Real talk: War and generational trauma

pearl_harbour1941 · 2023-03-01T19:12:04+00:00

I think you're on to something, trauma can definitely create a lack of compassion.

My grandma was born in 1913 and lived through two world wars. The abject poverty, death, loss, physical destruction and social upheaval that she and my grandfather went through must have been unlike anything I can imagine. No wonder she could be a hard-ass.

But maybe there's more to it?

Historically - in the absence of medicines - poverty and disease cause people to put in place social protocols to manage these things. In the 1800s, 1/3rd of Napoleon's army got Syphilis. You know, the sexual disease that turns adults mad and leaves their children blind? We can cure it rapidly, but they couldn't.

So what do you do without any medicine to counter this? You put in place social protocols to manage the risk - brides must be virgins, no sleeping around... and women placed strict measures on their girls to ensure this happened. Yep, for all feminists re-telling of history to paint men as controlling women's sexuality, it was actually women that controlled each other's sexuality, not men.

Likewise, if you suffer from a society-wide lack of food and heat, infant mortality is close to 50%, you learn to manage that with social protocols - moms make sure you eat every last scrap of food on your plate whether you like it or not! Dads ensure that you follow his rules, or people DIE. It's literally that serious.

Everyone is a hard-ass because you die if you don't follow the rules.

It's so easy from a feminist arm-chair historian viewpoint - one where the over-abundance of food has caused you to become obese, and one where you have never been so cold you burned your own furniture to warm yourself up - to point the finger back in time and say "Men so bad!" when in fact it was "resources so bad".

I'll leave you with the wisdom that women with very few resources tend not to be feminist...

chupasway · 2023-03-01T20:28:07+00:00

Wow yeah. Am Afghan vet myself and this all makes a lot of sense now.

I also realized that the wife-beating and domestic violence in the 50's was just because those husbands of the 50's were WW2 veterans and PTSD was not studied at all back then. Where as feminists say it was "normalized" in the 50's when it was not, it was just that some many men were vets of that war.

phoenician_anarchist · 2023-03-01T20:46:17+00:00

I'd be willing to bet that this is why feminists talk about the '50s so much... A lot of "toxic masculinity" could probably be explained by post-war trauma.

CookyMcCookface · 2023-03-01T20:26:21+00:00

There’s some truth to this, but the results of combat vary WIDELY, person-to-person. I know people who have seen and experienced things in combat that are unimaginable-and they’re fine. I’ve also met people who never left the FOB, but a rocket impacted 1km away and they’re a mess.

One thing that seems consistently true, however, is that people who’ve never experienced combat are at a disadvantage when trying to help those who have experienced it, as they try to continue on with their lives. Talking to people who have never experienced it, their eyes gloss over, or they’re only interested in asking extremely inappropriate questions (“so, how many people did you kill?!”). But it’s no fault of their own, they don’t know any better. Partners are no better equipped to deal with someone’s PTSD.

And because military service is so rare (<1%), men who’ve experienced it themselves are isolated from the people who they can really talk to about it. During World War 2, war was experienced by entire nations, whether they were on the front lines or not. In the US, it dominated the news and over 10% of the entire US population served. And those who stayed behind in the US built the equipment or rationed their daily lives to make it happen. It was a collective experience. War today is experienced by so few, and it’s so isolated from most people’s daily lives that so few understand it’s effect(s).

Men WANT to talk about it and process it, but very few men know who they can talk to about it and even fewer want to hear it or know HOW to listen. People think “thank you for your service” is them doing their part. It’s usually worthy of an eye roll. I remember some random old dude wearing a “Vietnam Veteran” hat in line at Wal-Mart ask me about whether I had been deployed (I was in ACUs). I told him I had just gotten back. He simply said “welcome home.” That dude got it. But he’s the only stranger I ever encountered that said something other than the obligatory: “Thank you for your service.”

So yeh, I can see how the inability to process war experience is detrimental to those who’ve served. There are plenty of examples of people who’ve gone to war only to return as completely different people. It’s pretty understandable that they tend to create a hard outer shell. And unless there are support structures in place, it’s a problem that has the potential to become generational.

Embarrassed-Tune9038 · 2023-03-01T21:51:06+00:00

My grandfather's brother was a WWII vet. He and his wife never slept in the same bed because of his nightmares.

Heard another story of a WWII vet, US Marine in the Pacific, who married after the war. Honeymoon and he nearly strangled his wife in a nightmare. He had to tell her it was his nightmares.

Edit: After every war we have a drug epidemic. Civil War it was opium. World War I it was Alcohol. WWII it was probably amphetamine. Vietnam, heroin. Now we have clinical opiates after GWOT.

Ukraine will have problems after this.

Intimate100 · 2023-03-02T05:46:11+00:00

Totally! I think it is a big contributor!

Character_Pirate_618 · 2023-03-02T17:02:47+00:00

Chivalry, courtly love and gynocentrism are the real 'toxic masculinity'.

henriquesr · 2023-03-01T18:54:36+00:00

No, because the majority of men who are sent to war front dies, only a minority can survive to come back to create sons.

You can see that it's quite rare someone being son of a former soldier who was sent to war front.

dibberdott · 2023-03-01T20:16:50+00:00

I agree, also have my own research that modern wars, not expansionist empires of the past, are only to cull and of course damage combatant age men from becoming powerful political forces in whatever country one studies with a large proportion of the combat age male demographic.

cl1p5 · 2023-03-01T20:00:22+00:00

I do not believe in generational trauma. If I lost my leg in Afghanistan my son doesn’t lose his leg at home. If your not a warrior your self you are one maybe two generations the child of a warrior.

If the man was wicked before war he will be wicked in war and he will return home being wicked. If he teaches his son to be wicked it is not because of war and his son has the choice to be righteous or wicked.

99% of all stories war stories I heard and told have not been about combat they are stories of your friends (mostly about drinking, women and getting in trouble). If you see your father’s tear when he talks about his friend you know he died and you will never hear how.

Title	Real talk: War and generational trauma
Author	ArgueLater
Upvotes	35
Comments	25
Date	March 1, 2023 6:30 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/11fbbru/real_talk_war_and_generational_trauma/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/real-talk-war-and-generational-trauma.1153924 https://theredarchive.com/post/1153924

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