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A review by morgan_blackledge
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman
5.0
I gave On Killing a 5 because its strengths and originality overpower its flaws. But that being said. It has some pretty major flaws and I want to talk about them up front before I start gushing about how good this book is.
The first problem I had with the book is that it's more theoretical and anecdotal than empirical. This has more to do with the era in which it was written than anything else. Although the author is clearly eclectic in his orientation, he's obviously very influenced by Freud. This makes for some seriously interesting and entertaining reading, but claims primarily based on theory (particularly Freudian theory) no longer cut it by today's data driven standards.
Secondly the thesis of the book is that violence is dramatically escalating due to the influence of violent media. This is an anecdotally compelling claim, but it just doesn't stand up to the evidence. With the benefit of hindsight and big data, we're actually seeing a drastic reduction in global violence. It's kind of hard to believe based on the news. But according to most of today's top analysts, the evidence is pretty much conclusive.
That's right, despite influence of gangster rap, death metal and Grand Theft Auto, people are actually doing less violent and nasty shit than 20 years ago. Not just by a little, but by a bunch. As mentioned, the book actually predicts an opposite upward trend in violence. It didn't happen. Violence is in decline. That is kind of an embarrassing mistake.
Anyway, like is said, the features of the text far outweigh the flaws, so let's jump right in.
The central thesis of On Killing is founded on an analogy between Victorian era sexual repression/obsession, and our current era's repression/obsession with violence, death and killing (this is the Freudian part I was talking about).
The theory is that before the Victorian era, humans cohabited communally and therefor sex was more open and visible and integrated into daily life. Living in tribes or on farms meant being exposed to sex throughout the lifespan.
According to the author David Grossman, beginning in the Victorian era, middle class and even poor people began living in multi roomed dwellings. Consequently, sex and sexuality became a private act. Around the same time modern pornography was invented. Sex became dirty and shameful and subsequent sexual pathologies including sexual exploitation of children became an epidemic.
Analogously, Grossman posits that in our recent past, death and killing were a common fact of life. We lived with the elderly, people died at home, we slaughtered our own food and war and killing in self defense were a much more common fact of life.
According to Grossman, similar to the Victorian era sexual repression/obsession, a repression of death and killing is emergent in our current era, replete with an analogous obsession with violence and the emergence of pathologies such as rampage killing and mass murder.
The author resists simplistic regressive tendencies to return to the "good old days" when we all slept in the same room and killed our own livestock. But rather takes a more progressive stance, assuming that we need to systematically study the human relationship to death and killing In order to create more enlightened life practices and social policies.
The author compares the scientific exploration of the human relationship to death and killing to the work of Masters and Johnson in the domain of human sexuality. This book (On Killing) represents the findings of Grossman's initial five years of research on the subject.
Grossman's first argument is that for the most part, people vehemently dislike killing each other and tend to avoid it at all costs. This applies to soldiers too. In fact it has been found that a large percentage of combat soldiers either intentionally miss their human targets or fail to shoot their weapons altogether.
Some of the interesting data Grossman cites is the relatively low rates of traumatization of civilian ariel bombardment victims as compared to military units subjected to artillery bombardment and exposed to prolonged close range combat.
Apparently being bombed from an airplane doesn't feel like a personal attack as much as an attack on you're people or culture, and the effect is to galvanize (rather than traumatize) the people in those circumstances. The 911 attacks are good examples.
Conversely, the knowledge that someone is trying to specifically kill you, coupled with the responsibility of killing another person are multiplayers of stress and therefor drastically increase the instances of clinically significant psychological trauma.
This explains the high rates of traumatization in victims of crime and torture compared to the lower rates for survivors of natural disasters.
The author also posits proximity of killer to victim as a factor for increased chances of traumatization. According to Grossman's research, soldiers who kill at long range (bomber crews snipers and yes, gas chamber operators) are significantly less likely to become traumatized compared to soldiers who engaged in close range, more "intimate" killing (infantry).
Grossman cites personalization vs. depersonalization of the enemy as important factors i.e. It's far more likely to view targets in the abstract (emotionally benign) if they only appear to you as grid coordinates or as blobs on a display as opposed to individuals with feelings.
Grossman cites the nearly universal practice of dehumanization of the enemy in propaganda or in soldier culture as (how ever repugnant) a type of protective factor against the often traumatizing aversive feelings of killing another person.
This is of course a knife that cuts both ways because that's sort of just another way of saying racial, political, religious and moral distancing enables those who are otherwise reluctant or unwilling, to go ahead and kill other people anyway.
Grossman spends a decent amount of time taking about sociopathy. It's important to note that psychopathy and sociopathy aren't actually diagnostic categories of psychopathology. They are simply popular terms referring to people who lack empathy and behave violently without remorse. The closest thing to that in the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM), the diagnostic "bible" of psychiatry and clinical psychology, is Antisocial Personality Disorder (Google the DSM diagnostic criteria if you're curious).
Anyway. Grossman asserts that approximately 3% of males could, under certain circumstances, kill remorselessly and without compunction. But he is carful not to classify this trait as necessarily pathological.
In order to illustrate the point Grossman barrows the following analogy from one of his associates that would in fact qualify as a non pathological remorseless killer.
The analogy goes as follows: there are some people who are like sheep, they are sweet and gentle, and wouldn't harm a fly. There are some people who are like wolves, aggressive and dangerous, and there are yet others who are like sheepdogs, who are loyal and protective, but who are also willing to kill if need be.
Good cops and soldiers are like the sheepdogs. They can kill without compunction, but they are above average in there contributions to the welfare of our society.
Like the old psychological truism goes: it's not a problem unless it's a problem, and it's a problem if it's a problem.
Grossman writes openly and compellingly about the nature of atrocity, positing killing an enemy combatant who is actively trying to kill you and your comrades on one end of the spectrum of justification for killing. And conversely, he posits atrocities such as mass slaughter, torture and rape of innocent civilians on the other end.
In his typically unflinching way, Grossman challenges the notion that war atrocities are "senseless". He doesn't argue that they are laudable or good or even necessary, but he does argue that they have a sensible function, that being to galvanize troops and civilian populations in a cause.
Grossman evokes some of the most compelling findings of social psychology to illustrate the point that an in group can galvanize by dehumanizing an out group. Furthermore, a highly galvanized in group tends to dehumanize out groups anyway, creating a kind of social cyclone of escalating in group loyalty and out group hatred.
Basic research on oxytocin finds that elevated oxytocin levels promote in group care and concurrent hostility to the out group.
Muzafer Sherif's classic Robbers Cave experiment illustrated that groups of individuals tend to bind into in groups and bond over competition with and disregard for out groups.
Stanley Millgram's classic obedience experiments demonstrated that otherwise nonviolent individuals will differ personal responsibility and carry out orders to torture and even kill another if the directives are given from a person of sufficient authority.
Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment found that arbitrarily assigned roles with power differences (e.g. powerful prison guards and powerless inmates) elicited spontaneous abuses that were eerily prescient of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses.
Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance asserts that the discomfort of the internal conflict that arises when an individual's actions violate there values pressures them to confabulate ad hock justifications for their own misdeeds.
All of these findings taken together support Grossman's argument that war atrocities are not at all senseless, but in fact have an underlying logic, follow a predictable course and serve a definite (how ever repugnant) function that has been exploited by political and military leaders since time immemorial.
The author is very carful to note that these reflections into the "use value" of atrocity are in no way aimed at promoting it. On the contrary the author explicitly states that atrocities are caustic and destructive to everyone involved and should be avoided at all costs.
While On Killing is not without some serious flaws, it's audacity and originality far out weigh it's short comings. This book is useful to anyone interested in human behavior regardless of weather your interested in killing, combat or violence.
The first problem I had with the book is that it's more theoretical and anecdotal than empirical. This has more to do with the era in which it was written than anything else. Although the author is clearly eclectic in his orientation, he's obviously very influenced by Freud. This makes for some seriously interesting and entertaining reading, but claims primarily based on theory (particularly Freudian theory) no longer cut it by today's data driven standards.
Secondly the thesis of the book is that violence is dramatically escalating due to the influence of violent media. This is an anecdotally compelling claim, but it just doesn't stand up to the evidence. With the benefit of hindsight and big data, we're actually seeing a drastic reduction in global violence. It's kind of hard to believe based on the news. But according to most of today's top analysts, the evidence is pretty much conclusive.
That's right, despite influence of gangster rap, death metal and Grand Theft Auto, people are actually doing less violent and nasty shit than 20 years ago. Not just by a little, but by a bunch. As mentioned, the book actually predicts an opposite upward trend in violence. It didn't happen. Violence is in decline. That is kind of an embarrassing mistake.
Anyway, like is said, the features of the text far outweigh the flaws, so let's jump right in.
The central thesis of On Killing is founded on an analogy between Victorian era sexual repression/obsession, and our current era's repression/obsession with violence, death and killing (this is the Freudian part I was talking about).
The theory is that before the Victorian era, humans cohabited communally and therefor sex was more open and visible and integrated into daily life. Living in tribes or on farms meant being exposed to sex throughout the lifespan.
According to the author David Grossman, beginning in the Victorian era, middle class and even poor people began living in multi roomed dwellings. Consequently, sex and sexuality became a private act. Around the same time modern pornography was invented. Sex became dirty and shameful and subsequent sexual pathologies including sexual exploitation of children became an epidemic.
Analogously, Grossman posits that in our recent past, death and killing were a common fact of life. We lived with the elderly, people died at home, we slaughtered our own food and war and killing in self defense were a much more common fact of life.
According to Grossman, similar to the Victorian era sexual repression/obsession, a repression of death and killing is emergent in our current era, replete with an analogous obsession with violence and the emergence of pathologies such as rampage killing and mass murder.
The author resists simplistic regressive tendencies to return to the "good old days" when we all slept in the same room and killed our own livestock. But rather takes a more progressive stance, assuming that we need to systematically study the human relationship to death and killing In order to create more enlightened life practices and social policies.
The author compares the scientific exploration of the human relationship to death and killing to the work of Masters and Johnson in the domain of human sexuality. This book (On Killing) represents the findings of Grossman's initial five years of research on the subject.
Grossman's first argument is that for the most part, people vehemently dislike killing each other and tend to avoid it at all costs. This applies to soldiers too. In fact it has been found that a large percentage of combat soldiers either intentionally miss their human targets or fail to shoot their weapons altogether.
Some of the interesting data Grossman cites is the relatively low rates of traumatization of civilian ariel bombardment victims as compared to military units subjected to artillery bombardment and exposed to prolonged close range combat.
Apparently being bombed from an airplane doesn't feel like a personal attack as much as an attack on you're people or culture, and the effect is to galvanize (rather than traumatize) the people in those circumstances. The 911 attacks are good examples.
Conversely, the knowledge that someone is trying to specifically kill you, coupled with the responsibility of killing another person are multiplayers of stress and therefor drastically increase the instances of clinically significant psychological trauma.
This explains the high rates of traumatization in victims of crime and torture compared to the lower rates for survivors of natural disasters.
The author also posits proximity of killer to victim as a factor for increased chances of traumatization. According to Grossman's research, soldiers who kill at long range (bomber crews snipers and yes, gas chamber operators) are significantly less likely to become traumatized compared to soldiers who engaged in close range, more "intimate" killing (infantry).
Grossman cites personalization vs. depersonalization of the enemy as important factors i.e. It's far more likely to view targets in the abstract (emotionally benign) if they only appear to you as grid coordinates or as blobs on a display as opposed to individuals with feelings.
Grossman cites the nearly universal practice of dehumanization of the enemy in propaganda or in soldier culture as (how ever repugnant) a type of protective factor against the often traumatizing aversive feelings of killing another person.
This is of course a knife that cuts both ways because that's sort of just another way of saying racial, political, religious and moral distancing enables those who are otherwise reluctant or unwilling, to go ahead and kill other people anyway.
Grossman spends a decent amount of time taking about sociopathy. It's important to note that psychopathy and sociopathy aren't actually diagnostic categories of psychopathology. They are simply popular terms referring to people who lack empathy and behave violently without remorse. The closest thing to that in the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM), the diagnostic "bible" of psychiatry and clinical psychology, is Antisocial Personality Disorder (Google the DSM diagnostic criteria if you're curious).
Anyway. Grossman asserts that approximately 3% of males could, under certain circumstances, kill remorselessly and without compunction. But he is carful not to classify this trait as necessarily pathological.
In order to illustrate the point Grossman barrows the following analogy from one of his associates that would in fact qualify as a non pathological remorseless killer.
The analogy goes as follows: there are some people who are like sheep, they are sweet and gentle, and wouldn't harm a fly. There are some people who are like wolves, aggressive and dangerous, and there are yet others who are like sheepdogs, who are loyal and protective, but who are also willing to kill if need be.
Good cops and soldiers are like the sheepdogs. They can kill without compunction, but they are above average in there contributions to the welfare of our society.
Like the old psychological truism goes: it's not a problem unless it's a problem, and it's a problem if it's a problem.
Grossman writes openly and compellingly about the nature of atrocity, positing killing an enemy combatant who is actively trying to kill you and your comrades on one end of the spectrum of justification for killing. And conversely, he posits atrocities such as mass slaughter, torture and rape of innocent civilians on the other end.
In his typically unflinching way, Grossman challenges the notion that war atrocities are "senseless". He doesn't argue that they are laudable or good or even necessary, but he does argue that they have a sensible function, that being to galvanize troops and civilian populations in a cause.
Grossman evokes some of the most compelling findings of social psychology to illustrate the point that an in group can galvanize by dehumanizing an out group. Furthermore, a highly galvanized in group tends to dehumanize out groups anyway, creating a kind of social cyclone of escalating in group loyalty and out group hatred.
Basic research on oxytocin finds that elevated oxytocin levels promote in group care and concurrent hostility to the out group.
Muzafer Sherif's classic Robbers Cave experiment illustrated that groups of individuals tend to bind into in groups and bond over competition with and disregard for out groups.
Stanley Millgram's classic obedience experiments demonstrated that otherwise nonviolent individuals will differ personal responsibility and carry out orders to torture and even kill another if the directives are given from a person of sufficient authority.
Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment found that arbitrarily assigned roles with power differences (e.g. powerful prison guards and powerless inmates) elicited spontaneous abuses that were eerily prescient of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses.
Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance asserts that the discomfort of the internal conflict that arises when an individual's actions violate there values pressures them to confabulate ad hock justifications for their own misdeeds.
All of these findings taken together support Grossman's argument that war atrocities are not at all senseless, but in fact have an underlying logic, follow a predictable course and serve a definite (how ever repugnant) function that has been exploited by political and military leaders since time immemorial.
The author is very carful to note that these reflections into the "use value" of atrocity are in no way aimed at promoting it. On the contrary the author explicitly states that atrocities are caustic and destructive to everyone involved and should be avoided at all costs.
While On Killing is not without some serious flaws, it's audacity and originality far out weigh it's short comings. This book is useful to anyone interested in human behavior regardless of weather your interested in killing, combat or violence.