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I suspect that even well-meaning articles like this does society a disservice when it characterizes war as horrifying. People are not afraid of horror; people
by teddyh 4y ago
I suspect that even well-meaning articles like this does society a disservice when it characterizes war as horrifying. People are not afraid of horror; people believe they can handle it. People watch horror movies. Calling war horrifying is still, in a way, glamorizing war. But even though war, the reality of war, does contain horror, war is not, I believe, on the whole, horrifying. It is instead (I suspect) boring. An oppressive and grinding kind of boring, and only punctuated with brief interludes of horror, which only contributes to its oppressiveness. I suspect that it is this aspect which destroys most people who wage war. I suspect that while some/many people do experience the horror of war (which indeed is quite horrible), most people in war do not experience much horror directly. It is instead the boredom; the oppressive, grinding, fearful boredom, which destroys most of them.
Of course, I’m only speculating; I’m not a sociologist or a psychologist.
- mannykannot 4y agoThe article is not a sociological or psychological treatise, but if you put some credence at all into what is partly (but not exclusively) anecdotal evidence, it makes the case that for many (probably the majority) who find themselves in infantry combat, it is worse than they feared or imagined. If it is protracted (and a figure of ~200 days is given), essentially all the survivors are traumatized, often profoundly. During the 82-day battle of Okinawa, I believe American lieutenants were in combat on average less than two weeks before being killed or becoming a casualty through traumatic injury (and it was worse for the Japanese troops), which cannot be passed off as long periods of boredom. The article is specifically about front-line experience, which (it is claimed, plausibly) is very different than even that of rear-echelon troops, and commingling the two does a disservice to the former. I feel fairly confident in saying that watching a horror movie is nothing like any of it.
- gryson 4y agoThe author is addressing front line combatants, not the people in the far more common support roles.