"Auslandseinsatz"

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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.

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

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.

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.

And that includes war witnesses who afterwards seem to live an apparently normal, ordinary life. Who can look into them?

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.

[Skybird]

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.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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.

[MH]

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.

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.


.........

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

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

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.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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.

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.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

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.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

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.