there’s something to sanding off the sensitive edges of a group of people as a strategy for grooming them into a dehumanized form of work, especially if you can convince them that they are sacrificing themselves for a noble cause.

it creates this narrative that makes the self-mutilation and destructive impulse have some larger meaning.

i went through wild land fire fighter training, but ultimately decided it wasn’t for me. that job is dangerous as hell, by the way. anyway, i knew this guy in his 30s who, after a breakup with a long term partner, just dove into it. put all his shit into long term storage and went all the way in. and like, when i heard he’d done that, i understood why even though it is hard to articulate. when a dream dies, sometimes its easier to throw oneself into something big and let it use you up for a “cause” than it is to build another personal dream.

i think the military has some similar principles at work in their active recruiting and the passive, broader social forces that stifle our self-understanding to make us receptive to the pitch, but it’s clumsier and more clearly malevolent. i mean, they are recruiting in high schools and going after people at their most impressionable and vulnerable to run them through a trauma machine designed to maximize bonding and compliance.

a deeply predatory institution.