I’m usually a little hesitant to get into philosophy books from military folks because I’ve seen… we’ll say a “rah rah,” attitude where things could be a lot more objective than they wound up. I think it’s a product of our modern all-or-nothing society that allows so little room for nuance.
But I heard his commencement speech and thought the idea of a book where he expands on his lessons learned sounded interesting.
And it was.
It’s also a good philosophy book harping on the importance of team work and pragmatism.
I found the most interesting part of it was the foreword where he said he was hesitant to give the commencement speech in the first place because, even if it was in Texas, he had doubts that a military man would have an audience in a college.
Then he was shocked that they seemed to like it so much.
I think that we’re often sold black and white pictures of people or groups and there’s very little room for gray. Even less so with increasingly-sparse social media outlets where we’re limited so much. Too much.
Nuance slips away until you’re left with such basic sentences that everyone is either friend or foe and the lines are clearly dividing everyone when, in reality, there’s a lot more middle ground and occupants of said ground than we’ve been led to believe.
It’s okay to be nuanced. Hell, I would say most of us are pretty friggin’ nuanced so I guess what I’m saying is it’s okay to acknowledge it in ourselves and others.
This guy was sold the idea that all universities are left-wing anti-military incubators and he was wrong, wrong, wrong. Tons of people in college are nuanced enough to realize it’s okay to support troops while also being anti-war and angry at politicians who are so blasé about sending troops in to die.
That’s probably the best lesson I got from this book: be open to the idea that we’ve been manipulated into thinking the world is FAR more black and what than it really is.
#philosophy #books #reader #lifelessons
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