Posted by bbob on July 2, 2000, at 1:59:04
In reply to Re: Seeing the Forest and the Trees » Sara T, posted by shar on July 2, 2000, at 0:36:58
This discussion is right on topic. Scientific American has a great essay, with charts and stats, on the psychological impacts of war. (Invisible Wounds by Richard F. Mollica, and The Human Cost of War by Walter C. Clemens, Jr., and J. David Singer June, 2000) Unfortunately, neither article is on-line.
According to the articles, and studies cited there-in, the psychological damage of war often lasts for generations. To quote the American Indian Movement spokesman from the Alcatraz Island take-over, Wounded Knee era, poet and musician John Trudell, "Hell man, two world wars in a row is really crazy man." (Baby Boom Che from AKA Graffiti Man)
In agreement with sara's general position, that the world is not doomed and things are getting somewhat better, there is an interesting article at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/story/86.html about the social policy implications of the new happiness research. It is pro-Prozak (i'm not) and pro-population growth (hmmm...) but it is a fair assessment of what research seems to indicate. Of particular interest to those of us who are environmentally oriented is the part that says:
"Popular culture is dominated by advertisements that offer the
following promise: buy our good or service, and your subjective
well-being will increase. The happiness research demonstrates that
most such promises are empty. Perhaps all advertisements for
non-essential goods should be required to carry the warning:
"Caution: scientific research demonstrates that this product will
increase your subjective well-being only in the short term, if at all,
and will not increase your happiness set-point".Regarding McVeigh, Kazinski and the insanity of all that...
The media, self included, did not have words to deal with the correlation between the tense days in Kazinski's trial when he was wrestling with whether to comply with a court ordered mental examination, he not wanting to make a insanity defense that would weaken the message of his acts, and the record ice storm that shut down the east coast during those three critical days of the trial. This is x-files stuff for which I could be commited for even suggesting a correlation. To that all I can say is well said down in CarolAnns "quotable quotes for $200" post.
Regarding McVeigh, he was trained to kill and killed a person for the first time in his life in Iraq as a gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle, using the 25 mm cannon at a fairly long range. He was reportedly elated. Three days later, he was taking pictures of the massacre on the highway to Bahrain, where George Bush (I'm MAD at Sadam) ordered the bombing of anything and everything that moved on the highway occupied by retreating Iraqi's. McVeigh was reportedly apalled.
Returning home with mixed emotions, he was less than determined to continue his military career. Traveling the country, sniffing aminergines with a psychotropic profile similar to Ritalin (meth, actually) he drifted down to the Waco standoff. There, he was aware that federal police invaded a religous facility on Sunday morning, on a flimsy warrant (read No More Waco's for a balanced assessemnt - they had a license to assemble AR-15s from parts, but a pre-emptory ATF action resulted in the license being pulled after they already had the merchandise, which he was selling to take advantage of a Brady-bill inflated market, and a box of dummy grenades reported by a UPS employee, which he ATF likely knew were routinely legally sold among military enthusiasts) without bothering to follow routine dynamic entry protocals - no phone number or phone for contacting those inside in the event of stalemate, no procedure for pulling back, and firing indiscriminatley at a building with no clear target. The first shots were apparently fired at the heretics dogs. The raid, planned by Reagan and Bush admistration ATF execs during the first days of the Clinton administration, seemed more timed to the upcoming ATF budget hearings than to the need to apprehend the gun dealer.
He knew the raw details of the April 19 action far sooner than most of the public did - fire trucks barred from the scene, flammable CS gas lobbed by the pound into a building full of children, autopsy photos of children dead of cyanide poisoning reflecting the pathology of death by the cyanitic fumes of burning CS gas.
Think what we will about the facts he was facing, we end up with a confused, war-scarred, well-trained killer. I could add more to the intrigue that led to his participation in a conspiracy to bomb, but I just want to suggest the psychological injury that was apparent - the evident erosion of boundaries that was not entirely self-inflicted and that seems to have arose from his desire to serve his country. His letters to the editor suggest a mind able to see both sides of a picture.
Now, whehter these people were sick, sociopathic, or just on the wrong side of a political battle is anybody's call. My thinking, from a social psychology perspective, is that people like this tend to express what we as a society repress. We understand the severity of some contradictions in our collective unconcious, but are unable to articulate the entrenched contradiction sufficiently to act decisively. Individual, small groups, or secretly instigated acts such as these named acts of terror might let us, as a society, vent the conflict and form new positions before the repressed conflict erupts into an even greater conflagration. A book about the OKC bomb advances (oklahoma city bombing and the politics of terror) advances the crazy idea that some leaders understand the need for occasional mass violence as part of our collective social construct. Never mind the author was jailed for stalking a victim of the bombing who was formerly his friend and also for jury tampering, there is some intriguing food for thought about the role of violence in our society.
I could say more, about the ongoing war in Irag and Kosovo, or the bombing of the Chinese embassy, but I don't want to make a political speach. My point is that war is a mental health issue. We are injured when we perpetrate war and we are injured if wars are fought around us. Improving mental health conditions worldwide sufficient to make the planet a tolerable residence for more than 10 billion people (coming soon to a planet near you) will involve finding ways to resolve conflict without creating a spiral of mental injury.
One other note, consumer/industrial Western society did not just happen because everyone wanted consumer goods. There are written strategic plans, dating to the 19th century and the creation of a dominant merchant marine, wherein America's status as a world power was built on a consumer society, the industries created therein making for a cheaper source of war-fighting materiel. Consumer society, environmental degradation, militarism and mental health are intricately interwoven issues that need to be collectively addressed as social/cultural issues.
> Thank you. After I posted it I thought "Jeez, that had nothing to do with Psych or Babble!! How irrelevant."
>
> I feel better after your remarks. Thanks--
> Shar
>
>
> > Shar-
> >
> > Great post. Very well said. Right on!!!
> >
> > Sara T.
poster:bbob
thread:37688
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000630/msgs/39017.html