Originally posted by Tommy86:
I believe you are correct Tommy Boy. The article makes perfect sense if you look at how society is devolving into smaller and smaller units composed of individuals right down to the single individual.
Most American's do not have much leisire time to enjoy the fruits of their labor. We are working longer and longer hours and producing more by working harder than ever before. What better way to find refuge than through the convenience of a computer. It is easily at hand, doesn't argue with you, will provide what you want to see or hear on command and most import, allows the disgruntled individual to delve into what in the beginning may be fantasies based upon anger that eventually become a reality and are acted upon.
Sadly for many, isolation from others is becomming a common problem. Go to large and medium corporations and cubicles are full of people isolated with little chance of even commincating with a fellow worker if you want to keep your job. Their workload also prevents them from meaningful comminication. Same for the production worker running machinery and such. It is produce, produce, produce or you are out the door. So for many, what is left but a world of fantasy. Frustration mounts and before you know it, a person is slaughtering others in an act of revenge for all of the injustices they have immagined and perceived suffering.
I also believe we are producing more violence prone people. Preganat women are bombarded with chemicals in the food they consume, many of the steriod type. Steriods control the production of Sterols in the body and believe it or not, changes the construction through gestation. In simple terms, a part of the brain that controls the areas of anger, fight or flight, aggression actually become larger and exercises additional control of a persons actions and responses to outside stimuli. Many people in medicine refer to it as the reptilian part of our brain. Which indeed it is as it does control our response to danger and stressful situations in our lives. Normally a person will not act out on impulses unless absolutely required but people who have sustained damage to their brain during gestation react in an entirely different manner. They stew at a slight by a person, a group of people, feel disconnected, isolated and bam, they go on something like we have seen in far too many school's and malls. And they have plenty of help with a computer in organizing, obtaining materials and anything they need to carry out their 5th generational act of war as described by the author.
Darn good article and it should all make us think about this increasing phenomenon in our society and really analyze why it is happening and hopefully arrive at some answers in helping prevent it.
S/F Gordon
quote:
Originally posted by AGBrina:
The "4th Generation Warfare" crowd are convinced that there will never be another war between two nations with professionally-trained and technologically-advanced military forces. Therefore the U.S. military must be devolved into what amounts to SWAT teams on steroids.
Mr. Lind is going just a bit farther in this article. He speculates that the military forces will need to devolve further into something akin to "Robocops", in order to combat technologically-advanced "barbarians". I think that he needs to take a break, to re-read a couple of classics on guerilla warfare and anti-imperialist strategies, and to start over.
To be honest, I don't think that anyone in the 4GW community has said that conventional 2-3 generation conflicts will not happen in the future. It is just that the proponents of 4GW claim that conventional state on state wars (think WW2, etc) are obsolete, rare and will be even rarer in the future.
Also their solution from what I have read seems to be to decentralize the state's power in order to allow the state to react more competently than it has been known to.
