241–250 of 264 posts
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> If you don't have something strong in you to guide you and keep you under control, you'll go wild, in his opinion. ethics and empathy is enough. no need to have religion.
He wasn't saying you needed to have a religion. He was saying you need to have something.
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So I guess Alexander's Greece wasn't a civilized society either.
Ancient Greece was a collection of societies that shared Greek culture. "Alexander's Greece" lasted only a few years and was hardly a society unto itself - it was another example of an empire-by-conquest. The guy at the top dies, and it all falls apart again. Unless you're trying to tell me that Alexander turned the people all the way to the Indus into greek culture adherents, no, Alexander's empire wasn't a society.…
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I'd love to know what these more realistic arts are called. I like whatever is most pragmatic.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Muay Thai, boxing, various types of wrestling, and many other arts train and compete against resisting, sometimes strongly resisting, opponents.
That said, I agree that simulating twisting the weapon out of someone with a gun pointed at your forehead with a fully extended arm might lead to a boost in confidence, but not so much of a boost in survival rates. I'd still argue that your chances are better with techniques fine-tuned for the streets, rather than the ring.
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Unfortunately, from what I understand, Krav Maga students don't practice against resisting opponents. Because of this, it has been criticized as more of a "dance" art, where the student and the opponent are just going through a "kata" or predefined motions without meeting real resistance. Of course, it is rare to come across a situation in any martial art where your training opponent will be resisting 100%, the way a…
Krav Maga - Is not a 'dance' martial art. You will learn the quickest way to ensure your opponent is on the floor and will not be able to getting up again easily. You will train against resisting opponents. You will train against multiple resisting opponents simultaneously. Then you will train against opponents with plastic knives and guns. You are taught things like 'If your opponent is on the floor - keep kicking h…
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> War is part of society? To barbaric ones maybe. Civilized societies don't settle disputes by mass murder. It's quite the opposite -- only civilized societies can have the kind of logistics, range, military culture, ability to support the warrior class (or standing armies), and numbers to engage in organized warfare. Conflicts between small bands of foragers can hardly be even called war. Not to mention mass murder…
I present to you: Ghengis Kahn. 40 million people died as a result of his campaigns. Civilized society? Not at all. Just organized tribal warfare. > Actually, poor kids seem to be enlisting at lower rates (relatively) to richer kids Huh. I stand corrected.
1. Authors show a graph showing the median income of the family of recruits is $48,616 then proceed to define any family making more than that as "affluent".
2. Authors didn't have income data of the recruits and their families so they based their study on what neighbourhoods the recruits came from using zip codes (!) and whether the neighbourhoods were considered low-income, high-income, etc.
Source: http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/04/w...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ancient Greece was a collection of societies that shared Greek culture. "Alexander's Greece" lasted only a few years and was hardly a society unto itself - it was another example of an empire-by-conquest. The guy at the top dies, and it all falls apart again. Unless you're trying to tell me that Alexander turned the people all the way to the Indus into greek culture adherents, no, Alexander's empire wasn't a society.…
But there was still a civilized Greek culture that formed the backbone of Alexander's organization and army, even if all the conquests weren't assimilated into the same civilization.
The original poster posited that Ghengis Khan's activities birthed the society. Alexander's activities did nothing like this - the society was already there, and greek culture was fairly widespread to begin with, though perhaps not in the direction of the Indus. When Alexander died, the Greeks didn't fade away to become background players again - they were a powerful political and especially social force for centuries to come... largely in the opposite direction to Alexander's conquests.
Alexander was an incredible conquerer, but he did not make nor break Greek civilised society.
I am an experienced soldier with combat experience in several corners of the world. I have a distinguished service record. The only units I've ever known are Special Forces units. I've operated in several tiers of the community. I was medically discharged following injuries sustained in combat operations. You deserve a better account than M provides. Please understand some detail must be left out. I am not an academi…
I have a hard time believing you didn't feel something for the people you _killed_ in your first fire fight. Word selection can expose more than a writer's vocabulary range.
That sentence stood out for me for some reason, but overall, it was a great insight that's given me a lot to think about.
As a former Marine infantryman, and a former Marine PR idiot, I think his numbers are off but a lot of the concepts are right, with a caveat. It's not sociopathy of the organic sort. It's the kind of detachment from prolonged exposure to extreme, unmitigated stress. So don't take this article as justification to feel like there's something mentally wrong with people who join a combat arms unit.
So in other words: PTSD. His numbers are off because his "80%" of sociopaths are more like 2% according to real studies. The rest more than likely are dealing with managing their own PTSD symptoms.
Reminds me of my father (who was in the Airborne) looking over my shoulder playing the training in America's Army. "That's pretty realistic. Do they have a level where you have to go knock on somebody's door and tell them their son was killed in a training exercise?" That said, I feel like this article, like the censors, gives video games much too much credit. Glorification of violence is everywhere in our culture an…
When I was younger, I remember playing a game called Aces Over Europe. I took a pilot character through to 1943 or so. Then he got shot down, and he was dead. Weeks of playing. No respawning. I spent about thirty seconds wanting to cry about him being dead, and then remember my grandfather surviving world war II, just, and spending the rest of his night waking up screaming from the memories, and didn't play war games…
Maybe the "closest" we can make CoD and other FPS to REAL war is ... make the first person die permanently and render the software useless after a fatal hit. Once & only once.
The loss of $39 for the video game should teach em fine.
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But there was still a civilized Greek culture that formed the backbone of Alexander's organization and army, even if all the conquests weren't assimilated into the same civilization.
"Yes, of course. It came to existence when Ghengis Khan united nomadic tribes" The original poster posited that Ghengis Khan's activities birthed the society. Alexander's activities did nothing like this - the society was already there, and greek culture was fairly widespread to begin with, though perhaps not in the direction of the Indus. When Alexander died, the Greeks didn't fade away to become background players…
While the Mongol empire was split up after Genghis Khan's death, it didn't just collapse. There was a fairly long period of stability that followed.