Re:I am very real
by Spearchucker on Saturday March 31, 2012 @09:40AM
(#3780275)
You're right about the percentage increase. This is for two reasons - first, because most of the close-range shooting on the ground was done by special forces who're trainined to overcome that resistance. Second, because many of the deaths are from bombs - either shelling from ships at sea, or from aircraft and UAVs. Those last three remove the personal element, and that makes "pushing the button" really easy and guilt-free. We as humans who pride ourselves on empathy can be pretty savage :-(
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I could be mis-remembering the article in question, but I think the percentage increase referred to soldiers who fired their weapon (e.g. assault rifle or sidearm) directly at an enemy they could see - meaning that we've become more desensitised to violence over time.
I also recall that snipers are trained by shooting watermelons - the impact of a high velocity round on a watermelon is not too dissimilar to an impact on a human head. Snipers see the carnage in all its gory detail because of their magnified scope so it's necessary to desensitise them in training.
Edit: slo-mo watermelon getting shot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO3XsZpOiBA
> meaning that we've become more desensitised to violence over time.
And yet the rate of violent crime continues to go down, bear-baiting and dogfights have gone from national pass-times to illegal aberrations, and dueling is pretty much extinct.