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What are you reading?
- Thread starter Recovering LSO
- Start date
I keep falling asleep reading the Introduction.
Technically I've only read the cover so far, but still counts...
I finished it a few days ago, but am just getting around to posting here. I thought the book was really well done. I'll have to watch the movie before I ship out next month.
I saw the title of the post and was thinking of this. Then opened up the thread and there it is. Going through the instrument examiner course right now. I feel like I'm in the movie Ground Hog Day.
About halfway through 'Night Fighter' by C.F. Rawnsley, the Radar Operator/Navigator for one of the UK's top night fighters aces. Very good and easy read with a lot of detail about RAF night fighters and the use of radar from the very beginning. Also nice to read a rare book by a non-pilot aircrew type.
On its own not much at all but when taught as part of his training it reinforces the dangerous notion that the police are better than the citizens they serve. All from an 'expert' on combat who has seen none himself, even I have seen more 'combat' than he has and that ain't saying much at all.
For some deeper analysis of the Sheep / Sheepdog meme, pick up Tom Ricks' Making the Corps. This recommendation is not a shot at the Marine Corps, but instead an opportunity to look at how and where the transformation from civilian to somthing-better-than-civilian begins to takes place.
As an aside, what's the correlation between those who strongly subscribe to Sheep/Sheepdog philosophy and those that have MOLON LABE decals/tattoos/t-shirts? That's not snark. That's a real question based on understandings (misunderstandings?) of history and soldier's roles as citizens.
As an aside, what's the correlation between those who strongly subscribe to Sheep/Sheepdog philosophy and those that have MOLON LABE decals/tattoos/t-shirts? That's not snark. That's a real question based on understandings (misunderstandings?) of history and soldier's roles as citizens.
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WRT Sheepdog and Grossman's training (that I have observed and read), you couldn't be farther from the truth. He absolutely does not teach or condone the notion cops are better than citizens. Again, if some folks, like you, get the idea that is something Sheepdog teaches without proper research or context, he can't help that. Get more information, make inquires, read more of his stuff, attend a lecture or training he is giving.
Grossman is not an expert on combat as in tactics, and never asserts that. Never lectures on it or written on tactics. As a psychologist, he is an expert on the psychological aspects and affects of violence and by extension, combat.
I haven't read Making of the Corps. Grossman has made dozens of presentations to USMC and US Army units in predeployment training. From his descriptions, his lectures to those audiences is more about surviving the psychological aspects of combat then something like Sheepdog and their place in civilian society. But to your point, just like viewing your enemy as evil and sub human ( taught to soldiers from the dawn of organized combat) helps a soldier deal with the killing of another human, even if enemy, having a soldier see himself as something better than civilians triggers an almost parental protective notion that helps them deal with the sacrifices they are making. Taken to an extreme, yes the better than civilian attitude can be harmful. But so can the enemy as sub human and training men to look through a scope, pull a trigger and blow a head up like a melon. Yet the military does a pretty damn good job of balancing all that with basic humanity and civility.
As to your final question regarding correlations, I'd say about the same as the dude you pass on the street with tattoos and a convict.
There are definitely some people who take the sheep/sheepdog/wolf thing too far and take themselves waaay too seriously about it, and I quietly roll my eyes and laugh a bit about that. But in the big scheme of things, there are a lot of worse things, far worse things, to be in life than to be a "motard."
On that note, when people use clichés like "warrior caste," in the sense that it's separate from normal society, they oughtta stop and ask themselves something: Is having these two entities so divergent such a healthy thing for the Republic?
You sir, win airwarriors today.
LFCFan
*Insert nerd wings here*
To add to this, Grossman interviewed a veteran who said that this was like virgins discussing sex. And to a point, he's somewhat right. However, if I may put my psychologist** hat back on for a second; when I was in academia we constantly had students taking psych 101 who were hell bent on a career in "helping people" with (insert their personal problem or problem in their family here) and we had to dissuade them from a career in working with that. Usually when they saw that this wasn't puppies and rainbows but involved things like statistics, learning and applying the scientific method and so on, they got scared and went to major in underwater basket weaving (...or they didn't get scared and made upper level courses less fun to teach). Doing research on something out of the ordinary that you yourself experience colors your research or clinical work, and usually not in a good way.
**I was not a clinically focused researcher, I did work in areas of cognition, psychophysiology and neuroscience mostly. TAed and taught various intro and upper level undergrad courses.