Dawgie said:
> mostly they fight for themselves, their mates, and their unit,
In a related vein, I'm reading a book called "On Killing" by a former US Army
Ranger, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who also taught psychology at West Point),
examining why soldiers do (or don't) choose to kill, and the psychological
effects on the soldiers. Worth taking a look at the reviews on Amazon.
G'day,
> In a related vein, I'm reading a book called "On Killing" by a former
If you can get you hands on any of the papers on evolutionary psychology. For
instance across a broad range of types of "soldier" (a fairly loose term in
the literatures hands), from conventional military to terrorists, some basic
principles hold out (actually they hold even beyond that, but the most
research has been in these areas). So
groups/nations that rely on nonkin (nonfamily) altruistic behaviour
amongst their members are most effective if they manipulate cues humans use to
define family (living in the same spot, looking alike, using affectionate
terms etc). The theory goes that's why training tends to keep recruits with
each other and their instructors (and usually away from real kin, so that
training isn't weakened), provides them with pseudo phenotypic matches (e.g.
uniforms and distinctive hairstyles... and informally via tattoos, songs, and
bonding ceremonies) and encourage use of terms usually associated with
families (not sure if that's true of conventional mi!
litary, but is true of cults/terrorist cells where the lead guy is
often painted a s a big brother/father etc). All this is much easier
with younger people as they are still fairly imprintbale (we all tend to get
rather fixed in our ways and more cantankerous with age) so young,
impressionable recruits are preferred.
Its an interesting topic.
Cheers
> Dawgie said:
Nice to see someone *else* recommending this book. I agree, it's an
excellent book - check out his website www.killology.com also.
An excellent book on the decision-making process in combat (and
conflict)
situations is _The psychology of conflict and combat_ by Ben Shalit, who
was an Israeli military psychologist. It's harder to find, and a dryer read,
but excellent.
http://www.millenniumsend.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownlo
adde tails&lid=24&title=On%20Killing
Excellent essay on the subject is available for download here.
Ian
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