|
We call this adaptive thinking, and our psychs tell me that we select for it. We want people who thrive in ambiguous situations, and make good decisions in grey areas, lacking full-information, when they are tired, hungry, etc. Our operating environment in Special Forces is full of those very situations. Guerrillas, intel sources, etc. are the people we deal with, and many of them are involved in unsavory activities. You will be forced to work with these people to accomplish the mission. When you call back to check with higher, they are going to want a SITREP after you are done, or a recommendation, not a complaint about something that is going on. Some of the events will require negotiation, and some you will have to disengage from and report it. You will have to determine which is which and deal with it, or you are going to have a bad rep as an indecisive and inflexible SF soldier.
The psychs also say that we select another group, but they cannot explain how. The average person has a high performance curve in low-stress situations, and it decreases under pressure. The soldiers we graduate tend to be "stress-innoculated", and do not perform strongly until the stress goes up. Then SF soldiers do better than they did with no pressure. This is a very unusual phenomenon. They have found that in high-stress situations, like SERE, with a measurement of stress hormones as an indicator, the SF guys are consistently less stressed than other SOF soldiers, to include Rangers and SOAR personnel.
Not everyone has these characteristics, but that is who we want, and who we are looking for.
TR
__________________
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
|