GREED the deadliest sin!!!

[NewfieDunfielder]

How often are you on a great flight, bagged a couple bandits, maybe smoked some ground targets. Whatever the case may be you've had a great go of it and instead of turning back to base, you push it and go after just one more only to end up in a fiery heap on the ground.

 

I know I'm not the only one guilty of this lol

[Finkeren]

We all do that in a game, and it is very much the opposite of how people react in an actual life-or-death situation, which is the reason why the casualty rate is so ridiculously high in almost any war game, not just video games but table top and other kinds as well.

 

In reality, combat is such a stressful, nasty experience, that 99.9% of us will try to get away from it as soon as possible.

[unreasonable]

We all do that in a game, and it is very much the opposite of how people react in an actual life-or-death situation, which is the reason why the casualty rate is so ridiculously high in almost any war game, not just video games but table top and other kinds as well.

 

In reality, combat is such a stressful, nasty experience, that 99.9% of us will try to get away from it as soon as possible.

 

I think that is only partly true - perhaps more true of fighter pilots of WW1 and WW2 than just about anyone else, despite their supposed "elite" status, simply because it was very easy for them to find themselves apparently alone after a short but confusing engagement.

 

Men in battle act collectively, and are not always cautious.   There was a British Officer from the Napoleonic era who expressed this rather well, who when asked about infantry bayonet charges, said that "When the enemy is showing his face it is almost impossible to make the men charge: but as soon as he [the enemy] shows his back it is almost impossible to stop them!" (Or words to that effect - cannot remember the exact source).

 

I think it would be fairer to say that 90% of us will try to get away as soon as they decide that their side - in the part of the battle that they can see - is not going to win. Even then there are often a surprisingly large number of resisters.

[Retnek]

In reality, combat is such a stressful, nasty experience, that 99.9% of us will try to get away from it as soon as possible.

True for > 90%, at least after the first battle and given a choice. But there is a certain type of desperate adventurer (lost souls imho) who become addicted to the extreme pressure very fast. Some just go on with it and can't stop - lot of mercenaries tell stories about a constant need for such existential experience. At least those mostly have a feeling of being strange and don't try to glorify it.

  Worse are those freaks who try to exaggerate their inner war damage into a kind of advanced manhood. If you ever read that horrible bombast written by Ernst Jünger f.e. you know what I mean - there were (bad) times when this kind of poorness was called literature. That's a common dazzlement and not typical for one nation, some "embedded journalists" or "extra proud veterans" produce similar nonsense until today.

Edited April 28, 2017 by 216th_Retnek

[unreasonable]

Come on Retnek, "literature" is simply the written expression of aspects of the human condition, including the condition of Junger and similar.  It should be judged for how well it captures and transmits those experiences, not on the basis of approval or otherwise for the person or the experience.

 

In fairness his book is as much about the transformative benefits of shared suffering as self-pitying bombast, and although I have only read an English translation both seem to be present and expressed with great power.   I agree that much of the more recent stuff is derivative and poor, "look how much I suffer" stuff. 

[Retnek]

Sorry, I can't let it go with "just literature" - that kind of proud blown-up helplessness cultivated by Jünger was used to produce mist in the heads of young, idealistic men much too often. Really feed the "best of our nation" with his hollow phrases of proud and patria, even if he composed better than most?

  Don't get me wrong, Jünger has been a victim of war like all the others. It was his way to work with his trauma, one has to respect that. He was raised on wrong patriotism and hollow phrases. He used his (only?) set of tools to reprocess his experience. Sadly he never presented proof he got much further than this. I hope it helped him somehow.

  But one has to make clear his writings are a kind of self-therapy, a desperate cry to find something meaningful in hell, a trace of sense in all that murder. I can feel with those poor men, it's like a thick red line across all those autobiographic war reports: there has to be at least some sense in all that suffering! This writing out of pain is remarkable, but no literature to me.

Edited April 28, 2017 by 216th_Retnek

[Finkeren]

Jünger IMHO is amazing prose, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with his values one iota. I certainly don't.

[Guest deleted@30725]

my virtual pilots life is none of my concern. I can kill him to infinity and he won't care.

[Beazil]

How often are you on a great flight, bagged a couple bandits, maybe smoked some ground targets. Whatever the case may be you've had a great go of it and instead of turning back to base, you push it and go after just one more only to end up in a fiery heap on the ground.

 

I know I'm not the only one guilty of this lol

Pretty much every time I lift.