Sigh. Forgot to hit the transmit button. Had it in another window still. This post goes before the other with the links, just above.
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Originally Posted by August
Skybird the only statistic I need is that nearly all of those 15 million men came back home and got on with their lives and did so successfully. They got married, they got civilian careers, they had kids and they lived full and happy lives as are the great majority of our soldiers who have served in every war before and since. How can you call that a sad story?
You seem to be under the impression that a little adversity in ones life means nothing but sadness and failure thereafter. Well sorry but most people thankfully do not see it that way.
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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:
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Originally Posted by mapuc
Isn't it something we want to believe that is was so? That they just continued as nothing had happened?
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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.