Even if, and there is good evidence to believe so, Slam was a fraud, I don’t see the core tenants of On Killing to be falsified:
- Most humans naturally don’t want to kill
- Getting soldiers to do so causes them serious trauma
The psychological model put forth in On Killing matches the Milgram Experiments. The specific elements being proximity and relation to both the authority and the target.
Modern armies have adapted their training to account for the proposed human reluctance to kill a fellow human and seem to have lowered that threshold effectively.
Further, other historians have found more evidence to support the notion that most soldiers did not partake in killing. These include muskets containing multiple balls, or staging a battle against a band of cloth, finding much higher accuracy than when firing at a real enemy.
Then again, the author claims that violence in media is partly at fault for our current woes. A notion that I believe has been disproven.
I once heard an interview with a soldier in Vietnam, who said something like, "we grew up with the Lone Ranger and then were told to do things the good guys wouldn't do."
The relationship between media and violence may not be direct, but I suspect it's there.
- Most humans naturally don’t want to kill
- Getting soldiers to do so causes them serious trauma
The psychological model put forth in On Killing matches the Milgram Experiments. The specific elements being proximity and relation to both the authority and the target.
Modern armies have adapted their training to account for the proposed human reluctance to kill a fellow human and seem to have lowered that threshold effectively.
Further, other historians have found more evidence to support the notion that most soldiers did not partake in killing. These include muskets containing multiple balls, or staging a battle against a band of cloth, finding much higher accuracy than when firing at a real enemy.
Then again, the author claims that violence in media is partly at fault for our current woes. A notion that I believe has been disproven.