The psychology of becoming a soldier

In 1983, PBS gave this extraordinary unvarnished view of what it means to be trained to be a soldier. The six-part documentary is called "Anybody's Son Will Do," and the documentary focuses on boot camp at Paris Island. Here's one of the opening quotes: "The secret about basic training is that it's not really about teaching people things at all. It's about changing people so that they can do things they wouldn't have dreamed of doing otherwise." In Part III, the instructor asks the trainees to name that special person to whom they are dedicating all of their hard training. The answer: To your enemy, so that he can "die for his country." The commentator adds that it doesn't really matter who the enemy is. Rather, it's the idea of an "outside threat that binds a combat unit together so strongly that its members will make the most extraordinary sacrifices for each other." In part V, the commentator mentions another key point of basic training: They indoctrinate the recruits with the idea that the enemy--whoever he may be--is not fully human, and so it's all right to kill him." Here's an excerpt from an actual training session (also from Part V, starting at the 2:30 mark), discussing the extent which the Marines need to destroy the enemy:

You want to rip out his eyeballs, you want to tear apart his love machine. You want to destroy him, privates! You don't wanna have nothing left of him. You want to send him home in a glad bag to his mommy." [loud laughing from the recruits] . . . Marines are born trained killers, and you've got to prove that every day."
Here's part I: It's apparent throughout this documentary that soldier training depends upon hating one's enemy. It is also apparent that many of the members of the military are religious. Somehow, through this mix, the religious command to "Love your enemy" co-exists with the military command to "Hate your enemy."

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People Are Idiots. A Cynical Observation

The video below from TED is chilling in many ways. Michael Specter touches on observations about the resistance people have toward anything that seems to threaten their hobbit-hole view of the world. A little of this, as he rightly points out, is fine, even agreeable, but when it burgeons into matters that threaten lives and seek to derail all that has made this present era as wonderful as it is---and it must be stressed, in the face of overwhelming negative press, that we are living in a magnificent period of history---then it loses whatever quaint appeal it might otherwise have. We respect the Amish, but they don't tell the rest of us how to live and try their level best to be apart from the world they disapprove. When you see people filing lawsuits with the intent to halt necessary, beneficial progress because they have bought into some bogeyman horror movie view of science or politics or morality, it behooves us to come to terms with a fundamental reality with which we live today. First, though, the video. Watch this, then read on. Okay, what reality? That many people are just idiots. I cannot think of a more tasteful way to phrase it. But when you consider the list, justifications and rationalizations fade. The Tea Party. The Anti-vaccine Movement. The Birthers. Young Earth Creationists. Medjugorje. Deepak Chopra. PETA. Free Market Capitalism. Global Warming Deniers. Holocaust Deniers. Abstinence-Only. Just Say No. The Shroud of Turin. Astrology. Texas Board of Education. Evolution Deniers. Frankenfood Protesters. Homeopaths. Herbalists. Psychics. Scientology. I could go on. [more . . . ]

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Whether to grow a beard

I currently have a beard, mostly because it takes less time to shave. I've probably considered the logistics too much: add up three minutes per day for 365 days--that amounts to 18 hours per year shaving. But maybe it's nonetheless worth it to shave. Many people say that having a beard suggests that one is hiding something, not being forthright. That's apparently what politicians think these days based on the lack of beards. Others argue that a beard makes one look more thoughtful. I don't claim to have any answers--I suspect that the way people react has to do with the kind of beard one has. Is it well-trimmed, for example? Andrew Sullivan has a short post suggesting that consumers react in somewhat predictable ways to beards. And here's more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Comprehensive moral instruction

We've all seen many Internet lists offering suggestions for improving one's life or state of happiness. This list, by a young man named Henrick Edberg at The Positivity Blog, caught my attention today, perhaps because it includes some of my own favorite bits of productivity reminders and folk wisdom, including the "80/20 rule" and the advice to not beat yourself up for making mistakes. His list also includes a nice twist to the golden rule: Give value to get value, not the other way around. Another item on his list reminds us to express gratitude to others in order to enrich our own lives, reminding us that expressing gratitude is socially contagious. What also intrigued me was Edberg's pre-list commentary: He laments that the nuggets of advice in his list aren't taught as part of the high school curriculum.

But I still think that taking a few hours from all those German language classes and use them for some personal development classes would have been a good idea. Perhaps for just an hour a week in high school. It would probably be useful for many students and on a larger scale quite helpful for society in general.

I think I know why there are no such classes in public schools. Teaching advice on how to navigate through the complexities of life in a positive state of mind would too often trigger discussions regarding "morality," which too often trigger discussions of specific religious teachings which, in turn, tend to anger at least some parents and students, which would then shut down the course (in public schools, anyway). I suspect that this causal chain is a big reason that so many schools tread lightly on teaching students how to navigate through life, even though there is an immense amount of information that needs to be discussed. Instead of vigorously teaching what the students need to know to be functional and virtuous, most schools ostensibly defer to families and churches (though they actually defer at least as much to pop culture, including magazines, "news" programs, television shows and movies) to fill that "moral" vacuum of students. In America, however, even "serious" teachers of morality often insist that the way to best live one's life is by obeying a standardized set of "moral" rules. Is the advice to follow any set of rules really the best approach for instructing us how to get along with each other down here on planet Earth? Is it even possible for any form of obedience to serve as the foundation for a high-functioning society? I think not. I'm going to digress at this point . . . [more . . . ]

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10 important psychology experiments

A site called Brainz offers a list of what it terms the most revealing psychology experiments. This is a pretty good list, mostly of prominent social psychological experiments, and it includes working links to detailed descriptions of most of these experiments. And you go to this site, you can review ten interesting psychological experiments from 2009, chosen by David Disalvo. Interesting, because they could have application to your own life.

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