Pro-Military folks complain civilians are indifferent to wars being fo

[Pisces Axxxxx]

Oh there is one passage I just love in Street Without Joy. Its too big to fit so I'll just link a page containing the entire passage.

 

http://husarblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/street-without-joy/

 

My specific favorite passage from the whole book:

 

 

 

 

Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall P. 294

 

All of a sudden, there rose behind the trees, from the nearby French camp, the beautiful bell-clear sounds of a bugle playing

Edited June 26, 2013 by Pisces Adonis

[Onasander]

I was asked to respond to this, so I guess I will.

 

In our youth, we are more receptive to moralistic and emotive stories emphasizing adult behaviors that give us a sense of adult schemas. I for example, was exposed to stories about people being arrested, and confronted the concept of time and inevitability..... I couldn't imagine someone living 100 years without statistically blundering in some act in that space of time into a crime, and being jailed. I thought everyone would eventually be jailed, and it seemed deeply unfair.... and would haunt me. I also read gruesome horror stories, and Pioneer/exploration stories. Alot of my early thought bounced around these considerations. 

 

A sense of fairness and time, and my action of anger, is left hemisphere. Means my childhood was dominated by such thinking, which tends to be highly abstract and violently emotional in terms of snapping when I would see things socially that was wrong. But I also had a deep well of self restraint reacting AGAINST this, haphazardly, as well as some good old fashion Obsessive Compulsive traits in the right hemisphere, giving me a pretty impressive maelstrom psychology leaping over a few different stable psychological personality types. The self discipline and control eventually beat out the left hemisphere sense of self, and literally conquered my obsessive compulsion disorder.... I still have it, but I will the way it's ordered now. This is growing up for all of us, but I was more conscious of it.... that is all.

 

Statement 1) You supported the Cambodians displaced sense of selfless and sense of "Frenchness" over and above seemingly more decadent, yet bona fide Frenchmen who should of responded as the Cambodian, who would have LESS reason to at face value.

 

Statement 2) You assert a psychological inversion of your original mindset, and accept the decadence of the French as more 'life affirming' in a almost Nietzschean sense, and see the Cambodian as a oddity, something to beware of, something macabre yet threatening as a intellectual void..... something is not right, here be dragons. An alienated unknown, against your values and sense of life.

 

Conclusion) You experienced a psychological inversion as you grew that emphasized personality aspects that are currently opposite of your youth. It doesn't make it right or wrong, it makes you specialized with a character.... a way of looking at things. Others will share traits, some won't. Many won't intact. It's not necessarily a bad thing either.

 

Background on the French:

 

Colonel Du Picq tried hard to reorganize the French corps around his concept of Esprite De Corps in the era running up to the Franco-Prussian war, but caught a mortar in the head, which delayed his theory from being taken seriously till WW 1, when it was barely applicable given the stagnant trench warfare..... Rommel's work "Attack!" Shows it indeed was possible, just not the French doing it, given the massive collapse of morale, leading to the collapse of French civilization in "The Four Corporals". The French would never regain sufficient trust in their military or capacity to enlist enough troops to maintain the empire, much less France, ever again to the present without substantial outside support. However, ideologically, they never accepted this, creating some hilarious yet nerve grating foreign policy decisions that made no sense, especially when it's biggest ally, the US, was in the depth of combating the Domino Effect in the early cold war era. The Americans couldn't understand what the French were doing, and the French couldn't figure out themselves. 

 

This lead to the collapse of their republic, and a much more centralized New republic under a abnormally strong executive, who is chronically alienated from everyone, be it French or Foreigner.

 

Algeria resulted from a massive population of French citizens having colonized Algeria over a few generations, and the military's refusal to accept their defeat in Vietnam. It was a identity issue more than anything. Also was a ideological component, anyone living in the French Empire had a right to become a and claim French Nationality..... it wasn't just a French mainland issue..... so the people on the French mainland thoughts and likely that Cambodian soldier saluting thought. 

 

Ultimately, we should let the French play this one out, it's only been a hundred years, they will eventually figure it out in a century or two from now. Best thing we can  do is refuse to learn French so the problem doesn't effect us.

 

As to college kids having drug induced orgies and swapping STDs in dandelion fields, yeah..... we need babies. It's a human instinct. Having a strong military keeps wacky crazy stuff like a ISIL state like in Syria and Iraq from spontaneously popping up and bayonetting said field orgies in the stomach. Douchebags are everywhere, and they all have fantasies and delusions of grandure they want to make a social reality. If you hold these beliefs free living beliefs, and can't comprehend a alien and distant military with weird rituals and incomprehensible obsessions, then thank them  for the luxury of being able to develope such ideas in relative peace. If you don't desire a interest in politics or military,then take up knitting or song worrying. A society can specialize. Thank God we had he collective foresight to create NATO and other alliances to keep war a minimum, where small specialized armies instead of emergency mass drafts can do the job.

 

If you do not live in such a country, I will send manuals to you on how to build a bomb shelter to hide your family in so they are not raped to death when the militias are plundering your home.

 

Any other questions? 

[Pisces Axxxxx]

I was asked to respond to this, so I guess I will.

 

In our youth, we are more receptive to moralistic and emotive stories emphasizing adult behaviors that give us a sense of adult schemas. I for example, was exposed to stories about people being arrested, and confronted the concept of time and inevitability..... I couldn't imagine someone living 100 years without statistically blundering in some act in that space of time into a crime, and being jailed. I thought everyone would eventually be jailed, and it seemed deeply unfair.... and would haunt me. I also read gruesome horror stories, and Pioneer/exploration stories. Alot of my early thought bounced around these considerations. 

 

A sense of fairness and time, and my action of anger, is left hemisphere. Means my childhood was dominated by such thinking, which tends to be highly abstract and violently emotional in terms of snapping when I would see things socially that was wrong. But I also had a deep well of self restraint reacting AGAINST this, haphazardly, as well as some good old fashion Obsessive Compulsive traits in the right hemisphere, giving me a pretty impressive maelstrom psychology leaping over a few different stable psychological personality types. The self discipline and control eventually beat out the left hemisphere sense of self, and literally conquered my obsessive compulsion disorder.... I still have it, but I will the way it's ordered now. This is growing up for all of us, but I was more conscious of it.... that is all.

 

Statement 1) You supported the Cambodians displaced sense of selfless and sense of "Frenchness" over and above seemingly more decadent, yet bona fide Frenchmen who should of responded as the Cambodian, who would have LESS reason to at face value.

 

Statement 2) You assert a psychological inversion of your original mindset, and accept the decadence of the French as more 'life affirming' in a almost Nietzschean sense, and see the Cambodian as a oddity, something to beware of, something macabre yet threatening as a intellectual void..... something is not right, here be dragons. An alienated unknown, against your values and sense of life.

 

Conclusion) You experienced a psychological inversion as you grew that emphasized personality aspects that are currently opposite of your youth. It doesn't make it right or wrong, it makes you specialized with a character.... a way of looking at things. Others will share traits, some won't. Many won't intact. It's not necessarily a bad thing either.

 

Background on the French:

 

Colonel Du Picq tried hard to reorganize the French corps around his concept of Esprite De Corps in the era running up to the Franco-Prussian war, but caught a mortar in the head, which delayed his theory from being taken seriously till WW 1, when it was barely applicable given the stagnant trench warfare..... Rommel's work "Attack!" Shows it indeed was possible, just not the French doing it, given the massive collapse of morale, leading to the collapse of French civilization in "The Four Corporals". The French would never regain sufficient trust in their military or capacity to enlist enough troops to maintain the empire, much less France, ever again to the present without substantial outside support. However, ideologically, they never accepted this, creating some hilarious yet nerve grating foreign policy decisions that made no sense, especially when it's biggest ally, the US, was in the depth of combating the Domino Effect in the early cold war era. The Americans couldn't understand what the French were doing, and the French couldn't figure out themselves. 

 

This lead to the collapse of their republic, and a much more centralized New republic under a abnormally strong executive, who is chronically alienated from everyone, be it French or Foreigner.

 

Algeria resulted from a massive population of French citizens having colonized Algeria over a few generations, and the military's refusal to accept their defeat in Vietnam. It was a identity issue more than anything. Also was a ideological component, anyone living in the French Empire had a right to become a and claim French Nationality..... it wasn't just a French mainland issue..... so the people on the French mainland thoughts and likely that Cambodian soldier saluting thought. 

 

Ultimately, we should let the French play this one out, it's only been a hundred years, they will eventually figure it out in a century or two from now. Best thing we can  do is refuse to learn French so the problem doesn't effect us.

 

As to college kids having drug induced orgies and swapping STDs in dandelion fields, yeah..... we need babies. It's a human instinct. Having a strong military keeps wacky crazy stuff like a ISIL state like in Syria and Iraq from spontaneously popping up and bayonetting said field orgies in the stomach. Douchebags are everywhere, and they all have fantasies and delusions of grandure they want to make a social reality. If you hold these beliefs free living beliefs, and can't comprehend a alien and distant military with weird rituals and incomprehensible obsessions, then thank them  for the luxury of being able to develope such ideas in relative peace. If you don't desire a interest in politics or military,then take up knitting or song worrying. A society can specialize. Thank God we had he collective foresight to create NATO and other alliances to keep war a minimum, where small specialized armies instead of emergency mass drafts can do the job.

 

If you do not live in such a country, I will send manuals to you on how to build a bomb shelter to hide your family in so they are not raped to death when the militias are plundering your home.

 

Any other questions? 

 

Of course we need military.

The problem I have is when it becomes radical to the point people are literally obsessing over every moment.

 

I understand getting upset over the guy opposing the Iraqi war, but is it fair to hit him? Especially in the middle of a college classroom???!!!!!

 

How about wanting to bomb anti war protestors?Is that acceptable?

 

I mean the French paratroopers literally began to bomb metropolis Paris late in the war and by the time De Gaulle granted Algeria independene they were literally executing a coup to overthrow the French government and a civil war nearly broke out in mainland France.

 

I though their duty was to defend France? They are going to start bombing Paris to continue a useless war?

 

Don't they understand the war was made in the first plae beause selfih European Algerians refuse to grant at least equal rights and access to public facilities to native Algerians if they weren't going to grant them citizenship?

 

Have you ever read Jean Lartguay's works?

Edited June 13, 2014 by Pisces Adonis

[Onasander]

I dont recall French paratroopers wanting to bomb French civilians anywhere in the quote above, but from the context you gave me, its generuc left hemisphere rage in its full extremity (we can all do it, minus a few Syndromes that prohibit this quite natural hysteria), which is reacting to pain received on a extroverted level in observing other peoples actions that effects their sense of self and their priorities. It often accompanies lingistic analism, which doesnt make sense unless you consider the part of the brain that does syntax and grammar is in the left, and is functionally meshed in the process.

 

A archetype for this would be the Arizona shooter.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner

 

He reacted violently to how he perceived others, as idiots who lacked intelligence and couldn't spell, and it tormented him. A generic type of strategic, unorthodox thinking takes place initially in the left hemisphere as well.... Timothy McVeigh, Bin Laden, the Unibomber all follow this profile. Its well documented.

 

Just 99.9999 of people just talk, or get anger and keep it to themselves, or protest.

 

If I was to take a Nihilistic approach, like Gorgias, but adapt it to psychology, I could claim it doesnt matter the correctness of information being processed validating this anger as correct or crazy, but merely of a type that is to be categorically appreciated in and of itself. The passions that lead people into protests and counter protests is exactly of this type. We are not validating or rejecting the validity of said protests (hence leaving them unnamed), merely noting the information is being processed similarly.

 

Now, what would cause two equally passionate movements to stir to the point of conflict, and eventually a coup?

 

One obvious answer..... weakness of a philosophical language diverse enough to allow a peaceful resolution, and the pursuit of a narrow minded ideology that allows few rational responses outside of violence.

 

The second is the group feeling of individuals and how they perceive themselves in the overall patterning of society.

 

Its important to note French were/still do to a extent, conceive themselves as a universal empire. That empire was rapidly crumbling. Much of its intelligentsia on the left was obsessed with Marxist insurgency, emancipatory communes, on a international and local scale.... they literally spawned the Khmer Rouge. They blended Marxist and Nietzschean thought together in a very rebellious anti status quo that was inhumane and horrifically unsustainable.... in other words, their intellectual class utterly failed them.

 

Counter to this you had traditionalist threatened (but really, how?) by the collapse of the French empire, foreign armies pressing against them, insurgencies, and it eventually occuring in the heart of Paris itself.

 

The two factions were too damn abstract, full of shit and lost in the fog of their own story lines. Both sides can claim a humanism. Neither were right, but they both got degrees of political power over what was left of France after the last revolution.

 

Hence.... the solution is NOT to learn French, and let their situation go away in a few more generations, take the occasional coup there and ignore them otherwise, while pushing a international language over them.... English, Mandarin, Swahili..... I don't care. Just so long as they grow out of this crap.

 

Bad human traits are still human traits, and they can contribute to the good as well. Man is born neither inherently good or bad. We are born each with a early, random emphasis towards one, but most learn over time which to emphasise, any every stable personality type will exhibit features of good and bad behavior to others in situations. Man is a creature of society, society is our nature.

 

Should individuals obsess and micro-analyse aspects of politics, sociology, philosophy, statecraft, military policy and strategy, and politics in general?

 

Yeah.... of course, duh..... if people naturally be ome obsessive of this, its tyrannical to oppose such study, as its obviously at root, a part of human nature that takes predictible forms..... being on the nature-nurture dichotomy.

 

We have strong traditions and schools of thought patterned on the neurology of the mind in how larger aspects of society can best function. Some contradicts. Its how personalities specialize in the mind, favoring aspects of the brain over others.... some seeks wrong. Othertimes its just a competition of our best interests.

 

In a democracy, particularly the non imperial kind that lack marxists and roaming squads of paratroopers battling it out in the streets..... the kind of democracies that perfer deep thinking and voting...... such deep thinking individuals can be quite a boon. They can specialize on problems, and if a frew press and freedom of speech exists, can communicate their more though out ideas.

 

Guys in the military produce a set of guys (a small population within the military) who study the military theoretically and concretely to a minutia, applying thier understandings to a whole. Doctors likewise do this with the medical field, engineers with engineering, diplomats with diplomacy, etc. Some good ideas, some bad. Democracy lets us decide what is preferable.

 

Your caution and withdrawl from this obsessive personality trait suggests on one hand you have a strong dislike for it, likely from contact with such thinkers, or the inability to process such thinking..... yet ironically you also exhibit it in obsessing over it in like, 6 or 7 threads yourself, suggesting your doing it as well, that you ARE it, but dont realize that way of thought in you is the same as that in others, due to restrictions in your sense of self being compatible or the same as in these other groups you have a prejudice against.

 

So if we were to strip the ideological content of your ideas and the ideas of the people you like least.... these French soldiers or soldiers in general, how much is similar, and how much actually differs in your and their thought process..... where did you diverge? Its a theory of mind question. How do you think, how do they think..... and honestly, just how different are you from them? Are they really that alien from you in your less stellar moments? Are they less deserving of their humanity and natural variation over you just because history caught a snapshot of them in their most extreme of states, whereas it completely overlooked you?

 

How do you think others would think of you if everyone read about your childhood tantrums, or when you stole something as a preteen, or cheated, or held a stupid idea, and talked about it passionately 50 years later?

Edited June 13, 2014 by Onasander

[Onasander]

Oh.... I don't mind the philosophy, but lets play to the larger audience and shift it from France to antiquity..... its a ancient history site, and apparently historic Roman era fiction authors infest this site like termites in a wooden jungle shack. Its not like the French were the first nation to develop douchebags. I used Gorgias above, so Ill increasingly try to keep my responses more and more classical. It may develop the depth of argument and perspective of hypothetical characters in these authors future novels. Imagine a few philosophers sitting in Athens having this very debate, but in their era. What countries are similar to your position historically that cause you to question, and for your pet peeves to flair up?

Edited June 13, 2014 by Onasander

[caldrail]

So basically this is about societal values? Well, human beings are no different than they've ever been. There will be those that get very up tight about loyalty and sacrifice, and those that are more selfish. Or loads of people in-between. So I guess the idea that you gun down people you don't like with machineguns, or nail them up on crucifixes, just because they have different sensibilities is nothing more than unrestrained subjectivity.

 

As it happens, my grandfather once came home on leave during the Great War. Whilst out in civilian clothes, an irate lady approached him and stuffed a white feather into his hand. As an underage volunteer, you can imagine what he thought of the declaration of cowardince. So as you see, subjectivity and perception is rather at face value and an obvious source of contention when surely some tolerance and communication makes life a bit more peaceful. After all, mowing down those that you don't like, historically, has led to situations where a lot of people don't like you.

Edited June 15, 2014 by caldrail

[Onasander]

If the women were that emphatic about fighting In WW 1, they could of opened up a new expeditionary force of their own and lead the charge, leading by example.

 

I dont much value rhetorical displays of cowardice and courage, its almost never right in terms of accuracy. Group feeling based on assumptions of what good and bad character rarely is. Its one of the failing points of Greek and Roman education, they turned every down to earth non fiction, historically accurate character into a abstraction that quickly resembles a overt exaggeration of said person until they resemble archetypes with little to back them up historically.

 

Diogenes is the worst victim of this. In war, in the rear, psychological tension is such that no one on anyside is allowed to be ignored and be a normal person. Animinity is lost to animosity, pride, and fear. It's just as bad for the pacifists as the war factions.

[caldrail]

 

 

If the women were that emphatic about fighting In WW 1, they could of opened up a new expeditionary force of their own and lead the charge, leading by example.

No-one at that time would have envisaged exposing the fairer sex to the violence of the battlefield - indeed, the outrage against the Hun was not just that they had instigated a war, but that in Belgium they had accrued a reputation for murdering pregnant women. However it is also true that WW1 was the first instance of women taking on male roles in production and support in British society, although we also have to allow for the influence of the Suffragette movement that had become quite strident politically just before the Great War.