I’ve got no beef with LtCol Dave Grossman, the Army Ranger who wrote “On Combat,” and “On Killing“, two books that attempt to explain the psychology of human combat and aggression. One particular quote he uses has been often – perhaps too often – repeated:
If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath–a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero‚Äôs path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.
Although I concede the man his larger point, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with this sort of language, to be frank. It is necessarily reductive, unnecessarily divisive and all too often self-congratulatory. The iconographic “sheepdog” – if in fact such exist – would feel no particular pride or superiority in his status. It would simply be who he is, his ontology – the classification of his existence.
People are almost infinitely complex, all the more so in that they are shaped by infinitely variegated experience. We all react to different stimuli in different ways, a fact that military training and discipline attempts to minimize but can never quite eliminate.
And because of their ontological nature, these are difficult issues for me to wrestle with. There are noumenological limitations of existential self-inquiry because of the effects of ?† priori which prevent the being-for-itself from separating the rational power of introspection from its own underlying essence.
Which doesn’t mean that others don’t do a damn fine job of it. Read this essayfrom FbL over at the Castle, if you haven’t already.
It’s well done.
the man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed…
..not because the gunslinger is a sheepdog.
just because.
gunslinger IS.
To me it just shows in what lucky times we live.
In earlier times you not thought for a moment about whether you were a sheep or a sheep-dog, you were given your Garand M1 (or H&K G3 in my case) and expected to serve. And most indeed did.
I wholeheartedly agree, Lex. I’m completely onboard with what LTC Grossman originally meant with that quote, but you’re correct in saying that it has been too often repeated and that it has been twisted into something that is self-congratulatory.
FbL is correct in criticizing the misplaced moral superiority that led those parents to feel uncomfortable around SSG Bellavia. However, too often I see the sheepdog quote twisted around into a similar form of misplaced moral superiority that is directed from the sheepdogs and their supporters towards those who would be considered sheep. The “Thin Blue Line” mentality you’ll hear police officers talk about is one form of this. It takes the opposite tack, that by nature of their being sheepdogs are inherently better than the sheep.
As someone who considers himself something of a sheepdog, nothing makes me sicker. Doing what I do doesn’t make me any better than the rest of the population. In fact, you could probably argue that society could be better served if I poured my (admittedly limited) intellectual talents into curing a disease or designing a longer lasting lightbulb instead of training and preparing for war. I do what I do because it’s part of who I am.
If you’ll permit me one last aside, I see some parallels here to politics I’ve encountered. Several of my friends in ROTC lean rather strongly to the right. These friends always express disbelief when I take a rather laissez-faire approach to the antics of the more extreme of our leftist friends. They don’t seem to understand that the reason I’m serving isn’t so people who agree with the government can say what they want to say, but instead the exact opposite.
I beg forgiveness if that was too bloviating, but hopefully it made some sense.
Help me out here, Captain. It isn’t often I’m stumped by a word — but you’ve stumped me. What is noumenology? I’ve checked my online Dictionary.com, and they say it doesn’t exist. But what do they know anyway, I ask you. We’ve got about thirty-five or so dictionaries strewn about the house, and I can pore through them until I find it, but it would help if you’d tell me a] if it’s spelled properly, and b] what the heck it means to us civilians. Pretty please?
Marianne
Thanks for the link, Lex (and the compliment).
It is necessarily reductive, unnecessarily divisive and all too often self-congratulatory. .
Interesting that you see it that way. I think I understand your point, but I never saw it as divisive or self-congratulatory (though some certainly use it that way). As you have so often lectured me, we all have our roles.
In comments at the Castle, we batted around this concern. I concede that it is perhaps over-simplified, but it speaks to a categorization that I think is worthwhile even if the boundaries between types are blurred. For example, I have no doubt that if it came to the point of the direct survival of me or someone I cared for vs. the death of the person endangering us, I’d have no hesitation enacting whatever violence I was capable of. But I could not do a job that required regular violence and find anything other than my own psychological destruction in it. I am capable of a great variety of actions/characteristics contained in the sheep-sheepdog-wolf analogy… but one type comes much more naturally to me than the others.
This is one of the great things about a volunteer military–there are certainly those called to the “warrior’s life,” as evidenced by the way they thrive in that environment in general, and “recover” from their wartime experiences more easily than many others (in years of the draft, even in WWII, we saw those who weren’t necessarily of the sheepdog type comport themselves with great valor and heroism, but who dealt with the horrors of war with less capability than others).
How much of my attitude about all of this is based in my being female and whatever differences there may or may not exist as a result of that fact is for another discussion…
There are noumenological limitiations of existential self-inquiry because of the effects of à priori which prevent the being-for-itself from separating the rational power of introspection from its own underlying essence.I was just saying that to my wife … oh … wait … it wasn’t me.
one of the limitiations of noumenology is evidently spell-checking….
(i know i shouldn’t have, but could NOT resist)
Hey Lex, as a retired police officer, I can identify with Grossman’s definition of a Sheepdog for the most part. Where I differ is through my experience; most of the cops/sheepdogs I have known over the years are a little too humble to admit to walking a hero’s path.
Mike, the “Thin Blue Line” you make reference to is mostly a thing of the past, and has nothing to do with cops feeling “superior” to those that they serve. It has a lot to do with the lack of understanding by the general public about what cops experience, and who other cops can relate to because of those experiences.
I guess I ought to go over to the Castle and read the essay…
Marianne, you might try “noumenal” the knowable, yet indiscernible by the senses.
I tend to think this overstates the case by categorizing people this way. Wolves can be taught to be wolves. Many of the young people raised in this caustic environment of Madrassas might have been very different minus the indoctrination. Similarly sheepdogs are not “naturals” but taught.
FbL … I understand what you’re saying, being also female. But let’s not underestimate ourselves. In a threatening situation, untrained in self-defense or not, we can do remarkable things. Once when I was young, I dated rather aggressive young man who got crossways with another man. The other man promptly reached through our car window and socked my guy in the face. Before I even thought about it, I took my lighted cigarette, reached across my friend and ground it out on the attacker’s face [which was the only thing I could reach. ] Fortunately, he couldn’t reach me to punch me in return. He staggered back away from the car which allowed my friend, who was driving, to pull away.
Thinking about it afterwards, I couldn’t believe how aggressive I’d been. but we can be, when it’s necessary, whether we think we are sheep or not. Thank God.
Unfortunately, cigarettes are not a good defensive weapon. And I haven’t smoked in 35 years. So I bought a house gun, and I’ll use it if I have to — to defend my husband and my home.
Marianne
I’m having flashbacks to Youngster year Ethics class. We read Grossman and Kant. Grossman made some nice points, but the narrow application of his ideas turned me off and I never finished the book.
Kant is too broad for my tastes. Kind of like philosophy written by a lawyer, picayune to the extreme. And pretentious.
“Ding an sicht”, indeed.
Allen … thanks so much for the definition. I took my Philosophy class back in 1950, and not much memory of it remains in my internal all-too-full hard disc [besides which, I'm more of a scrapper than a philosopher.] I really have to get around more…
Marianne
Scott, not trying to say you’re wrong, and in fact I wish all cops had that mentality. But unfortunately I have encountered and/or read about several that do not, that have the mentality that I referenced. Granted, I’ve gotten most of this from a source like Radley Balko, so I’m admittedly hearing only the negative. Also, didn’t mean to make it sound like it was only police officers that exhibited this mentality, I’ve encountered it across the spectrum of people who would be considered sheepdogs.
Marianne, I know the feeling. More and more of my knowledge is relegated into the memory of which book it most likely might be in if I look there.
Pretty soon the only thing left will be a kind of card catolog system containing a few key words.
Lex, I left my two cents at the “Castle”. I just went through the link. In my view, that article is a turning point in this Nation’s history. I am talking not so much about the war, as the Nation’s perception of itself. Thanks, for the “heads up”.
Lex, I ‘m fully cognizant of the fact that most of the good folks ( The Owner’s Manual excepted) who comment here are way too polite or wary of censure to call you on the monumental turgidness of that second to the last paragraph in your post above.
My first raction on reading it was Huh??…it’s late PM… must be me….by the third careful reading …definitely a challange…I finally got your point and I agree… I think. A re-write and re-posting of that paragraph relying on short declarative and unambiguous sentences would settle the matter once and for all and I respectfully call for it… I also strongly suggest, for the sake of humanity, that you strive to eschew obfuscation from this point forward.
Best
Snake Eater, I just assumed Lex was taking a quick break from his doctoral thesis when he wrote it…
Snake Eater,
I saw it as a an interesting metaphor for the very subject he is speaking to. Consider the paragraph before, unambiguous and declarative.
Then we get into the authors own muddy thoughts, who translates that uncertainty into a muddy paragraph.
Followed up by a clear, short, declarative paragraph on a post by FbL, who maybe laid it out in a better way.
Does our Lex have plans within plans? Perhaps.
It’s an interesting discussion.
Not to make it too simplistic, but I think that there are no sheep, only people who haven’t realized the sheep-dog within themselves. Further, I think that those who respond negatively when confronted with the actions of sheepdogs do so more out of fear of their own capability than anything else.
It’s not that they are disgusted with the actions of the sheep dog so much as they are scared that they might be capable of the same actions. Most people do not comprehend, or even want to think about, what they are capable of when pressed into a life or death situation. At the end of the day, regardless of whatever Clausewitz-ian reason put you into combat, it comes down to you or the enemy, someone’s going to live and someone’s not, and most normal citizens do not want to contemplate that fact. On the other hand, ask them what they would do to someone who attempted to kill their children and I’ll bet you get a different response.
All in all, it’s about understanding.. but more so it’s about empathy. You don’t have to like it, just try understand it.
Like a conversation I had the other day,
Cavalry Major: “I don’t know how you can live hundreds of feet underwater.”
Me: “That’s ok, I don’t know how you can go outside the wire every day. It’s just what we do.”
Snake, it was intentionally dense and I toyed with the idea of throwing it out entirely for the sake of clarity. But I had fun with it, it warped itself nicely to the argument’s weft and a further discussion of the nature of a sheepdog’s awareness of his essential sheepdogginess – real or constructed? – seemed a bridge too far.
Interesting. I know I have a capacity for violence, but I would hardly consider myself a sheepdog… and I know I’m not a wolf. I just simply believe in self defense and defense of one’s country.
Jim C
Allen, I certainly agree that children can be “warped” into a wolf mentality, especially if “trained” (intentionally or not) from a very young age. I think the same is probably true for a child who has a good role model. But I still maintain that some turn to it more naturally than others–not to say their choices are constrained or preordained, but that there is a natural turn in a particular direction if left to one’s own devices. Sheepdogs and wolves are not created out of thin air–there’s gotta be a something to work with.
And Marianne, I agree that violence is in all of us, that was my point in the essay when I said that those who have undergone combat-preparative training master the “beast” in humanity, as contrasted with those of us who are playing the odds that the undisciplined beast in us will never wake up. I have long said that it is probably good that a certain vile-beyond-words father of a friend and I have never met face-to-face, so I don’t deny my capacity for violence. I just think the ability to inflict deadly violence and have it directed back at me and not be destroyed by the experience is not a strong trait in me.
I invite people to read the comments thread at the link. It was an interesting discussion, I think.
Lex, regarding that paragraph and its use in the post… I bow to your brilliance.
I’m not a wolf. I just simply believe in self defense and defense of one’s country.
I think that makes you a sheepdog in reserve. Hopefully you will never need to be called on, but it sounds like you are someone people would be glad to have nearby if things went bad. As I understand it, a sheepdog is a type, not a profession/action.
“One particular quote he uses has been often – perhaps too often …”
No kidding. Another example of his writing after drinking a cheap Merlot….(-*
I think for the average civilian it is hard to know what category we would fall in because here in the states we seem to live in a sort of a surreal bubble (not necessarily a bad thing) of security and freedom. We don’t have things like war here on our soil, there is violence but for the most part you can stay away from those areas or avoid them. We have laws and a fairly stable government and many of us have been raised this way. Granted there are always the “exceptions to the rule” I think many people wouldn’t know how to act. I know I tend to be very clear headed during traumatic situations. I recall a situation on a city bus when I was living in Chicago a man collapsed. I was shocked…the bus driver did nothing just watched this man laying there. Granted I am almost sure this man was on drugs or something but by golly I wasn’t about to sit and watch. So I just jumped in and started to call out orders. Clear a space for this person, call an ambulance etc. I just tried to help the man breath and have space in a stable position vs all slumped over on the bus stairs and up against the doors. I lifted him under the arms myself to help stabilize him. No one helped. I cannot just sit and watch and was shocked that a whole bus full of people just watched but did nothing. However, during a situation with a peeping Tom that I caught looking into houses I collapsed onto the floor and moved past the sliding door “commando style” and my adrenaline was out of control! Heart palpitating the whole nine. I had to sit down before I could talk to the MP’s. Didn’t go into hysterics or anything crazy but just went into what I think was “survival Mode” I never would have thought I would have reacted that way. I am a great shot with the shotgun but if someone was coming at me to harm me I am not sure I could hold steady enough to get a clear shot. Who knows hopefully none of us will ever have to find out what we are be it a sheep, sheepdog or wolf. I cannot say I am just a sheep and I know I am no wolf but the sheep dog description is a little “harsh” I cannot say I would want any part of violence but I know I would do what I had to do if the situation presented itself!
All human beings have the capacity for violence. That’s why we’re at the top of the food chain.
I always like that essay. Near the end of it, as I remember, it speaks of humans having a range, and of being able to shift along the continuum, moving from being a victim(a sheep) to being a protector(a sheepdog). It must be true, because as we undergo military or other training and experiences, we change, and our responses to threats change.
Your type of fighting involved fighter jets as weapons. You flew toward the threats, turned to meet it, engaged with the weapons you had with as much skill and courage as you could deliver.
Other people’s weapons are rifles, bayonets, and grenades. Or handguns, tasers, fists, and handcuffs. If the reason all of you move to meet the threat is to defend the defenseless, that makes all of you sheepdogs, in the meaning of the essay.
You may not think of yourself as a hero, or the defender, or feel set apart from the civilians you defended, but the separation was there.
The instinct for survival is part of our genetic make up. When we’re in a threatening situation the body produces a fast pulse, a lot of adrenaline and other hormones as we prepare to fight or flee. So, we all have that capacity for violence when forced into it. Jessica and Marianne’s experiences illustrate that very clearly.
Military training teaches a person how to use that fight or flight instinct in a pro active and useful way. Some people are more genetically inclined toward being aggressive and violent. When that tendency is channelled for defense of people who can’t/won’t defend themselves it’s a good thing. Those sorts of people tend to gravitate toward jobs like law enforcement and the military. The flip side of the coin is the aggressive, violent type who preys upon people who can’t/won’t defend themselves. Wolves, sheep, and sheep dogs make a good analogy. I’ve always liked Grossman’s analogy.
As to the sheepdogs being somehow superior……. that never occurred to me. Maybe that’s because I was a member of the miltary when we were vilified and the object of derision and insult. Hard to feel superior when you’re in that situation.
One of the things that struck me about Fbl’s essay was that there are now people who are not in the military who try to understand and express appreciation for the job that the military does.
It was many years ago, but I can still remember long deployments, wives and kids left alone for long stretches, friends lost to enemy fire, and much more. In my book that is the sort of sacrifice that most people in this country are not called on to make.
It is, therefore, absolutely appropriate that we, who are enjoying the joyous freedom and peace here in CONUS, be appreciative of and try to understand the sacrifices that our troops are making today. I, for one, salute Fbl and all the citizens who are taking it upon themselves to do just that.
I’ve enjoyed reading this thread and FbL’s essay! Fast Nav said it for me, but I would like to relate an interesting story about DNO.
When applying for college and the attendant scholarships, she applied for the ROTC as well, for the three majors: Army, Navy, Air Force. Having passed the exam with flying colors and being a National Merit Scholar, it was down to the interviews.
Being a Navy Airedale, I was pulling for my branch, but kept it to watching from the sidelines. Returning from the Navy interview, I asked how it went and she said, “He was cheesey!”
“Why”, I asked. “He said they were looking for ‘warriors’”! I understood, but refrained from being too much of a part of her decision. So… what did she decide?
She went into the Army, the Medical Corps, she said because they had more hospitals. She didn’t want to be a “warrior” for the cheesey Navy guy.
So where did she serve, little sheepdog or even, forbid, sheep that she was?
Her medical unit was attached to the 82nd Airborne and she spent her first overseas duty in Bosnia, only to be followed in ’03 by following the Army across Iraq, living in the desert and telling me how they were going to “Kick Saddam’s A**”. She had become a warrior!
Oh, yes… Marianne, I think they call having a too-full hard drive, CRS. You know, for “Can’t Remember Stuff”.
The analogy itself is simplistic, but that is it’s purpose — to make up three simple categories that can then be compared and contrasted to make the main points. He might have well used Cranberry juice, Apple juice, and Cran-Apple juice for all the difference it makes. It is not the author’s fault that others, myself included, have resorted to it when needing a classic example.
The greater subject he broaches is public responsibility and the use of force as a means of keeping the peace. Force, as we were taught in physics, is neither good nor bad, it’s merely a measure of an action. It has no moral value. The action that force is used to accomplish has moral value. Kind of like the Great Gun Debate, guns are neither good nor bad, nor do they have moral value. The actions they’re used for make up the moral component. Shooting zombies = good, shooting JFK = bad. Cops with guns = good, rogue evil criminal masterminds with guns = bad.
Even if they have a white cat.
Once beyond this simplification of the classifications, the real discussion can begin. How we take a normal, law-abiding, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly guy like Joe Foss and turn him into a guy who deliberately targets and kills 26 others and lives with his actions later is the subject under review, not those pithy sheep and sheepdog classifications. How a pacifist like Alvin York can approach machine guns and selectively target 28 other human beings, using his marksmanship skills to cleanly kill each of them, then compare his actions against the average of 1 in perhaps 7 infantry who actually fire their rifles at the enemy and making our Army over 10% entirely ineffective.
From a military standpoint, this is a needed debate. It’s force-multiplication. On the social side, it’s so much more valuable.
It’s difficult to take a human life. It’s especially difficult to do so if you value that human life as a matter of inherent conscience. Self-defense is one thing, we all know the she-bear defending her cubs scenario, but what is involved in making a commitment to kill in defense of others and carrying that out?
I don’t know, frankly, nor do I expect I ever will unless placed in that situation. How often I’ll rationalize it in those dark hours before the dawn, how I’ll look at my neighbor and his stupid yap-dog and wonder if it was worth it protecting him, or my other neighbor and his Varga Girl wife and think, “Hubba hubba, yeah it was!”
Those are areas I cannot go because I didn’t walk that path.
LtCol Dave Grossman did. Perhaps he wrote this because he wanted to clear his own mind, and in the process let others know his conclusions.
Seems unfair to dismiss the message solely because you first heard it from the jester.
– Max
Lex, I thought that might have been the case…day after April 1 and all…but it was late in the day so I choose to have some fun ( and I did) and leave the weighter thread discussion to the Trust Fund Set. I know to some posing as a contrairian, preachy pain in the a** church lady is a perverse almost self-loathing act… and I agree…but who said I was posing …. and finally please do keep in mind, as you continue to post, that timeless bon mont… to eschew obsfuscation. Best
Marianne & Allen,
I liked Einstein’s take on a “full hard drive:” Why remember something if you can look it up.!?! (grin)
Now then, on to the topic. With the exception of the final few words of the quote from LtCol Grossman, “and walk out unscathed,” I find the simplicity of his metaphor to be a clear representation of several of the Marines that I know.
The thing about metaphors and simplicity is that they allow many permutations from the original intent. As MaxDamage said: “real discussion.”
More than the quotation itself, I have enjoyed reading the comments regarding this topic here. They remind me that “sheepdogs” come in many varieties yet each “pup” manages to work with the “pack” to acomplish a common goal: the protection of freedom.
We all have a need to categorize things. For example, I divide the world into things that fit into my mouth and things that don’t. It simplifies the entire thinking process.
You know, a couple lines down from what you quoted, Lt Col Grossman writes, “Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be.”
The only reason I think it seems divisive is because he’s making the point several times that being a “sheep” or “sheepdog” each carries with it certain moral and lifestyle choices, some of which are good and some of which are bad.
Fbl,
Thank you for the compliment. Very kind of you to say that. Hey, if nothing else, if things do go bad I can always beat the wolf over the head with my cane while praying they don’t step on my oxygen hose (No, I’m not kidding… or that old. I just have several health problems that really do require that equipment).
Jim C
Spade, I believe he stops at the moral categorization, he merely defines the moral requirements. In short, being a sheep means never taking a life, being a sheepdog means taking the life of the wolf, and he allows the reader to make their own judgement on the morality. though he does state self-sacrifice is a morally high position.
Let’s face it, you cannot have belief in a Creator and kill a man without having to justify it to Him, and while He may not be blind most folks tend to believe He is pretty darned Strict. Pretty sure he’d over-ride any decision made at court-martial since He sort of knows your intentions.
Tough judge. But then, that’s His job. I said Job. Get it?
Regardless, if we wish to be a nation of citizen-soldiers it’s probably about time we looked at the differences in job requirements between being a citizen and a soldier. It is also long past time we look at how soldiers transition back into citizen mode.
Understanding and helping those transitions will be a milestone in understanding why we fight and what we need to erase those ghosts the fighters pick up along the way.
– Max