What it is Like to Go to War

What Its like to Go to War--Bill Moyers with Karl Marlantes

At 40 minutes during this engrossing interview with Bill Moyers Karl Marlantes (November 20, 2012), the author of the Vietnam novel Matterhorn and more recently the non fiction account of "What It is Like to Go to War" speaks of the crushing effect of combat on the minds of soldiers during World War II.

And I think about, there's sort of several ways that the mind can go. In World War II, there was only-- several ways out. The war had to be over or you had to be wounded bad enough that they never sent you back or you could die. And about a quarter of the casualties were psychiatric. A quarter.
What that's telling me is that the mind says, "I've got to get out of here. This is just not good for me. This is not good for me. How am I going to do it? I'm going to go crazy. That's how I'm going to do it." And how did they solve that? They said, "We’re going to give them all a length of service, so that they know when it's over." Vietnam, you know, the Army had 12 months, the Marines had 13 months. The psychiatric casualty rate dropped to something like two percent.

This strategy reminds me of the countdown traffic lights that eliminate the uncertainty of the duration of waiting at a traffic signal.  

Countdown Traffic Lights...the countdown traffic light is convenient since it also illustrates just how short the duration of a red light actually is. Waiting 20 seconds can last forever if you don’t actually know that it is 20 seconds. In this case uncertainty is a stressful experience that may only be eliminated by embracing the low-risk of jaywalking.

However, by showing the duration of a red light, the countdown traffic light effectively eliminates uncertainty thereby reducing cognitive stress since we are no longer charged with closely monitoring the signal while pondering the decision to stay or cross.

Waiting for the red light to turn green patiently reduces enormous stress on the part of driver (and pedestrian alike).  On the other hand, a countdown green light has the opposite effect at least with regard to safety as motorists and pedestrians will speed up in order to "make the light" often causing more accidents then uncertainty might have predicted.

Made me wonder:  Are we born with a "length of service" that provides the same effect of reducing uncertainty?  Sure, there is a lottery as to which day will be the last but we can depend upon averages to eliminate that issue.   Are we less stressed knowing that all of this will come to an end some day and do not have to choose to go insane to be removed from the situation?