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Guavanaut posted:A veteran friend of mine recommended that I read this:  Grossman's arguments followed from the classic 1947 work by SLA 'Slam' Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command. Marshall was a war journalist/historian who made the controversial claim that only one in four American soldiers in WW2 fired their guns directly at an enemy. This was attributed by him to a number of factors, from inadequate training and preparation to issues of morale and psychological and cultural directives against killing (I think the anecdote about soldiers loading but not firing their guns comes from that book). There's a massive question mark over how credible Marshall's research was - he was prone to inventing or exaggerating personal experiences of warfare - but he did certainly travel to the frontline and interview frontline troops shortly after combat had taken place. A lot of postwar study into the cause and effect of battlefield violence followed on from this work. One of Marshall's more significant observations in this work was the importance of the soldier's peer group to battlefield effectiveness. Basically, a soldier was far more likely to engage with an enemy if he was surrounded by fellow soldiers on whom he relied, and he believed relied on him. This in itself was far more important than continuous drilling in rote procedures, but was hardly uniform in how it could be seen on the battlefield. If your peer group thinks of the enemy as an existential threat, or that their entire economic well being is contingent on destroying the enemy, you're going to be incentivised into committing worse (ie more militarily effective) acts of violence. There's not a great deal of difference ideologically between Roman soldiers massacring fleeing enemy soldiers and the Atomic bombing of Japan. Both emphatically reduced the risk of further conflict. Tiler Kiwi posted:I think the perception that people are inherently nonviolent is a rather noble one, but I'm also a bit scornful of it since it results in a sort of unpleasant side effect where groups or individuals that carry out violence are deemed sociopathic or inhuman in some way, which ironically makes the whole dehumanization aspect and subsequent violent response a lot easier for so-called "decent" value systems, and makes actually attempting to address things like these individuals being raised in settings that normalize violence much more difficult to address.
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Apr 2, 2016 09:00
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Popular Thug Drink posted:a big difference is that in ancient warfare you'd spend months if not years of fanfare for a few hours at most of extreme violence, but in the industrial era you could go from civilian to solider in a few months and then spend months at a time under combat stress and gruesome conditions constantly all the time. the amount of time actually in combat has increased by a huge amount because it's hard to live under the threat of dudes stabbing you 24x7 for weeks at a stretch but introduce guns and bombs into the mix and suddenly your whole existence is under a death microsocope that never blinks Ehh, I don't know if that can be applied too broadly. While there were professional soldiers in the past (such the Romans and mercenary forces) and warrior classes, there were still a lot of people who were, while not fitting the generally false stereotype of "farmer given a spear and thrown into battle", functioned in a similar sort of way as a national guard/levy/citizen-soldier mold and could find themselves brought to arms in short notice. Plus, to my knowledge, warfare in the past also wasn't really oriented around pitched battles as people tend to focus on, but more low level engagements and skirmishes and long drawn out sieges, so soldiers of all eras could wind up tied up in long-term campaigns where the threat of death or injury at random times was still fairly real. The scale of death could also be quite ghastly at times and the whole experience could be pretty hopelessly miserable for all the soldiers involved, especially if it involved being on a boat at all. I think a big difference is just how our lives in general have changed. I read a bit of the book The Chemical Muse which covered this aspect a bit; plauges and famines were commonplace enough where the difference between prospering and having everyone you've ever known die was small enough that one bad harvest could spell disaster, infant mortality was sky high, and generally the structure of society was more based around "might makes right" (especially in regards to widespread use of slavery and other structurally violent systems) and the use of naked coercive force than we are generally comfortable with. War was harshness, but so was life, and unlike modern life, there was really no concepts about sanitizing violence or "shielding" people from its effects (like gently caress the idea of "childhood innocence" was something that a lot of cultures would react with abject scorn to), so I'd guess there's less of a "culture shock" aspect about it for those people, compared to a contemporary soldier going from a secure urban setting to some twisted flaming hellscape populated by death engines, but I don't know enough to say how big a role the change in warfare altered our reactions to it. Societies of the past generally being based more on shame than guilt is also a factor in the responses to violence; since we hold violence as more inherently bad, even doing violent acts against other people for a socially well regarded act can result in a lot of suffering and uncertainly in how people react to it. You can note that other sorts of communities that indulge in violence also tend to utilize shame based concepts like "honor" and "respect" that demand violent action in order to maintain ones fairly insecure social status, such as criminal organizations. People are weird, tho. I mean on one hand you have dudes that get PTSD from being drone pilot operators, and then you have groups like ISIS that are totally cool murdering and brutalizing entire populations because of some variation of "gently caress you". I wonder how widespread PTSD is among them. --- quote:In the hours leading up to the ceasefire that would end the first Gulf War Jarecke was traveling along the Iraqi - Kuwait highway when he came upon a truck destroyed by American bombardment. The picture Jarecke took features the charred remains of an Iraqi Soldier with his last expression of pain imprinted on his face, his arms slumped over the window of the truck, attempting to lift himself out; almost staring at the camera[1] Jarecke was travelling with a military public affair officer who allowed him to take the picture. quote:”If i don't photograph this, people like my mom will think war is what they see on TV”.  Incinerated person e: an article on Taliban PTSD: http://www.newsweek.com/do-taliban-get-ptsd-68973 Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Apr 2, 2016 |
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Apr 2, 2016 09:26
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Apr 2, 2016 11:31
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gently caress you gently caress you gently caress you This morning people from Keep NC Safe Coalition unfurled a massive banner bearing the alleged mugshots of trans people as they faced down chanting LGBT activists across a downtown Asheville street. It’s not yet known what crimes the depicted trans people are accused of having committed, but the message, obviously, is that since some trans people have been arrested in the past, none deserve the civil rights.
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Apr 2, 2016 18:41
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Happy April Fools from Google
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Apr 2, 2016 21:06
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Snowman Crossing posted:Happy April Fools from Google I finally get where the people who bitch about how "everyone's just looking to blame someone else for their mistakes" are coming from.  Edit: Sair posted:It was happening no matter which button you pushed. Ok, that is a problem. Everything I read about it said people were actually clicking the mic drop button. MizPiz fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Apr 2, 2016 |
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Apr 2, 2016 22:41
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https://twitter.com/RobMorroLiberty
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Apr 2, 2016 22:58
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Apr 2, 2016 23:12
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MizPiz posted:I finally get where the people who bitch about how "everyone's just looking to blame someone else for their mistakes" are coming from. It was happening no matter which button you pushed. 
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Apr 2, 2016 23:31
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MizPiz posted:I finally get where the people who bitch about how "everyone's just looking to blame someone else for their mistakes" are coming from. Supposedly there was a glitch where the normal Send button added the stupid "mic drop gif" too, or maybe just people on the internet looking to blame Google instead of their own idiocy. 
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Apr 2, 2016 23:35
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 As a note Omega Psi Phi is the first predominantly African-American fraternity to be founded at a historically black university. Kind of reminds me how racist high schools have been using "Trump!" as a chant to heckle minority heavy teams recently.
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Apr 3, 2016 01:22
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Apr 3, 2016 13:58
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https://vine.co/v/ip0MWlQBzZH https://vine.co/v/ip17nl1I1uI
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Apr 3, 2016 15:15
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News sources from several countries has just published a leak named the Panama Papers, implicating loads of people as having hidden assets away in tax havens. http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/apr/03/icelands-prime-minister-walks-out-of-interview-over-tax-haven-question-video It seem the Icelandic Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Interior Minister have just been exposed. The same is the case of a lot of other former and current politicians and leaders.
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Apr 3, 2016 19:47
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XOUJhhBuYQ
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Apr 3, 2016 20:42
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http://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com
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Apr 3, 2016 20:49
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Wow - this dude is a spectacular photographer. His pictures of everyday Philadelphia are riveting and don't seem to have the same kind of vague condescension that characterizes those "Humans of..." pages.  edit: 
Frog Act fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 3, 2016 22:53
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Apr 4, 2016 12:20
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Apr 4, 2016 15:55
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Apr 4, 2016 16:13
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 http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/FBI-Frisco-Hospice-Owner-Directed-Nurses-to-Overdose-Patients-373933951.html Someone finally made good on the death panels promise pillsburysoldier fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 4, 2016 17:31
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quote:The owner of a North Texas medical company regularly directed nurses to give hospice patients overdoses of drugs such as morphine to speed up their deaths and maximize profits, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit for a search warrant obtained by NBC 5. 
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Apr 4, 2016 18:24
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Actual Audio from Donald Trump Rally https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-gSJW3sHXE
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Apr 4, 2016 19:34
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Apr 5, 2016 15:55
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 With regards to the question of ancient warfare vs firearms combat, and the reluctance to commit violence, etc: One thing to keep in mind is that the image of ancient warfare we have from movies and videogames is very misleading, where we picture battle lines facing each and eviscerating the people on the other side etc. Historians who look into the question argue that most ancient battles were won by routing the enemy from the battlefield, just making them run away rather than killing that many of them, which is what the outcome of a charge would most likely be (so just like bayonet charges). Also many historical accounts of battles from ancient & feudal times tend to be exaggerated, romanticized or propaganda (so their version of depictions of battles in movies/videogames). Most of the time, a surprisingly small proportion of soldiers on either side would actually die in any given battle (except for a few battles which are strongly remembered precisely because of how lethal they had been) the few battles where the losing side was exterminated did not look very exciting but more like a long tedious process of a surrounding army slowly and methodically working their way through the murdering of a helpless and surrounded enemy with no means of escape. Deaths due to disease in marching armies, or just plain desertion, could be a much bigger factor in terms of loss of men than actual deaths in combat. 
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Apr 5, 2016 16:58
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 The Battle of Cannae being a famous example of deadly battles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae quote:Polybius writes that of the Roman and allied infantry, 70,000 were killed, 10,000 captured, and "perhaps" 3,000 survived. He also reports that of the 6,000 Roman and allied cavalry, only 370 survived
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Apr 5, 2016 17:39
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Nosfereefer posted:
[edit]  Medieval representation of the battle, 1600 years later.
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Apr 5, 2016 17:44
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Nosfereefer posted:[edit] Everyone is sooooo midly inconvenienced by the turn of events.  Barricades in France. 'Tis the season!
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Apr 5, 2016 17:52
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Apr 5, 2016 19:29
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here's some OC I thought of a few days ago and haven't the slightest on where to post it  
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Apr 5, 2016 20:20
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Post it in YOSPOS.
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Apr 5, 2016 22:38
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Apr 6, 2016 00:21
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Bob le Moche posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM6slD2OnLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZZDq8S6bhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8LiQFnkuJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7_mBLh88Jo This reminds me that watching riots is such a great way to imagine what ancient or medieval battles may have looked like. IIRC some historians have tried to study riots for this purpose. People have not changed much in thousands of years and the general behavior and crowd psychology is the same. You have the exact same formations used. Shield wall, testudo, wedge, etc. Most ancient armies were very difficult if not impossible to control, did not have a lot of discipline, and may have looked similar to a mob of protesters once they were let loose on the enemy. Huge pitched battles were rare back then and you had mostly skirmishes, sieges and maneuver warfare. You had a lot of armies staring at each other at a stand-off distance for hours on end, making a lot of noise and throwing poo poo at each other like in a modern riot. Some brave individuals might rush forward briefly, but people would not just charge like madmen and slaughter everything in sight (well not usually). People have that base reluctance to stab or get stabbed by someone else, and anyone wearing armor and carrying a weapon and shield would also not be able to fight for more than a few minutes without getting exhausted, so I imagine battles might get extremely violent in short spurts, but would mostly involve a whole lot of people harmlessly poking and prodding at the enemy like they do most of the time in riots, looking for weakness. Occasionally some guy might get injured, fall out of their formation, or expose some vulnerability and become an easy target for a bunch of guys to rush forward and beat him or stab him or stone him to death as a group. Or some men from one side might make a sortie outside their own line to deal with a troublesome enemy or group of enemies. When one side feels they are beginning to lose, regardless of what the reality of the situation actually is, they fall back a bit or just rout off the field completely. I have a feeling that ancient battles looked less like a bunch of glorious, badass muscle-men swinging huge swords around and chopping heads and limbs off with blood spraying everywhere, and more like a bunch of hooting and hollering apes jumping back and forth, throwing rocks and other missiles, and whacking and poking each other with sticks while running away a lot. 
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Apr 6, 2016 07:25
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Apr 6, 2016 07:34
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^^^ guy's got my vote ^^^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=443B6f_4n6k A mechanic calculator tries to divide by zero and gazes into the abyss This isn't very political, so have this article about badass archaeologists trying to save as many ancient artifacts as they could from Isis, loading the last crate from the museum in Palmyra under heavy fire and leaving the city only ten minutes before Isis fighters finally stormed the museum.
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Apr 6, 2016 07:48
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Iceland#Settlement_and_commonwealth quote:The battle consisted of little less than 1000 men with the average casualty rate of 15%. This low casualty rate has been attributed to the blood-feud mentality that permeated Icelandic society, which meant that the defeated army could not be slaughtered honourably to a man. As well as the requirements of Christianity to get a pardon from a cleric for each fiend smitten, which resulted in only people of low class taking care of executions. While executions after battle were uncommon, they were extensive when they happened. See, for instance the battle of Haugsnes with about 110 fatalities, Flóabardagi with about 80 fatalities on one side and unknown on the other and the battle of Örlygsstađir with up to 60 fatalities including executions. These three battles, or skirmishes as they would be called in a European context add up to 250 fatalities, so these three encounters alone add up to almost 6 of the average killings of 7 per year in the period 1220-1262. Years could pass without killings.
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Apr 6, 2016 08:43
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Apr 6, 2016 18:02
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Apr 6, 2016 18:32
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDT8T0ZYX_E
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