The thing no one talks about ....
Strangely enough, this opinionated post is about real life military training and consequences but it's fandom related because so many of us (myself included) idolize men (and women) who are shown to be capable of violence and are often soldiers, police officers, criminals, spies and so on. Our love of idealized violence both has real life consequences and I think also means we need to look at the fact that, at least in regards to military violence, we are perpetuating a terrible myth.
I recently bought an old book called something like 'Officer Training' or some such -- it was intended as a resource for a new commissioned officer and printed in 1941 in the US.
Flipping though it, I noticed the most commonly referenced ideal as critical to soldiers was pride, loyalty and cleanliness. Military units without these things were doomed to failure, according to the author. My partner saw it and reminded me that the book was totally out of date -- not just because, well, it was but because the method of training soldiers underwent a complete overhaul in the 1950's - 1960's.
Once upon a time, the military trained their soldiers via group loyalty, boundary maintenance, concepts of honor (varying based on culture) and a form of military fairness that led to things like really low rates of gunfire, erring on the side of compassion, and the Christmas Truce.
The military leadership didn't much like the consequences of this form of training -- which led to things like the Christmas Truce.
Factoid:
"After this, the authorities on both sides, promptly forbade fraternization, and it is claimed that in 1915, when certain troops involved in the 1914 truce attempted to repeat it they were shot dead by their own side, who were under orders to prevent it at all costs."
This pesky habit of mercy, compassion, friendships and respect between soldiers on enemy sides is ancient and continues to this day -- though in a much smaller amount these days. It's a consistent issue for command staff who are really looking for obedient killing machines and have been tweaking military training since the first drill sergeant bellowed on the first drill field.
Also, formal studies, particularly in the 1950's and 60's confirmed what everyone had known. Most soldiers never fire their guns, even if they're in active combat. An even smaller percentage actually shoot at the enemy.
This was, obviously, a waste of training, manpower, and political effectiveness. THe military, all over the world, looked for a better method for training their soldiers to do their core function -- kill each other.
They came upon two methods: desensitization and operant conditioning.
Some of the changes include:
Changing the target on target practice papers from bulls eyes to human figures (in varying detail).
Using commercially available video games to overcome normal human resistance to inflicting violence on other humans.
Renaming successful hits to a target from 'shots' to 'kills'
The usual sub-rosa encouragement to see the enemy as less than human (sand niggers, japs, etc) was expanded to include the soldiers themselves who are often encouraged to think of themselves as killing machines (and celebrated for this) and so on.
Looking into the current military training is a painful process for me because I have a deep respect for those who are capable of aggression and violence without losing sight of their -- and others' -- humanity. I admire the good cop (Benton Fraser, Ray Vecchio, several of the characters from The Wire, many of the officers I see daily), the good soldier (Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Ripley, and so on) and these are characters and personalities I'm strongly drawn to.
But what is presented to us in movies and television (and recruiting posters) is no longer the reality. I hate that. I hate that vulnerable young men and women are conditioned like dogs to think they and their enemies are beasts. I hate that we refuse to acknowledge the damage we're doing and either monitoring these soldiers, whose judgements have been impaired, or blame them for the very things the military psychologists have been intentionally doing to them or acting shocked that things like Abu Ghrab, PTSD, callous responses to murder or civilian killings happen. And, most importantly to me, lying to recruits with images of the old style 'honor, pride, and courage' advertising then inflicting a dubious, very morally questionable system of de-humanization.
For those of us who can cheer on Jack Harkness, or Ripley for defending us with a big gun we need to be aware that we are cheering on an ideal. An ideal that is being intentionally eroded by the military (world-wide), by the pseudo-military training that some police officers receive and even by our culture's bizarre double standard that is fascinated by violence, gore and torment (torture porn, violent video games) but also despises the police and others who are forced to take on the burden of violence for all of us.
If we love the ideals of honor, courage, loyalty and standing at the side of your fellows to the hangman's noose and beyond, then I think it's important to fight to preserve these critical ideals in the face of today's pragmatic dehumanization.
I'm not a pacifist, I both believe that it's not normal human behavior, and also that it's far too frequently used as an excuse to both push off the necessity for violence to other people then to turn around and despise those people for it.
What I believe is that the capacity for violence must always always be tempered by the understanding that the targets of your actions are living things -- people, animals, whatever and they deserve your absolute best efforts of respect, compassion, mercy, and restraint. We should never make violence easy or simple, never use the tricks of the mind to dehumanize ourselves or others. We shouldn't have efficient, killing military machines -- all our soldiers should err on the side of life, waste bullets, avoid shooting at the respected enemy, engage in holiday truces, refuse to carry out illegal orders and never think of stripping captured enemy soldiers naked and making them bark like dogs.
The capacity for violence is a precious, terrible tool that can be used well or abused horribly and our cultural refusal to look at that is horribly damaging to all of us. By refusing to look at violence, how it's used, how we idealize and fear it, we are letting the good in it be perverted to solely bad.
Note: I really don't expect, or need, my flist to agree with this -- I'm very aware that discussing RL violence is a controversial issue. I just think it's important to think about violence, and come to our own conclusions about it.
Resources: various, this guy is interesting, though I don't always agree with him and I'm just getting into reading his work.
http://www.killology.com/art_bomb_death.htm
I recently bought an old book called something like 'Officer Training' or some such -- it was intended as a resource for a new commissioned officer and printed in 1941 in the US.
Flipping though it, I noticed the most commonly referenced ideal as critical to soldiers was pride, loyalty and cleanliness. Military units without these things were doomed to failure, according to the author. My partner saw it and reminded me that the book was totally out of date -- not just because, well, it was but because the method of training soldiers underwent a complete overhaul in the 1950's - 1960's.
Once upon a time, the military trained their soldiers via group loyalty, boundary maintenance, concepts of honor (varying based on culture) and a form of military fairness that led to things like really low rates of gunfire, erring on the side of compassion, and the Christmas Truce.
The military leadership didn't much like the consequences of this form of training -- which led to things like the Christmas Truce.
Factoid:
"After this, the authorities on both sides, promptly forbade fraternization, and it is claimed that in 1915, when certain troops involved in the 1914 truce attempted to repeat it they were shot dead by their own side, who were under orders to prevent it at all costs."
This pesky habit of mercy, compassion, friendships and respect between soldiers on enemy sides is ancient and continues to this day -- though in a much smaller amount these days. It's a consistent issue for command staff who are really looking for obedient killing machines and have been tweaking military training since the first drill sergeant bellowed on the first drill field.
Also, formal studies, particularly in the 1950's and 60's confirmed what everyone had known. Most soldiers never fire their guns, even if they're in active combat. An even smaller percentage actually shoot at the enemy.
This was, obviously, a waste of training, manpower, and political effectiveness. THe military, all over the world, looked for a better method for training their soldiers to do their core function -- kill each other.
They came upon two methods: desensitization and operant conditioning.
Some of the changes include:
Changing the target on target practice papers from bulls eyes to human figures (in varying detail).
Using commercially available video games to overcome normal human resistance to inflicting violence on other humans.
Renaming successful hits to a target from 'shots' to 'kills'
The usual sub-rosa encouragement to see the enemy as less than human (sand niggers, japs, etc) was expanded to include the soldiers themselves who are often encouraged to think of themselves as killing machines (and celebrated for this) and so on.
Looking into the current military training is a painful process for me because I have a deep respect for those who are capable of aggression and violence without losing sight of their -- and others' -- humanity. I admire the good cop (Benton Fraser, Ray Vecchio, several of the characters from The Wire, many of the officers I see daily), the good soldier (Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Ripley, and so on) and these are characters and personalities I'm strongly drawn to.
But what is presented to us in movies and television (and recruiting posters) is no longer the reality. I hate that. I hate that vulnerable young men and women are conditioned like dogs to think they and their enemies are beasts. I hate that we refuse to acknowledge the damage we're doing and either monitoring these soldiers, whose judgements have been impaired, or blame them for the very things the military psychologists have been intentionally doing to them or acting shocked that things like Abu Ghrab, PTSD, callous responses to murder or civilian killings happen. And, most importantly to me, lying to recruits with images of the old style 'honor, pride, and courage' advertising then inflicting a dubious, very morally questionable system of de-humanization.
For those of us who can cheer on Jack Harkness, or Ripley for defending us with a big gun we need to be aware that we are cheering on an ideal. An ideal that is being intentionally eroded by the military (world-wide), by the pseudo-military training that some police officers receive and even by our culture's bizarre double standard that is fascinated by violence, gore and torment (torture porn, violent video games) but also despises the police and others who are forced to take on the burden of violence for all of us.
If we love the ideals of honor, courage, loyalty and standing at the side of your fellows to the hangman's noose and beyond, then I think it's important to fight to preserve these critical ideals in the face of today's pragmatic dehumanization.
I'm not a pacifist, I both believe that it's not normal human behavior, and also that it's far too frequently used as an excuse to both push off the necessity for violence to other people then to turn around and despise those people for it.
What I believe is that the capacity for violence must always always be tempered by the understanding that the targets of your actions are living things -- people, animals, whatever and they deserve your absolute best efforts of respect, compassion, mercy, and restraint. We should never make violence easy or simple, never use the tricks of the mind to dehumanize ourselves or others. We shouldn't have efficient, killing military machines -- all our soldiers should err on the side of life, waste bullets, avoid shooting at the respected enemy, engage in holiday truces, refuse to carry out illegal orders and never think of stripping captured enemy soldiers naked and making them bark like dogs.
The capacity for violence is a precious, terrible tool that can be used well or abused horribly and our cultural refusal to look at that is horribly damaging to all of us. By refusing to look at violence, how it's used, how we idealize and fear it, we are letting the good in it be perverted to solely bad.
Note: I really don't expect, or need, my flist to agree with this -- I'm very aware that discussing RL violence is a controversial issue. I just think it's important to think about violence, and come to our own conclusions about it.
Resources: various, this guy is interesting, though I don't always agree with him and I'm just getting into reading his work.
http://www.killology.com/art_bomb_death.htm