Sensible Erection | Call of Apathy

Friday, 2 March 2012

quote [ Next time you watch a military documentary, ask yourself why only 3 or 4 men are ever interviewed from a unit. The answer?

The rest of them are like me. ]

Brutally honest.

[games] [by eggboy@11:23pmGMT] [+10 Interesting]

Comments

monday said @ 11:32pm GMT on 2nd Mar [Score:1 Insightful]
An ex-soldier who quit the "regular" army to become a mercenary wants to justify his sociopathic lifestyle by claiming all soldiers are sociopaths.

How about just all mercenaries?

dangerm00se said @ 11:41pm GMT on 2nd Mar
He seems to allege that 'heroic' behavior during these inherently for-profit military missions creates medal-laden corpses and invalids, that the people who escape during heroic action in the face of adversity tend to be the ones who are there for the brutal slaughter when the balance of power goes the other way.

dreamingzephyr said @ 11:56pm GMT on 2nd Mar
The soldiers I've known (who don't come from a military family they need to protect the honor of) paint a very similar picture.

swiggy said @ 11:57pm GMT on 2nd Mar
All combat soldiers are sociopaths to some degree, because sociopathy is in the job description. How can you hold a normal value for human life if you have to be able to kill pretty much anyone you're told to, for no better reason than someone told you to.

rndmnmbr said @ 1:33am GMT on 3rd Mar
That's why basic training exists. Take a normal human, break him down, and rebuild him as a sociopath that takes orders.

swiggy said @ 2:15am GMT on 3rd Mar
There's a line in a Terry Pratchett novel (possibly monsterous regiment) about stabbing a practice dummy with bayonets while pretending they're people until you can stab a person and pretend it's a practice dummy, but I'd be damned if I can find it anywhere.

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 6:56pm GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 Funny]
Goddamn, where's that miracle cure for Alzheimer's?

jackbnimbler said @ 6:41am GMT on 3rd Mar
One of the biggest problems with modern soldier creation is that it does an excellent job of molding men and women into soldiers that follow order with out question and kill at the drop of a hat is that when the fighting is over, the military has effectively no way of negating that training and no specific desire to create one.

The truly sad thing is the militaries we see today are little more advanced in basic training doctrine then the ones of thousands of years ago.

CapnSilver said @ 8:44am GMT on 3rd Mar
I think it's Jingo or Night Watch. I'm pretty sure it's a Vimes quote.

CapnSilver said @ 8:45am GMT on 3rd Mar
This is for swiggy. I got confused, what with my burning desire to be correct.

lalanda said @ 10:14am GMT on 3rd Mar
Can't we just sell the used ones to another country?

wangcan0 said @ 1:26pm GMT on 3rd Mar
That didn't work out so well for Nieuw Freisland.

sanepride said @ 2:05pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Except that this is really a false assumption. In most cases the military really doesn't do a particularly effective job of creating soldiers who are compliant killers. The biggest psychological barrier newly-minted combat soldiers face is not fear of death or injury to themselves, but the moral aversion to killing someone else - even an enemy combatant.

schatten00777 said @ 2:07pm GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:2]
When people say that soldier are rewired to become killing machines and are brainwashed psychopaths, the first thing I wonder is where their information is coming from. Has swiggy or jackbnimbler ever been in the military? Do they even know what military training is like? Because the picture they paint is quite inaccurate.

kichijoii said @ 7:01pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Funny, I know someone who has been through training and would disagree with you. Where is your information coming from, if you please?

schatten00777 said @ 10:13pm GMT on 3rd Mar
First hand experience.

jsabin69 said @ 5:34pm GMT on 3rd Mar
I think people that want to label soldiers as sociopaths simply because they can control their emotions to achieve a goal truly don't understand sociopathy. You can very well have a normal value of human life and be able to kill as your told if you have the wisdom to know that that not following orders will cost a lot more human life than killing as you are told.

Sadly, (sorry to be cliche)not everything in the real world is a simple black and white choice, but rather exists in shades of grey.

dangerm00se said @ 11:37pm GMT on 2nd Mar
Those men who don't talk about their war days are walking wraiths, forever haunted by what killed them inside.

sanepride said @ 12:05am GMT on 3rd Mar
Perhaps. I would just point out that a generation of men who served under brutal combat conditions during WWII lived their lives without talking about their war days. No doubt many of them suffered their traumas in silence, but the vast majority of them apparently did just fine - successfully re-integrating back into society, raising families and being productive and humane citizens.

willrogers said @ 12:19am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:2 Insightful]
That's a load of bullshit. World War II vets just suffered in silence because of the intense social pressure to not admit that they had any kind of problems.

Instead of getting real help, those guys just ended up self-medicating with alcohol, benzos and other drugs while suffering the same

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/22/MNGJ7DCKR71.DTL&type=health

-- The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder estimates that one of every 20 World War II veterans suffered symptoms such as bad dreams, irritability and flashbacks.

-- According to Department of Veterans Affairs' statistics in 2004, 25, 000 World War II veterans were still receiving disability compensation for PTSD-related symptoms.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/22/MNGJ7DCKR71.DTL#ixzz1o0l8dg7X

All that stuff about these guys being the "Greatest Generation" and World War II being so idealized as a "good" war just makes their psychological problems even worse, because they feel as if they are somehow bad or weak for having such problems resulting from their service and feel so isolated and alone because they think WWII vets aren't supposed to have those kinds of problems.

PTSD has been around forever and has afflicted large numbers of soldiers in every conflict. In the Civil War, it was known as "nostalgia" or "Soldier's heart." In World War I, it was called "Shell shock." In World War II, it was called "battle fatigue."

sanepride said @ 12:28am GMT on 3rd Mar
I'm not disputing your comment. I'm not saying these men didn't suffer, I said as much. I'm saying they endured and lived their lives, and most importantly they were not, on the whole, 'sociopaths', and not necessarily 'walking wraiths'.

lilmookieesquire said @ 12:57am GMT on 3rd Mar
Why do you think that?

I'd assume there were, it just wasn't in the press and/or openly talked about.

sanepride said @ 1:33am GMT on 3rd Mar
I did say not necessarily. I'm disputing the contention that this applies to all.

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:29am GMT on 3rd Mar
Ah. If that's the case, then I can't fault you.

scojam said @ 11:33am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 Insightful]
I think the term "just war" has some impact. The ones that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for sure Vietnam knew they were fighting unjust wars. I think that could make a difference.

sanepride said @ 2:11pm GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 Insightful]
Maybe this is a valid point, especially with regard to Vietnam veterans, but I wonder if it makes that much difference when you are actually in combat. A bigger issue may be the difference between the volunteer army of contemporary wars vs the conscripted army of past wars, though I would still contend that the vast majority of soldiers do not enlist because they are sociopaths eager to kill people.

Thathurt said @ 6:19pm GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 Interesting]
It goes both ways though, my father is without a doubt a sociopath. He was drafted in one of the last lotteries of the war and flew with the 1st Air Cavalry, which was one of the last to leave Vietnam and had heavy focus toward Cambodia. My father most likely was a sociopath before the war, but when he got back (with two purple hearts and a silver star) he focused on drugs and organized crime, which just fed the monster. I, myself have gone through years of counseling because I have some of the same tendencies and have long considered military enlistment. The only reason I haven't fully gone through with it is I've seen what war does to a person and one way or another, I wouldn't come back. This was a fantastic article.

willrogers said @ 1:09am GMT on 3rd Mar
And what is your evidence of that?

You're really not understanding that people can have mental illnesses and other psychological problems, but not show any outward symptoms to the outside world. Just because your neighbors and coworkers don't see you suffering doesn't mean you aren't seriously hurting. Just because you can hold it together for the eight-hour workday doesn't mean that you aren't a total wreck inside. This frequently leads to the psychological problems being misidentified, e.g. a veteran becomes a problem drinker or alcoholic while self-medicating their PTSD with alcohol, causing people to solely identify them as an addict to alcohol, rather than their true primary problems of PTSD.

You really don't understand the social stigma that the mentally ill suffered until just a decade or two ago. Admitting that you had any kind of psychological problems from your military service was tantamount to admitting that you were a worthless, weak coward, so they all just kept it bottled up inside and suffered in silence. They did all the things that society expected of them, going to work, raising children, etc., but all the while they felt the anguish and torture that is PTSD. Just because these men had the fortitude to maintain their social obligations doesn't mean they suffered any less than someone who is rendered homeless due to their psychological problems.

You're also not understanding the developments psychology and psychiatry have made in the last 50 years. Many World War II veterans just internalized all the grief, anxiety, and other problems they felt, not realizing that they had a diagnosable and potentially treatable psychological problems. The medical community just did not have the diagnostic and treatment tools to adequately identify what these problems actually were, let alone help these people. Furthermore, the public was much less informed about these issues than they even are today, causing most people to not understand when someone they know is suffering from a psychological problem. So, just because it seems like WWII veterans somehow suffered less than the veterans of other conflicts doesn't mean that they actually did.

sanepride said @ 1:31am GMT on 3rd Mar
In fact I understand all of this. You're expending a lot of words preaching to the choir.
I'm simply taking exception to a statement I considered a hyperbolic, overreaching generalization. If you prefer to take it at face value, that's fine.

mrcucumber said @ 2:47pm GMT on 5th Mar
It's what willrogers does. We accept this with open arms, right?

GordonGuano said @ 2:07am GMT on 3rd Mar
Well, we have a dedicated surgical icepick for lobotomies now instead of having to borrow one from the iceman, but I'm not actually sure we've made that much psychological progress in the last half century. We are selling a lot more drugs to a lot more people, if that's the metric you want to go by. I'm not sure suffering in silence was any less effective.

willrogers said @ 10:32am GMT on 3rd Mar
Yeah, that's pretty much the biggest pile of horseshit I've read/heard in weeks and also a pretty obvious troll.

You overplayed your hand at the very beginning with the icepick comment.

GordonGuano said @ 1:26pm GMT on 3rd Mar
To be fair, immobilization, cold water baths, and spinning have also fallen out of favor to a good degree. This is probably a good thing. And the advances in meds are astounding-you can stay high all day and hold down a job! And meds even go to people who need them, sometimes!

You are 100% right about the stigma of mental illness lesseninhg in recent years, but that's social progress, not psychological progress. What helps people is good old-fashioned talk therapy, the precepts of which were laid down in the bad old days of Freud. And what made that palatable to the public was neurotic Jewish comedians. If I were trolling, I would say it was a generational conspiracy and lnk the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Freud, then Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. But I think that is actually on Ron Paul's website somewhere, so Poe's Law strikes again.

In his novella Rage, Stephen King has a character define psychology as a "a twisted parlor game using human lives as party favors". At its best, that is a monstrously unfair assessment. But when the approach becomes to prescribe evry problem away with Prozac/Ritalin/what have you, that description barely does it justice.

willrogers said @ 11:05pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Yeah, still not going for that crazy mess of trolling and/or stupidity.

GordonGuano said @ 12:09am GMT on 4th Mar
"A man only learns in two ways: one, by reading, and two, by association with smarter people."

I don't expect a thank you, but you are welcome.

GordonGuano said @ 12:13am GMT on 4th Mar
^ trolling, btw.

buzhidao said @ 12:22pm GMT on 3rd Mar
unfortunately awareness goes hand in hand with commercialism, at least in the US.

GordonGuano said @ 1:29pm GMT on 3rd Mar
I don't use the word "evil" in earnest very often at all, but letting drug companies advertise qualifies in my book.

granitewitch said @ 3:09am GMT on 3rd Mar
I would say that they were certainly walking wounded, at the very least. In the 1970s when I was but a wee nipper I can remember encountering more than a few WWII veterans getting grimly smashed on a regular basis and talking in low tones to one another about things, and glaring at anyone younger than them who hadn't lived through combat against the Germans and Japanese. They were definitely self-medicating with booze.

They may not have talked about anything openly, but they did talk to each other quietly and were often a lot like Clint Eastwood's character in "Gran Torino". They were far from being whole.

swiggy said @ 11:46pm GMT on 2nd Mar [Score:2]

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

CompletelyIrrelevant said @ 1:22am GMT on 3rd Mar
A gung-ho soldier type informed me he couldn't possibly play World of Tanks because it's not realistic enough.
I fail to see how a realistic WW2 tank combat game, where there's a roughly 50% chance you'll lose the game because your vehicle broke down, would be enjoyable.

Sometimes they have to take liberties and make use of abstraction to make the damn thing playable

RuneLancer said @ 5:09am GMT on 3rd Mar
Wouldn't the other team also have a 50% chance of losing the match under the same conditions as your team, then? Not trying to play devil's advocate here but it doesn't seem all that crippling when the opposition can fall victim to it just as easily as you - if anything, I'd think it'd get worked into one's overall gaming strategy...

CompletelyIrrelevant said @ 5:58am GMT on 3rd Mar
The point was more the idea of loading the game to find your part in the battle is to sit next to your immobile tank and watch everyone else have all the fun =)

spite48 said @ 7:49pm GMT on 4th Mar
Exactly. What is the fun of a legal drama where you watch 3 two hour episodes which recount silent document review in excruciating detail? Or a medical drama which includes all of the paperwork, routine examinations and labwork?

Entertainment based on real-world circumstances aren't as much fun for people who live the lifestyle being portrayed because they notice the shortcuts, mistakes and dramatization. Who can complain about cutting out the parts that aren't entertaining, or replacing them with abbreviated or dramatized versions?

CompletelyIrrelevant said @ 6:18am GMT on 5th Mar
Drama: Life without the boring bits

happiest_sadist said @ 12:18pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Tanks can be repaired during battle.
The game is pretty, but not terribly realistic. It doesn't currently have a physics model. The focus is on team gameplay rather than a war sim.

Personally I don't find it particularly enjoyable, but it is very popular- and I'm not much of a gamer.

ethanos said @ 1:23pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Say, like guitar hero.

eIfish said @ 4:34pm GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 Informative]
1) Guitar Hero was never intended to simulate the guitar. Like DDR, it's a more interactive way of consuming music, and was designed and marketed as a game.

2) Rock Band can grade your performance on a five-piece drum kit with three cymbals, missing only the hat pedal, whatever microphone you choose to plug into it, or a full-size (as-in six strings, 22 frets, 4kg) guitar, each of which can be hooked up to an amp simultaneously, so's you can hear what you really sound like.

blibblob said @ 11:04pm GMT on 3rd Mar
The Rock Band midi guitar has some serious flaws. Still sweet though.
The Rock Band drumset is still nothing like playing a real drumset, but it is pretty much the same as playing a cheap electronic kit. Or a nice electronic kit if you have one and hook it up with the new midi to usb thing.

SnappyNipples said @ 5:13am GMT on 4th Mar
Rocksmith is the answer, and it is kicking my ass.

an example of what it is like

eIfish said @ 7:22pm GMT on 4th Mar
Jealous.

It's still not out in the UK, due to a trademark dispute with a band of the same name.

I'd not heard of them either.

eIfish said @ 6:11am GMT on 4th Mar
Conveniently the midi thing for the guitar will also do drums and keys.

Now that I think of it, the keytar is actually pretty good.

Eru said @ 11:34pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Most long-term World of Tanks players will tell you that it is very much an arcade shooter, not a simulation game. Don't get me wrong, I love the game and it has a bunch of good mechanics such as damaged systems, injured crew and hit boxes. But realistic it is not.

SnappyNipples said @ 2:01am GMT on 4th Mar [Score:2 Informative]
My problem about not playing these war games has nothing to do about them not being real enough, I did eight years doing the real thing why would I want to do it again in simulation. Granted I laugh my ass off on how something so real looking can get the art of warfare all wrong. I for one would like to see a combat game that makes you take 5 months to a year to convalesce your injuries. I guess you couldn't sell many video games with many real world experience involved.

This craziness you see in our military, that was brought in by the soldiers. Hate groups, gangs, extreme left and right views, homophobia, and just plain insanity are brought in by the troops. CID spends so much time trying to weed out these assholes before they do something stupid or worse rip off the military of hardware to bring to their groups of choice. Now when it comes to gunship pilots and officers in general, those guys are trying to make a name for themselves. Yeah they are quick to order things in order to gain glory. Go toHERE to read about this cluster fuck that happened in my regiment in Dessert storm. I was the crew-chief to Col. Starr's flying TAC, and had watch this unfold in front of me. Officers who hunt for this glory are one reason why we lose troops and do stupid things to the civilians. Most of the other stuff happens when stupidity collects together and creates a sort of critical mass causing so much stupidity in a way a unit operates, treats its soldiers, and does its missions. Lastly, there is no training that makes soldiers psycho, its is the two aforementioned groups that are the primary sources of this insanity. So if you are a glory hound officer, you are going to find the NCO who is a certifiable nut job to do your bidding in order to gain those career advancing accolades. Sensible NCOs are not going to get you your bird colonel or first star.

SnappyNipples said @ 4:58am GMT on 4th Mar
Ah yes the dessert wars, but in the end only Taco Bell was left. Who knew the power of the cinnamon twits

sanepride said @ 12:01am GMT on 3rd Mar
If I too may be brutally honest, this article is bullshit.

dangerm00se said @ 12:03am GMT on 3rd Mar
you gonna elaborate on that assertion?

sanepride said @ 12:13am GMT on 3rd Mar
One alleged 'professional soldier's' assessment - that blithely contradicts what is well known and established about troops in combat? What he says is simply incorrect. The best military documentaries (see 'Restrepo' for an excellent example) profile all the members of combat units and they are not sociopaths. They are just regular guys doing their job and trying to stay whole. What this guy says is not what we know of actual soldiers serving and returning, or what is reported by seasoned, credible war correspondents (from all spectra of media) who spend months embedded with combat units.

This is just one guy who maybe was an actual soldier who apparently has some kind of beef, or at least an outsized ego and opinion - probably just trying to justify his own callous nature. But more likely he's just bullshitting.

GordonGuano said @ 8:39am GMT on 4th Mar
Seriously, watch Restrepo. Good stuff.

sanepride said @ 5:05pm GMT on 4th Mar
Not only good stuff, but easily the best war doc of the WOT-era conflicts and perhaps one of the best ever. And definitely contradictory to the contentions of this particular essay.

traitor said @ 4:03am GMT on 5th Mar
Couldn't agree more. I work in a theater that showed Restrepo. Nobody came to see it. I thought it should've been required viewing for every American.

eggboy said @ 12:08am GMT on 3rd Mar
Here, have some science and some batman. Feel better?

ComposerNate said @ 12:01am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:3 WTF]

htabdoolb said @ 12:20am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:2]
The only thing holding that building up is the depleted uranium.

flat_michael said @ 2:50am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:2 Insightful]
the problem with living in a building made of cheese would be having to avoid eating structurally important cheese.

lilmookieesquire said @ 4:26am GMT on 3rd Mar
The middle east is such a holey place.

RuneLancer said @ 5:07am GMT on 3rd Mar
Beats being a hoely place...

Or not. I don't know. Take your pick. :)

swiggy said @ 5:22am GMT on 3rd Mar
Bend over, Ill beat your holey place.

sacrelicious said @ 4:39pm GMT on 3rd Mar
that building is not fit for children to live in. there's lead in the paint, lead in the pipes, geez, there's lead in just about everything!

mechanical contrivance said @ 2:01am GMT on 4th Mar
lead in their parents...

mrcucumber said @ 2:45pm GMT on 5th Mar
I would be really funny if an architect told his contractor that the stippling effect for the exterior of the building is achieved by large caliber automated weapons fire.

"Sorry, I refuse to accept anything less. It's what I want, and therefore it's what I will get. You get the proper permits. "

GordonGuano said @ 12:10am GMT on 3rd Mar
I liked the L.A. Noire arti le at that site as well, though it may have had a few spoilers.

yasha said @ 12:25am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 Insightful]
-1 Troll.

An anonymous, violent, military sociopath writing an essay for a site that describes itself as "a safe space for women, transpeople, people of color" just screams out fake.

can you imagine how such a person would inhabit the same universe as folks who would want to create a safe space for "women and transpeople?"

barring strong evidence to the contrary, this essay should be considered the dream of some transperson, who thinks they are somehow striking a blow against the evil army.

which of course is not to say there isn't evil in the army, or that modern combat is, you know, accurate. just that this is obvious bullshit.

sanepride said @ 12:30am GMT on 3rd Mar
Yeah, the big problem I have with this broad generalization of soldiers being sociopaths is that it diminishes, or even excuses the minority who actually are sociopaths. It is a vital distinction.

lalanda said @ 10:20am GMT on 3rd Mar
They're sociosociopaths.

eggboy said @ 12:59am GMT on 3rd Mar
And sociopathy automatically means a fear or hatred of minorities?

Why bring transpeople into it? The author made not mention of anything like that and the article wasn't even remotely about any trans issues. Are transpeople now trying to strike a blow against the army?

can you imagine how such a person would inhabit the same universe as folks who would want to create a safe space for "women and transpeople?" Yes easily.

Granted the author is anonymous, but this would not be the first time a guest contributer has not (you assume) shared all of the values of the publisher.

Dioxin said @ 2:13am GMT on 3rd Mar
He wants to kill people who are deemed socially acceptable to kill in exchange for money. What does he care about people back home he can't kill?

LeavemeAlone said @ 1:57am GMT on 3rd Mar
One of my friends from high school ended up going to West Point. While he went there, America's Army was a big video game, and a lot of guys would play it there because they had fuck all to do. Instructors began to ban the game there because it was teaching them that the rules of engagement were bullshit; it was better to shoot first and ask questions later in order to survive.

It would explain how the military would be so callous toward "enemy" civilian death.

swiggy said @ 2:34am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 Funny]

manbaby said @ 10:21am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:3 Insightful]

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 6:54pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Worst depiction of a young girl ever.

kichijoii said @ 7:06pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Agreed. Also, pretentious.

Mad March Harris said @ 10:27pm GMT on 3rd Mar
SMBC is slipping into the XKCD trap. Not so much in the fact that the author is an alienating, pretentious, douchebag loser but that some of his comics are getting needlessly preachy. It's been so solid for so long that it's about time some cracks started appearing :(

ComposerNate said @ 5:57pm GMT on 4th Mar
Why do you assume it a girl, DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69?

eIfish said @ 7:23pm GMT on 4th Mar
Because his girls have long hair, like in XKCD?

DeadCarbonCopy said @ 6:45pm GMT on 3rd Mar
My problem with the article is that it is written by someone whose education ended at the age of 16 and is providing psychoanalysis of a multitude of individuals. ...not to mention that it is anecdotal. Not to say that it isn't true, but such evidence holds (as it should) little sway in scientific analysis.

Interesting place to start research, assuming other research doesn't exist, nothing more. As for Journalistic piece, it's fantastic. I didn't know many people in high school could write that well, never mind those that dropped out at 16.

krimz said @ 7:02pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Charles Dickens left school at the age of 15.

jsabin69 said @ 7:28am GMT on 4th Mar
and that's really a red herring considering that leaving school at 15 back then wasn't nearly the same thing as leaving school at 15 is today.

sanepride said @ 2:49am GMT on 4th Mar
If you like the writing, maybe you mean to say that as a literary piece it's fantastic. Being anecdotal, speculative, and unsourced it is in fact not 'journalistic' at all.

kichijoii said @ 7:10pm GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 Insightful]
I think his lack of education really shows through the structure of his argument. Wasn't he starting with a criticism of the depiction of soldiers in video games and/or movies? Especially from the title, I assumed he was going to focus on the inaccuracy inherent in video games. However, his end conclusion was "all soldiers are sociopaths;" although that is a valid topic for debate, it's not entirely relevant to the opening subject.