I think they TOTALLY get it (Suicides)

[BQZip01]

Maybe we can talk about it at our next commander's call at 1700 on a Friday

Expect an announcement at 1650 that it's been postponed until Saturday at 0700 so you can enjoy your Friday evening. Uniform is service blues...bring PT gear

[guineapigfury]

What's really fucked up is that when this war is over in 2 years and suicide rates decline accordingly, the credit will go to Resiliency Day and Anti-Suicide CBTs ensuring we will be stuck with them forever because they "work".

[HuggyU2]

I attended a seminar on base... it was sponsored by the Airman and Family Readiness Center (good on them for doing this!),... by Lt Col Dave Grossman.

I couldn't believe it when I saw it advertised.

I cleared my schedule.

I showed up at 0800, knowing full well there was no way he'd actually be here.

I was wrong.

He actually was there, and gave his presentation.

In what should have been a packed, standing room only crowd,... I sat there with about 200 airman (I was one of only about 10 officers (max) that were in flight suits), and listened to 4 hours of outstanding commentary.

Take every CBT you've ever done... not just "resiliency training", but everyone of them... add every briefing you've ever had from the AF on any subject relating to suicides, combat stress, deployments-and-the-family, PTSD,...

Multiply by 1,000,000,000,000,000

... and you'll maybe get a brief glimpse of how worthwhile this 4 hour session is.

It should have been a down day; and every person should have been required to see it.

Every now and then, the AF gets it right.

Too bad only 200 of them at a base get to see it.

Edited August 28, 2012 by Huggyu2

[Royal]

I attended a seminar on base... it was sponsored by the Airman and Family Readiness Center (good on them for doing this!),... by Lt Col Dave Grossman.

Huggy, how long ago was this?

[HuggyU2]

Huggy, how long ago was this?

7 days ago... 21 Aug.

[Royal]

7 days ago... 21 Aug.

Thanks, man. Did he or the Family Readiness say if he'd be making his rounds to different bases?

[BQZip01]

Thanks, man. Did he or the Family Readiness say if he'd be making his rounds to different bases?

If it's so good, perhaps they should have videotaped it and sent it out.

[Royal]

If it's so good, perhaps they should have videotaped it and sent it out.

I hope they did tape it; I enjoy reading Grossman's stuff. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but he did an awesome job breaking down how the military has used operant and classical conditioning to its benefit and detriment. Valuable information.

[HuggyU2]

Recommend you call the Beale Family Readiness Center. I'm sure they will be able to tell you. Base Operator number is DSN 368-1110.

They did videotape it. However, it was a guy balancing a camera for 4 hours near the front row, so I'm sure it will be very shaky and unstable. Couldn't believe they half-assed the fliming of it.

[BB Stacker]

Re: Grossman, here's a link to his calendar. AF wise looks like he'll be at Scott on 9 Sept and at the 163rd RW in California on 3 Nov. Looks like he/his webmaster do a good job of keeping it updated a ways in advance, so I'd check back periodically if you are interested to see if he's coming somewhere near you.

[17D_guy]

For the rest of us who don't know who this Lt Col is - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_%28author%29

Hope he comes to my location. Don't know why his books aren't on the CSAF Reading List.

[Royal]

Recommend you call the Beale Family Readiness Center. I'm sure they will be able to tell you. Base Operator number is DSN 368-1110.

They did videotape it. However, it was a guy balancing a camera for 4 hours near the front row, so I'm sure it will be very shaky and unstable. Couldn't believe they half-assed the fliming of it.

Thanks, Huggy; I'll look into it.

[Darth]

Link to Lt Col (RET) Grossman's "On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs." I am sure there are many other links out there as well. Too long to post fully, but if you want a read, here ya' go.

https://www.gleamingedge.com/mirrors/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html

[Mark1]

Link to Lt Col (RET) Grossman's "On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs." I am sure there are many other links out there as well. Too long to post fully, but if you want a read, here ya' go.

https://www.gleaminge...dsheepdogs.html

Understood that it has nothing to do with his point, but you lose all credibility when you say something like "We may well be in the most violent times in history". Talk about uninformed. That's where I stop reading.

[rancormac]

I like this line.

The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Edited August 29, 2012 by rancormac

[Danger41]

Link to Lt Col (RET) Grossman's "On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs." I am sure there are many other links out there as well. Too long to post fully, but if you want a read, here ya' go.

https://www.gleaminge...dsheepdogs.html

That anything like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDPQumbccCY

[Darth]

Understood that it has nothing to do with his point, but you lose all credibility when you say something like "We may well be in the most violent times in history". Talk about uninformed. That's where I stop reading.

Too bad. I think you miss the point of the article. And I don't believe that you can refer to him as "uninformed" although his comment might be characterized as a "sweeping generalization." Take a look at hs bio: https://www.killology.com/bio.htm. I say it shows he can speak with authority on violence and training to kill.

And this thread has turned from sarcastic comments on CBTs regarding suicide prevention to other topics as seems to be common for BO threads.

[Mark1]

Too bad. I think you miss the point of the article. And I don't believe that you can refer to him as "uninformed" although his comment might be characterized as a "sweeping generalization." Take a look at hs bio: https://www.killology.com/bio.htm. I say it shows he can speak with authority on violence and training to kill.

And this thread has turned from sarcastic comments on CBTs regarding suicide prevention to other topics as seems to be common for BO threads.

I guess my preface of "Understood that it has nothing to do with his point" wasn't clear enough...

Regardless, however off topic it may be, anybody who makes that comment is grossly uninformed when it comes to the reality of violence in the world. Another example is this one from the website you linked, "the root causes of the current "virus" of violent crime that is raging around the world". It's sensationalism, no different from Fox News, in order to sell a product.

His comment can't be a "sweeping generalization", because the only generalization of violence rates available is that we're living in the most non-violent world that has ever existed since the existence of man. There's still violence, and if you want to acknowledge the reality and then deal with the violence that still exists, great, but don't spout falsehoods in order to make your product more relevant and expect me to pay attention after the fact.

[HuggyU2]

..., but don't spout falsehoods in order to make your product more relevant and expect me to pay attention after the fact.

Um... ok.

[Muscle2002]

Understood that it has nothing to do with his point, but you lose all credibility when you say something like "We may well be in the most violent times in history". Talk about uninformed. That's where I stop reading.

How does he define "most violent"? Similarly, how do you or scholars you've read define it?

I'm being serious and not trying to provoke.

Edited August 30, 2012 by Muscle2002

[BB Stacker]

How does he define "most violent"? Similarly, how do you or scholars you've read define it?

I'm being serious and not trying to provoke.

By pretty much any definition (whether you are talking about declared wars, undeclared conflicts, other uses of armed force, murders, rapes, assaults, other petty crime, total number of people killed violently due to the action of another human being) statistically we are living in the most non-violent times in the history of the mankind. It's been a little while since I've read On Killing but from what I remember Grossman's argument is that we are living in the "most violent times in history" from the standpoint of people being more conditioned to kill, particularly in the developed world, making crime rates and the like go up...but this is statistically untrue as violent crime rates in pretty much every category (murders, rapes, assaults, etc), both in the U.S. specifically and the developed world in general, have been on a steady decline for the past 20+ years (during the same time where the things that Grossman claims are responsible for increasing the conditioning to killing among the general population have been on the rise...violent movies/TV/video games, other popular glorification of violence, etc).

Grossman does a lot of good stuff and has a lot of good and interesting ideas, but his work has some pretty serious methodological flaws, and that's one of them. Another would be that he based his "U.S. soldiers in WWII rarely fired their weapons because they weren't conditioned" thing off of S.L.A. Marshall's work Men Against Fire, and that particular claim has been revealed to be more or less completely made up bullshit on the part of Marshall...but at the time Grossman wrote On Killing Marshall's claim had already been disproven yet Grossman still made it central to his thesis. Ironically enough there is evidence that Marshall specifically included it in Men Against Fire (despite being on very shaky empirical ground) in part to spur Army leadership to institute the very conditioning that they did wind up using, and the type that Grossman talks about.

Edited August 30, 2012 by BB Stacker

[Mark1]

How does he define "most violent"? Similarly, how do you or scholars you've read define it?

I'm being serious and not trying to provoke.

It's not philosophy, it's cold hard fact. There are only two reasons that its acknowledgement is resisted.

1. There's an incentive to do so by people who profit off of fear mongering.

AND

2. A complete lack of understanding of the current state of violence in all forms when compared to the history of violence (largely exacerbated by #1).

People tend to perceive things that they're personally subjected to, or witness, as more significant than other more distant accounts of similar events that affect only third persons. Violence is down but exposure to the remnant violence is up. Its pumped into every aspect of our lives 24hrs a day through the internet/media. It creates the perception that violence is rampant when in reality, relative to history, it is strongly down. Nobody seems to remember that it used to be a regularity for the entire township in 'developed' and 'modern' nations to show up to the square to witness a heretic being tortured to death through any number of creative means that could fill a book. And that was a spectacle...entertainment.

WWII had a higher gross death toll than any other conflict in recorded human history, but when looked at as a percentage of the human population, it barely breaks the top 10 worst conflicts. Even so, it is an outlier in a strong downtrend in the data. There are historical conflicts in which nearly 10% of the existing human population was killed. If that happened today you're looking at 700million deaths. Now the 5000 U.S. deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan are almost too much for the American public to stomach. 5000 makes up .001% of the U.S. population, or .00007% of the world population (Yes, I'm aware that there is another half to the conflicts to consider...the point remains valid).

Violence through warfare, both civil and international, has declined sharply in both frequency and intensity. Homicide rates, instances of rape, hate crimes, spousal and child abuse, and non-violent crimes of nearly all types are in long term decline. Genocide, state sponsored and non-state sponsored torture, even things like state sponsored executions ('justified' or otherwise), institutional discrimination, slavery, and sexual exploitation are on their way down. And yes, I know it's hard to believe if you watch cable news networks, but terrorism is sharply down as well.

We live in the most tranquil time in all of human history. Anybody who claims to be an expert in violence and then makes the comment that "we may well be in the most violent times in history" is either knowingly peddling in bullshit for personal gain, or is grossly misinformed. Period.

Edit: BB Stacker beat me to it.

Edited August 30, 2012 by Mark1

[Muscle2002]

It's not philosophy, it's cold hard fact. There are only two reasons that its acknowledgement is resisted.

1. There's an incentive to do so by people who profit off of fear mongering.

AND

2. A complete lack of understanding of the current state of violence in all forms when compared to the history of violence (largely exacerbated by #1).

People tend to perceive things that they're personally subjected to, or witness, as more significant than other more distant accounts of similar events that affect only third persons. Violence is down but exposure to the remnant violence is up. Its pumped into every aspect of our lives 24hrs a day through the internet/media. It creates the perception that violence is rampant when in reality, relative to history, it is strongly down. Nobody seems to remember that it used to be a regularity for the entire township in 'developed' and 'modern' nations to show up to the square to witness a heretic being tortured to death through any number of creative means that could fill a book. And that was a spectacle...entertainment.

WWII had a higher gross death toll than any other conflict in recorded human history, but when looked at as a percentage of the human population, it barely breaks the top 10 worst conflicts. Even so, it is an outlier in a strong downtrend in the data. There are historical conflicts in which nearly 10% of the existing human population was killed. If that happened today you're looking at 700million deaths. Now the 5000 U.S. deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan are almost too much for the American public to stomach. 5000 makes up .001% of the U.S. population, or .00007% of the world population (Yes, I'm aware that there is another half to the conflicts to consider...the point remains valid).

Violence through warfare, both civil and international, has declined sharply in both frequency and intensity. Homicide rates, instances of rape, hate crimes, spousal and child abuse, and non-violent crimes of nearly all types are in long term decline. Genocide, state sponsored and non-state sponsored torture, even things like state sponsored executions ('justified' or otherwise), institutional discrimination, slavery, and sexual exploitation are on their way down. And yes, I know it's hard to believe if you watch cable news networks, but terrorism is sharply down as well.

We live in the most tranquil time in all of human history. Anybody who claims to be an expert in violence and then makes the comment that "we may well be in the most violent times in history" is either knowingly peddling in bullshit for personal gain, or is grossly misinformed. Period.

Edit: BB Stacker beat me to it.

What was the most violent period? The reason I asked how it was "defined" is that violent deaths (due to warfare, genocide, etc) as percentage of population versus gross number of lives lost has seemed to me to be how people have justified calling modern times the most violent. That is, they've used the gross number.

Is that incorrect?

[Darth]

I would have to agree that Grossman is pushing this for his own economic gain and I too would disagree that this is the most violent time ever (a sweeping generalization). I just find the idea intriguing that some people want to ignore the threat, some want to be prepared and there are those who will take advantage of the weak (or random group.) That is why I find the sheep, sheepdog and wolf analogy interesting. The web site I picked was a random google site that showed the article, I did not care about the context with which it was posted. On the BO forums, folks who paste or post page long diatribes tend to be ignored and I wanted to give folks the opportunity to either read (or in your case not read) the article.

As they said on Monty Python - "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition." A loose connection to if you are unprepared, you might get surprised in a bad way. I suppose if you or a family member had been attacked as a random victim, you might think differently - that these might might not be the most violent of times but they might be the craziest of times. There are lots of contextual issues.

[rancormac]

Agreed. Aside from the opinion and debate on 'most violent times', the analogy of sheep/sheepdog/wolf still very much holds.