Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
I came across what follows while reading a “Friggin Outstanding Book” written by Sebastian Junger titled, “War.” I was a spell binding true story about the title and held me captive until I finished just a few minutes ago. It wasn’t till I got to the last few chapters that the author brought a lot together into what I wrote as notes provided in italics throughout this particular mindless meandering thought provoking bunch of typed words.
It spoke to me and the quotes triggered the proverbial, “Oh Shit” moments that one gets every once in a while when something they unconsciously understood but couldn’t actually grasp till some one else spit out some paradigm shifting often very wisdom oriented bunch of alpha-characters into some semblance of understandable written or spoken words.
“The basic neurological mechanism that induces mammals to do things is called the dopamine reward system. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that mimics the effect of cocaine in the brain, and it gets release when a person wins a game or solves a problem or succeeds at a difficult task. It is stronger in males and men are more likely to become obsessively involved in such things as hunting, gambling, computer games, and war.” - Sebastian Younger, WAR
They say that eating ice cream does pretty much the dame thing, that part of the brain even when imbibing in something totally legal triggers that “comfort food or drink or smoke or something” of our brains saying, Ohhhh and Ahhhhh and Feel good stuff. Like when we get to take off by ourselves for the very first time driving our very first car - orgasmic ain’t it?
At least it puts an understandable spin on why we do some of the things we do where morality, social conditions and other such teachings are the only things that separate our thoughts and actions from actually doing vs. contemplating of things.
In self-fense through martial arts it tells us the why we take up such difficult and often dangerous disciplines as well as once again connecting us to our very nature, the nature of conflict and violence. I mean, we are so far distanced and conditioned to the ignorance of reality that we even forget that violence is about the very food we eat where others now do the killing, cleaning and preparation over how we humans once got up each day and hunted and gathered and slaughtered the very sustenance of our very survival.
It also explains how our brains are the very tools used to bring us to conflict and violence of survival from the very methods we once used to feed ourselves to the acts we do to ensure our and our families survival all the way up to how we go to war for the very survival of our society, the way we live and our heritage survivals, etc.
Combat starts out as a fairly organized math problem involving trajectories and angles but quickly decays into a kind of violent farce, and the randomness of that farce can produce strange outcomes. “Every action produces a counteraction on the enemy’s part, the thousands of interlocking actions throw up millions of little frictions, accidents and chances, from which there emanates an all-embracing fog of uncertainty.” - quote by Jack Belden WWII
“Combat fog obscures your fate - obscures when and where you might die - and from that unknown is born a desperate bond between the men. The bond that is the core experience of combat and the only thing you can absolutely count on.The shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to dies for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.”
“ … a wounded man will go AWOL after their hospitalization in order to get back to their unit faster than the military could get them there. This was considered by soldiers not as an act of courage but an act of brotherhood, and there probably is not much to say about it except, ‘Welcome back.’”
When I read this part I wondered if this missing component of human survival is another reason for our modern lost way syndrome where everyone is for themselves and each individual feels a strong entitlement pull that exists counter to the social connectivity necessary for the survival of the tribe or clan over that of the individual. I wonder if it will take some cataclysmic life threatening event to bring the solidarity and connectedness of a brotherhood way to get us out of the quicksand before our heads sink into oblivion. I also wonder if there is some way other than through the dangers of war and death and survival that will bring about a social connectedness that helps us cope and connect and get along in a brotherhood like manner?
“A survey of ethnographic data found that pre-contact hunter-gatherers around the world lived in shifting communities that ranged from 90 to 221 people., with an average of 148. Romans used in their time a formation of a 130 men, called a maniple, or a double century, in combat. It might be of interest to know and understand that in the Hutterite communities of South Dakota would split up after reaching 150 people because, in their opinion, anything larger cannot be controlled by peer pressure alone.”
“The size of hunter-gatherer communities were not spread evenly along a spectrum but tended to clump around certain numbers. One group size in ethnographic data was thirty to fifty people - essentially a platoon. Those communities were highly mobile but kept in close contact with three or four other communities for social and defensive purposes. The larger these groups were, the better they could defend themselves, up until the point where they got so big that they started to fracture and divide. Many such groups formed a tribe, and tribes either fought each other or formed confederacies against other tribes. The basic dichotomy of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ happened at the tribal level and was reinforced by differences in language and culture. The parallels with military structure are almost exact. The molten core of the group bond was the platoon, with a headquarters element, a radio operator, a medic, and a forward observer for calling in airstrikes is the smallest self-contained unit in the regular army.”
Could it actually be about modern societies dependency on a few not connected in any clan or tribe or social way leaving us gathering in larger and larger groups that are unable to keep us connected in a human survival like way? It seems that we naturally gravitate toward smaller and smaller groups of like minded and culturally connected with mutually beneficial beliefs that make the tribe work, is this why we are getting more violent and trying hard to stop such atrocities that currently plague not just our societies but our very human existence across the entire globe called, Earth?
Is it because we have far exceeded our humanity in the name of technology for the ease of instant gratifications that we are trying to use to cover up and disguise or hide our true selves? Is our effort toward the modern social media driven connectedness actually destroying our very existence as it separates us placing a huge growing chasm or divide between not just individuals but tribes, clans, groups, disparate social groups within the social entity of our nation and so on?
“Self-sacrifice is defense of one’s community is virtually universal among humans, extolled in myths and legends all over the world, and undoubtedly ancient. No tribe, community, can protect itself unless a certain number of its youth decide they are willing to risk their lives in its defense. Over and over again throughout history, men have chosen to die in battle with their friends rather than to flee on their own and survive.”
Are we losing sight of our heritage, a heritage of sacrifice of the self for the good and survival of the many while maintaining the many at levels conducive to human existence and the very human nature that makes us, “Human?” In our concerted blinded efforts to make ourselves as individuals comfortable are we failing to realize the value and need of humans to bond and band together as a single wholehearted tribe that lives, works, survives and thrives together into the weaker and vulnerable single individuals we are becoming while blinding ourselves to reality of connectedness that is merely a blind rather than a reality?
“Genetic material gathered from contemporary hunter-gatherers suggests that for much of prehistory, humans lived in groups of thirty to fifty people who were loosely related to one another. They married into other groups that spoke the same language and shared the same territory. Our evolutionary past was NOT peaceful: archaeological evidence indicates that up to 15 percent of early humans died in battles with rival tribes. Because of our violent past, evolution may have programmed us to thing we’re related to everyone in our immediate group - even a platoon - and that dying in its defense is a good genetic strategy.”
Isn’t it just possible that evolution has run against a wall of stone regarding human existence? In our run for the ring have we failed to slow ourselves down, take control of human existence and made technology, industrial ability and our agricultural progress our masters when they all should be our slaves doing our bidding in accordance with the evolutionary process natural to humans and to the very Universe in which we live, die and survive? Are we just banging our heads against that stone wall and are we pushing ourselves past natures limits until nature’s inevitable conclusion that our human existence has outlived its usefulness and sends us off to nev-dull?
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