble sets up justice not as a natural outgrowth of power, but as a deliberate act of design, because unchecked power breeds injustice.
   
   Behavioral flaws addressed: Partiality, vengeance, corruption, and moral blindness.
   Behavioral virtue invoked: Coordinated vigilance, fairness, impartiality, moral clarity. 

4. “Insure domestic Tranquility”
   The word “insure” implies fragility — that peace is not permanent. Domestic tranquility had been shattered by Shays’ Rebellion, and the phrase reflects the founders’ awareness that economic dislocation, inequality, and mismanagement of power lead to unrest.
   
   Behavioral flaws addressed: Discontent, uprising, revenge against systems perceived as unjust.
   Behavioral virtue invoked: Prudence, civic peace, institutional stability. 

5. “Provide for the common defence”
   Here the Preamble channels a collective instinct for survival, turning fear into structure. The phrase acknowledges a world of threat, both foreign and domestic, and seeks to unite the states in response to those threats.
   
   Behavioral flaws addressed: Isolationism, short-term thinking, and neglect of shared responsibility.
   Behavioral virtue invoked: Vigilance, mutual protection, shared responsibility. 

6. “Promote the general Welfare”
   This clause expands the vision beyond the individual or privileged class. It is a direct confrontation with the human tendency to govern narrowly, for the benefit of a few, and a call to elevate decision-making.
   
   Behavioral flaws addressed: Greed, class protectionism, neglect of the vulnerable.
   Behavioral virtue invoked: Equity, compassion, long-view governance. 

7. “Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”
   This phrase introduces a powerful interplay between temporal ethics and eternal aspiration. Temporal ethics refers to a moral framework grounded in the imperfect, provisional world of contingent human affairs—one that accepts time, change, and fallibility as its operating conditions. It asks: what responsibility do we bear, not just for ourselves, but for generations yet to come? In this light, the framers recognized the seductive pull of short-term gains accruing to a single party or narrow interest. To counteract this, they embedded a call to long-term stewardship—a temporal ethic of restraint and continuity. But this ethic does not exist in isolation. It is tethered to an eternal ideal: the enduring value of liberty itself. By invoking “the blessings of liberty,” the Preamble reaches beyond the moment, gesturing toward principles the framers believed to be timeless in nature—even as they entrusted their preservation to a fallible and time-bound people. The Constitution thus operates in two registers: it is a vessel of temporal design—mechanical, revisable, and pragmatic—yet it carries within it a moral compass aimed at something more permanent. It is not utopian, but it is aspirational. It accepts human frailty while still striving toward lasting truth.
   
   Behavioral flaws addressed: Myopia, hedonism, disregard for future costs.
   Behavioral virtue invoked: Stewardship, generational responsibility, foresight. 

Philosophical and Historical Grounding
The framers drew from Enlightenment period thought, particularly: 

• Hobbes and Locke on the state of nature and social contract; 
• Montesquieu on separation of powers; 
• Cicero and Polybius on republicanism and virtue; 
• And classical Christian realism, which contends that man is not inherently virtuous and must therefore be regulated by law, structure, and moral discipline. 

The Federalist Papers reinforce this behavioral diagnosis: 

• Federalist No. 10 (Madison): the danger of factions 
• Federalist No. 51 (Madison): the need for checks because “ambition must be made to counteract ambition” 
• Federalist No. 1 (Hamilton): the entire Constitution is a test of whether societies “are really capable…of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” 

Modern Implications for Leadership and Governance
For the Lyceum Circle of Leaders, the Preamble becomes a moral compass. It reminds us that leadership is not about perfection but about aspiration in the face of frailty. Every institution, like every human, is flawed. But worthy leadership requires: 

• Constructing systems that anticipate human bias 
• Serving beyond immediate interests—to broader constituencies and future generations 
• Holding the tension between liberty and order, and the human tendency to favor ease today at the expense of endurance tomorrow 
• Channeling ambition toward durable structures and collective good 

In this, we are not unlike the framers—called to design behavioral containment systems of our own. Governance and leadership, whether public or corporate, is not merely about policy or profit; it is about shaping conditions that elevate virtue, buffer vice, and endure the tests of time. 

Future installments in the series are shared exclusively with members of the Lyceum Circle of Leaders—a peer group of executives and directors committed to progress through shared intelligence. If this first piece resonates, please consider joining us. It’s free and no obligation.

Click here to join the Lyceum Circle of Leaders