| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves...which one are you? |
| 2005-02-09 |
| This is a EXCELLENT article. ON SHEEP, SHEEPDOGS, AND WOLVES By LTC(RET) Dave Grossman, RANGER, Ph.D.,author of "On Killing." Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always,even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending?One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million. Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep. |
| Posted by:FWTB-DLTR |
| #4 ...killing other human beings requires overcoming years of societal indoctrination. For some people (sheep) it does. Not all (Wolves and born Sheepdogs), though. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2005-02-09 5:33:25 PM |
| #3 Grossman wrote a book called On Killing a while back. According to him, the most stressful part of battle for a soldier is not being shot at but killing, but with a catch, the closer you are to your target the harder and more stressful it is to kill. (I personally think getting shot would be the most stressful part of battle.)Conversely, killing from an out-of-the-line-of-sight distance actually becomes easy. Being shot at invokes more surprise and disbelief than stress. According to him, killing other human beings requires overcoming years of societal indoctrination. Thus all the drills and the more realistic the better. Without the drills, he claims people will routinely refuse to kill or miss on purpose. We are not Natural Born Killers according to him. |
| Posted by: Zpaz 2005-02-09 4:57:16 PM |
| #2 ima still like teem americas descripshen the threee diffrent kindsa peples |
| Posted by: muck4doo 2005-02-09 4:34:43 PM |
| #1 I tend to think of them as rabbits (prey whose only defense is to run, hide and hope for the best), porcupines (well defended but don't attack), mamma bears(claws, teeth and will rarely attack unless provoked), outright predators and pilot fish. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-02-09 4:00:11 PM |