Being a quiet professional doesn’t pay off in the real world, aka our market-driven capitalist economy. Soldiers live and function in what is essentially a socialist culture with rigid, strictly enforced rank and class structure. Hence the refrain: “What the hell do you think you are, soldier? An individual!?!”
I’ve lived & worked in paramilitary cultures myself. They all have the same characteristics: Be a quiet professional, don’t make waves, conform, fit in, don’t question authority. And when you’re getting shot at in Iraq or running around fighting forest fires (like I was), this makes sense.
But in a dynamic, entrepreneurial economy where people all the time come out of nowhere and make a name for themselves, being a quiet professional is sure path to peon-hood or, best case, middle management.
If you want more than the default station in life you've been handed, you gotta make noise and alert the world to your presence, it’s that simple. Either that, or you can play by the rules and hope that the man actually rewards you.
Those SEALs kicking doors, those Marines taking bullets, they do it so that people like you and me have the freedom to make noise, create new things, and maybe, if we’re lucky, make a small dent in the universe.
But they don’t do it so we can be like them; Because their world is more Soviet than anything else in the US of A.