Goblin Squad Member
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I know from the boards and PMs that there are a lot of military/former military members and family here. This thread on the Marine Resilience Research Project may be of interest to some.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have the link here. Second article down.
Anyone having trouble registering on that site use your TAB to re-enter you password: looks like the registration form was meant for 1024X768 and doesn't size well at other resolutions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Dr. William M. Marcellino is a contracted researcher in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, who provides research support for the USMC's Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning. His research focus is in resilience and cohesion issues, and he is a former U.S. Marine Corps officer and enlisted.
Makes a lot of sense :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some questions become imperative when confronted with warborn realities. Civilian life supports and buffers the immediacy of the questions that really do confront us all eventually. Seeking meaning is fairly universal, but becomes intensely specific in a crisis such as is found in battle. My opinion, YMMV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It strikes me that it is extremely important for us (those of us who love and respect the people who choose to serve by joining the Marines, or any other service) to push the culture to treat what Marines do as something noble and praiseworthy. I'll stop there to avoid getting political.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What is the control group you are comparing to? Marines seek "meaning" is a pretty universal feeling.
Soldack, this isn't an experimental study with a treatment, so there's no control group. This was descriptive and explanatory qualitative research, meant to provide richness and precision in understanding.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What is the control group you are comparing to? Marines seek "meaning" is a pretty universal feeling.Soldack, this isn't an experimental study with a treatment, so there's no control group. This was descriptive and explanatory qualitative research, meant to provide richness and precision in understanding.
Could you ask the same questions to marines who didn't go to war to form a comparison? Then a group of civilians to form another comparison.
Are the answers you are hearing unique to marines in war? Could the results be unique to marines/military? Or could you find that the questions are answered fairly the same by all groups, even civilians.
I don't know. I am just having a conversation with you, in no way criticizing. I am an Iraq war veteran myself and now a biomedical scientist, so I definitely find your work interesting and important.
Thanks for sharing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Asking young, inexperienced men to put themselves in harms way... I view soldiering as a necessary evil. We all owe them thanks for their sacrifice. Enriching marine culture and enabling soldiers to find their way in civilian life is a noble goal that I believe deserves even more attention.
I don't mean to derail this thread, so I'll stop there.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I don't think it's fair to group every enlisted member of the USMC in the same moral group.
Not fair to the jarheads, not fair to the marines, not fair to the members and veterans of other services, not fair to civilians, and not fair in general.
And with that, I recuse myself from further political statements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Could you ask the same questions to marines who didn't go to war to form a comparison? Then a group of civilians to form another comparison.Are the answers you are hearing unique to marines in war? Could the results be unique to marines/military? Or could you find that the questions are answered fairly the same by all groups, even civilians.
Those are good questions.
The study participants were mainly ground combat/ground logistics Marines with deployment experience. That covers a fairly wide range from Marines who were at large bases and faced little or no combat, to logistics Marines who faced regular threats during convoy operations, to ground combat Marines at remote FOBs doing combat operations on a continuous basis. And a few of the participants had no deployment/combat experience.
So in terms of combat experience we got some sense of the range of possibilities for stress and distress. For some of the combat experienced Marines, self-judgment of combat performance was fairly common--"Why didn't I react faster? Why was I calling in a checkpoint to battalion instead of scanning the line of buildings?"
But many Marines, including ones with multiple combat tours, located distress at home during stateside tours, beating themselves up at work for spending so much time away from their kids, and then feeling guilty at home for not being with their Marines.
All that makes sense, given what we understand of Marine culture. Marines continually practice an other-focused way of living--we don't make pilots at The Basic School go on humps because it has any practical relationship to flying planes, but because it is a chance to screen for and practice walking until you drop, even if it means dying, rather than bail on other Marines. Spending time on your family, or failing to be perfect in combat, can invite a judgement that you bailed on your fellow Marines.
Which is why we wouldn't try and compare them to civilians--Marine and civilian culture are so different, we doubt the insights into stress and distress from either would be applicable to the other.
My guess is that US Army combat arms soldiers, who have functional needs similar to Marines, would have some similar dynamics. I'm positive special operators do--I have no experience in that community, but when I listen to them talk I hear the same values, many of the same linguistic strategies being used, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We do have similar dynamics. The behavioral health system is a nightmare and the government is ok with putting a bandaid over a bullet wound. After guarding detainees, quelling riots, finding caches of shanks and hit lists, I have a hard time in Wal-Mart or other highly populated areas. That's just the tip of the iceberg. The understanding of the impact of the past decade on our Armed Forces is equivalent to that of a marathon and the government is content to walk the first quarter of it. I'm glad to know people like you are looking into the problems our brethren suffer from.
-Areks
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Goblin Squad Member
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sorry for being an outsider butting in (not american, no marines connection), but it is always interesting to have fellow researchers explain their work.
My simple (or not so simple) question is: "why do this?" ie what is the goal you are trying to achieve? I expect the overall goal is "less stressed veterans", but I see at least the following potential paths towards that:
-improve resilience training (or screening) for marines
-improve military decision making to minimise effect of stress
-improve integration to civil society by changing policies for how veterans are treated by the system
-improve integration by (eventually) changing culture for how veterans are treated by other people
-improve integration by changing marine culture (ie how they view themselves. Though here i suppose there is a conflict of interest in that part of the problem seems a side effect of exactly what makes marines perform well)?
Any comment on the context would be appreciated. As mentioned I have no connection to the US military, so my starting point here is based mostly on prejudice.
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Goblin Squad Member
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-improve integration by (eventually) changing culture for how veterans are treated by other people
This is the one thing on that list I feel like I can contribute towards, so I'm going to.
One particularly important part of that for me is trying to change the way the culture judges soldiers. In much the same way that very hard battles have been fought to change the way the culture views women in the workplace, interracial marriages, and homosexuality, I think it's very important to fight back against any (almost certainly unintentional) efforts to stigmatize what soldiers do. It is necessary, yes; but it is most definitely not evil. By way of comparison, it would generally be viewed as evil to break down a door with an axe and snatch a screaming baby from its crib - unless you're a fireman and the building's on fire. In that case, it's not a necessary evil, it's not evil at all. In fact, it is a very good thing.
I apologize if my particular contributions to this topic are not appropriate for these boards.
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Goblin Squad Member
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sorry for being an outsider butting in (not american, no marines connection), but it is always interesting to have fellow researchers explain their work.
My simple (or not so simple) question is: "why do this?" ie what is the goal you are trying to achieve?
I enjoyed reading it as "discovery" science where they were just trying to understand what has happened.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That isn't a very good metaphor; the door doesn't have a soul, it doesn't think, it doesn't have it's own motivations for being there. Replace the door with another human being and you are faced with a more difficult moral decision, and I think there is ample evidence that that decision has a profound effect on a soldier's psychological well-being (I've never killed a person, so I have no idea).
But that's the part of it that I did not address in my post above. What I mentioned as a necessary evil was putting young boys in harms way (physically and psychologically).
I feel pretty uncomfortable derailing this thread from such a worthy pursuit, could we take this to a private conversation or continue on the T7V forums (I doubt Paizo would allow such a charged topic on their forums, no?)?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@randomwalker: The study goals were:
-Precise, robust definitions of stress, resilience, and rigidity in terms of how Marines actually understand and live them.
-Identify any USMC resilience training/training that supports resilience
-Recommendations to Training & Education Command for supporting and enhancing resilience (in plausible, natural ways that account for the mission and obligations of the Marine Corps).
You're quite right about the dual-edged nature of Marine culture. The incredible commitment to others that Marines learn--they routinely practice suffering and privation on behalf of others, and the community's highest value is to die for the sake of another--can also become an idealized standard of perfection no one can measure up to.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My guess is that US Army combat arms soldiers, who have functional needs similar to Marines, would have some similar dynamics. I'm positive special operators do--I have no experience in that community, but when I listen to them talk I hear the same values, many of the same linguistic strategies being used, etc.
For what it's worth Mbando, I am very familiar with the casualty side of the Army...it is my field. I think the stressors are similar. I Was fortunate in that while in Iraq I was in an MI unit far to the rear (in country at least. "Rear" is relative.) But even then I went on many mission outside the wire and might have experienced some pretty terrible things..but was a very lucky Soldier. Many of the guys I knew when I left...not so much. Some of my team members were injured and/or killed shortly after I left.
This is not a new problem. Strange after thousands of years of war humankind doesn't have a better grasp on the long-term effects and beneficial treatments. Humanity is a slow learning bunch sometimes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On a somewhat related note....I really don't enjoy shooters much, and tire of the constant combat in gaming. I have had quite enough in RL and would like there to be mostly non-combat related offerings. Granted, most every movie we watched in theater was extremely violent and largely combat related, but I "think" it was more of an ambient experience than anything else. We were so saturated with the sounds and smells of combat it all just blended in. Even playing group games of Ghost Recon (way back in 03-04) while choppers were flying overhead in the game we had real choppers flying over to go on missions so low we could feel the thobbing of the blades. The immmersion was deep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's interesting, Hardin. Two of my neighbors have combat patches and one of my cousins (several family members are/were enlisted), and all three of them love playing the Call of Duty games.
I remember my cousin was showing me a version he had on his iPhone, and his dad asked him: "How can you play those games? Haven't you had enough shooting?"
I could never know.
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Goblin Squad Member
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On a somewhat related note....I really don't enjoy shooters much, and tire of the constant combat in gaming. Granted, most every movie we watched in theater was extremely violent and largely combat related, but I "think" it was more of an ambient experience than anything else.
+1
I quit FPS and war movies since...|
Goblin Squad Member
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That's interesting, Hardin. Two of my neighbors have combat patches and one of my cousins (several family members are/were enlisted), and all three of them love playing the Call of Duty games.
I remember my cousin was showing me a version he had on his iPhone, and his dad asked him: "How can you play those games? Haven't you had enough shooting?"
I could never know.
I guess it is different for everyone. If I found a fun game that gave experience for doing something aside from killing I'd be fine with that. It seems very gratuitous sometimes.....kill, kill, kill! I work in Casualty Operations and see it every day, even now (I sort of fell right into the job after doing it for a few years as a mobilized Reservist). Being surrounded by injury, illness and death certainly gives you a different perspective, and warps your sense of humor. We all seem to make severely off color jokes in horrible circumstances to help ourselves and each other stay sane while the world is seemingly falling apart around us. Tragic, but we all have outlets. Mine is gaming.