Respect.
Well, giving up is taboo in the military. As is fragging etc.
I think there is a big correlation between being defeated and thinking you are.
The quote seems to imply a one way causality. Like as if the realization causes the defeat.
e. g. US thought it defeated Taliban by the end of 2001, Taliban certainly didn't think so. Similar thing with Palestinians vs. Israel.
No. It is only taboo at basic training. Mission-focused delegation of authority in modern militaries specifically adresses this. Leaders are encouraged to take initiative, which often means abandoning a failing plan. The ability to quickly recognize failure, "give up" and reattack a problem is what separates western forces from the drills-based approach of the post-soviet block.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics
(Even at basic training, giving up is a thing. The only true failure at basic is getting oneself or others injured.)
The quote was about the 'enemy'. Many civilian governments will end a war, before the military would have.
I'm sure there are a lot of examples in both directions, they should have just walked away sooner, or they should have stuck it out and all died gloriously.
Example: The German Military didn't want to end WW1, wasn't it the civilian government. But, weren't they actually really beat?
Or Vietnam. Did we lose? Or were we convinced we had lost.
It is possible to be 'defeated' but just not accept it. The never give up attitude leads to extra deaths.
What if Japan had this attitude, and we just kept dropping atomic bombs until the country was gone.
Guess goes back to some other quote I can't cite. War is easier to start than to end.
Or when they do not think they are defeated, but their goals now align with your own.
> But Miles had seen it complete in Metzov's eyes sixty seconds earlier. It reminded him of that definition of his father's. A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind. The mind was the first and final battleground, the stuff in between was just noise.
-- The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold
Interesting:
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.
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.
Or, as soldiers (and some others) put it: "Pick your battles"
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.
Stoicism is about not allowing your emotions to govern you.
Subtle but profound difference.
Hard to believe, but it is possible.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-are-in-the-us-...
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpVtJNv4ZNM
We're doing abnormal things (technologically-intensified war), the effects of those things are "normal" in the sense that we should expect trauma from experiencing traumatic events. What we put our soldiers through is hell. "Hardness" is scar tissue.
Come on, this is a shill interview if I have ever saw one. Fuck all this, the US Army personnel, past and present, deserves way better than this psy-op-ed crap. All soldiers, former and present, deserve that.
And back to the, let's say essence, of the article, you could tell that it was written in 2014, back when Stoicism just had had a strong revival, hence why this lady is mentioning it ad-nauseam. I'd say that by 2016-2018 it was already gone, either way, large parts of the US/Western establishment sure as hell left Stoicism apart when confronted with Trump, for example.
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.