There is a certain threshold of dangerous and selfless action that defies ordinary logic. In the cases of direct and unambiguous help to others it is called heroism. In cases where the action causes harm to some parties the definition is less clear. In the worst cases it is referred to as terrorism. Either way the readiness to face mortal danger can be used for both good and evil. Whether it represents brainwashing however is a different question.
dejb, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you haven't actually been exposed to any form of military training, have you?
While you may feel this to be irrelevant, I can assure you that you aren't quite able to grasp the nuances and evolved thinking behind this type of "performance under stress" training unless you have experienced it firsthand. Being an observer isn't good enough.
It's "brainwashing" only in as much as all other forms of teaching are brainwashing. Which is to say that it is not.
I actually think it is quite relevant. If I'm right then you have been to some extent brainwashed into the thinking that the training is reasonable. Your response makes sense if you had been brainwashed or if you hadn't. Of course this doesn't prove anything either way.
The point is that the proper identification of brainwashing is always going to come from an external observer. To me the process I have heard described of 'breaking someone down and then building them up again' is the definition of brainwashing.
Not subjective. It boils down more to feel the fear, but do it anyway. Which is the point of stress innoculation in basic training, police academy, the more advanced stuff of special forces, or even SERE.
Grossman's books describe the physiological effects of stress and combat. Some of the responses are also caused by folks not understanding just what has happened to them, and why is their body acting like this?
High speed driving tends to drive adrenaline levels way up. Police brutality complaints are much higher in the aftermath of high speed pursuits. Yet the tunnel vision and other responses of that kind of driving also affects non-police drivers. We had an incident here in Denver where an ambulance driver t-boned a light rail train. How the heck could someone not see something that's 15 feet tall and 200 feet long? Adrenaline poisoning will do it to you. And I contend that could have been anyone who did that, as well. It takes "innoculation" to learn how your body behaves in these situations, and to do the "right" thing despite what your body wants to do (which in my case is usually puke and soil myself).
