Farewell GH forum mates :]

Your statement about no individual will shows that you have had little to no contact with people in the military, or the product of military training.

As far as institutionalized aggression.. well, DUH! If aggression weren't institutionalized in the military, they wouldn't be a very successful military, now would they?

lol! Bucky has a point. If the military wasnt aggressive we'd be Canada!

Originally posted by Bucky@Jul 26 2005, 02:10 PM
As far as institutionalized aggression.. well, DUH! If aggression weren't institutionalized in the military, they wouldn't be a very successful military, now would they?

Actually, the most succesful army is the one that doesn't need to fight.
And again, an army is designed to eliminate every expression of free will. It is the mother of all bureaucratic hierarchies, as described by 19th century sociologist Max Weber. It has a massive amount of hierarchical layers, aimed at maximizing control and ensuring that the bottom will carry out everything the top wants. That leads to what he calls a dehumanization, resembling alienation and basically means that individuals will be socialized by the structure. They will give up every sense of criticism and become doctrinated by the structure, in essence doing everything the top says without any criticism. That also relates to the authoritarianism I mentioned earlier; obeying to authority without any criticism.
Put simply: an army is designed to erase any individual thought and change you into a mean killing machine.
And actually, I do know a few people who went to the army. I was amazed how much they changed.

Originally posted by the alcohol soaked braindead chimp@Jul 26 2005, 02:16 PM
lol! Bucky has a point. If the military wasnt aggressive we'd be Canada!

ROLF ROFL

Originally posted by jan the man@Jul 26 2005, 10:42 AM
Actually, the most succesful army is the one that doesn't need to fight.
And again, an army is designed to eliminate every expression of free will. It is the mother of all bureaucratic hierarchies, as described by 19th century sociologist Max Weber. It has a massive amount of hierarchical layers, aimed at maximizing control and ensuring that the bottom will carry out everything the top wants. That leads to what he calls a dehumanization, resembling alienation and basically means that individuals will be socialized by the structure. They will give up every sense of criticism and become doctrinated by the structure, in essence doing everything the top says without any criticism. That also relates to the authoritarianism I mentioned earlier; obeying to authority without any criticism.
Put simply: an army is designed to erase any individual thought and change you into a mean killing machine.
And actually, I do know a few people who went to the army. I was amazed how much they changed.

Yes! The first battle any military fights is NOT to fight. But, they achieve that by constantly being prepared to fight A non-aggressive military is pretty much guaranteed to lose a war in the near future.

As far as all the sociological babble about the purpose of a military being to squash free will.... you are speaking from your biased academic training, not from any form of personal experience or even any independent study.

Yes, of course a military has a bureaucracy, it has to in order to move large amounts of people and equipment around.

But destroy free will in the individual? Well, some militarys have sought to do that. That is the result of some form of fear of the military, usually by a leader that fears a military coup. Stalin's army is the best example of that. Any form of initiative was swiftly punished.

On the contrary, the most effective and successful militarys throughout history have been ones that rewarded initiative and creative thinking. It was true with the ancient Greeks, the Romans and todays militarys. I don't give a hoot what some pinhead sociologist from 100 years ago thinks, he is flat wrong.

This is the good-bye thread.