The US
Military and the Myth that Humanity is Predisposed to Violence
We have
this tragic misperception that humanity is predisposed to violence.
The truth
is that humanity is predisposed to peace. The default position for
humanity is that of conscientious objector to war and violence.
In our
work at the Center
on Conscience & War,
this is proven to us daily, through our individual conscientious
objectors. Science
has proven it, too. This tendency for cooperation over competition is
evident in daily life: on an average day, most people will witness
countless acts of cooperation, kindness, and humanity towards
one another, and not one act of violence or competition. And most of
it is so commonplace, we barely even notice it. We take our
nonviolence for granted.
And so
does the news. What makes the news is violence, not cooperation.
Particularly, on our local news programs, the top stories are
the ones that depict street crimes and “home invasions.” Seeing
this interpersonal violence, I am convinced, leads us to believe that
people are predisposed to acting violently toward one another. We
all make decisions
based on patterns we observe, and if the patterns we observe are
highlighting violence, we are going to decide that humanity is
violent.
How does
this relate to war? If we believe that violence among humans is
natural, we will believe that war is inevitable.
But
violence is not natural. Our conscience tells us killing another
human being is wrong. And it is the military that knows this better
than anyone.
The
military has taken notice that, over time, and through the history of
war, the vast majority of individuals refuse to shoot to kill. That
means, instead of firing directly at an “enemy,” soldiers (used
here to cover all members of the Armed Forces: soldiers, Marines,
airmen and women, and sailors) would fire their weapons away from
their “targets,” or pretend to shoot. One investigation found --
and these studies
have been replicated
-- that in World War I only about 5% of people shot to kill; in
World War II, about 15% of people shot to kill. By
the US war in Vietnam,
the rate at which soldiers were shooting to kill was found to be 90%.
Today, that number could be even higher.
What
happened? Training evolved to meet the military's goals.
There is a
science of teaching soldiers to kill and it is called killology.
It is the science of circumventing the conscience.
In order
to get an otherwise psychologically healthy individual to kill, US
military training has been developed to bypass the conscience and
have the act of killing – the act of firing one’s weapon with the
intent to kill -- become reflexive.
Our
conscience knows that taking another human life is wrong. We don't
want to do it; we know that it is the worst possible thing we could
do. So the training has been developed to teach a soldier to kill
without thinking, without filtering through the conscience.
When we
take the time to think – to filter through the conscience -- we
make better decisions. And in the case of war and killing, the vast
majority of us already have decided.
In fact,
99% of us have decided by default that we will not chose to kill. The
military comprises less than 1% of the total US population. When you
add veterans to that number, it still only creeps up to 7%, and some
of them, of course, had been drafted; they didn’t volunteer to join
the military. And did volunteers join the military with a
desire to kill, or for some other purpose?
In my
experience, talking as I do to members of the military everyday,
people that volunteer hold a sincere desire to serve and protect and
to do something bigger than themselves. We call it "the
service," after all. The people who join the military are some
of the most beautiful, selfless, and loving people you could know.
Sure, there are some cynical and self-serving reasons we could
suggest for why people join the military, and there are real accounts
of skinheads and other racists who were enlisting during the US
invasion of Iraq, but that’s not the rule. By and large, today’s
1% joined the military out of a deep love and affection for humanity,
not because they want to be killers.
And they
suffer consequences for the same reasons. It is the same love for
humanity and desire to serve, I believe, that causes them to
experience deep trauma once their conscience processes the results of
what they've done, the deaths and the pain they’ve been a part of.
Military training dulls the conscience, but not forever. Very
likely, the conscience is going to come back. We all can relate to
that just through our normal experiences of life. If we have an
argument with someone we love and don’t handle ourselves well, it
nags at us. Our conscience tells us we’ve done something wrong.
Now, put
that on the scale a million times greater: killing someone or failing
to prevent an egregious act in war. Even being trained to kill can
and does cause trauma because it is so foreign from what our
instincts tell us is right. This trauma, these wounds to the soul –
moral injuries – are caused by transgressions against the
conscience.
Hundreds
of thousands of veterans are struggling with this trauma, which is
different than the trauma that is experienced by a rape survivor or a
hijack survivor. It's not characterized by the hyper-vigilance or
fear for one’s life that we see in those cases. Moral injury is an
inner conflict. The Marines did a study
in 2011 that revealed that much of the trauma the service members
were experiencing was about guilt and betrayal of conscience.
So, is
humanity predisposed to violence? I don't think so. We’ve allowed
ourselves to be deceived by not only the military industrial complex,
which profits from war, of course, but also by all the major pillars
of our society: our government, our schools, our media, and even our
churches. They all tell us that violence is human nature. Even
the peace movement falls victim to this myth. We think, “people who
join the military are different from me. They can kill. I can't
kill.” Well, what I’ve learned, and what the evidence shows is
that they can't kill either – not without consequences.
Remember,
veterans make up just 7% of the population, yet they represent 20%
of the suicides in
this country. That’s a very telling and shameful number.
So what’s
a soldier of conscience to do? Too often, soldiers in crisis believe
they have only two choices: violate their conscience or violate their
orders. Of the two, violating their orders is a piece of cake. Maybe
they'll get court martialed, go to jail, get busted down in rank,
lose some pay. Maybe they'll get kicked out with a bad discharge.
That’s finite, that's measurable, it’s manageable by most people.
But the
violation of the conscience? We are just beginning to understand its
consequences, and they can be immeasurable.
It’s
important that people know there is a third option: conscientious
objection -- a legal pathway through which one can apply for
discharge by affirming our natural predisposition for peace, by
affirming the power of conscience.
Beverly
Bell, Natalie Miller, and Emily Simmons helped with this article.
Copyleft
Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part.
Please credit any text or original research you use to Other Worlds.
Maria
Santelli is Executive Director of the Center
on Conscience & War,
a 75-year old organization founded to provide technical and community
support to conscientious objectors to
Donations
can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St.,
Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at]
verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The
master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has
always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and
nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and
everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs