I used to work with Soldiers a lot (I helped build training simulations) and was often amazed by their perspectives. I remember theoretical discussions (Q: when is the enemy defeated? A: when he thinks he is) alongside powerful raw emotions (Dutch peacekeepers unable to intervene in the Srebrenica massacre). On one project, where things were technically crashing around our ears, I was staggered by the emotional and practical support from soldiers who understood that I was on their side, more than I’ve ever experienced from civvie project managers. It's the closest I've come to crying with gratitude. That and the attitude: when you fall down, we will laugh, but we will help you up.
Respect.
> Q: when is the enemy defeated? A: when he thinks he is
Well, giving up is taboo in the military. As is fragging etc.
I think there is a big correlation between being defeated and thinking you are.
The quote seems to imply a one way causality. Like as if the realization causes the defeat.
You interpret the question in a tactical context, but I sense it was in a strategic sense.
e. g. US thought it defeated Taliban by the end of 2001, Taliban certainly didn't think so. Similar thing with Palestinians vs. Israel.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#Pa...
> ...such is man, that most individuals will stop fighting at some point short of extinction; that point is reached when one of two things happens:
> Either, the defeated people may lose their sense of organization, fail to decide on leaders and methods, and give up because they can no longer fight as a group. This happened to the American Southerners in April, 1865. The President and Cabinet of the Confederate States of America got on the train at Richmond; the men who got off farther down the line were "refugees." Something happened to them and to the people about them, so that Mr. Davis no longer thought of himself as President Davis, and other people no longer accepted his commands. This almost happened in Germany in 1945 except for Admiral Doenitz.
> Or, the defeated people can retain their sense of organization, and can use their political organization for the purpose of getting in touch with the enemy, arranging the end of the war, and preparing, through organized means, to comply with the wishes of the conquerors. That happened when Britain acknowledged American independence; when the Boers recognized British sovereignty; when Finland signed what Russia had dictated; and when Japan gave up.
Note that Linebarger claims the high point of his PsyWar career to have been figuring out a formula by which outgunned chinese during the Korean War* could stop fighting, in a way that seemed to them not cowardly but honourable.
* a conflict which has yet to reach either of the endings above
> You interpret the question in a tactical context, but I sense it was in a strategic sense.
Exactly. The (British) soldier who answered this was channelling Sun Tzu
Hm ye maybe. But in the 'tactical sense' we have routing, which kinda is applicable of a self-fulfilling prophecy of believing you are defeated, makes you defeated. Maybe not very relevant today though.
>> Well, giving up is taboo in the military
No. It is only taboo at basic training. Mission-focused delegation of authority in modern militaries specifically adresses this. Leaders are encouraged to take initiative, which often means abandoning a failing plan. The ability to quickly recognize failure, "give up" and reattack a problem is what separates western forces from the drills-based approach of the post-soviet block.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics
(Even at basic training, giving up is a thing. The only true failure at basic is getting oneself or others injured.)
"Well, giving up is taboo in the military"
The quote was about the 'enemy'. Many civilian governments will end a war, before the military would have.
I'm sure there are a lot of examples in both directions, they should have just walked away sooner, or they should have stuck it out and all died gloriously.
Example: The German Military didn't want to end WW1, wasn't it the civilian government. But, weren't they actually really beat?
Or Vietnam. Did we lose? Or were we convinced we had lost.
It is possible to be 'defeated' but just not accept it. The never give up attitude leads to extra deaths.
What if Japan had this attitude, and we just kept dropping atomic bombs until the country was gone.
Guess goes back to some other quote I can't cite. War is easier to start than to end.
"The German Military didn't want to end WW1."
Not true. Following the breaking of the Hindenberg line on 1918-09-29 Ludendorff realised that further resistance would likely lead to communist revolution in Germany. On 1918-10-01 he explained this to the heads of department of his General Staff and said he had therefore asked the Kaiser and Chancellor to ask Woodrow Wilson for an armistice based on his Fourteen Points. It took six more weeks for the armistice to be agreed partly because Ludendorff was trying to ensure that someone else could be blamed the defeat.
Its all in "On a Knife Edge - How Germany lost the First World War" by Holger Aflerbach, 2022.
You're correct. I was referring more to the general attitude of the 'country'. There were a lot of people upset that Germany had 'given up', including rank and file. And a lot of that resentment went into WW2. Of course lot of details being skipped here.
Maybe Vietnam is better example. One could argue that after the Tet Offensive, that the North was out of resources and the US could have won. But the Tet Offensive had convinced the US that there was no winning, so by 'believing' they had lost, they lost.
"Q: when is the enemy defeated? A: when he thinks he is"
I was just commenting on the original quote, that there is large part of psychology to winning/losing. If you can make the enemy 'think they lost' then you have won, even if it doesn't look like it on paper by the number of units, position, etc...
(2014)
Interesting:
The Stoics were giving salvation for tough times. It’s a great philosophy for tough times, I’m not sure it’s a great philosophy for everyday living. It’s always good to feel more in control, but it’s not good to think that luck and the vicissitudes of the world can’t touch you or that you can’t show moral outrage, love, grief, and so on.
If someone said this about Stoicism on HN (not a professional philosopher) they would get corrected by the Stoic practitioners/dabblers: that it’s about skillfully managing circumstances and your reaction to them. Not about cutting off your emotional life.
Anyway I don’t see the connection between the vicissitudes of life and travelling half-way across the world and then getting blown up by an IDE^W IED. What part of that fits into the Reinhold Nieburh quote?
> God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.
Damn IntelliJ blowing people up
Ahh haha. Fixed now. ;)
> > God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.
Or, as soldiers (and some others) put it: "Pick your battles"
Full agree.
The preceding paragraphs are terse and add further insight about the limits of Stoicism (or perhaps the little-s version that one might commonly adopt if under stress) and its effects on curtailing emotions.
Common misconception; Stoicism is not about curtailing or repressing emotions.
Stoicism is about not allowing your emotions to govern you.
Subtle but profound difference.
Hmm, I may be a stoic by accident then (or more like coming there on my own). Emotions are great, I've fallen madly in love few times, I've cried from happiness when summiting Matterhorn, proposing to my girlfriend on top of Mont Blanc or checking some other higher peaks, I've had tears of joy when cutting umbilical cords of my kids and so on.
But I never let them run my life, and I remove them from any bigger decisions. Cold hard facts don't change, and so doesn't your perspective and decisions based on them. Any new fact just adds to the mix with at most mild alteration of the result.
Yet many folks I know have fucked up something bad in their life, by giving up to emotions in crucial moments. Lifelong regrets often afterwards, either hiding the fact in shame or living with consequences, in both cases visibly permanently less happy (not just cheating to be clear although that's of course one of main ones).
Ditto the first sentence.
One imperfect, but applicable analogy: "emotions are a fuel, and reasoning should be the steering system"
I think it would be useful to emphasize that not letting the emotions govern applies to regret as well: Yeah, I did what I shouldn't have (or missed an opportunity), but now it's done and staying miserable helps noone, just makes me feel bad. Let's take it seriously and make the best of it (at least using it as a very important lesson), focusing on improving the future, not crying about the past.
Completely agree. I see mistakes (not really bad ones, I managed to avoid those due to what I wrote and probably some luck) as necessary learning steps that got me where I am right now. I am happy with current state, and thats all that matters. Then inevitably avoiding those mistakes would not made me the man I am today, you learn much more from bad experience rather than good one.
Past girlfriends are a prime example - since they are past, there was always a not-nice breakup for those long trelationships, but every time I learned very valuable lessons about psychology and personalities and also myself and areas to work on, that led me to my current, non-perfect but pretty amazing wife.
Of course then focus of not repeating those mistakes, this is going back to rationality.
And past is a great source of lessons, but that's about it - focus on now and future, time spent pondering about 'what if' is wasting precious little time we still have in this reality, and it will go fast.
At first glance it seems related to self discipline.
We have 2.4 million soldiers coming home from war.
Hard to believe, but it is possible.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-are-in-the-us-...
Excellent read. Original perspectives too - just drop the D from PTSD and get with the idea that this is normal and the hardest people are soft on the inside.
Well, clinical psychology is oriented pretty much exclusively towards preventing “disruption” or “distress” or other synonyms for “bad”, which they call “pathological behavior”. PTSD is, obviously, very bad when compared to people who don’t have it, thus “disorder”. I do think some education around that could help, tho! You’re right that it absolutely shouldn’t imply a moral failing.
I just think that’s a bigger conversation than “this one disorder is normal if you’re in traumatic environments”; it needs to be something more like “people aren’t responsible for their mental failings”. Obviously, that’s still a controversial one in and out of the military.
What you say sounds sensible. There is definitely a danger that while we try to remove stigma that can also normalise things. In turn that leads to a higher societal acceptance and a counterproductive effect on protecting people. We go full circle back to "just suck it up because it's normal". By recognising the feelings as normal I didn't mean to imply treating it any less seriously.
> What do you think of Martin Seligman’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness programme [ a $180 million programme introduced in 2010 to teach resilient-thinking skills to all service-members, to try and prevent PTSD occurrence]?
Come on, this is a shill interview if I have ever saw one. Fuck all this, the US Army personnel, past and present, deserves way better than this psy-op-ed crap. All soldiers, former and present, deserve that.
And back to the, let's say essence, of the article, you could tell that it was written in 2014, back when Stoicism just had had a strong revival, hence why this lady is mentioning it ad-nauseam. I'd say that by 2016-2018 it was already gone, either way, large parts of the US/Western establishment sure as hell left Stoicism apart when confronted with Trump, for example.
You’re in a lethality and violence-soaked environment, increasingly in population-centric environments. There’s a lot of grey area - who’s the enemy, are they a voluntary or involuntary human-shield, and so on.
If someone posted an article about The Russian Officers’ Philosopher it would get flagged to hell. But since it’s about the empire on the other side of the Pacific it’s kosher and should be treated with solemn reflection.
Nothing goes together like Russians and whataboutism
I'm not Russian. But I'm not insulted because you think I am. It's just weird.
That wasn't whataboutism
Well it’s certainly hard to tell sometimes. People will bring up Russia out of nowhere just to point out that it’s not any worse than the US.
Russia: Other countries do bad things too!™
How would you comment on that? What would change if ggp wasn’t (allegedly) russian?
Your comment reads like “whatever, shut tf up” and nothing else. What you expect from that?
It’s whataboutism. Yes. Pointing out inconsistencies and hypocrisies.
That’s what is at the heart of it.
> People will bring up Russia out of nowhere just to point out that it’s not any worse than the US.
Like most people who yell “whataboutism” as if it is an argument you don’t make the effort to parse the salient commonality between these two countries: they both invade places.
Being worse or better in some greater picture has got nothing to do with it.
Some people have a weird thinking style whereby they think broader context and perspectives upon an issue are relevant and important.
And other people think this is a bad way to think.
I wonder if one approach is better than the other. I suppose it depends on one's goals, and perhaps on some other things.