Originally posted by Acrosurge
Perhaps I'm just not communicating precisely enough. Have you been in the military or any branch of special forces? I've had three friends in spec forces including one who later became my biology professor. Another good friend of mine served in Afghanistan for two ToDs.
I don't really want to go down the antecedent road but here goes.
Let's see here, my distant cousin and his best friend were army rangers. An acquaintance of mine is also a military historian and his brother in law had a TOD in the gulf war. I heard he also might be involved in black water, but that's hearsay and I cannot confirm this.
Originally posted by Acrosurge
They describe utilizing the will to pull the most from your body during highly strenuous conditions. One thinks that one is exhausted, but one isn't really exhausted and rather than give up (which is what the mind wants to do) one uses the will to continue fighting or working under fire.If you like, you can say that you are willing yourself to draw on the resources already present in the body. The same thing can happen in a fight, unless it mirrors the surprise attack situation described earlier, in which you really don't have time to react at all.
First off, the average corporal in the armed service having been through basic training/boot camp brain isn't wired like ours. Military society's unlike other society's has been relatively unchanged for centuries. They tend to be very collectivist and place strict emphasis on hierarchy. Disobedience in hierarchy in the old days meant death. Their survival programs are centered around their place in their hierarchy. Which is why they follow orders, because following orders keeps them in a favorable position within said hierarchy. Unfavorable positions can result in things like being court marshaled or severely punished. It's very common in special forces.
Second, their conditioning revolves around desensitizing them to the prospects of killing other people and others trying to kill them. In the line of fire the idea of your mind giving up is unlikely. Unless you have a mental breakdown or brain damage, but the former never just happens right away rather it takes a series of stressful events to finally wear your mind down. Your cerebellum [the part of your brain that your survival instincts are located] during a fire fight would most likely send a signal to run for your life if someone was shooting at you. A Soldier however is conditioned to have a different response, due to his conditioning.
Originally posted by Acrosurge
At some points, I think we're talking semantics about the same thing, then at other points I think we're talking about different things. I think I'm getting hung up on your term "instinct". This refers to something wired into your biology, akin to the same instincts that animals possess. In a dangerous situation, your "survival instinct" would be to get as far away from danger as fast as possible, much like the gazelle's instinct to run from a lion. But what if your mission is to run toward a lion? A gazelle would never do that, since it operates on pure instinct. A human, however, might have to run into heavy enemy fire and it takes a mental act in order to do so. This is not instinct, but intellect at work.
That depends entirely on you're priorities or I should say the priorities of your survival instinct. Gazelles run away when it's safer to flee from a predator. Try cornering a Gazelle and see what happens:
That's why it's called fight or flight. Two expression of one motivations.
Humans on the other hand have complex social organizations that result in much more complex reactions. Being Ostracized in a harsh environment can be viewed as much more of a survival threat than being eaten by a predator for example. Or if a predator attacks a persons home with their family in it. They are more liable to fight back. It doesn't really take intellect.