I Was Surprised How Open And Unguarded

Here's An Easy Way To See If A War Movie Is Being Truthful: If You See An Explosion On A Faraway Hillside And The Sound Of The Explosion And The Detonation Of The Bomb Happen At The Same Time - If They're Putting The Sound And The Vision Together In The Same Moment - They're Going Toward Our Cultural Understanding Of War, Not The Reality Of War.

The Only Thing That Makes Battle Psychologically Tolerable Is The Brotherhood Among Soldiers. You Need Each Other To Get By.

Ironically, Though Our Society Of Affluence Brings Safety And Stability, It Doesn't Bring Psychological Health. As Wealth Goes Up, Suicide And Depression Rates Tend To Go Up. I Read One Study That Compared Women In North America With Women In Nigeria, And The Group With The Highest Rates Of Depression Was Urban North American Women, Which Is The Wealthiest. Now, There Are Obviously Huge Stresses That Come With Poverty, But The Poorer The Society, The More Collaborative People Have To Be.

Of The Primary Emotions, Fear Is The One That Bears Most Directly On Survival. Children Show Fear. Adults Try Not To, Maybe Because It's Shameful, Or, In Some Circumstances, Dangerous. The Fear Response Is Automatic, Though, And Your Body Runs Through Its Reflexes Whether You Want It To Or Not.

Society Can Give Its Young Men Almost Any Job And They'll Figure How To Do It. They'll Suffer For It And Die For It And Watch Their Friends Die For It, But In The End, It Will Get Done. That Only Means That Society Should Be Careful About What It Asks For. ... Soldiers Themselves Are Reluctant To Evaluate The Costs Of War, But Someone Must. That Evaluation, Ongoing And Unadulterated By Politics, May Be The One Thing A Country Absolutely Owes The Soldiers Who Defend Its Borders.