(The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society)
-by lt. col. dave grossman
1995, 2009
A brilliant, searing book that lays to rest misconceptions about killing in war, most notably the Hollywood-fueled myth that most soldiers shoot to kill in that moment of truth...and also the notion that combat PTSD is about the fear of death. Psychiatric war casualties are about the humyn resistance to killing - the more intimate it becomes, the more we do anything to avoid it, and the harder it is to deal with the guilt and remorse. The quality of brainwashing and unit discipline soldiers experience, plus the amount of societal reinforcement they receive afterwards, can reduce psychiatric casualties profoundly.
The spark of the book came after WWII, when the military discovered that only 15-20% of riflemen where shooting to kill. Grossman's research indicates that this had always been the average. Subsequently, the army changed its training (for instance, replacing circular targets with silhouettes of humyn beings, standard practice now even for police). By Korea, 50% were shooting to kill. By Vietnam, 95%. In the past half-century, we've fought many enemies who were training old-school, which helps explain why we've usually been so brutally dominant.
PTSD isn't about the fear of death, because sailors, medics, and civilians who endure months of bombing suffer almost NO psychiatric casualties. Put any soldier "on the line" for months, and psychiatric casualties will be over 90%.
This book is a must-read. Grossman, who served as an army ranger and paratrooper before becoming a West Point psychology professor, explores what has to be in place for our killing resistance to be overcome. The statistics and personal testimony he unveils are scathing. The final section jumps to society at large, and how our children are affected by the tens of thousands of violent deaths they're exposed to on TV and in video games. Grossman says that we're raising entire generations desensitized to violence. This has been the most criticized part of the book, as the link between TV/games and violent behavior has been "inconclusive" for decades (hmmm, conspiracy theorists take note)...but that uncertainty is finally disappearing, and researchers like grossman are being validated. Here's a brilliant, disturbing link to that effect:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-baby-scientist/201801/violent-media-and-aggressive-behavior-in-children
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
corona musings
One can't help speculate about the virus-response decision-making at our country's highest levels. I'm sure they considered not declaring a state of emergency, and letting things play out. Millions more might die, but...under the current shut-downs, lost wages and production are prodigious. Businesses are closing, some of which won't open again. The dow jones blahblahblah...well, if you can convince yourself those numbers mean anything, it just means that fairy tales are vital to the humyn psyche.
I'm sure the point was also made at the aforementioned meetings, that the people who would die would mostly be non-productive retirees, a disproportionate drain on the huymn services budget. People with "not much time left". Though a recording of that meeting might leave most queasy, i'm not condemning anyone unsentimental enough to make such assessments. Those in charge have an obligation to consider every aspect. Our government has never represented the interests of the people, but still...it can be a brutally hard job, even if you're only doing it terribly. This time, the more humyn choice was probably made. That sounds hopeful to me.
Or maybe this "state of emergency/shelter in place" is just a concession to the medical industry, to keep them being overwhelmed before we return to "business as usual" in a couple weeks.
And now...the corona comedy!
Before venues closed, i was ready to do this bit: "Did you hear the CDC announcement? It seems that one blood type, O negative, has a natural immunity to corona. And not just that, but anyone who has sex with someone O negative, becomes immune as well. So sharon, antoinette, wendy and karen together, and greg, you're all covered. You can thank me later." A little obvious, i know (i heard another comedian do a less-subtle version, and cringed), but this was for one specific crowd who knew me very well. The humor would have been amplified, because wendy and antoinette's significant others would be in the crowd.
OR...
I'm considering getting a friend, dressing in ties and white shirts, and knocking on doors as the "social-distancing jehovah's witnesses". We would stand not just six feet from the door, but six feet from each other, and try to get people to engage on matters of faith.
OR...
I'm planning, when it gets warm again, to go to the park to do my normal music practice/busking. But instead of sitting by the path with an open case, i'll sit six feet off the path, with a butterfly net extended and a sign saying "CORONA TIPS".
Enjoy your shelter. Do you have someone to love? Then screw you.
Hmph.
I'm sure the point was also made at the aforementioned meetings, that the people who would die would mostly be non-productive retirees, a disproportionate drain on the huymn services budget. People with "not much time left". Though a recording of that meeting might leave most queasy, i'm not condemning anyone unsentimental enough to make such assessments. Those in charge have an obligation to consider every aspect. Our government has never represented the interests of the people, but still...it can be a brutally hard job, even if you're only doing it terribly. This time, the more humyn choice was probably made. That sounds hopeful to me.
Or maybe this "state of emergency/shelter in place" is just a concession to the medical industry, to keep them being overwhelmed before we return to "business as usual" in a couple weeks.
And now...the corona comedy!
Before venues closed, i was ready to do this bit: "Did you hear the CDC announcement? It seems that one blood type, O negative, has a natural immunity to corona. And not just that, but anyone who has sex with someone O negative, becomes immune as well. So sharon, antoinette, wendy and karen together, and greg, you're all covered. You can thank me later." A little obvious, i know (i heard another comedian do a less-subtle version, and cringed), but this was for one specific crowd who knew me very well. The humor would have been amplified, because wendy and antoinette's significant others would be in the crowd.
OR...
I'm considering getting a friend, dressing in ties and white shirts, and knocking on doors as the "social-distancing jehovah's witnesses". We would stand not just six feet from the door, but six feet from each other, and try to get people to engage on matters of faith.
OR...
I'm planning, when it gets warm again, to go to the park to do my normal music practice/busking. But instead of sitting by the path with an open case, i'll sit six feet off the path, with a butterfly net extended and a sign saying "CORONA TIPS".
Enjoy your shelter. Do you have someone to love? Then screw you.
Hmph.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Global Sliding Scale
We arise.
All are equal.
In pain, joy, and need...equal.
This truth has been self-evident to free and fair thinkers, into the mists of pre-history. Our path since has been an unrelenting act of violence against...ourselves. No species ever so successful, nor so wretched. As our seeds of self-destruction bloom, this garden will no longer tolerate blindness. In the unfeeling void of the universe, the conditions that allow for life are a flickering flame ever one ill breath from extinguishment.
So we arise, to protect eight billion sparks of gentle wisdom.
It was never acceptable that a child or elder or mother or stranger should suffer from lack. Our cleverness is so astounding, all may live in ease if we but choose. Balance restored and apocalypse denied, if we act together as one.
But we cannot, when the vast majority live under the crushing boot of deprivation, and murderous fist of exploitation.
Yet in truth, we never needed abide these. For when a majority are oppressed, but one unified word is required - "no".
Nor is justice doomed to be a glacial crawl. Within a week, this document can be translated into 6,500 languages. 6,500 iterations of one message - GLOBAL SLIDING SCALE. With these words, the greatest revolution ever will be effected - with no violence. "We are all equal"...words that have reverberated for centuries, with no clear path to fruition. To move beyond facades of political democracy, to full economic democracy. Humynity determining its destiny.
All business transactions will henceforth be enacted under the global sliding scale, in which a person's income the previous year determines how much any item or service costs, such that everything costs the same for everyone. The math is elegantly simple. Might a loaf of bread cost a penny for someone making minimum wage, and $10,000 for a billionaire?
Yes.
If someone earned nothing, all goods and services the following year will cost nothing. And businesses won't lose a penny.
We would instantly realize that simply cleaning up a neighborhood is valuable...have you noticed how messy things are? To say nothing of the infinite value in guiding a child, or helping those less able.
All of humynity would suddenly be free to do the work they choose...nothing more, nothing less. The motivation for 99% of crime would disappear overnight, and we'll quickly discover that people are not naturally lazy...humyn nature is to help ourselves, by helping others. Explore, play, create!
Yet too, the majority will instantly reject the forty(or sixty)-hour workweek, as a relic of an age when predatory barons sucked people's lives dry, to maximize profit and minimize thinking. Perhaps we'll return to the paradise of pre-agriculture, when humyns worked three hours a day.
We have that choice, for we are richer and brighter than those ancestors (Just a few centuries ago, 10% of humynkind would have been able to read these words - global literacy is now 90%. Two decades ago, 10% of humynkind had internet access - it's now 50%.).
In the wink of an eye, jailers and moneylenders will be a disgraceful memory. We will also figure out that goods and services can be "owned", but not the Earth. One might "own" a house, but not the land. It belongs to life, of which we're a small part. We'll also realize that legislators needn't make laws, but simply oversee their implementation. Laws and resource distribution will be determined by the people, in ballot initiatives (a direction already unfolding in progressive cities worldwide).
We arise.
All are equal.
In pain, joy, and need...equal.
This truth has been self-evident to free and fair thinkers, into the mists of pre-history. Our path since has been an unrelenting act of violence against...ourselves. No species ever so successful, nor so wretched. As our seeds of self-destruction bloom, this garden will no longer tolerate blindness. In the unfeeling void of the universe, the conditions that allow for life are a flickering flame ever one ill breath from extinguishment.
So we arise, to protect eight billion sparks of gentle wisdom.
It was never acceptable that a child or elder or mother or stranger should suffer from lack. Our cleverness is so astounding, all may live in ease if we but choose. Balance restored and apocalypse denied, if we act together as one.
But we cannot, when the vast majority live under the crushing boot of deprivation, and murderous fist of exploitation.
Yet in truth, we never needed abide these. For when a majority are oppressed, but one unified word is required - "no".
Nor is justice doomed to be a glacial crawl. Within a week, this document can be translated into 6,500 languages. 6,500 iterations of one message - GLOBAL SLIDING SCALE. With these words, the greatest revolution ever will be effected - with no violence. "We are all equal"...words that have reverberated for centuries, with no clear path to fruition. To move beyond facades of political democracy, to full economic democracy. Humynity determining its destiny.
All business transactions will henceforth be enacted under the global sliding scale, in which a person's income the previous year determines how much any item or service costs, such that everything costs the same for everyone. The math is elegantly simple. Might a loaf of bread cost a penny for someone making minimum wage, and $10,000 for a billionaire?
Yes.
If someone earned nothing, all goods and services the following year will cost nothing. And businesses won't lose a penny.
We would instantly realize that simply cleaning up a neighborhood is valuable...have you noticed how messy things are? To say nothing of the infinite value in guiding a child, or helping those less able.
All of humynity would suddenly be free to do the work they choose...nothing more, nothing less. The motivation for 99% of crime would disappear overnight, and we'll quickly discover that people are not naturally lazy...humyn nature is to help ourselves, by helping others. Explore, play, create!
Yet too, the majority will instantly reject the forty(or sixty)-hour workweek, as a relic of an age when predatory barons sucked people's lives dry, to maximize profit and minimize thinking. Perhaps we'll return to the paradise of pre-agriculture, when humyns worked three hours a day.
We have that choice, for we are richer and brighter than those ancestors (Just a few centuries ago, 10% of humynkind would have been able to read these words - global literacy is now 90%. Two decades ago, 10% of humynkind had internet access - it's now 50%.).
In the wink of an eye, jailers and moneylenders will be a disgraceful memory. We will also figure out that goods and services can be "owned", but not the Earth. One might "own" a house, but not the land. It belongs to life, of which we're a small part. We'll also realize that legislators needn't make laws, but simply oversee their implementation. Laws and resource distribution will be determined by the people, in ballot initiatives (a direction already unfolding in progressive cities worldwide).
We arise.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
rainy day blues
Not that rain makes me sad.
Often, quite the opposite. Perhaps especially so today, as the three months of rain we usually get was only three days this year, and waiting for California to catch fire seems to be just another spring ritual now.
It happens to be rainy today though, and i'm lonely, a feeling slightly amplified by coronavirus isolation. My social life is being cancelled pell mell. So shouldn't i be making a coronobaby, instead of contemplating a day on Earth almost entirely alone?
I hate that it always comes back to sex for me, this alienation we feel...that filter feeds into the notion that if we just get our romantic life in line, all will be well! Which is seven kinds of dysfictional. But sex is by far my greatest wound.
Nor is virus-induced solitude an entirely bleak prospect. Before the library shuttered, i loaded up on cds, books, and dvds...and you could easily argue that alone time is saner than trying to maintain some semblance of a relationship with one of the damaged, codependent wastes walking around out here impersonating a person.
Anyway, let's check my (non) options...
My neighbor A is the most scraping ponderment. We've exchanged social pleasantries for six months. She keeps offering to make me curtains, she's hinted that i can call her whenever, and she's expressed an inebriated interest in knowing me better. She's intellectual, older, independent, and perhaps very analytical/practical, which might make a relationship easy. She also might be a bit cold or detached. Am i attracted? I'm not sure. I've never felt any particular spark, which should be a warning sign...though i've started fantasizing about her regularly. Hardly a surprise. I find her agreeable to talk with and look at, but her heavy smoking (and perhaps drinking) should perhaps be BIG warning signs. But it's hard to say, "Hey, would you like a beautiful friend-with-benefits relationship, with no expectation on where it might or mightn't lead?" I see her almost everyday, and if things turned sour...should i ask her whether she's found her friend for the end of the world? Something so blatant might come across as creepy, but perhaps self-sabotage is the way to go.
There's N, a clerk at my grocery store. I've given her my card. She's never called, but still gives me a megawatt smile from far across a room. Her intellectual horizons might be limited. There are predatory romantic realities we're all taught, which i've been fighting forever but never go away. I hate being aware that she's gained weight, which might make her self-worth and cultural value decrease. I feel ready to not care about such things, but i don't know how to lose that AWARENESS. Physically i feel a strong pull, but our differences would probably sabotage any conventional relationship. My non-sexual fantasy is that she stops by my place after every work shift, for a foot rub and conversation with a friend she can tell anything.
There's D, a friend of a friend i met once, and was blown away with desire. Smart, foreign-born, with gentle energy...it's so easy to project a million beautiful fantasies (even insane, baby-making ones). My friend wants to match us up, but those plans have been shelved, as that friend has a bad cold, and in this coronaclimate...
So with almost no healthy options, my anguished loneliness has nowhere to go. The balance and equanimity we should all feel, is a dream. I was just "friended" online by a womyn who's heard me perform, and thinks i'm hilarious. She seems dynamic and dedicated, and i just want to pour my battered spirit into her, like a drowning man grasping at a bubble of air...an almost-total stranger, yet i want her to read this, and ask, "Wait, you want a sexual connection between us??", so i can reply "NO! Probably not." But when you're broken and off-balance, you go where the wound is deepest.
Just relax, wisdom tells me...
But for those of us trying to de-anesthetize our feelings, this world is where wisdom goes to die. This should be the time of my life when my achievements in inner stillness ought make me a beacon of peace and healing...but the lowered emotional walls that are part of my spiritual journey have made me relentlessly vulnerable to the pains and fears inside and all around.
I just wrote a song called "The Walkalone Blues"...
Often, quite the opposite. Perhaps especially so today, as the three months of rain we usually get was only three days this year, and waiting for California to catch fire seems to be just another spring ritual now.
It happens to be rainy today though, and i'm lonely, a feeling slightly amplified by coronavirus isolation. My social life is being cancelled pell mell. So shouldn't i be making a coronobaby, instead of contemplating a day on Earth almost entirely alone?
I hate that it always comes back to sex for me, this alienation we feel...that filter feeds into the notion that if we just get our romantic life in line, all will be well! Which is seven kinds of dysfictional. But sex is by far my greatest wound.
Nor is virus-induced solitude an entirely bleak prospect. Before the library shuttered, i loaded up on cds, books, and dvds...and you could easily argue that alone time is saner than trying to maintain some semblance of a relationship with one of the damaged, codependent wastes walking around out here impersonating a person.
Anyway, let's check my (non) options...
My neighbor A is the most scraping ponderment. We've exchanged social pleasantries for six months. She keeps offering to make me curtains, she's hinted that i can call her whenever, and she's expressed an inebriated interest in knowing me better. She's intellectual, older, independent, and perhaps very analytical/practical, which might make a relationship easy. She also might be a bit cold or detached. Am i attracted? I'm not sure. I've never felt any particular spark, which should be a warning sign...though i've started fantasizing about her regularly. Hardly a surprise. I find her agreeable to talk with and look at, but her heavy smoking (and perhaps drinking) should perhaps be BIG warning signs. But it's hard to say, "Hey, would you like a beautiful friend-with-benefits relationship, with no expectation on where it might or mightn't lead?" I see her almost everyday, and if things turned sour...should i ask her whether she's found her friend for the end of the world? Something so blatant might come across as creepy, but perhaps self-sabotage is the way to go.
There's N, a clerk at my grocery store. I've given her my card. She's never called, but still gives me a megawatt smile from far across a room. Her intellectual horizons might be limited. There are predatory romantic realities we're all taught, which i've been fighting forever but never go away. I hate being aware that she's gained weight, which might make her self-worth and cultural value decrease. I feel ready to not care about such things, but i don't know how to lose that AWARENESS. Physically i feel a strong pull, but our differences would probably sabotage any conventional relationship. My non-sexual fantasy is that she stops by my place after every work shift, for a foot rub and conversation with a friend she can tell anything.
There's D, a friend of a friend i met once, and was blown away with desire. Smart, foreign-born, with gentle energy...it's so easy to project a million beautiful fantasies (even insane, baby-making ones). My friend wants to match us up, but those plans have been shelved, as that friend has a bad cold, and in this coronaclimate...
So with almost no healthy options, my anguished loneliness has nowhere to go. The balance and equanimity we should all feel, is a dream. I was just "friended" online by a womyn who's heard me perform, and thinks i'm hilarious. She seems dynamic and dedicated, and i just want to pour my battered spirit into her, like a drowning man grasping at a bubble of air...an almost-total stranger, yet i want her to read this, and ask, "Wait, you want a sexual connection between us??", so i can reply "NO! Probably not." But when you're broken and off-balance, you go where the wound is deepest.
Just relax, wisdom tells me...
But for those of us trying to de-anesthetize our feelings, this world is where wisdom goes to die. This should be the time of my life when my achievements in inner stillness ought make me a beacon of peace and healing...but the lowered emotional walls that are part of my spiritual journey have made me relentlessly vulnerable to the pains and fears inside and all around.
I just wrote a song called "The Walkalone Blues"...
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Riptide 17
One new song, "Composition in D". This is one of the few times when the video doesn't convey how good a performance was. It's clumsy, but the audience is quiet because they're paying unusually great attention for a bar crowd, as i had just delivered a firecracker of a first song that had perhaps the most inspired and perfect audience call and response i've ever done. Sadly, the host and i both forgot to have that first number ("Pupus-Aria") recorded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ_69EGp1mc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ_69EGp1mc
Sunday, March 1, 2020
"Game of Thrones"
-created by david benioff and d.b. weiss
2011-2019
Confound this damned show.
Loved it, and hate that i loved it.
Winning characters, sparkling dialogue...and a bankrupt moral center. Violence-glorification is nothing new, but it's a deeper problem here. GOT is a celebration of the culture of honor, a mindset from which most of the world's democracies have long-since evolved. In honor culture, one defends one's reputation by any means necessary. You can see echoes of this in our south and west, which explains America's outsized homicide rate. Subtract those regions, and the U.S. is comparable to Europe.
As for feminism, GOT takes two steps forward and two back. Despite strong female characters, one gets the sense that these are strong wimyn - as defined by MEN. Machismo has always played well, because of the disempowerment that 99% of citizens feel in industrialized corporate states, where true democracy has never existed. We need to escape reality through onscreen heroes. We need them to kick ass, and never apologize. It's understandable, yet it keeps us from rising more quickly out of our own barbarity. Shows like GOT are more insidious than obvious crap like CARLITO'S WAY, because they're so...charming.
Though let's not delude ourselves, we wouldn't have cared half as much about this show without the nudity. Without it, i would have seen one or two episodes at most.
What entertainment do you create for a sexually-repressed, disempowered culture? One could devote a college course to the evil genius of this show. So tantalizing that you get sucked in, caring deeply about the characters, even though they represent the worst of us. Did i long for a lost identical twin of that redheaded northern love of jon's, no matter how hopelessly cheesy? Did i hope for ample final-season nudity from the stark sisters? Did i want arya and the hound in a spin-off buddy comedy? Yes - all of that! Did i want full frontal from tyrion? Of course. I don't mind the show pandering to our sexual repression (in fact, i'm grateful), but let's be fully and finally done with double standards.
Hollywood, you suck.
2011-2019
Confound this damned show.
Loved it, and hate that i loved it.
Winning characters, sparkling dialogue...and a bankrupt moral center. Violence-glorification is nothing new, but it's a deeper problem here. GOT is a celebration of the culture of honor, a mindset from which most of the world's democracies have long-since evolved. In honor culture, one defends one's reputation by any means necessary. You can see echoes of this in our south and west, which explains America's outsized homicide rate. Subtract those regions, and the U.S. is comparable to Europe.
As for feminism, GOT takes two steps forward and two back. Despite strong female characters, one gets the sense that these are strong wimyn - as defined by MEN. Machismo has always played well, because of the disempowerment that 99% of citizens feel in industrialized corporate states, where true democracy has never existed. We need to escape reality through onscreen heroes. We need them to kick ass, and never apologize. It's understandable, yet it keeps us from rising more quickly out of our own barbarity. Shows like GOT are more insidious than obvious crap like CARLITO'S WAY, because they're so...charming.
Though let's not delude ourselves, we wouldn't have cared half as much about this show without the nudity. Without it, i would have seen one or two episodes at most.
What entertainment do you create for a sexually-repressed, disempowered culture? One could devote a college course to the evil genius of this show. So tantalizing that you get sucked in, caring deeply about the characters, even though they represent the worst of us. Did i long for a lost identical twin of that redheaded northern love of jon's, no matter how hopelessly cheesy? Did i hope for ample final-season nudity from the stark sisters? Did i want arya and the hound in a spin-off buddy comedy? Yes - all of that! Did i want full frontal from tyrion? Of course. I don't mind the show pandering to our sexual repression (in fact, i'm grateful), but let's be fully and finally done with double standards.
Hollywood, you suck.
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