Summary of Dave Grossman's On Killing

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I would like to thank a host of great men and women who have stood beside me and gone before me in this endeavor.
#2 I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all those who contributed to the making of this book: my literary agent, Richard Curtis; my editors at Little, Brown and Company, Roger Donald and Geoff Kloske; and my publicist, Becky Michaels.
#3 I want to thank all the veterans who shared their stories with me, and those who permitted me to interview them. The responsibility for the report given from this elevated position is entirely mine.
#4 War has always been a sexist environment, but death is an equal opportunity employer. Men and women have fought side by side in guerrilla and revolutionary wars, and there is no evidence that women are any worse at killing people than men.

Sujets

• Général
• Military

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 04 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669347934
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Dave Grossman's On Killing
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I would like to thank a host of great men and women who have stood beside me and gone before me in this endeavor.

#2

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all those who contributed to the making of this book: my literary agent, Richard Curtis; my editors at Little, Brown and Company, Roger Donald and Geoff Kloske; and my publicist, Becky Michaels.

#3

I want to thank all the veterans who shared their stories with me, and those who permitted me to interview them. The responsibility for the report given from this elevated position is entirely mine.

#4

War has always been a sexist environment, but death is an equal opportunity employer. Men and women have fought side by side in guerrilla and revolutionary wars, and there is no evidence that women are any worse at killing people than men.

#5

Until now, there have been no books available on the subject of killing that examine the act itself, its psychological impact, and the social and psychological repercussions. This book fills that gap.

#6

I was concerned that World War II veterans might take offense at a book that demonstrated that the vast majority of combat veterans of their era would not kill. But not one individual has disputed this finding.

#7

There has been a recent controversy concerning S. L. A. Marshall's World War II firing rates. His methodology appears not to have met modern scholarly standards, but when faced with scholarly concern about a researcher's methodology, a scientific approach involves replicating the research.

#8

The controversial subject of low firing rates in World War II has been replicated by the findings that high firing rates result from modern training techniques.

#9

The observation that violence in the media is causing violence in our streets is not new. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association have both made unequivocal statements about the link between media violence and violence in our society.

#10

Around the world, the result is the same: an epidemic of violence. This is because when people are frightened, they stop thinking with their forebrain, which is why they act instinctively. And when people are angry, they stop thinking with their midbrain, which is why they act irrationally.

#11

Japan is the only country that has not been affected by the violence virus. If you have a destroyed immune system, your only hope is to live in a bubble that isolates you from potential contagions.

#12

The Japanese have very few cultural, social, and governmental factors working against them that enable them to control the degree to which their media contributes to violence. But this restraint can only be maintained for so long.

#13

The off switch solution is the most common response to any concern about media violence. Unfortunately, it is completely inadequate. The biggest problem with it is that it is racist. If these killings and incarceration rates were happening to the sons of white upper- and middle-class America, there would be a national outcry.

#14

The study of killing is not unique to any one society. It has been done by many throughout history, and it is in the cave-dwelling man that we as a society today find the most difficulty looking at it.

#15

A society that has no sex has no society in one generation. Today, we are beginning the slow, painful process of escaping from this pathological dichotomy of simultaneous sexual repression and obsession. But we may have begun our escape from one denial only to fall into a new one.

#16

The American Indian asked forgiveness of the spirit of the deer he killed, and the American farmer respected the dignity of the hogs he slaughtered. Death and killing were a part of daily life for most people until this last half century of human existence.

#17

The impact of this new sensibility ranges from the trivial to the bizarre. People are attacked for wearing fur or leather coats, and for eating meat. Meanwhile, a new obsession with the depiction of violent and brutal death has flourished.

#18

Sex and death are essential parts of life. When a society begins to deny and warp natural processes, it will respond by denying and warping that aspect of nature. As our technology isolates us from a specific aspect of reality, our societal response is to slip into bizarre dreams about that which we flee.

#19

The health of humankind is not measured just by its coughs and wheezes, but by the fevers of its soul. Or perhaps more important yet, by the quickness and care we bring against them.

#20

I believe that this study will provide insight into the way that rifts in our society combine with violence in the media and in interactive video games to indiscriminately condition our nation's children to kill.

#21

I am a veteran of twenty years’ service. I have been a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division, a platoon leader in the 9th (High Tech Test Bed) Division, and a general staff officer and a company commander in the 7th (Light) Infantry Division. I am a parachutist and an army Ranger. I have not killed anyone in combat.

#22

The author interviewed dozens of Vietnam veterans, and their stories were instrumental in understanding the dynamics of killing. Their experiences were painful, but they shared them in order to contribute to the body of human knowledge.

#23

The soldiers whose stories are the heart and soul of this book understood the essence of war. They are heroes as great as any found in the Iliad, but the words that you will read here, their own words, destroy the myth of warriors and war as heroic.

#24

The subject of killing makes most people uncomfortable, and some of the specific topics and issues addressed in this book are repulsive and offensive. But we must face up to our fascination with the dark beauty of violence and try to understand and control it.

#25

There are many soldiers who have answered their nation’s call and fought for what they believe in, but the majority of them do not kill. They are proud to have stood with those who did.

#26

We must understand the psychological nature of killing in combat, and the emotional wounds and scars of those who answered their nation’s call and meted out death. Only then can we hope to influence human behavior in such a way as to ensure the survival of our civilization.

#27

The average and healthy individual has an inner and usually unrealized resistance towards killing a fellow man. Men Against Fire states that the average person will not take life if it is possible to avoid doing so.

#28

The study of killing in combat is very much like the study of sex. Killing is a private, intimate activity that is intensely intense, and the act becomes psychologically very much like the procreative act.

#29

During World War II, Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, an American historian, asked soldiers what they did in battle. He found that only 15 to 20 percent of them would take any part with their weapons. This was consistently true whether the action was spread over a day, or two days or three.

#30

The question of why soldiers don’t fire is answered by the fact that there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man.

#31

The fight-or-flight model, which is often applied to the stresses of the battlefield, is inappropriate for intraspecies conflicts. In these cases, the first decision point is between fleeing or posturing. If an opponent is not deterred by the posturer, the options become fight, flight, or submission.

#32

In war, as in gang war, posturing is the name of the game. In this account from Paddy Griffith's Battle Tactics of the Civil War, we can see the effective use of verbal posturing in the thick woods of the American Civil War's Wilderness campaign.

#33

The fight-or-flight response of aggression is explained by adding the posture and submission options to the standard model. When a man is frightened, he literally stops thinking with his forebrain and begins to think with the midbrain, and in the mind of an animal it is the one who makes the loudest noise or puff himself up the largest who will win.

#34

The musket and rifle meet the requirement of being relatively harmless when we consider the consistent historical occurrences of firing over the enemy's head.

#35

The fire of the Napoleonic and Civil War era soldier was incredibly ineffectual. This was not because of a failure on the part of the weaponry, but because soldiers had a desperate urge to fire their weapons even when they couldn’t harm their enemies.

#36

The weak link between the killing potential and the killing capability of these units was the soldier. When faced with a living, breathing opponent instead of a target, a significant majority of soldiers revert to a posturing mode in which they fire over their enemy’s head.

#37

The tendency of humans to posture when faced with violence is universal, and has been seen throughout history. Modern training techniques can help overcome this tendency, and soldiers are trained to kill their enemies.

#38

Millions of soldiers have outsmarted the enemy by simply exercising their right to miss.

#39

The fact that a significant number of soldiers do not fire at all in combat is just as significant as the fact that a few soldiers do not fire over the enemy’s head. These actions very much resemble those of animals who submit passively to the aggression and determination of their opponent.

#40

The concept of drill has its roots in the harsh lessons of military success on battlefields dating back to the Greek phalanx. It was perfected by the Romans, and then mas