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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
It reflects our reality. Nobody outside the country stands to gain from a war with the United States, so the only remaining wars are started by those looking to, in one way or another, steal from us (the public) with invented necessities. If we find ourselves paying for another war in the Middle East, in all likelihood it will be because our government refused to accept Iran's appeasement, not the other way around.
As for the acts of war, when the justifications are so distant and the arguments from "defense of interests" so tenuous, they really do start to appear as random acts of violence.
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.
I guess she understandably doesn’t want to focus on that part, but this has to be a huge part of rising PTSD rates: it’s hard to ignore that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were ultimately immorally waged. What scientists call the “are we the baddies?-syndrome”
Respect.
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