Has my previous posting been deleted...???

Sigh. Forgot to hit the transmit button. Had it in another window still. This post goes before the other with the links, just above.

My two grandfathers came back from war and had families and an income, too. Still, the one had nightmares destroying his nights for the rest of his life, and at christmas he hid at home because the sight of christmas trees made him break out in tears, for it made the city look like memories of burning villages in Russia. At the same time, he gave hell to his little daughters, there was a lot of sadism and violence involved in the household - a feature of his character that should not have been present before the war. The other grandfather of mine lost one eye, most of one lung, one leg. He was very kind by heart, and very well meaning. And sometimes, out of the blue, broke down and cried. On the street. In a shopping mal. At work. At the table, with cake and coffee served.

You take the surface and do not look beyond, and that is a big mistake, August. And you seem to think that a man's meaning of life is not so much about happiness and being at peace with himself, but as you indicated give the impression of falling into the traditional norm of having social life and being successful in a job. I hear the Protestant or Calvinistic working ethics ringing bells in the background, but maybe I'm wrong there. Anyhow, I think this view on life is short-stretched, imho. We owe nobody for as long as we do not live at the other'S cost or disadvantage. I do not know whether life has a meaning or not. Maybe it is all just meaningless and useless. But I pragmatically think that it might be a good idea to try to experince happiness and love and get loved for the short moment of time that we are here. At least it seems that even if this also is in vain and meaningless, it at least does not add to any harm done. Business careers - let some water run down the wirver, and even these famous business careers will not even be remenbered by anyone anymore. It all is in transition. Nothing stays. Evertyhing is transitory. Fame, prestige means nothing.

That successful job life is not the criterion of health nor does it say anything about the state of a soul. You can be successful in a job and earn reputations in social life and found a family - and still be broken, empty. As you know I was running a meditation course for several years. About the emptiness of modern life I could tell you by quite some examples of people that I actually knew face to face, and which led them to me. Some came for curiosity only. But some came for more existential pain of theirs, or a deep-felt hunger for "more" of something that our society's standards cannot satisfy, they were searching, and sometimes desperately so. This, and other stuff I got myself occupied with in the past, spiritual crisis, death and hunger for a sense and meaning in life, has convinced me that often the appearance of the ordinary world, the row of tiny houses with correct garden and fresh-washed white doors, often hide mure suffering, fear and despair, than the first impression when looking down that street seems to tell.

This longer sermon to show you why your reference to those millions you seem to know so well does not impress me at all. In a way, you seem to me as if still living in the military mode that I mentioned before: giving the appearance of you and the gang being strong, shiny, invincible, bullets repelled by your skin, soul untouchable, fate cannot harm you, and everybody functions according to the ordered parameters. Well, I exaggerate a bit, but well - you get the idea.

Earlier I mentioned that the military is a closed parallel society, and is valuing traditions and the appearance of man being strong and invincible as a mechanism by which men cope with the inherent edge they walk on when making killing an getting killed their life's focus and profession. It is not just like any job. It needs coping strategies to cope with the threatening abyss behind it all. Boasting and acting extroverted, are part of that. It's also part of that that the naivety by which shiny promises and glorious reasons of their superior leaders why they go tot war, get swallowed and indeed believed in a very uncritical attitude, often. The trust and respect payed to "authorities", indeed illustrates a stellar amount of naivety, often. When one could get crippled or killed, and kill others, one wants to be sure that one does so on behalf of the good and the light and the right and the beautiful. Of course one believes in the fairy tales the criminal gangster in politics tell you over why they send you to war. And if the lying becomes obvious, and new reasons get invented, and excuses after the war replace the original arguments before the war, then even this often gets swallowed and accepted all too willingly. Because Mapuc has it absolutely correct where he said:

Very well noted, mapuc. Make war an ordinary thing. Give it the impression of normality. Problem is: war isn't like just any ordinary thing. It is a situation of extremes, and chaos and the lack of order previously known.

Normality. Man cannot live without the illusion of having at least a minimum of control over his fate, the world. Soul does not bear this, it wants a justification, the impression of normality, of being in sufficient control to prevent the worst striking us any time. Without this illusion, you indeed have to face that harm can struck you just any second, and that everything is uncertain, and your existence makes no difference in the face of a cosmos that always keeps its silence and never answers your questions and pleas. And that is more than many, very many people can bear.

August, stop talking about 15 million people that you do not know at all. You cannot look into their insides, and what is going on ion their hearts and minds. The literature of war traumatization however is empirical much more robust than you wild claims. In well-done statistics, the numbers come from actually counting, using established methods to secure the sample'S representativity for the total population, and if you want to laugh about these numbers, you have to prove them wrong and show where they are. We do not talk about a random poll, non-representive. We talk about medical and psychological research being done. It can be done in wrong and distorting ways, yes, and science is not invulnerable to being abused by intention or incompetence. I think this is not what has happened here. You said you need only one statistics, yours. But that is no statistics, you have none. That is not even experience of yours. It's just a wild claim about people you do not know. Sorry, but more it is not.

EDIT:
I copy this in here, to get back to the original order in which I had posted these two long posts.

Damn. I was wondering, and thus rereading the thread - and just relaised that I forgot to put in the link about that report by CNN about the study from earlier last year that I mentioned. Completely my own fault, but explains maybe why August ignores it so strictly.

The CNN article mentioning the one study I was after I again did niot find again, they have plenty of articles about PTSD from the past few years. However, there is so much more interesting material as well. I admit I only flew over most of it, checking abstracts, methods, samples, and conclusions.


Vietnam veterans (sample 108 thousand) face an almost doubled risk for developing dmeentia in later years when having suffered from PTSD from combat action. Summer 2010.
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/data...12_608_613.pdf

Changes in brain structure and loss of grey matter in neo-cortex due to combat stress exposition and following severe PTSD in Vietnam and Gulf war veterans.
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/data...12_608_613.pdf

Literature survey on PTSD in Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom:
http://epublications.marquette.edu/c...4&context=gjcp

I remind of my own estimation I gave earlier, that soldiers effected from combat PTSD numercially range from 1:6 to as many as 1:4.

http://winoverptsd.com/wp/persian-gu...q-combat-vets/

http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/...erly/v22n2.pdf

http://www.ispub.com/journal/the-int...stan-wars.html

The last article mentions (in 2009) the number of troops having done more than one tour in AF or IR to be around 420 thousand, and then plus x, x being those having done one tour so far. Most research done on how many people become victims of PTSD, range from 15-30%, extremes even go as high as 50%, which is a number I do not trust, however. When now taking the mean of my own estimation, as many as 1 in 4 or as few as 1 in 6 falling victim to PTSD, I would have a mark of 20% (1 in 5). Estimating those doing their first tour to be 80.000 for the comfort of pushing the total number of troops having been part of AF and IR to be roughly half a million, that would mean that 100.000 veterans returned home while suffering various degrees of PTSD. The official number for wounded soldiers in these wars is approaching 40 thousand, and it excludes PTSD patients.

^ Yes to all that.

And I never said there weren't those who have experienced difficulty but if you'll look back in the thread you'll see that Skybirds original premise was that there is never a happy ending from war. I think I have amply proven that this is not the case.

My premise is that by results war create for all affected people, it always is unjust, unfair, and kills more innocents and civilians than "guilty" ones or combatants, and thus war never can be said to have had a happy ending. One can hardly say that WWII has had a happy end, after 60 million deads and millions of families having had losses and hundreds of citiesy and villages shattered. Nor can you say that about Korea. Vietnam. Gulf 91. Afghanistan. Iraq.

Those having played any role in it, may feel relieved that it is over and that they survived, they may be glad that their families suffered no losses, if it is so.

But the whole and total thing that war is, never has happy ends in total. There are always far too many innocent victims, and there always has been to much chaos ruling and too much horror taking place.

And that includes war witnesses who afterwards seem to live an apparently normal, ordinary life. Who can look into them? You only see the surface, their conformity with the social rules and conventions. Their insides, you cannot judge. To say that war did nothing to them after they went through it, is a bit like like claiming that in a neat and tidy street with friendly houses none of the inhabitants has haemorrhoids. - Maybe you just don't want to look closer.

It had a far, far happier ending than if the Germans and Japanese had won that war and don't you forget it.

War, like any human endeavor, is a collection of individual stories, some sad, some not, but for you, a person who has never served his country in any way, to claim that you know the minds of untold millions of people is simply ridiculous.

Exactly, certainly not you, yet that is exactly what you are doing when you claim that no one can ever have a happy ending after a war. I look at what these people have made of their lives. The laughter of my friends, uncles and grandfathers is not fake, it is not effected nor forced. Yet of course you think you know better, well sorry I will just not reject real life examples over your usual dark, Nihilist prognostications of doom.

Okay, you are right, and statistical research and actual countings have it all wrong. It's a new form of math, but I think I understand the basics now. Sorry for having bothered you. Will not happen again. After all, beliefs weigh heavier than verified facts - I finally must mark that in thick red letters in my book.

You can't rely on books to give you common sense Skybird.

Ahh you know sky is a drama queen but you are actually looking at the same issue from opposite angels and you both are right.
Yet those functioning people may have lot of things going in their heads or simply pushed deep into corners of mind..that is good case scenario.
Those are the people who can deal with the issues but there are others who cant.
Simply if not for army service their life might be better and happier...
This is somwhat similar to a traumas people experience in civilian life....for some it ruins their lives while others cope.


.........

Agreed. That's why I don't do that, but demand empirical checks. And that is what all this is about.

And here is now one wise sentence for you, as a direct reply to yours: you cannot gain credibility and respect for your beliefs by just insisting that you believe so and so. Believing is not knowing.

Empirical experience is knowledge.

And the empirical database is such that your beliefs already were crushed and shown absurd the very moment you entered in this debate. Statistics - describe bigger populations. Your uncles and my grandfathers - are just individual biographies.

One does not judge the state of dentition of all people in a nation's population, by looking at the teeth in one's own family. And when gathering data of a representative sample, one does not take people's self-description of what they think about their teeth, but one does it in a standardized format: one has a dentist checking out their set of teeth according to specified parameters.

One does not leave it to beliefs, hopes, intuition and having a certain feeling in the stomach.

Nor is one qualified to make authoritative judgements because they once read The Idiots Guide to Dentistry, and I at least have my families experience, and that of my friends, and my students and many, many others to go by.

"Students". And "many others". That certainly qualifies for a representative sample of the total population of war-experienced ex-combatants that is to be assessed on the matter of PTSD.

August, you are simply unknowing on certain methodological topics, you illustrate that all the time in this thread. That alone would not be anything to be criticised, not everybody know evewrtyhiong and has learned everything. But you even boast with your naivety and make your knowledge gap appear as a glorious virtue and claim that your precious personal view proves all data wrong that you do not like, no matter how empirically overhwhelming and methodologically robust it may be in case of many of such researches done. You simply ignore it, intentionally, which also is a common habit of yours when getting locked in a thread. Professional experience of doctors and therapists havign worked in this field, having had access to according ammounts od patient's files and biograohic datasets - all not needed, all relevant, becasue you already know it all better, due to your uncles and students and 15 million others that you do not know at all and never talked to. I think I must not further explain why I find this absurd, or must I?

Damn, I got a stiff neck from always needing to look up to your monumentally elevated position from which you see it all so much better. Well, readers here are not stupid and can judge themselves who has the more qualified and numerically stronger fundament for his opinion forming on this matter, so no need for me to stay around in here forever.

Nobody is holding you back. Get your nose out of Der Speigel and your butt out of your mom's basement, go out in the world and start interacting with real human beings. You might learn a thing or two not covered by your books.

Oh, do we have to get personal because we are out of valid arguments now, August?

:down:

Or maybe that one can be nice for only so long in the face of breathtaking obtuseness. Like I told you in my last reply to you (which you ignored): "...if you'll look back in the thread you'll see that Skybirds original premise was that thereis never a happy ending from war. I think I have amply proven that this is not the case."

Now you can agree or disagree or even continue to ignore but it's not my fault if your pal refuses to see reality.