Това е книга, чийто автор с предговора си ме отказа да я чета.

Съжалявам, но когато напоително описваш за своя основна теза компютърните игри като факторът, който кара децата и младежите да са агресивни и да упражняват насилие, звучиш малко смешно.

Още по-смешно звучиш, когато обясняваш как именно поради агресията във видеоигрите и по телевизията, насилието в живота ни се увеличава всяка година, че непрекъснато расте броят на убийствата, изнасилванията и т.н. в съвременния свят - когато точно книгата, която приключих преди това доказва обратното - насилието намалява през цялата човешка история и в последните години е на невиждано ниско ниво ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11107244-the-better-angels-of-our-nature ).

Войните били причинени от това, че чрез телевизията и игрите ние приучаваме и тренираме децата си да убиват. Да наистина, сигурно Ченгис Хан и Василий Българоубиец са играли прекалено много видеоигри като малки...

Авторът е военен и доколкото погледнах вътре в книгата, разглежда различни моменти от военната история и организация, за да защити идеята, че насилието и убиването са заучаеми и подлежащи на тренировка, в което няма съмнение. Но уводът бе толкова нелеп, че не можах да издържа. ( )

'Full of arresting observations and insights...that make you alter the way you have thought about a certain subject...a powerfully argued explanation.'-New York Times

The good news is that the vast majority of soldiers are loath to kill in battle. Unfortunately, modern armies, using Pavlovian and operant conditioning, have developed sophisicated ways of covercoming this instinctive aversion. The psychological cost for soldiers, as wittnessed by the increase in post-traumatic stress, is devastating. The psycholicial cost for the rest of us is even more so: contemporary civilian society, particularly the media, replicates the army's conditioning techniques and, according to Grossman's contoversial thesis, is repsonsible for our rising rate of murder, expecially among the young.

On Killing is an important stydy of the techniques the military usese to overcome the powerful reluctance to kill, of how killing affects the soldier, and of the societal implications of escalating violence.

'Colonel Grossman's perceptive study ends with a profoundly troubling observation. The desensitizing techniques used to train soldiers are now found in mass media-films, television, and video arcades-and are conditioning our children. HIs figures on youthful homicides strongly suggest the breeding of teenage Rambos.'-William Manchester

'A fine piece of work.'-Dr. Richard Holmes, author of Acts of War

'This important book deserves a wide readership.'-Library Journal, starred review

A former army Ranger and paratrouper, Lt. Col. Dave Grosman taught psychology at West Point and is currently the Professor of Military Science at Arkansas state University

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction the the paperback edition
Intoduction
Section I Killing and the existence of resistance: A world of virgins studying sex
Chapter One Fight or flight, posture or submit
Chapter Two Nonfirers throughout history
Chapter Three Why can't Johnny kill?
Chapter Four The nature and source of the resistance
Section II Killing and combat trauma: The role of killing in psychiatric casualties
Chapter One The nature of psychiatric casualities: The psychological price of war
Chapter Two The reign of fear
Chapter Three The weight of exhaustion
Chapter Four The mud of guilt and horror
Chapter Five The wind of hate
Chapter Six The well of fortitude
Chapter Seven The burden of killing
Chapter Eight The blind men and the elephant
Section III Killing and physical distance: From a distance, you don't look anything like a friend
Chapter One Distance: A qualitative distinction in death
Chapter Two Killing at maximum and long range: Never a need for repentance or regret
Chapter Three Killing at mid- and hand-grenage range: 'You can never be sure it was you'
Chapter Four Killing at close range: 'I knew that it was up to me, personally, to kill him'
Chapter Five Killing at edged-weapons range: An 'intimate brutality'
Chapter Six Killing at hand-to-hand-combat range
Chapter Seven Killing at sexual range: 'The primal aggression, the release, and orgasmic discharge'
Section IV An anaomy of killing: All factors considered
Chapter One The demands of authority: Milgram and the military
Chapter Two Group absolution: 'The individual is not a killrr, but the group is'
Chapter Three Emotional distance: 'To me they were less than animals'
Chapter Four The nature of the victim: Relevance and payoff
Chapter Five Aggressive predisposition of the killer: Avengers, conditioning, and the 2 percent who like it
Chapter Six All factors coinsidered: The mathematics of death
Section V Killing and atrocities: 'No honor here, no virtue'
Chapter One The full spectrum of atrocitiy
Chapter Two The dark power of atrocitiyi
Chapter Three The entrapment of atrocity
Chapter Four a case study in atrocity
Chapter Five The greatest trap of all: To live with that which thou hath wrought
Section VI The killiing response stages: What does it feel like to kill?
Chapter One The killing response stages
Chapter Two Applications of the model: Murder-suicides, lost elections, and thoughts of insanitiy
Section VII Killing in Vietnam: What have we done to our soldiers?
Chapter One Desensitization and conditioning in Vietnam: Overcoming the resistance to killing
Chapter Two What have we done to our soldiers? The rationalization of killing and how it failed in Vietnam
Chapter Three Post-traumatic stress disorder and the cost of killing in Vietnam
Chapter Four The limits of human endurance and the lessons of Vietnam
Section VIII Killing in America: What are we doing to our children?
Chapter One A virus of violence
Chapter Two Desensitization and Pavlov's dog at the movies
Chapter Three B.F. Skinner's rats and operant conditioning at the video arcade
Chapter Four Social learning and role models in the media
Chapter Five The resensitization of America
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Compelling

This was a book on a great and important topic, with a productive line of research, which unfortunately succumbed to two major flaws.

The two big problems are quite serious. First, the data/research he relies on is a limited set, and primarily from now-highly-questioned sources. The SLA Marshall "non-firer" data from WW2, and the civil war musket studies, are specifically highly questioned. Second, he spends the last 10-20% of the book pushing "video games are turning children into killers" through a weak link with military conditioning techniques, and crime/murder statistics.

There are some parts of the book which don't "ring true" to me, but they were addressed and may have been due to the changes in how training was conducted after WW2. I'm not sure, though. I have never been a sniper and have never fired a scoped rifle at a human being, but from reading about them pretty extensively and talking with a few, the idea that it's somehow "less intimate" than regular infantry combat seems false. Most of the long-range snipers are observing their _targets for longer than most regular infantry ops, and a similar argument could be made for UAV operators (who might be monitoring a _target for days or weeks before firing). They have a clearer view of the _target than a few instants behind a red dot at 25m. As well, I don't know of anyone in Iraq/Afghanistan or modern counterterrorism/counterinsurgency who would hesitate at all to fire, and most who actually wouldn't be particularly "torn up" by dropping an adversary -- maybe this is due to the effective depersonalization which happened in spite of official policy, or maybe I've somehow just been around the 2%, but reflexive/automatic and without particular moral concern would be how I'd characterize it.

However, the core of the book was still solid. The most interesting to me was how fucked up our policies were in Vietnam (individual replacement vs. unit-level rotation, plus tolerance of anti-war activity directed against soldiers returning from Vietnam), as well as how bad pre-Vietnam military training was (bullseye ranges vs. current instruction on known distance ranges), and how we did some things right in Afghanistan/Iraq largely by accident. A topic of particular interest to me is how as a contractor I ended up experiencing some of the "high risk of PTSD" activities or lack of mitigation (constant low-grade risk, and going from war zone to a 5 star hotel or Michelin starred restaurant or hypermarket after a 2h flight on a weekly or more frequent basis; acting alone; zero other support; zero legitimacy by a larger organization), and yet aside from "fuck these people" as a general belief (for a large set of "people"), and a desire to shop for things in bulk and stockpile, no lasting consequences. My "peak risk" only happened a few times, and wasn't so much "active firefight" as "situation which almost turned into the Alamo but was defused at the last second", unlike infantry combat, but that's not particularly different from the 90% of non-combat-arms personnel involved in the wars.

It does seem like one could design a superior training, deployment, and re-integration program for participants in "20 year long wars" like Afghanistan, vs. what we've evolved from the military contractor communities, and this book provides some of the arguments. Still, a better solution is to go back to short, well-defined, winnable wars. ( )

Although some of the statistics and research cited in this book are a bit dated at this point, I enjoyed it. This book gave me some new perspectives and understanding that I hadn't had before now. ( )

The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society. This seems to be the definitive book on why soldiers do and don't kill in battle. Author's thesis is that most infantry don't shoot because of inbuilt resistance to killing. That seems very hard to believe and the stats, while convincing, aren't verifiable...e.g. 85% of civil war soldiers did not shoot, not because they're scared, but because they have inborn resistance to killing. It's a difficult book to read because of the subject; not fun reading. If you read it, be skeptical. ( )

Interesting and daunting. Final chapters really encourage thought about the society we live in and are bringing our children up in. ( )

Does not contain history or strategy or tactics, except as they are collateral to the study of how soldiers kill in war, and how killing affects those soldiers.

Grossman's study provides some needed insights into the process of killing and the impact on the individual and society. His understanding of PTSD is helpful and rounds out the picture of how a nation's attitudes towards the soldier can either heal or damage a fighter returning from combat.

Grossman never really penetrates to the source of what he calls "guilt" (is it objective: according to an absolute law; or simply subjective: being either real or false?). He assumes that in every engagement guilt will always be present, which implies that all killing has an aspect of wrong in it regardless of circumstance or intent. His model of evaluation is based in ancient Greek mythology and modern Freudian psychology. Although these models provide some metaphorical maps they do not provide any clearly defined ethics for a man to deal with the act of killing in war. Grossman provides shallow and superficial models of rationalisation, and so there is little clarity in regards to actual right and wrong. This is not a book on the casuistry of killing or war, and so will provide little ethical guidance for those trying to understand the subject from this angle. In this way, the book may be of little help to the returning soldier or to those who are seeking to understand their role in the military or police force.

One of the odd methods that Grossman employs is "counting bullets" as a measure of a willingness to engage the enemy. He does not take into account cover-fire, suppressive fire or fire and maneuver tactics as used in modern engagements. In most of these instances bullets are being used to control a battle environment and not necessarily to engage an enemy directly. This is an odd accounting that is never justified as a way of supporting his thesis.

It's a relatively valuable book, but I was looking for something a bit more penetrating in it's analysis and ethics. ( )

This is an exploration of the societal and psychological influences that can aid or hinder one human being to kill another, especially when one is close enough to see the actual death. Bombing or artillery fire are covered only peripherally but, they are easy to explain once you've read this book. Grossman was a serving soldier in the USA, and this gave him access to real professional soldiers and access to psychological sources for the intellectual part of the work. It certainly was an eye opener, and should be read by those engaged in the creation of adventure fiction. I also understand that Dr. Grossman now crusades against the proliferation of "Point and Shoot!" video games. He believes they are useful in desensitizing humans so as to make them easier to train to fatal violence. ( )

It was interesting until he described video games as murder simulators, maybe about 10 pages into the book. I checked out after that, and really couldn't find the willpower to push myself much further. I skimmed a bit, but wasn't very impressed overall with what I'd read. Some of it felt like he was rehashing what he said in the previous paragraph(s).
It's really odd - I usually LOVE nonfiction. This one, I'm just not a fan. ( )

I don't agree with some of what Grossman says--he seems for example not to have read the literature on suicide bombers, but his book convincingly describes the psychology of lethal violence: the innate abhorrence almost all humans have for killing one another, the methods used to train soldiers to kill and the causes of post-traumatic stress disorder. Grossman also offers in this context a persuasive critique of violence in film, television and video games. This is an essential book, one that is required reading at West Point and one I would make required reading for anyone who, like me, is working to create nonviolent alternatives. ( )

The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society is a great subject with books far and few between. Perhaps it is because of the subject's rarity that this particular book falls short. Lacking in much evidence and reference, this seems to be an extremely biased book. Aside from the word "killology", Grossman does not contribute much new thought or experimentation. While the majority of what Grossman says may be true, it is difficult to stand behind without sited evidence or experiment. ( )

This seems to be the definitive book on why soldiers do and don't kill in battle. My overall impression is that this is a weak book, and perhaps it's been generally accepted due to a lack of competition.

The author has a few points to make, and lays out his stall in the introduction where he asserts a causal link between media violence and violence in society and neatly poisons the well for anyone who claims otherwise:

"There are also people who claim that media violence does not cause violence in society, and we know which side of their bread is buttered"

The author only seems to think of the explanations that fit his own theory. So the fact that most new infantry recruits in WW2 didn't fire their weapon must be because of an inbuilt resistance to killing. Yes, maybe, but why not also consider:

a) They were too scared or confused to shoot;
b) They had been too much emphasis on ammunition conservation "don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes";
c) They had only been trained to shoot static bullseye _targets at known distances.

A lot of the author's evidence comes from the study done by S.L.A. Marshall. But this study is now controversial, and it's said that Marshall made up a lot of his evidence.

Could do better. ( )

Interesting read. The author explains why soldiers kill, and more importantly, why don't they kill. ( )

I dislike the word killology which is used in the book and evidently invented by the author. But I suppose that is a personal problem. Another reviewer slammed the science in the book. I am not well enough versed in the subject to know one way or another. I did, however, find that the oral testimony of the various veterans were close to my own experience.

This book should be read. Wether you agree with the author or not, it is a starting point for an important discussion. How we train our men and women for combat and what to do afterward.

Grossman's knowledge of history is poor. He mentions the Japanese giving up the gun. Nevertheless, when Commodore Perry sailed into the Japanese harbor he was fired on by artillery. A Japanese official later committed sepuku in atonement for this act.

Further, when I checked the bibliography I discovered he cited articles from Soldier of Fortune magazine. I can not consider this as an accurate and truthful source of information.

I think the book should be read with a great deal of skepticism. The book may not be accurate but the ideas expressed should be considered.

"Societies which ask men to fight on their behalf should be aware of what the consequences of their actions may so easily be."

The above quote is included in this book and, I think, sums up why everyone should read this. We so easily (and thoughtlessly) accept sending our men and women to war and we give little, if any, thought to the toll killing in battle takes on them. Grossman's in-depth research teaches us how much damage is caused by our indifference. ( )

I am truly puzzled why this book is on the U.S. Army Center of Military History professional reading list and has received mostly glowing reviews on Amazon. The book is a perfect example of "truthiness". Why do research if it sounds right? Grossman's errors range from the trivial ("a millennia") to conceptual to historical to sociological to strange ethics. He is wrong on so many levels that the book makes for painful reading.

"... for the most part we are given James Bond, Luke Skywalker, Rambo, and Indiana Jones blithely and remorselessly killing off men by the hundreds." One wonders whether Grossman has ever seen the movies in question: Luke Skywalker, played by baby-faced Mark Hamill, a remorseless killer? Luke throws away his own weapon in not one but two movies! John Rambo, at least in his original conception in First Blood, certainly feels remorse. Rambo might have been the ideal persona to discuss different aspects of killing. Instead, Grossman rolls out the tired (and intellectually bankrupt): Kid, only a killer truly knows about killing (which incidentally disqualifies the non-killer Grossman himself). Konrad Lorenz was able to explain the behavior of bees and geese without being one or the other himself. Lorenz, however, was a scientist (and a Nazi). Grossman (unfortunately and fortunately, respectively) is neither.

Grossman fails to understand the scientific approach. It is not about cherry-picking examples to confirm your bias. It is about testing alternative explanations on reliable data. One of Grossman's cherished ideas is that humans are blocked from killing due to their love for mankind (what I call the New Testament approach). Chief witness for Grossman is SLA Marshall's debunked idea that most soldiers do not fire their guns. Grossman, as he often does without noticing, provides his own falsification: Many soldiers shoot to posture (by far the best part of the book), as heavy ammunition expenditure and most TV footage of soldiers amply testify. There is also interdiction fire (which Grossman does not mention).

Grossman fails to do research. The bibliography is short and lacking in essentials, e.g. Martin van Creveld's Fighting Power could have supplied Grossman with WWII data instead of the anecdotes he cherishes. As Grossman fails to supply citations, a History Channel version of the past clogs the text. Just one small example: He claims "the professional Roman army went up against the Greek citizen-soldiers". In fact, during the first major encounter of the Romans and Greeks in the invasion of Pyrrhus of Epirus, the Romans were the citizen-soldiers and the Greeks the professionals. In contrast to what Grossman writes, the Greeks always had missile troops ("psiloi"). The fame of Cretan archers apparently has not yet managed to penetrate the Ozarks. The consistency of Grossman's misunderstanding of history is shocking. Truly amazing is that the U.S. Army Center of Military History recommends such hackwork.

Grossman fails to develop a framework. Grossman fails to categorize the different forms of killing. He tries to cast all killing into the New Testament approach ("remorseful killer") and tries to hide the Old Testament approach ("foreskin collector"). While a brief chapter on killing at sexual range touches on this, he fails to provide a framework for this behavior and represses it calling it the behavior of 2% of sociopaths. Neglecting this approach to killing, airbrushes out Achilles dragging dead Hector around Troy, Confederate soldiers massacring black troops to Somalis and Iraqis parading dead Americans. Grossman also fails to discuss the (changing) laws of war and just killings. His lack of an analytical framework and conceptual rigor leaves him struggling with the aspects of killing.

Grossman is severely biased. In contrast to that remorseless killer, Indiana Jones, Grossman is easily shocked. In order to uphold the purity and goodness of the United States of America and its army, most despicable forms of killing presented in the book are done by Nazis and various assortments of brown and yellow colored folks. Contrast the elliptical treatment of My Lai to the extended example of a black Congolese raping a white nun (to be valiantly saved by white men). "Yet still we had our My Lai, and our efforts in that war were profoundly, perhaps fatally, undermined by that single incident." Instead of being a scientist neutrally gathering the facts and analyzing the data, Grossman is a patriotic cheerleader, and denier in the tradition of that already forgotten president "The United States of America does not torture". Grossman fails to offer a teaching moment that good guys can do bad things (and deepen the understanding of his too short account of the Milgram experiments). Grossman's take on Vietnam reads as if the Vietnam vet's PTSD is caused not by war but by the dirty hippies and the unwelcoming society at home.

In conclusion, the book is an undistilled and unreflected collection of cookie-cutter psychology (Milgram, Kübler-Ross), History Channel history and Oprah-style soldier lore. It is a sad that the US Army promotes such a flawed work. A better intellectual and moral foundation at the start of the millennium might have led to better trained and educated officers and soldiers committing fewer war crimes. Books such as these are a testament that the reform of the military has yet to begin. ( )

I grew up under the guidance of a father that like many, served his country in its time of need. He chose not to share his WWII experiences with me, or anyone for that matter. Through brave reactions to horrific circumstances, the U.S. Army bestowed the Silver Star and Purple Heart upon him. He also earned a life of anguish, regrets, self-loathing and a torchered soul. I read On Killing, to gain a greater understanding of what enabled him to destroy, especially his own kind. Broken down into many reactions and scenarios, and observed from many directions, I was thoroughly engrossed by the mind-set of the individual(s) that have to find the strength to commit the evilist of deeds, the very opposite of what we are taught to respect above all else in life; life itself. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman draws on first-hand accounts (including his own), past research of others and the edition I read is as current as the world we live in today. I strongly recommend reading On Killing, for those that wish to gain insight to what a killer is faced with before, during and after the ultimate decision to kill is made; or not! ( )

I had read many years ago - in high school - that only one in six soldiers at the front line even fired their rifles. What I didn't know was that that had changed, that in the Vietnam war and more recent wars the fire rate has gone way up, and that has happened as a result of training methods that condition people to respond in a more automated way, so that taking the shot happens without processing. This explains to me what I feel is a higher level of damage to people involved in recent wars. People who wouldn't have killed in the past, even while feeling it was patriotic and that they should, are now killing and have to live with that. ( )

Grossman is a west-point psychologist and a Army ranger vet. He provides a good look into the ways armies train people to be killing machines and what the negative long-term effects of such training are - both on the individual and on the community/society that has to deal with that person. The last chapter - about violent video games - feels like an add-on to get the book published. Worth reading though - espcially if you have been through or know/care about, anyone who has been through military training. ( )

Is a little dry at times, but stuffed full of an amazing amount of information about humans natural adversion to killing another human. Lots of charts and graphs. ( )

NA