Society Disconnect and Veterans

Have you noticed how as we become more and more connected that we, in fact, become more and more disconnected from those around us?

When looking around any public venue, I can’t help but thinking that the zombie apocalypse has already arrived but rather than being caused by some man-made or alien virus it has been caused by the smart phone. Personally, I try to keep my phone use to a minimum, especially when with others, but didn’t realize how much I actually still rely on it until recently when my family went on a cruise. You see, when you are out to sea there is no cell service and consequently your mobile devices become disconnected. Of course, the ship offered various forms of connectivity (for a price) but I decided to go cold turkey and let the chips fall where they may. The interesting thing for me was that even though I don’t use mine much compared to those generally around me, I am obviously used to it being there and available whenever I want it. There were times that I would think of something that I would normally just look up and then realize that I didn’t have connectivity and that my phone was actually in the safe back in the room. I would actually find myself reaching back to where I normally carry my phone before I consciously thought about it. Hmm…

As I looked around at the people on the ship with me, I noticed that a very large number of them, of all ages, were still looking at their phones for much of the time. We were on a ship, presumably all on vacation, in the middle of the Caribbean with the bluest water you’ve ever seen stretching from horizon to horizon until it connected to the biggest sky you’ve ever seen…and they were looking at their phones!

Wow...

So how does this tie back to Veterans and the problems they have with integrating into the civilian world?

The smart phone illustration was just an example, a symptom, of the disconnect among people in our society, not the topic of this essay. Recently I was watching a TED talk given by a man named Sebastian Junger who was an embedded war correspondent for many years. During his talk, he suggested the reason for the increases in disability claims, PTSD and worst of all, suicide among our returning Veterans in recent years…even as actual casualties have decreased dramatically when compared to previous wars. If you haven’t seen his talk, I recommend it, it was very insightful. He broke it down into something that I’ve known intuitively but just never fully connected the dots in the way he did.

Let me explain.

For a little background, at this point about 0.5 - 1% of the U.S. population serves in the military at any given time with the VA estimating that only about 7.3% of the living population are, or have ever, served. Consequently, it is not unusual today for a person to not even know someone who has ever served in the military. The result of this is that when a Veteran returns to the civilian world there is already a gap that must be bridged, a collision of worlds if you will. Plain and simple, the two don’t understand each other. This situation is magnified by the disconnect already present in society.

The simplest explanation is that the military is a tribal experience in the old sense. Deployed service members live together, eat together, sleep together, face death together, etc., etc. They bond in ways that most just don’t have a way to relate to if they haven’t lived it. Although the environment they leave is extremely stressful by any measure, the closeness of the small group gives them a built-in support group and coping mechanism. Even those that don’t like each other are willing to fight and die for each other.

The result of this is that when they come “home” they lose the closeness and support of their tribal brothers and sisters. The people around them, including their families, don’t understand them…and often don’t try…and they are suddenly cast adrift in a sea of isolation where each person is an island unto themselves (and spend more time looking at their phones than at the people around them).

This is not a product of some military/civilian conflict, per se, but rather a reflection of “progress” and “civilization.” When people lived in hunter/gatherer or agrarian societies there weren’t these sort of issues due to there being more of a smaller, tight-knit community and less disconnect among people. As we became more “civilized” and moved on through the industrial revolution where more and more of the population moved to larger urban centers we began to drift apart as a society. We moved from a society where the entire community would show up to help raise a barn or to harvest the fields for an injured neighbor to one where we often don’t even know our neighbors.

The information age has just exacerbated the issue with global connectivity which, in many ways, has removed the need to actually speak to those around us.

I know many Veterans who have said that not only would they go back to war, but that they wanted to go. When they’ve said this, I’ve seen people look at them in shock and disbelief. It’s almost like you can read, or even hear, the thoughts; ‘What is wrong with that person?’ or ‘Is he crazy?!’ or ‘They must be some sort of warmonger.’ or ‘They must be a violent person.’ or a hundred other things when the reality is that what they miss is not war but the closeness of their tribe and the sense of belonging…and that being there is worth it to have that back.

I worked for a time assigning Navy Reserve volunteers to deployment positions and I had more than a few who kept coming back for new assignments, not once did I have one that say that it was because they enjoyed or liked war but rather because they wanted to go back to something they understood among people who were like them and understood them.

So what do we do about it? Well, the “easy” answer isn’t easy at all, we as a society need to change. We have to do better…for all of us. We need to reconnect with and embrace each other, including our Veterans. We must find a way to become a community again.

About the Author: Lee Crowson is a Story Teller and Asker of Questions who also happens to be a Navy Veteran and problem solver with over 20 years’ experience in organizational leadership, communications, training, public speaking, operations, human resources and data analysis. He has a strong passion for learning, reading, storytelling, fitness, the outdoors and helping others to reach their full potential. He writes and speaks because it is more easily understood than his interpretive dance.