Role and Value of the Regiment

“Sociopaths” ? Really? That’s not the experience I nor most of my fellow alums had at school and in the Army - nor was it the experience of anyone else I know having gone through multiple other Academies or Military/Maritime colleges.
I would suggest that what most people learned was that there are absolutes that most if not all organizations expect and operate on: on-time means on-time - not when you feel like it. Required equipment and required actions are just that - required and to do or have less is to fail to meet the requirement. Honesty and integrity means that regardless of the personal implications- what you report and what you claim are in fact what occurred or failed to occur. And sometimes you are not going to be able to pick and choose to ensure that you only do what you wish- and yet you still have to accomplish it because somebody else has decided that you must. Persistence and ignoring the obstacles matters. And sometimes you just have to decide that the right thing to do is not the expedient thing, or it needs to be a higher priority than the thing that somebody else is pressing you for.

I think that the requirements I’ve seen in my career in the Army followed by another career in the manufacturing and corporate world isn’t all that different from responsible jobs held by most of the people on here, and from my experience- learning to deal with those realities is pretty key to success whether you are a corporate manager, driving a ship or an airplane, an engineer or a teacher or a Soldier.

And personally while the whole millennial/ boomer thing rubs me the wrong way (because it is millennials who have been going to war for the last 18 years - which most of the boomer generation would collapse at the thought of), I think that the value of a highly structured/ disciplined educational environment is higher than ever. One of the more persistent comments that I routinely hear and observe about young people coming into the workforce from a normal college environment is that they have little functional discipline and are frankly unprepared to deal with a world that really doesn’t operate on their time-line or with satisfying their desires as the primary objective of the organization. Learning to deal with -and then lead people and organizations through an often stressful and sometimes hostile environment with integrity, is a huge positive for virtually every organization.
Very few of the guys whom I’ve known since I first started as a Cadet > 45 years ago (:scream:) see the system as anything other than providing them with a solid foundation to enter the professional world - whether in the military or the corporate world or as entrepreneurs. Likewise most of the guys who graduated with my father from Ft Schuyler in the mid-1950s seem to value their experiences there as providing them with a solid start to their professional lives regardless of what they did afloat or ashore. ( And they had a wide variety of careers which ranged from sailing to manufacturing to professional ballet dancing and directing).
You may of course see things otherwise but if you see these systems as mostly composed of sociopaths and automatons- to me that indicates a lack of objectivity on the subject.

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Good grief! What an ideal world some of you live in. It might be the path I took and the nature of the industry I’ve worked in for such a long time that has shown me quite a different view of things. As for those that went to the “regimented” universities - they aren’t any more successful or happy than those that don’t even have a college degree. Hard work got you only so far, and a strong work ethic got you past the lower levels, but beyond that, it’s always been purely a matter of luck and political talent.

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There a couple of ways to learning discipline and respect for your fellows. Some need the regimental routine of being told when to sleep, eat and work. Others teach themselves thru experience but that takes a bit longer. Having experienced both I have to opine that the worst thing that happened to young people and perhaps the USA is when the draft was eliminated. The draft affected everyone pretty much. You learned to get along with people of many different backgrounds. You came out with a better appreciation of what a nation really is and who its citizens are. During peace time if you were stationed overseas you learned those folks really weren’t that different from your folks. There were fewer wars then and I don’t believe that is a coincidence.

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I couldn’t agree more! Far more than going to college, service in the military taught me that we are all far more alike than we are different. This nation seems to be at, or possibly past, a critical tipping point from which we may never recover. In this time when everyone seems to be a hyphenated-American, the focus seems to be more on what separates us rather than what we all have in common.
I have long believed, and now more than ever, that we need some form of universal service. It wouldn’t have to be just in the military, but could include forms of civilian service as well such as the Peace Corps, VISTA, and reviving the very successful Civilian Conservation Corps from the depression era to name a few ideas.
As I envision it, people would have a certain window of time in which to serve, say between the ages of 18 and 28. While there would be no legal penalty for not serving, service would be a requirement for college aid and most forms of welfare. In addition, successful completion of service would qualify one for something similar to the GI Bill for future education. There could be other penalties/incentives as well. Basically, successful completion of service would be the requirement for many of the benefits this country provides that most people take for granted.
This is not a new idea. Something along these lines has been proposed in Congress several times over the years but never seems to go anywhere. Maybe its time has finally come.
Most of us appreciate the things we have worked for much more than that which has been given to us. This country is falling apart in many ways. A couple of years spent helping to put it back together couldn’t hurt.

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I admire you idealism and I don’t take pleasure from bursting your bubble but that ship has sailed.
It’s unfortunate that such programs of positive action weren’t expanded instead of abandoned but the country was a much different place when they were in place and so was the world. The kids who taught villagers to dig wells and plant better crops have been replaced by Humvee riding warriors.
Through failed policies, we’ve lost much well earned respect from the developed world but significantly, third world countries that would benefit most from those programs have a more favorable view of the US and could still benefit.
In reality though, your proposal in the current era of cultural and individual entitlement would most likely be met with outrage and rioting.

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Very good idea. This civilian service could include working to rebuild the USA’s rotten infrastructure too. The military is NOT for everyone but I believe everyone should serve their country beyond just paying taxes.

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Do not underestimate the young folks of today. There is less a sense of entitlement now than there used to be a few years ago. The rich of course are different and entitled; they would fight any compulsory service but they also fight being governed or paying taxes. Most young folks today that I know want to work or do something to make a difference.

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It reflects my family and acquaintances but it’s anecdotal. Any independent source forming your opinion?

Nope, just the young people I come into contact with and I am pretty independent.

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It’s still anecdotal and not valid no matter your personal beliefs, experiences or personal contacts. It doesn’t speak for the population at large.

The United States is suffering not from lack of individual initiative, but from government intervention. Do you really think a mandatory service system run by the government would work well? Employment is at a record high, service industries need workers and are paying well above minimum wage (free market at work), my state has tons of help for those in need, and yet there still are homeless people.

Instead let’s do away with social security and welfare and just let people motivate themselves.

I believe Uncle Sam would be very happy to hear you are willing to forgo receiving your social security. Be sure to let them know when you turn the appropriate age.

As a side note not everyone pays into Social Security and thus do not qualify to receive it.

As both we, and our employer, contribute to Social Security perhaps you should suggest changing Social Security from defined benefit to defined contribution.

No, I should be able to keep my money and invest and get actual returns instead of handing it over to retiring boomers who couldn’t manage to save for retirement.

You don’t need to worry about bursting my bubble. I know too well the ship has sailed. Sailed and foundered. Its just that, short of aliens landing and providing an external threat, I can’t think of anything else that might provide a way to end the divisiveness that is destroying our society.

Universal service has nothing to do with personal initiative. Neither is it a jobs program in usual sense. The point would be to provide a mechanism whereby people can discover we’re not all that different from each other. Spending a couple of years in the company of people you think you have nothing in common with could help teach that. We may not need the jobs, but we do need more people in this country to have a shared, common experience. And a sense of pride and ownership that comes from having worked together to build something.

I do not share your cynicism that anything run by the government must necessarily fail. We as a nation have a history of accomplishment and I don’t think those days are behind us. The last time we had a mandatory military draft it was pretty effective, as I recall. Sure, not everyone complied, and they wouldn’t with universal service either. But this time, rather than criminal penalties for not serving, make the benefits of serving too advantageous for the average person to pass up. Two years of service could be the ticket to educational aid, health care, hiring preferences (sure, if most people have served then a hiring preference may not help much, but not having it would sure hurt those who didn’t serve), perhaps even help funding the beginnings of a retirement account.
Could the idea of universal service be sold to the public at large? I don’t see why not. Ideas catch on. Attitudes change. In the ten years I spent in the military, drunk driving went from a slap on the wrist to a career ending event. Where, when I enlisted, if a commander wanted to reward the troops, he would provide some kegs of beer and maybe a case of whiskey. When I got out it was Coke, Pepsi, and designated drivers. And look at smoking. It used to be the most common place thing to do. Now, in many places smokers are virtually pariahs. Which just goes to show that the right advertising campaign can work wonders. All it would take is the leadership and the will to make it happen. Maybe not overnight, but try to find an ashtray the next time you’re in a restaurant.

Exactly. The additional benefit of a program of universal service would be to address our failing infrastructure. Something that is not currently happening to any great degree.

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OK millennial :roll_eyes:

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Really? It’s been constant for the last 7 years.

If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

Perhaps you have scientific evidence of a certain age group of the population at large being more “entitled” than other age groups of years past? What exactly is “entitled” anyway. I hear that term thrown around a lot. The most entitled people I know inherited their money or were born into it.

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In my reference to cultural and individual entitlement, I was thinking mostly of new arrivals but they don’t hold a monopoly.
For those born in the US, inherited money is not the only factor that can provide an individual with a sense of entitlement. This is from an article published in 2013:

Here’s the cold, hard data: The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance. They are fame-obsessed: three times as many middle school girls want to grow up to be a personal assistant to a famous person as want to be a Senator, according to a 2007 survey; four times as many would pick the assistant job over CEO of a major corporation. They’re so convinced of their own greatness that the National Study of Youth and Religion found the guiding morality of 60% of millennials in any situation is that they’ll just be able to feel what’s right. Their development is stunted: more people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults. And they are lazy. In 1992, the nonprofit Families and Work Institute reported that 80% of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; 10 years later, only 60% did.
For example, millennials’ perceived entitlement isn’t a result of overprotection but an adaptation to a world of abundance. In fact, a lot of what counts as typical millennial behavior is how rich kids have always behaved.
The Internet has democratized opportunity for many young people, giving them access and information that once belonged mostly to the wealthy.

If what the author says is true then we’ll need a global pandemic, nuclear war or a Great Depression II to fix millennials… I think I’d rather they be entitled.

Don’t think it takes a great pandemic. It’s nothing a small dose of poverty won’t cure. Being poor does wonders for curing narcissism. A lot of folks became humble after the 2008-09 financial debacle. That scenario will happen again sooner rather than later. Long time mariners become humbled so often we become pack rats, storing everything we can for the next downturn.

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