The Soldier's Inner Landscape

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From the course by Princeton University

Paradoxes of War

572 ratings

Princeton University

Paradoxes of War

572 ratings

The Paradoxes of War teaches us to understand that war is not only a normal part of human existence, but is arguably one of the most important factors in making us who we are. Through this course, I hope that you will come to appreciate that war is both a natural expression of common human emotions and interactions and a constitutive part of how we cohere as groups. That is, war is paradoxically an expression of our basest animal nature and the exemplar of our most vaunted and valued civilized virtues. You will learn some basic military history and sociology in this course as a lens for the more important purpose of seeing the broader social themes and issues related to war. I want you to both learn about war, but more importantly, use it as way of understanding your everyday social world. So, for example, the discussion of war and gender will serve to start you thinking about how expectations of masculinity are created and our discussion of nationalism will make clear how easy “us-them” dichotomies can be established and (ab)used. I will suggest some readings for you to complement the class and assign some activities through which you will be able to apply the theoretical insights from the course to your observations of everyday life. At the end of the course, you will start to see war everywhere and come to appreciate how much it defines our life. All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.

From the lesson

The Experience of War

In order to understand the social creation of war we need to appreciate that this is an activity VERY few would engage in with control or inducement.

The Battlefield 4:16

The Soldier's Inner Landscape 4:07

Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat4:41

Atrocities 2:48

Meet the Instructors

Miguel A. Centeno
Musgrave Professor of Sociology and Professor of Sociology and International Affairs
Sociology

Now, now that we understand what the battlefield might look

like, we have to ask, what does it feel like?

Let's look at the level of the soldier, what

is the inner landscape of the soldier feel like?

What is the soldier thinking of?

What is the soldier going through as

they're going through this experience of battle.

Now, I'm basing the following lectures on readings of memoirs, of reading

biographies, some psychological accounts, descriptions of

battle probably too many war movies.

And I'm trying to reduce these down to a few principles

in order to communicate what this experience would, would be like.

And the two words that I've come up with are confusion and loneliness.

The first one is confusion.

Few soldiers know where they are.

Few soldiers have no idea what they are doing in this battle.

Very nicely captured in this picture, see this man

sort of wondering, scratching his head, why am I here.

What's going on?

What's happened to, to these people?

So, there's a sense of just not knowing

what's coming, where you've been, or where you're going.

In fact, physically not knowing where you are.

Until the 20th century, access to maps was very, very limited, and most of

the time most soldiers would have had absolutely no idea of where they were.

Not just in the sense of the immediate

battle, but even into a large geographical zone.

They would simply not have known where they were fighting,

or and this is very important, how they could get home.

Add to this sense of confusion, the massive amount

of smoke and dust that contribute to this confusion.

Being in a space in where visibility is extremely limited, or being

in a space that's very rare, that looks different from what it should.

My favorite example is this urban fighting in, in the case of Stalingrad for example.

Imagine trying to go through these streets that don't look

like streets anymore but have enough of a remainder so you're

confused by the similarity and the difference, meanwhile you have

all this dust, you have massive amounts of noise.

Moreover, you're exhausted.

Every single account of soldiering talks about tiredness, talks about

being exhausted, about not being able to keep one's eyes open.

In fact, many soldiers' fantasies are simply about sleeping.

Might be also about sex, it might also be

about eating, but sleep, the possibility of simply lying down.

In here we see this on the trench.

Here someone is still waiting.

But these comrades don't look like they're dead.

They're actually just sleeping, taking this small moment, small moment

when they can relax and they can go somewhere else.

The other great emotion we've talked about

is loneliness, the existential loneliness of facing death.

This is something that awaits us all, but that for soldiers is very, very immediate.

There is this idea that when you die, no

matter who is around you, you will die alone.

Perhaps and romantically accompanied by your loyal horse but in the end

alone or injury, injury so incapacitating, injury so destructive

that one can't feel that the urge for living anymore.

So there is this fear of this confusion, there's this fear of this loneliness.

Is it any, any surprise then that the need for companionship under these

desperate conditions is, is particularly found among soldiers.

This need for friendship, this need for a hand, this need for

just a gentle touch to remind oneself that one is not alone,

that if one is confused, there's someone else who might know, if

one is alone, there's at least the possibility of another human reaching out.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

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