Читать книгу Peaceful Revolution - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 9

The human mind is not only our greatest strength, but also our greatest weakness. In the struggle for survival, it is our strongest and weakest link. The army understands this and that is why it trains its soldiers to be hopeful.

Army training puts soldiers in difficult situations where hunger, exhaustion, and muscle fatigue push the body to its limits. Soldiers must rely on teamwork and their training to overcome challenges designed to make them want to quit. When I attended basic training at West Point in 1998, every squad of around ten cadets had to complete a twenty-four-hour team event that tested their skills, endurance, and resilience. The day consisted of challenges requiring cooperation, like pushing a heavy vehicle and protecting an area from a simulated attack. This demanded a lot from my eighteen-year-old body and my muscles sometimes begged me to quit, but I kept going with the help and encouragement of my squad mates.

The feeling of accomplishing something you once believed you couldn’t do is indescribable. Prior to basic training at West Point, I had never rappelled down a cliff (I was afraid of heights), fired a weapon (let alone passed an army marksmanship test), or marched for fifteen miles while carrying heavy weight on my back. And the list goes on.

After basic training, West Point cadets must continue to overcome a wide variety of challenges that might have once seemed daunting to them. In addition to mandatory gymnastics and swimming classes, every male freshman must take a boxing class (optional for females). Freshmen must also lead their peers, speak in public constantly, and not only write a poem for their English class but also read it out loud. The education at West Point is designed to take cadets out of their normal range of experience in order to build their self-confidence.

The army utilizes the same educational philosophy. Every time soldiers successfully complete a challenge their self-confidence increases. By repeatedly putting soldiers through tough training requiring teamwork, the army develops three kinds of trust.

Trust in yourself. Soldiers are trained to never underestimate themselves and to never be afraid of trying. By having soldiers overcome a wide variety of challenges, army training conditions soldiers to believe in and trust themselves. In my case, this did not lead to the arrogant belief I can do everything, but it did build the self-confident belief that anything is possible if I try my best. This self-confidence is not based on wishful thinking, but on the many training experiences that taught me to trust myself. Since soldiers must be prepared to survive in some of the harshest situations imaginable, lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem are among the worst enemies they can have. To make them resilient in the face of adversity, army training gives soldiers an optimistic perspective that can help them overcome other challenges in their lives as well.

Trust in other people. Because the army cannot function without teamwork and cooperation, the strongest army units are similar to a family. Army training taught me I can rely on others and trust them with my life, and that cooperation is one of the most powerful forces in the world. In the army I learned that nothing worthwhile is possible if we do not trust other people, but all things are possible when we build the bonds that lead to trust.

Trust in your ideals. When people say that selflessness, sacrifice, and service are naive moral ideals, it shows how little they know about the military and humanity. In the army these ideals are not naive, but matters of military necessity. Without them a community cannot survive in extremely difficult circumstances. Imagine if ten greedy people willing to exploit each other for personal gain were transported to the harsh African plains of a million years ago, where they would be hunted by predators and continually faced with starvation and drought. Unless they changed their selfish attitude, they would not survive long.

Now imagine if ten people willing to sacrifice for each other—similar to the bond within an army unit—were transported to the same unforgiving environment. Their chances for survival would be much greater. Our earliest ancestors had to survive in conditions where predators hunted them relentlessly and not even water was guaranteed. Selflessness strengthens teamwork and cooperation by transforming isolated individuals into a strong family unit that functions like a superorganism—something far more difficult for predators to conquer. In the army I learned that greed and selfishness are cancers in this superorganism.

The army gave me a lot of evidence and experience that enabled me to trust in the ideals of selflessness, sacrifice, and service. It taught me that these ideals are necessary for real bonds of friendship and family to exist. When I studied our greatest peacemakers—like Buddha, Jesus, Socrates, Lao Tzu, Susan B. Anthony, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Einstein, and many others—I found they all said the same thing. Are West Point, the army, the peacemakers who contributed so much to humanity, and my own experience, all wrong?

The army also taught me to trust in other ideals: I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. Soldiers are required to memorize these lines from the Warrior Ethos, and the army also conditions them through rigorous training to embody these ideals. Sometimes retreat that allows you to fight another day is the best option, but the decision to retreat should be based on good judgment, not fear or lack of resilience. Many of us are so cynical and pessimistic that we quit before even trying. People have told me that attempting to end war is impossible and a waste of my time. But army training gave me trust in my ideals by teaching me that if we never accept defeat and never quit, what once seemed impossible can become possible.

Wishful thinking, unsupported by evidence and experience, is the basis of naive hope, but the three kinds of trust—in myself, in others, and in my ideals—are the basis of realistic hope. They transform hope from a cliché into a powerful ally. The army trained me to have this trust, and with it I have the strength to wage peace. Military training is not essential though; people like Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, and many others who did not serve in the military demonstrate there are other ways of developing these three kinds of trust. Peaceful Revolution will reveal some of those paths.