Day 137
To continue from yesterday:
But perhaps soldiers should not be held responsible for their actions. If we push hard enough at what I'll call a 'social determinism argument' we may be compelled to release some people from their moral obligations.
Most soldiers are young, male, poor, relatively uneducated, and live with few prospects. They join the army precisely because the army offers the best or only meaningful prospect for a good life, an education and so forth. Furthermore, the army constantly releases propaganda about how honourable and great and fun and exciting the work is; the reality is that you'll be driving around Afghanistan in a lightly armoured car in shifts, just waiting for the moment an IED buried in the road hits the front wheels.
A solid third of US troops home from Iraq suffer from psychological illness, specifically PTSD and depression. Contrast this with the commercials you see.
So we send young, poor, uneducated, desparate young men - boys really - into a world of death and destruction. We give them six weeks training and a few powerpoint presentations on the military code of ethics, and somehow we expect them to be moral, to do the right thing against all odds and pursuasions.
The only way to cope with seeing dehumanization on such a regular basis is to detach yourself from it emotionally, to learn not to care and let your eyes glaze over at the sight. The shadow of this propensity is that of becoming inhuman yourself, and ultimately becoming the deliverer of the very same actions you detached yourself from in the first place. Soldiers spend months, years, watching death, inflicting moral and mortal wounds upon fellow human beings.
And we bring them home, shower them with praise, love, admiration. We call them heroes. We expect them to live happy, fulfilled lives.
That is scarsely possible.
But perhaps soldiers should not be held responsible for their actions. If we push hard enough at what I'll call a 'social determinism argument' we may be compelled to release some people from their moral obligations.
Most soldiers are young, male, poor, relatively uneducated, and live with few prospects. They join the army precisely because the army offers the best or only meaningful prospect for a good life, an education and so forth. Furthermore, the army constantly releases propaganda about how honourable and great and fun and exciting the work is; the reality is that you'll be driving around Afghanistan in a lightly armoured car in shifts, just waiting for the moment an IED buried in the road hits the front wheels.
A solid third of US troops home from Iraq suffer from psychological illness, specifically PTSD and depression. Contrast this with the commercials you see.
So we send young, poor, uneducated, desparate young men - boys really - into a world of death and destruction. We give them six weeks training and a few powerpoint presentations on the military code of ethics, and somehow we expect them to be moral, to do the right thing against all odds and pursuasions.
The only way to cope with seeing dehumanization on such a regular basis is to detach yourself from it emotionally, to learn not to care and let your eyes glaze over at the sight. The shadow of this propensity is that of becoming inhuman yourself, and ultimately becoming the deliverer of the very same actions you detached yourself from in the first place. Soldiers spend months, years, watching death, inflicting moral and mortal wounds upon fellow human beings.
And we bring them home, shower them with praise, love, admiration. We call them heroes. We expect them to live happy, fulfilled lives.
That is scarsely possible.
Comments
Or, maybe you're suggesting that society has created an impregnable cult around symbolic figures: i.e. the patriotic soldier who puts himself/herself at risk for the good of his or her country. Society fears loosing faith in the ideal as it faces the threat of non-ideal reality. So, instead of using criticism and reform to bring reality into alignment with our publicly stated ideals, we turn a blind eye to unpleasant details for the sake of preserving a complacent confidence in hollow symbols.
Criticism becomes taboo; reform impossible; double standards reign supreme. The longer we hold out, the more slavishly we invoke our faith in imaginary heroes at the expense of the welfare of real people. We ignore the shortcomings of the system in the vain hope that no one will notice the increasing discrepancy between the ideal and reality.
This is faith operating backwards.
Ideals are not supposed to degenerate into illusions; they are supposed to inspire motivation. Most of the time, however, they are an unpredictable combination of both.
First, we must identify what we are so afraid of loosing, should society as a whole stop believing in a given story, like the 'hero-of-the-state' one mentioned above.
For instance:
How would our tax dollars be conceivably reallocated?
What kind of behaviour toward military men and women, projected on a long-term basis, would become publicly legitimate?
Who would quit (or join) the military, or decide against joining, that would not have otherwise?
Which actions of government would loose their moral or legal authority?
Would government, on the whole, gain or loose integrity and/or respect as a defender of our rights, especially with respect to the international environment?
That's a start...