The Art of Manliness - #151： The Way of the Stoic Warrior

00:00:00.000 rott mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so we've talked

00:00:18.320 about stoicism on the site it's a philosophy born in ancient greece but really embraced by

00:00:22.340 the ancient romans particularly high-class romans like seneca and even emperors like marcus aurelius

00:00:27.840 who's one of the most famous stoic philosophers with his meditations but i guess they wrote a book

00:00:32.520 talking about how the philosophy of stoicism can help soldiers who men and women who are served

00:00:39.740 fighting in our wars uh face the challenges that come with that profession her name is nancy sherman

00:00:45.420 she is a professor of philosophy at georgetown university she served as a chair the chairwoman

00:00:50.540 of ethics at the u.s naval academy and in her book stoic warriors she takes a look at how different

00:00:55.920 facets of stoic philosophy can help soldiers navigate things like losing a partner losing

00:01:01.760 a comrade losing an arm dealing with ptsd so we talk some about that we also discuss her most recent

00:01:07.900 book after war healing the moral wounds of our soldiers we discuss how not only war how war can

00:01:13.500 traumatize someone mentally emotionally physically but also morally and what soldiers can do to heal

00:01:19.840 those moral wounds what the military is doing to do that and what civilians can do to help the men and

00:01:25.000 women who are fighting for them really fascinating discussion thinking a lot out of it even if you're

00:01:28.820 not a soldier uh the stoic principles that we talk about it can definitely help your own life

00:01:33.640 so without further ado nancy sherman stoic warriors and after war

00:01:37.840 nancy sherman welcome to the show my pleasure so you've written several books uh we're gonna talk

00:01:51.800 about a few of them today uh one of your books that i really enjoyed was stoic warriors you look at

00:01:57.360 stoic philosophy and how it can inform the military or how the military prepares soldiers for war

00:02:04.420 but then also deal with the aftermath of war um before we get into the details about stoicism's

00:02:11.380 connection to the military i would love for you to give us a just a brief summary of what stoicism is

00:02:17.040 because i think you did such a great job of it in stoic warriors well stoicism is an ancient philosophy

00:02:22.960 uh both that the ancient greeks uh after aristotle and the romans embraced and it's in the tradition

00:02:32.800 of ancient philosophy of being concerned about the good life and flourishing but they take issue

00:02:41.780 these are especially the romans like seneca and marcus aurelius uh and epictetus

00:02:49.420 they take issue with the idea that happiness should include exposure to luck good and bad

00:03:01.120 and so they develop a philosophy of self-sufficiency and self-reliance essentially um well before um emerson

00:03:11.480 and the idea is that your virtue alone should be sufficient for happiness it's actually a

00:03:18.740 socratic position from way back um and so that's the idea that cultivating your strengths and uh

00:03:26.820 intellectual and uh endurance are a matter of enormous self-discipline and that you can be in a

00:03:34.440 certain way invincible is too strong but protected from the outside world infringing on your projects

00:03:42.480 okay so it's basically you're not letting the world or all the the chaos the things that are in flux

00:03:48.560 disrupt you emotionally mentally it's not even an issue that's right and the emotional part of not

00:03:57.360 being disrupted is critical they think that the emotions are disturbances almost um um pathologies

00:04:06.200 if you like so uh and the idea some ways that emotions a little the normal ordinary ones of fear

00:04:13.540 and of of even love and anger um are ways that you are attached to the world and want the objects of

00:04:24.000 those emotions and so they leave you open to disappointment and to the inability to um uh

00:04:31.780 to avert or go for the objects of the emotions in the case of fear adequately avert the risk in the

00:04:39.500 case of desire um sort of get what you're going for yeah so it's very kind of attachment free in a way

00:04:47.260 not buddhist it's not about quiet meditation and getting rid of the self the self is very important

00:04:53.440 but it's just should be your reason has has dominion in this world yeah and i guess they'd say a lot of

00:04:59.140 the emotions are based on perception right so if you can change how you view an event so it's not the

00:05:05.500 thing itself like if you're your child dying that's not the thing that's actually disturbing it's just

00:05:10.420 your perception of how you approach it is what causes the disturbance within you that's right so they have

00:05:16.080 this view that emotions are a sense to impressions that's the way they put it and a sense to ways that

00:05:26.280 you're being perceived upon you might say as you're saying so there and you can say yes or no to those

00:05:33.860 a sense and you might be affected by it just sort of subliminally almost you know you you um there's a great

00:05:42.820 example they give you're on a you're on a ship and uh someone you're supposed to be a sage a great sage doctor

00:05:49.760 but yet you start turning green and so someone turns to you and say i notice you you profess to be a sage

00:05:56.680 but you're you're getting very seasick and scared and the response that a stoic will allow well yes

00:06:03.980 but that's just a pre-emotion or a proto-emotion it's kind of a physiological response

00:06:10.340 but and it's momentary and the true stoic won't indulge it so you know i can sort of say no to it

00:06:18.120 without it taking hold and and without the without it really fully coming to fruition and that in a sense

00:06:24.740 tracks where we are uh in terms of our understanding of of psychology um kahneman for example the great

00:06:32.720 nobel prize winning psychologist has a of the notion and many do that we have two track systems

00:06:39.560 emotions those that are sort of fast track and and go without much brain circuitry and very

00:06:45.060 immediately responsive and those that are more mediated and so the stoics had that notion early

00:06:51.440 on and they think that maybe some are a kind of arousals that you can't control but you won't be

00:06:56.980 impugned for having them and in the long term you can maybe control even those better than you do

00:07:02.000 right now yeah and it also seemed they were very um uh sort of foretold cognitive behavioral therapy

00:07:08.380 to some degree to some degree that's right because they're they view the emotions as not just uh

00:07:16.800 impressions but the part of your brain that's doing it in a sense well that we'll put it differently

00:07:23.320 the part of the part of you you are just reason they're uh they're uh monolithic in that regard

00:07:33.160 and so you uh should be able to control emotions insofar as they are a sense but a sense to that are

00:07:42.940 governed by reason and the and and so uh even your perceptual um capacity should be under the control of reason

00:07:51.820 so a lot of talking and a lot of uh suasion and um persuasion should be able to change your your

00:08:00.220 state what you eventually assenter or um do not give assent to okay i think there's this popular

00:08:06.320 conception of stoics as just like not having any emotion whatsoever or not enjoying life and you have

00:08:12.220 to to be a stoic sage you have to go off into a cave and cloister yourself off but a lot of the the

00:08:17.760 famous stoic thinkers they were like marcus aurelius he was an emperor and he lived a pretty good life

00:08:22.840 seneca he was the tutor to nero and he lived a pretty he enjoyed things he enjoyed life probably

00:08:28.980 wore nice clothes ate good food um it's like how does how does stoicism allow for us to enjoy the good

00:08:36.760 things in life is this where the whole things in different come into play well popular stoicism

00:08:42.620 first of all is the kind of notion suck it up and truck on if you're in the military or or or or you

00:08:49.440 profess a kind of stoic popular stoic mentality you are just sort of um sucking it up and moving on

00:08:56.520 um the stoics were um somewhat um mixed about this the roman stoics were in embracing stoicism embracing a

00:09:07.600 very widespread popular view out there you know it was it was a court as you say it was it was the

00:09:14.440 the court's philosophy um sanica was the tutor de niro and marcus aurelius was the emperor who wrote

00:09:22.180 the meditations which were to himself um at night after during the day a huge golden statue of himself

00:09:33.260 would be wheeled out and then wheeled back so he doesn't look like too much of an aesthetic

00:09:36.740 um when he's leading uh you know massive uh legions of troops and has gold statues um on his behalf

00:09:45.700 that said he is very much trying to distance himself from those things with which he doesn't have full

00:09:56.180 control so epictetus um who was once a slave but then goes on to teach philosophy and the time of

00:10:03.100 neera will say of those things that you cannot um control you know say that they are indifferent to

00:10:08.780 you now the indifference doesn't mean as you were sort of saying before it doesn't mean

00:10:12.780 you don't feel anything it means excuse me it means that you're not attached or desirous fully of the

00:10:24.740 objects of your interest and that you can have them or not have them in that regard they're indifferent

00:10:34.140 not you you don't have an attitude of indifference but they're they're not constitutive of happiness

00:10:41.240 that's what's critical they do not add one iota to your happiness if you have things that you um

00:10:50.580 that you desire um through the emotions nor do they detract if you get the things that you don't

00:10:58.740 want having them is better than not having them but they don't add to the thing that's called

00:11:07.200 happiness flourishing thriving okay so you can have lots of money for a moment but if you lose the next

00:11:12.800 day you're like meh it's no big deal you kind of develop this notion that uh if my kid dies

00:11:19.900 um and i lose the things to which i am really attached then i have to realize that they really

00:11:28.980 weren't a part of true genuine happiness now there's going to be cognitive dissonance for most

00:11:35.300 of us because you don't get to be a sage ever for most of us and you'll still hold on to worldly

00:11:43.840 goods and by that i don't just mean material goods i mean the goods that many of us hold on to love of

00:11:48.680 our children whom we prize and uh spouses and partners whom we um adore and whose loss would be to rip

00:11:58.960 something precious out of our souls and psyches um but they still think that if you got to the highest

00:12:07.500 point of perfection you would somehow realize and embrace the idea that your goodness if you had

00:12:17.920 developed virtue was sufficient for your flourishing let's get to this connection to the military

00:12:23.420 because you are you're a professor of ethics um how did you get interested in seeing how stoicism

00:12:29.540 could inform uh military life well i was at the naval academy in the mid-90s in the wake of a cheating

00:12:39.200 scandal and i was asked to design uh a brigade wide ethics course which i i had taught ethics for

00:12:50.280 years and so that wasn't a novel task you might say but on the other hand i hadn't talked to

00:12:58.360 military folks and not just shipmen but officers so i did the stuff i always do aristotle

00:13:05.620 um plato and uh and and uh some contemporary readings when i got to stoicism early in the course

00:13:15.580 everyone resonated with it in part they resonated with it because one of their own uh that is uh

00:13:22.640 admiral stockdale jim stockdale uh had embraced stoicism wholeheartedly he was a graduate student

00:13:31.480 way back uh at stanford and kind of wandered into the philosophy department and someone handed him

00:13:41.060 a text of epictetus the little handbook and he has sort of said uh what do i need that for you know

00:13:46.820 a martini drinking aviator who plays golf what do you need that for so he put it aside but then he

00:13:52.680 found himself on the ticonderoga in the middle of um uh uh on his way to hanoi or excuse me on his way

00:14:02.220 to saigon and he um started reading it in the ward room and then one day he's an aviator he was shot

00:14:08.360 down and the lessons of epictetus were sort of inscribed in his soul and he said i'm jim stockdale

00:14:16.560 leaving leaving the world of technology and entering the world of epictetus and he imbibed it um

00:14:26.180 for himself it was a salvation to be able to say no to the things that he wasn't in control of because

00:14:33.640 he ended up being in uh prison as a pow for about seven and a half years or so two two and a half in

00:14:41.820 solitary with leg irons so he found this uh absolutely empowering and it helped him as the

00:14:49.460 um head of the chain of command which there is uh in a in a in a military uh prison where you're pows so

00:14:57.620 uh being able to say no i control the show and not you cat eye who was the name of one of his

00:15:04.640 um his torturers slash slash uh prison guards was critical to his survival and and so the

00:15:13.720 long story is the it made sure the military knew of his story and even if they didn't if they were

00:15:22.180 to read epictetus they would find it's kind of good medicine for those who are in situations of

00:15:31.100 deprivation and stress yeah this is where the i guess that what's called the stockdale paradox

00:15:36.100 comes from uh i think he said that the way he survived was like he you had to be both hopeless

00:15:42.260 but also have hope at the same time which is kind of weird

00:15:46.100 so going on to this so in stoic warriors you you look at how stoicism can inform different aspects of

00:15:54.780 a soldier's life uh throughout their career and we start off with talking about the body so for

00:16:01.440 uh the soldier his body is important or because that's that it's trained to be fit to be able to

00:16:08.740 do hard work to fight but when you're a soldier there's a good chance that you're probably you might

00:16:15.200 lose a limb or become disfigured um and that affects them i mean sometimes i think that affects the

00:16:21.640 soldier more than losing the limb it's just the emotional trauma that comes from being disfigured

00:16:26.900 from an iud or something like that but the stoics would say like you know the hardcore stoics would

00:16:31.840 say well you know it's your body it's something external you shouldn't be disturbed by that um

00:16:37.960 is there a stoic approach to our bodies that takes into consideration the role that our our body

00:16:44.860 plays in our sense of self well i'm not sure uh they fully do the most exaggerated case is epictetus

00:16:56.360 who thinks of your body is just one more encumbrance um sort of like a little donkey that you that is you 0.92

00:17:04.340 and then you have to carry all these uh things that it needs and so you've got to carry the bucket of

00:17:11.680 water and you've got to carry your food and all of the encumbrances and so it's a it's an unpleasant

00:17:18.940 image and it's just uh being burdened down um and you're supposed to be able to distance yourself as

00:17:26.820 you say from the physical injuries that you might suffer by realizing that the body is somehow not

00:17:34.840 really not you the which is uh which is reason that's a hard view to have uh given in fact that

00:17:43.380 uh you couldn't survive without a brain and the brain is one of the of the body parts that it may

00:17:50.440 not visibly be disfigured but certainly you mentioned ieds ieds can cause enormous rattling and traumatic 1.00

00:17:58.100 brain injury tbi which leads to other kinds of of um difficulties in being in the world having memory

00:18:06.460 having um good cognitive functioning and the like so is there a a a more palatable version of stoicism

00:18:15.960 um stoicism is kind of hard to swallow in its full form so i would probably say not really i've always

00:18:24.140 advocated to the degree that i find myself attracted to stoicism a kind of moderate stoicism where there

00:18:31.720 are blessings and curses and i guess seneca is the person who's always um feeling the tension he says i'm

00:18:41.020 the doctor they call themselves doctors who heal um the pathology of of of emotional attachment but i'm

00:18:49.020 also the patient meaning i'm sick too i can't fully get rid of my attachment to my body i can't fully

00:18:56.660 get rid of my grief that i lost a a dear friend and that i find myself sinking in um in sorrow i'm

00:19:06.260 struggling too and so he he's always acknowledging the the way in which the externals touch him and that

00:19:12.740 he's trying to limit their impact a bit and i guess that's one way to approach stoicism moderately

00:19:19.000 and with um some recognition that if you are trying to minimize uh the the effect of these

00:19:27.140 devastating accidents on you that you you go forth with some humility about just how how much you can

00:19:34.840 control in the end yeah and that's one of the things i i problems i've had with stoicism is that

00:19:39.700 you try to be stoic like you make that your ideal okay i'm just not gonna let this bother me at all

00:19:44.120 whether you be you lose a limb or something happens you know even like the the daily trifles

00:19:49.780 of life that just annoy you but the problem with is you set that as your ideal and if you don't

00:19:54.500 achieve it then you like get angry at yourself because you you feel bad about yourself that you

00:20:00.140 didn't achieve that ideal and it sort of spirals downward well that's right i think um perfectionism

00:20:06.160 can be a curse and um and to the degree that the stoics set very very perfectionist ideals 0.95

00:20:14.300 with it can come the psyche that freud would say it produces a harsh superego and anger and and self

00:20:23.960 anger um in the form of guilt or in the form of shame um and certainly in the form of disappointment

00:20:30.880 and so i'm not sure it's a a wonderfully winning strategy the other thing is you have to um be able

00:20:38.960 to uh acknowledge loss in order to go forward to readjust to new body images um to be able to

00:20:50.340 do the hard work that will come with um re um physical therapy and and kind of reconstitution of

00:20:59.680 yourself if you've lost as some of those i write about in after war have full full half of their

00:21:06.180 body you know they've lost the whole bottom of their bodies and they can't go on as they did before

00:21:12.840 and so there has to be an adjustment to loss that does involve a grieving process if you're to go

00:21:19.720 forward and i'm not sure the stoics are the best uh uh philosophers to help us with that so let's talk

00:21:27.780 a little bit about this uh the anger because it seems throughout western history anger has played

00:21:34.280 a big role in the ethos of the warrior right if we go back to homer that's what that's what the

00:21:39.860 was all about right is how anger fueled this this 10-year war um and it seems like the military uses

00:21:48.120 anger to an extent like through boot camp you have the the stereotype of the the yelling drill sergeant

00:21:53.540 from full metal jacket and this the like like the things like that but stoics would say well no

00:21:58.660 anger is one of those emotions you shouldn't have because it's a disturbance and yada yada so how did

00:22:04.860 the stoic philosophers approach war if you know other for for centuries anger was often used as a

00:22:11.860 motivator for for battle and for war that's a great question um anger whets the appetite um

00:22:19.460 for for for uh for for war and action um it's often said and so what do they replace it with well just

00:22:27.740 just sort of be clear anger is this disturbance pathology it uh seneca rails on about it it it it

00:22:35.880 makes you livid and it causes enormous havoc inside you and and in the world and part of their railing

00:22:45.100 against it is because seneca and others are advising kings who use it a lot and who go to war

00:22:53.500 needlessly or or throw their servants in in pools of sharks and the like when they break a crystal or

00:23:02.200 do something minor so there's um anger management that's required and so that's part of their interest

00:23:09.260 in being able to get rid of anger now anger comes in waves you know some people think you should be

00:23:14.620 it it is a good thing and other people think it isn't and anger also is uh of of a different sort

00:23:21.320 um it's not clear that you need anger in order to motivate um or incite uh troops to battle what you

00:23:31.840 might need is in the case of the drill sergeant a performance of anger just like the orator performs

00:23:40.720 certain emotions actors perform certain emotions and they instill fear in their listeners and that

00:23:48.240 would get a young boot camp a young person in boot camp to sort of to move in and do better if you

00:23:54.760 um incite the wrath of your drill sergeant now it could also be that the the inductee

00:24:04.200 you get a real dose of anger that moves them to battle but the problem the stoics will say is that

00:24:11.500 you can't shut it off um easily and so you have um rampages and um revenge um killings and um hadithas

00:24:22.060 or me lies or the like so um the stoics think that you can actually fight on principle you know you might

00:24:29.820 have a sense of what's right and wrong and the sense of justice and that will be able to carry um

00:24:38.780 carry you forth in in action and i think it's a real live question as to how useful anger is i mean

00:24:46.000 we wouldn't want to get rid of many would argue resentment indignation moral protest moral outcry

00:24:51.440 if you don't have those emotional reactions to horrific world world scenes of refugees or 1.00

00:24:58.820 or innocent victims being killed um what how do you morally engage um but others would say we'll have

00:25:10.860 that first proto emotion of it and maybe the stoics will give you that have it so it kind of rouses you

00:25:19.520 but then be able to put it into or contain it and use your reason to motivate you forward after that

00:25:28.380 use it as a transitional pivot and move on after that and that may be a way to um to get the the best

00:25:36.740 of both worlds yeah both light the match but then contain it yeah and speaking of that idea that you

00:25:43.540 know the fear of anger is that once you get it going it's hard to turn off particularly in warriors

00:25:48.960 i think you mentioned in your book how um oftentimes when men return from war like increases in spousal

00:25:55.320 abuse happen yes i mean it's a complicated story uh and to just say well it's um there's anger

00:26:07.120 management problems is is too narrow um there's all sorts of reactions to war that have to do with grief

00:26:14.600 have to do with the difficulty of civilian reintegration resentment to civilians who don't

00:26:21.000 understand was uh confusion about uh or or anger about of the injustice of the war whether it's the

00:26:28.900 conduct or the cause or too many collateral killings that were authorized or not enough because then you

00:26:35.620 lose your troops the moral mess of war is endless and you're asking thinking soldiers to sort it through

00:26:42.880 um and it's got a uh bubble up in frustration as well as a certain kind of um difficulty in adjusting

00:26:51.180 to the tempo of life afterwards so just sort of say it's anger and that you can't control the anger

00:26:57.460 when you come home i think understates the moral complexity of trying to adjust the emotions of war to

00:27:03.680 the emotions of civilian life yeah i want to get more into the uh the moral complexities of after war

00:27:08.520 because that's what your most recent book is called after war um but before you mentioned grieving that's

00:27:13.380 a problem that soldiers have and the stoic approach it you know there's a story of uh i forgot who gave

00:27:19.160 it but like the king who forced a person to eat their own child and the the appropriate stoic response

00:27:25.940 was well that was thank you you know like not not be upset about just do it and just calmly eat it and

00:27:32.820 then go away that to me seems uh doesn't seem very healthy a very healthy approach i guess the question

00:27:40.460 would be is there a way we can look at use moderate stoicism to help soldiers and civilians alike deal with

00:27:47.440 the loss of loved ones well that was cambius yeah who who uh uh uh was uh was asked to do that i think

00:27:57.000 um there's it's so attractive to be stoic in some ways and i'm one of those persons who's attracted to it

00:28:07.920 the world throws up tons of things that we can't control the vicissitudes of fortune are around us all

00:28:20.940 the time the limits of our being able to uh influence our children exactly the way we want to or our spouses

00:28:28.540 exactly the way we want to or our students or or the political process or the army or the navy or or the course

00:28:37.700 of of of of a country's future we're just we're small and we all live in systems and the systems

00:28:45.680 collectively exert enormous amount of pressure on us and yet we are asked to hold on to our individual

00:28:52.540 consciences and we can't always be whistleblowers and yet we have to do good in a world that's

00:28:59.520 extremely flawed with pressures that we can't manage always so why not try to be stoic about some of these

00:29:08.840 things now it doesn't mean indifferent but it does mean know the limits of your control and try to

00:29:13.860 try to expand the circle of your control as as widely as you can without being a control freak

00:29:21.860 because no one likes a control freak who's managing other people's lives or if you're too

00:29:28.100 self-managing then you yourself are letting out to the experience of too many things that you can't

00:29:34.960 manage that but but you need to feel so i think experimenting with the borders of control is

00:29:41.880 the best way to be a mindful stoic um and i you might say at the end of the day you end up an

00:29:49.480 aristotelian that's really i think yeah you mentioned in the book how you know you know some

00:29:57.480 soldiers right now that the way they deal with grief is maybe they'll they might not cry in front of their

00:30:03.920 their troop but when they're in their tent with like their close buddy that's when they'll let it out

00:30:09.640 have that moment of grief um so they're like i guess they're mindful of it well yes um there's

00:30:17.360 always a performative element in being a leader and especially a leader with all the modeling

00:30:22.940 that comes with wearing the uniform and projection to very young troops um who may be less seasoned in

00:30:33.440 in battle than you are some more seasoned officers don't always face and often don't face the same

00:30:39.260 stresses that that um the enlisted who deploy over and over again do so you're you're you got to be

00:30:47.160 there for them and you're sort of trying to show toughness but if we look at the suicide rates recently

00:30:51.920 um we know that the modeling doesn't always hold in your most private moments and it's you can't

00:31:00.440 you can't you can't closet off parts of yourself and hope that you will forever not see them they

00:31:07.580 come back to haunt you yeah so in your most recent book after war um you make the case that in a lot

00:31:14.120 of ways we've made clinical the emotional mental and moral wounds that our veterans come home with

00:31:20.920 um first off let's talk about this the moral moral wounds or moral trauma because that's something

00:31:26.280 you don't hear very often when we talk about uh soldiers coming home from war you hear about

00:31:31.000 uh ptsd traumatic brain injuries lost limbs but you never hear about moral trauma how would you describe

00:31:37.860 a what is moral trauma so moral trauma or moral injury is a sense of uh it's a psychological sense

00:31:48.680 that you may have done wrong in a in a serious way uh or been wronged in a serious way or fallen from

00:31:58.540 ideals that you subscribe to in a very serious way and that you um um are hurting there's anguish as a

00:32:08.300 result so it can be accompanied by reactions of enormous um guilt in the case of transgression or if

00:32:15.620 you've been transgressed resentment or in the case of falling short um um uh annihilating shame

00:32:26.240 and uh the it's a psychological injury but ptsd is typical or pts without the d for disorder

00:32:36.860 which some find stigmatizing has clinically at least been understood as a fear response

00:32:43.920 you're responding to a sense of being helpless to a threat a life threat and the treatment has been

00:32:52.680 the kind of deconditioning of that fear and that life threat uh because you're now not in a

00:33:00.160 condition of threat but yet you're reliving the the the stimulus as if you were uh we need to

00:33:08.020 recognize that all sorts of emotions that are that are that cause anguish and enormous pain come home

00:33:16.180 from war or come home from other kinds of assaults and and um and infringements and that they're not

00:33:24.760 all fear-based and so moral injury is a way to um to to talk about that like like ptsd it can be

00:33:30.840 invisible meaning you're not coming home from uh from the battlefield or or or from um uh a trailer

00:33:40.480 in nevada if you're a uh remote um pilot with with a visible loss uh missing something or blinded or

00:33:49.960 or without hearing but you're coming home with um with a psychological injury so how how do we

00:33:57.220 treat is the right word because it sounds again sounds clinical right i mean we know we can do

00:34:02.560 for physical injuries psychological injuries you can go to counseling but what do you do for moral

00:34:08.460 injuries is it well yeah i think you still can um see clinicians mental health professionals um so i

00:34:17.360 don't mean to depathologize um all of the suffering that comes home from war by no means and we're very

00:34:24.420 short on mental health clinicians um in the services and in the va and people need to be able to reach

00:34:30.660 out without stigma but we also have to realize that some of what we do in this country um isn't enough

00:34:38.400 and we could do more um we say thank you for your service um as a quick way of separating the war from

00:34:44.940 the warrior um but it's also kind of pat and a bit superficial and doesn't always lead to a deeper

00:34:51.320 um conversation that builds bridges between military and civilian um we are afraid to ask

00:35:00.820 what people's war experiences were or what people's experiences um when they didn't deploy but are

00:35:07.100 sitting um doing war related work on bases at home because we think we might be prying or it's private

00:35:14.960 or we don't really know what we're talking about you know they're soldiers and they wear uniforms and we

00:35:19.520 don't so we live in different worlds um we're not really so willing to engage in the hard

00:35:26.000 conversation was it a was it an unjust war and we shouldn't have had it and and the awful feelings

00:35:32.300 of futility that many soldiers feel as they think about what's going on with isis in areas they thought

00:35:38.040 they secured in tala fair mosul or fallucia etc so um there's a moral mess that comes home

00:35:48.620 if you've got a thinking brain on you and it's some of it is um some of it you can't process because

00:35:57.020 there's a lot of cognitive dissonance some of it you don't want to process and you want to

00:36:00.120 just medicate with booze or or medicate by driving fast on bases or medicate by being angry and and um

00:36:09.740 being prone to um strike out and and have altercations um but some of it requires actual

00:36:19.240 thinking about the circumstances of war and what you saw and what you did in a safe place with a

00:36:26.860 person you trust and so the opposite of moral injury is moral recovery and moral repair and some of those

00:36:32.320 emotions like guilt um can be relieved a bit by empathy and self-empathy some of them shame by a

00:36:39.900 sense of people hoping in you and you hoping in yourself trust a sense of betrayal that your

00:36:45.780 leadership betrayed you or your country betrayed you by re um restoring bonds of trust somehow and

00:36:52.800 that's civilian work as much as clinical work long answer sorry no that's great no it's i love that

00:36:58.120 um i'm curious if the military is doing anything proactively um you know i know they're working

00:37:05.120 hard to get more clinicians uh for mental health and things like that but um are they doing anything

00:37:09.140 else to i don't know help soldiers prepare for after war and dealing with this the moral complexities

00:37:16.260 of it well there are you uh both researchers and clinicians and um lots of outreach groups that are

00:37:25.720 beginning to recognize that moral injury has a slightly different face than clinically understood

00:37:33.860 ptsd so the the bible of of clinicians for reporting for insurance purposes and for diagnosis which is

00:37:43.220 called the dsm diagnostic and statistic manual we're now up to to um edition five has slightly changed

00:37:51.340 the definition of ptsd so that it includes some factors that or experiences mood experiences i believe

00:37:59.860 they call it they call it of guilt and shame and whatnot recognizing that's not just um responses to fear

00:38:06.340 so that's one thing um that in that bible out there of of diagnosis there's a wider understanding of

00:38:15.340 of of of of trauma and post-traumatic stress trauma um in addition um there are folks that are doing

00:38:24.860 active research on this on a on a on a clinical basis um through the va and in trying to set up

00:38:32.700 treatment protocols uh that would involve um telling your story but not in a sense of trying to

00:38:40.420 decondition the fear but trying to develop compassion for yourself with the buddy that you left behind

00:38:46.860 who whose life you just couldn't save or the child who was caught in a collateral incident would she

00:38:53.220 hold you and condemn you in the very way that you condemn yourself that kind of thing so the conversation

00:39:00.260 is expanding um in clinical circles i think as well as in outreach groups that deal with families that

00:39:08.700 who are who are who are at the core of of um helping a returning service member uh in retreats

00:39:16.440 and the like and you know and i go around talking at various conferences there are many conferences i

00:39:22.220 it it's it's uh a slowly growing um there's so awareness of the complexity of the issues

00:39:31.660 very good well nance before we go where can people learn more about your work

00:39:35.400 uh well after war is a kind of character driven service member driven uh book so i would recommend

00:39:44.380 that um and um it's available uh at all places that sell books including amazon um and it's extremely

00:39:54.340 readable when i say character driven it's it tells the stories of service members who've come home many

00:39:59.360 i've i've known for years who are my students or or or that i've known so that's one place i have a

00:40:05.280 website nancy sherman.com that um has lots of information about the kind of work i do and the

00:40:12.340 kinds of um interests i have um so those are two places all right well fantastic well nancy sherman

00:40:19.460 thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you so much brett pleasure talking thanks

00:40:24.020 my guest today was nancy sherman she is the author of the book stoic warriors and after war and you can

00:40:28.500 find those both on amazon.com go check them out well that wraps up another edition of the art of

00:40:36.460 manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website

00:40:40.060 at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy this show again i'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a

00:40:43.760 review on itunes or stitcher really help us out in getting the word out about the show and also help

00:40:48.260 you giving us feedback on ways we can improve it i really appreciate your support and until next time

00:40:52.380 this is brett mckay telling you to stay madly

The Art of Manliness - October 30, 2015

#151： The Way of the Stoic Warrior

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