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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (108111)	9/20/2005 11:36:54 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 108807

Those aren't brainwashing.

To: Grainne who wrote (108111)	9/23/2005 7:50:13 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 108807

Chanting cadence during a march, or other similar activities aren't even close to being brainwashing. Punishing the entire group? I don't think any form of collective punishment is brainwashing, and the collective punishments are normally only very mild ones (unless perhaps you are not referring to the modern American army, for example the Romans had some pretty severe collective punishments such as decimation, not that I'd call that brainwashing either, horrible and unjust but most horrible and unjust things aren't brainwashing). The exercise is mainly to 1 - Improve physical fitness, and 2 - Teach people that they can keep going even when they are close to exhaustion. To the extent that it is used as a punishment it normally isn't severe and has very little effect that resembles brainwashing. taking fairly civilized young people and teaching them to become trained killers Who are also fairly civilized young people, often more civilized then they where before. and allegiance to the new group in a short period of time Presumably in a volunteer force they already have allegiance to the country and to the armed force they are joining. They develop closer bonds to the people they are fighting with and probably to a lesser extent the people they are training with, sometimes very quickly, but calling that a sign of brainwashing is IMO silly. it should not be violent or abusive If you consider the training in the army today to be "violent and abusive" then you have a very low threshold to consider something violent and abusive. Tim