This meme assumes sympathy from military leaders. They don’t. They can’t. It would overwhelm any man who leads more than a company of soldiers.
So they’re not people, they’re soldiers. And even you male do with what you got, that’s one thing you learn in the military. You get told to do a thing and you do it, no matter what you got to do to achieve it.
Honestly that spirit is pretty fun most times. Like say my peacetime conscription in Finland. I was an NCO, so I had a pleasant levels of power imo, without too much responsibility. We’re the ones who “actually get shit done.” So when the officers want something achieved, and you find a way to achieve it which had to bend the rules a little or use some other improvise solution, it’s often actually looked pretty positively on. Well, depending on the solution ofc, but if it works and didn’t break anything or massively waste anyone’s time, it’s usually fine.
And generally, that’s the mentality when you’re being given orders, even when you explicitly explain how you think achieving said orders is impossible. It’s only rarely that it’s the officers who will bend due to reality. Well, at least on the executive level, because the officers have discussed something and deemed it possible, so then it’s for the NCO’s to make that be the new reality. Which is challenging, but can be fun.
But then you can sometimes steee them by telling them the options of reality. I had one come tell me the majors and colonels will have their food now. I told him “well, I can bring them the potato soup now, or I can bring them cooked potato soup in 20 minutes.”
They waited 20 minutes.
My point being that empathy is just understanding the feelings of others. It doesn’t mean you care about them. Sympathy on the other hand is feeling the same thing as the other person, viscerally. Not just understanding, but sympathising, as in “co-feeling” it, instead of “logically understanding” it. And you wouldn’t want to feel bad things yourself.
Anyway military leaders can have empathy, just not sympathy, as feeling so much sympathy would disable a person.
This meme assumes sympathy from military leaders. They don’t. They can’t. It would overwhelm any man who leads more than a company of soldiers.
Well, ‘oopsie’ in the sense of ‘oops I just executed a man for having a mental wound, I guess that does look rather bad in retrospect’ rather than ‘oops, I should have cared about this soldier’s individual condition’.
But they don’t. The psyche requires them to absolutely not accept that. I don’t think you understand how far a human mind will go with coping when it’s required.
So just having to believe that it’s a justified sacrifice means you do believe it so it doesn’t matter if it the death was unjust as it served a higher purpose. So theyre doing their job. Getting the job done matter, not what it looks like. That was the whole point of my comment. Optics aren’t a thing in the military. That’s what was so freeing about it.
It’s not an oopsie.
This meme assumes sympathy from military leaders. They don’t. They can’t. It would overwhelm any man who leads more than a company of soldiers.
So they’re not people, they’re soldiers. And even you male do with what you got, that’s one thing you learn in the military. You get told to do a thing and you do it, no matter what you got to do to achieve it.
Honestly that spirit is pretty fun most times. Like say my peacetime conscription in Finland. I was an NCO, so I had a pleasant levels of power imo, without too much responsibility. We’re the ones who “actually get shit done.” So when the officers want something achieved, and you find a way to achieve it which had to bend the rules a little or use some other improvise solution, it’s often actually looked pretty positively on. Well, depending on the solution ofc, but if it works and didn’t break anything or massively waste anyone’s time, it’s usually fine.
And generally, that’s the mentality when you’re being given orders, even when you explicitly explain how you think achieving said orders is impossible. It’s only rarely that it’s the officers who will bend due to reality. Well, at least on the executive level, because the officers have discussed something and deemed it possible, so then it’s for the NCO’s to make that be the new reality. Which is challenging, but can be fun.
But then you can sometimes steee them by telling them the options of reality. I had one come tell me the majors and colonels will have their food now. I told him “well, I can bring them the potato soup now, or I can bring them cooked potato soup in 20 minutes.”
They waited 20 minutes.
My point being that empathy is just understanding the feelings of others. It doesn’t mean you care about them. Sympathy on the other hand is feeling the same thing as the other person, viscerally. Not just understanding, but sympathising, as in “co-feeling” it, instead of “logically understanding” it. And you wouldn’t want to feel bad things yourself.
Anyway military leaders can have empathy, just not sympathy, as feeling so much sympathy would disable a person.
Tldr empathy doesn’t necessitate sympathy
Well, ‘oopsie’ in the sense of ‘oops I just executed a man for having a mental wound, I guess that does look rather bad in retrospect’ rather than ‘oops, I should have cared about this soldier’s individual condition’.
But they don’t. The psyche requires them to absolutely not accept that. I don’t think you understand how far a human mind will go with coping when it’s required.
So just having to believe that it’s a justified sacrifice means you do believe it so it doesn’t matter if it the death was unjust as it served a higher purpose. So theyre doing their job. Getting the job done matter, not what it looks like. That was the whole point of my comment. Optics aren’t a thing in the military. That’s what was so freeing about it.