Watch that and tell me if you think it's still cool and normal life is boring. I find that it snaps me right back out of "Hollywood war" thinking and makes my stomach turn.
Junky is a good description of what they were. They wanted another taste. I can't imagine after 5+ years of that life how you would detox from that, not easily I imagine.
https://septemberpublishing.org/product/my-war-gone-by-i-mis...
I’m not even sure this is caused by trauma so much as just living a whole other life in a whole other culture with completely different norms, even with combat aside.
Going back into the civilian world is a pretty uneasy experience for a lot of veterans.
It’s kind of a hard feeling to relay to civilians. A very strong culture shock for even many POGs.
I think your advice is better suited to people who glorify war and play too much Call of Duty.
A kid there was throwing a tantrum in the isle about his mom not picking the right color toy off the self for him.
It was incredibly jarring for me. At that time events in my life were extremely visceral. If I ate a time or two that day, it was a good day. If I didn't get shot at that day it was a great day. If I didn't get blown up by an IED or RPG, it was an incredible day.
I was eating breakfast one morning and a wild dog had drug the amputated arm from a surgery over from the incinerator that was currently broken, and decided to eat it next to me. The arm still had part of the camouflaged sleeve on it.
The idea of being upset over the color toy your mother was buying you was the most insane thing to me.
I try to rationalize it all by knowing that we, especially westerners, largely live in this seemingly safe facade we like to call “our lives”.
But then, behind the curtain, the raw machinations of life happen to keep the facade going.
The facade is nice. It tricks almost everyone into pacification and thus be less of a threat to us.
On the other hand, the machinations behind the curtain keep churning along. We find it horrifying, but it’s just how things really work underneath the veneer.
The facade is kept up by violence, or the threat thereof. You can’t resist following the facade’s rules (eg. laws and in many cases, human norms) without ultimately being the subject of violence, be it from the state or an angry mob.
It’s best to find peace with that.
I didn't get the feeling that OP was saying it's cool. Rather, that it's intense, and that the intensity itself is addicting.
I was on jury duty for a murder case last year, and it was like living in a different reality. The weight of the responsibility bore down on me hard, it felt like the stakes of what I was doing were higher than anything else in my life. It took me a while afterwards to fully come back down to earth. OP is basically saying that war feels somewhat like that - you come back home and the stakes feel trivial.
However the "combat addiction" among people who did go to war is still very real. There are countless stories of people who knowingly chose to go back.
I think it's important to recognize that the idea "if only people knew how awful the war is, no one would go there" doesn't really work.
It's an open secret many people who experience raw conflict in which actions and not regulations decide outcomes like it. It's the reason why they often go back and it's an age old story.
The GP most likely has led a comfortable life safely ensconced in the bubble of order provided by society and when they are a glimse of the reality of the world, they assume that everyone feels like them that it's a horror to be avoided. It's incomprehensible to them that some see that video and I think I could have done better. Some will have seen that video or others like it and set off for Ukraine to see if they can.
The videos that horrify this cohort are the combat videos where the soldier has no influence over their fate: drones, mines, and artillery.
There's no basis for it. It looks to me, without basis, like the current attempt to spread the fetishization of voilence and war by the same propaganda leaders have used for eternity.
> It's no different to Marvel or Harry Potter movies.
Indeed.
What is that based on?
> You don’t get to pick reality
But there is the major question of, 'what is reality'. Again you try the sophistry of assuming your claim is reality and others are fantasy. That's a fantasy in your head.
Personal experience, but desensitisation and psychological callousing are completely uncontroversial.
> But there is the major question of, 'what is reality'. Again you try the sophistry of assuming your claim is reality and others are fantasy. That's a fantasy in your head.
I guess you don't see the irony in your comment.
That is certainly not a basis for drawing conclusions about humanity. Also (maybe think to yourself - not really appropriate for HN, and much too personal to ask for a response): have you actually experienced killing someone or nearly being killed, or are you speculating on your response based on your response to online videos?