I am watching a distinguished brainwashing expert giving an interview. He spent many years in the military. He is sharp, smart, and gives valuable info. And then he pauses for a moment, and says ‘oh, those civilians…’, lets out a big sigh, and the interview goes on.
This little observation gives me a crazy idea. It looks crazy at first, but the more I think about it the more it gains weight in my mind.
When military personnel come back to civilian life, many of them, if not all, complain that civilian life is very plain, and that military life was real. Not ‘real’, ‘REAL’.
What if…
What if their life in the military ACTUALLY is real, or resembles the most real life possible for a human being? What if it is we, the civilians, who live an un-real life? What if this side of life is the superficial reality, and we are dumbed down, and OUR life is not real? I once heard the opinion that humans are organic bio-electro-magnetic beings. I know, I know, it is a long one, and ‘too much detail’. If we took our organic nature into consideration, our life would run a some other course.
On the environmental side, we are supposed to be in much closer contact with nature, not living in grey boxes of grey buildings.
From a relationship standpoint, we are supposed to live in tribes or communities and have various forms of relationships that are much closer, involved, and caring than we currently have. We are supposed to have a rich circle of bonds and be much tighter to each other. I personally prefer the word ‘tribe’, as the word ‘community’ is a bit washed out for me due to its excessive use within the corporate world.
And from the perspective of our internal life , we have way too many illusionary levels in our life – responsibility is often not personal, but given to an authority; personal truth is diluted with buts and ifs; our daily decision-making is so contaminated by external noise that we no longer own our decisions.
We, ‘the civilians’, don’t move that much physically; we don’t encounter many dangerous things in our environment that could challenge us in some ways; our lives are rather sterilized, diluted, or veiled by illusions, as opposed to being raw and real.
While military life is in many ways the opposite of this. Physically, those people need to be fit, or they have a problem. That is not a ‘daily gym’ exercise; it is a LIFESTYLE. Psychologically, they exist in much closer circles, and their bonds within their ‘teams’ are much closer than in the civilian setup. They face danger that is real; their emotions are often raw but controlled and/or suppressed; their courage, tough choices, and values are challenged regularly.
In military life, the decision-making process is challenged much more often because of the ripple effect every decision has on the larger group, task, or geography. Within civilian life, we exist in a much shorter span of thought about the larger consequences of our decisions. This is what we call being ‘mindless’. How would our decision-making and consideration change if we took a moment and considered the ripples our decisions create in other parts of our life? I could have misread it all, really, but this is where my thinking took me. Military decision-making is not directly mindful, I’d say, but it is more of an implanted habit of the mind to think just a bit more strategically about the effects of actions. Wouldn’t it be that the military lifestyle is actually CLOSER to how humans need/should/were designed to live? Discharging from the military into civilian life is not just changing a uniform and a routine; it is TELEPORTING TO A DIFFERENT REALITY. And from this standpoint, that new reality is largely numb, sterilized, too vanilla, too soft.
Many years ago, when I did my internship at a mental hospital as a part of my degree in psychology, I had a chance to speak to a man with schizophrenia. He lived at the hospital long-term; it was his home. His consciousness was coming and going, and sometimes he gave a really interesting perspective. He once said: '"What makes you think you are normal, and we are the broken ones? The fact that the proportion of mentally challenged people, especially the strongly challenged, is much smaller in the overall population does not directly mean that we are ‘the wrong ones’. What if YOU are here to take care of me, and my life is THE life?” That really stuck with me… WHAT IF HE IS THE ONE going through the REAL LIFE thing, and the rest of society is there to take care of him with its resources but is meant to remain in the illusions of what life actually is???
How’s THAT for a perspective?..
What if it is the ‘civilian’ life that is non-real? What if a veteran’s life is the real one in this sense? What if we need to learn from them to get just a bit more real – physically, in terms of bonding, dedication, focus, commitment, discipline, and responsibility for oneself and others – and take it easy on pushing the ‘normie’ lifestyle ’s superficiality on them? The thing is – most military people can make it into the civilian lifestyle with their dedication, resources, and drive. How many civilians overall can make it through the military lifestyle?.. Hmmm…
Many physical problems are cured with training/exercise.
Most loneliness is cured with bonding.
The majority of goals are achieved with dedication and focus.
Isn’t that what the military lifestyle offers?
What if next time you talk to a veteran or a discharged person, you ask them not what they did, where they have been, and how many they have killed, but – “WHAT DO YOU THINK I CAN LEARN that you learned, that I can adapt to civilian life to make it just a little more REAL?”
This little observation gives me a crazy idea. It looks crazy at first, but the more I think about it the more it gains weight in my mind.
When military personnel come back to civilian life, many of them, if not all, complain that civilian life is very plain, and that military life was real. Not ‘real’, ‘REAL’.
What if…
What if their life in the military ACTUALLY is real, or resembles the most real life possible for a human being? What if it is we, the civilians, who live an un-real life? What if this side of life is the superficial reality, and we are dumbed down, and OUR life is not real? I once heard the opinion that humans are organic bio-electro-magnetic beings. I know, I know, it is a long one, and ‘too much detail’. If we took our organic nature into consideration, our life would run a some other course.
On the environmental side, we are supposed to be in much closer contact with nature, not living in grey boxes of grey buildings.
From a relationship standpoint, we are supposed to live in tribes or communities and have various forms of relationships that are much closer, involved, and caring than we currently have. We are supposed to have a rich circle of bonds and be much tighter to each other. I personally prefer the word ‘tribe’, as the word ‘community’ is a bit washed out for me due to its excessive use within the corporate world.
And from the perspective of our internal life , we have way too many illusionary levels in our life – responsibility is often not personal, but given to an authority; personal truth is diluted with buts and ifs; our daily decision-making is so contaminated by external noise that we no longer own our decisions.
We, ‘the civilians’, don’t move that much physically; we don’t encounter many dangerous things in our environment that could challenge us in some ways; our lives are rather sterilized, diluted, or veiled by illusions, as opposed to being raw and real.
While military life is in many ways the opposite of this. Physically, those people need to be fit, or they have a problem. That is not a ‘daily gym’ exercise; it is a LIFESTYLE. Psychologically, they exist in much closer circles, and their bonds within their ‘teams’ are much closer than in the civilian setup. They face danger that is real; their emotions are often raw but controlled and/or suppressed; their courage, tough choices, and values are challenged regularly.
In military life, the decision-making process is challenged much more often because of the ripple effect every decision has on the larger group, task, or geography. Within civilian life, we exist in a much shorter span of thought about the larger consequences of our decisions. This is what we call being ‘mindless’. How would our decision-making and consideration change if we took a moment and considered the ripples our decisions create in other parts of our life? I could have misread it all, really, but this is where my thinking took me. Military decision-making is not directly mindful, I’d say, but it is more of an implanted habit of the mind to think just a bit more strategically about the effects of actions. Wouldn’t it be that the military lifestyle is actually CLOSER to how humans need/should/were designed to live? Discharging from the military into civilian life is not just changing a uniform and a routine; it is TELEPORTING TO A DIFFERENT REALITY. And from this standpoint, that new reality is largely numb, sterilized, too vanilla, too soft.
Many years ago, when I did my internship at a mental hospital as a part of my degree in psychology, I had a chance to speak to a man with schizophrenia. He lived at the hospital long-term; it was his home. His consciousness was coming and going, and sometimes he gave a really interesting perspective. He once said: '"What makes you think you are normal, and we are the broken ones? The fact that the proportion of mentally challenged people, especially the strongly challenged, is much smaller in the overall population does not directly mean that we are ‘the wrong ones’. What if YOU are here to take care of me, and my life is THE life?” That really stuck with me… WHAT IF HE IS THE ONE going through the REAL LIFE thing, and the rest of society is there to take care of him with its resources but is meant to remain in the illusions of what life actually is???
How’s THAT for a perspective?..
What if it is the ‘civilian’ life that is non-real? What if a veteran’s life is the real one in this sense? What if we need to learn from them to get just a bit more real – physically, in terms of bonding, dedication, focus, commitment, discipline, and responsibility for oneself and others – and take it easy on pushing the ‘normie’ lifestyle ’s superficiality on them? The thing is – most military people can make it into the civilian lifestyle with their dedication, resources, and drive. How many civilians overall can make it through the military lifestyle?.. Hmmm…
Many physical problems are cured with training/exercise.
Most loneliness is cured with bonding.
The majority of goals are achieved with dedication and focus.
Isn’t that what the military lifestyle offers?
What if next time you talk to a veteran or a discharged person, you ask them not what they did, where they have been, and how many they have killed, but – “WHAT DO YOU THINK I CAN LEARN that you learned, that I can adapt to civilian life to make it just a little more REAL?”