If you shell a military base and happen to kill civilians, you have not committed a war crime; if you deliberately target cities and towns, you have.
When you’re scared, you’re still hanging on to life. When you’re ready to die, you let it go. A sort of emptying out occurs, a giving up on the world that seems oddly familiar even if you’ve never done it before.
How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?
It’s fun to have money, but the more money I get, the less interesting it becomes. If you don’t have very much, you have to think about it. If you are starving, you become interested in food. If you are struggling to pay the bills, money becomes tragically important.
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.
Traditional Albanian society was based on a clan system and was further divided into brotherhoods and bajraks. The bajrak system identified a local leader, called a bajrakar, who could be counted on to provide a certain number of men for military duty.
I’m a good liberal, and I grew up in a very liberal family and had very strongly held beliefs.
A grenade launcher will easily take out a tank; a Molotov cocktail placed in its air intake will destroy one as well.
I think objectivity is like this strange myth that people think you’re supposed to achieve, but actually, the dirty little secret is that it’s not attainable any more than pure justice is attainable by the courts.
There’s no reason to do anything twice, and certainly no reason to do something that almost killed you.
People who do really dangerous tasks can’t afford to sit around and discuss the merits of what they’re doing.
Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It’s time for that to end.
The public is often accused of being disconnected from its military, but frankly it’s disconnected from just about everything. Farming, mineral extraction, gas and oil production, bulk cargo transport, logging, fishing, infrastructure construction – all the industries that keep the nation going are mostly unacknowledged by the people who depend on them most.
What would you risk dying for – and for whom – is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss.
How do you become an adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice? How do you become a man in a world that doesn’t require courage?
Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy of its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long. The.
Today’s veterans often come home to find that, although they’re willing to die for their country, they’re not sure how to live for it.
Because modern society has almost completely eliminated trauma and violence from everyday life, anyone who does suffer those things is deemed to be extraordinarily unfortunate. This gives people access to sympathy and resources but also creates an identity of victimhood that can delay recovery.
In effect, humans have dragged a body with a long hominid history into an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, competitive, inequitable, and socially-isolating environment with dire consequences.” The.
It may be worth considering whether middle-class American life – for all its material good fortune – has lost some essential sense of unity that might otherwise discourage alienated men from turning apocalyptically violent.