lizards on toast :: chucky’s rant (personal)

2008-08-19 13:35:50 chucky’s rant

As an addendum to my response to Chucky’s rant about the stupidity of enlisting.

.  It’s no secret that Chucky hates the army. He’s made it pretty clear why, and I agree with him on a lot of those reasons.  For me however, the army’s proved to be a great environment for something I enjoy a lot; studying people. In the movie Dark Night, Heath Ledger’s character says that the only reason he does anything is for chaos’ own sake; Stress and chaos reveal what kind of person people really are. The military is the best place that I’ve found so far to see the same effects of stress on people; I don’t think I could get away with blowing up buildings and killing people outright. ;]

.  Get a group of poeple together in a common situation, then heap a bunch of stress on them and see what happens. The real point of basic combat training – aside from the training, of course – is uniting a group of individuals in a stressful situation against a common enemy – the drill instructors and the training obstacles – and teaching them to work as a team.  That’s the basic idea; How it really turns out depends largely on the individuals in the group.

.  A recent example is my unit’s upcoming field protection exercise. A large group of the soldiers will break down into excessive whining and moodiness.  Another (smaller) group will endure the unavoidable silliness with a good attitude; They will even try to excel at the tasks placed in front of them. Where else would you get this level of insight into people?

out.