As I mentally wrestled with my insubordinate soldier yesterday, desperately trying to keep him from throwing away his career in a pique of anger, I couldn't help but think of the book, Learned Optimism, that I read at the beginning of this deployment.
Sure, the soldier had many legitimate gripes with this unit. This unit has a very poor track record with soldier care over the years. Some of the fault could be found in the DC-area culture, which simultaneously breeds a class of ambitious, cut-throat, political networkers and a class of entitled, self-absorbed, ego monsters. Neither of these classes produce the type of leaders who would look out for and mentor soldiers.
Certain dynamics on this deployment also worked against general soldier-care. Much of our leadership was fairly new and not well-acquainted with the soldiers or their issues. Half of our unit was cross-leveled from other units around the country, meaning that there was not much in the way of unit chemistry or pre-existing bonds. Also, our unit was split into pieces and spread around the country.
All that granted, this soldier was not in a helpless situation. He believed he was, but there are always areas of our lives that we can control and even improve. This soldier had never finished memorizing the NCO Creed, which is required for his promotion. He had not bothered to ask if there were other reasons, related to behavior or work habits, that might have obstructed a potential promotion. He certainly could mouth off less and respect his NCOs more. The fact that other soldiers were getting promoted ahead of him might not have been as much about favoritism, as the fact that his NCO-caliber skill set was not matched by an NCO-caliber demeanor.
But we must take another step back in assessing this soldier. Why did this soldier believe that he had no ability to improve his state? This gets back to the concept of learned helplessness. Somewhere along the way, this soldier learned to interpret unfavorable circumstances, not as an exception to the norm and as something to overcome, but as the norm itself and without remedy. When bad things happen, they are part of a pre-conceived pattern that encompasses either history, the whole of the present, or one's identity (or perhaps all three).
While the last pattern is hardest to detect because it is the most painful and personal, the other two were clearly in evidence with this soldier. He has been stuck in his rank for a long time. He believes that he has been stuck in this rank because of the unit's history of malfeasance and because of the leadership surrounding him at the present.
We must not scoff at this soldier's self-deception--it is emblematic of the mentality of much of my generation. Many of our young adults were taught as children that they had angelic natures and were the center of the universe. They were not treated as sinners who need constant correction, nor were they given sources of meaning beyond themselves (i.e. faith, family, community, etc). Thus, when something goes wrong for young people, they are prone to think that it is beyond their control and that they are victims. They also have no hope of transcendent meaning in the circumstance because they are center of their world and meaning starts and ends with them.
This problem is compounded by the general fracture of the family in our society. When little Jack watches his single mom work tirelessly to barely put food on the table, he begins to think that the world is unfair and that there is not much you can do but try to survive. Because his parent is slaving away to put food on the table and there is no parent at home to help him take responsibility for his life and his choices, he is given no means with which to overcome obstacles. Of course, these are all generalities, but they tend to fit the pattern that has led to this generational disarray.
So what do you do with a person who struggles with learned helplessness, which in turn midwives depression and resentment? First, you recognize that there is a superficial, psychological, and spiritual component to the problem. The superficial assessment recognizes that this person is not taking responsibility for himself and is thus liable to whatever consequences his behavior has earned. Simple justice would make for simple solutions, but it doesn't dig to the heart of the problem.
Second, once past the superficial diagnosis, you must deal with the psychology of learned helplessness. The Sergeant Major stumbled upon one way of doing this yesterday. He didn't bust the soldier down a rank, which would've reinforced his faulty interpretive grid, but gave him two weeks to put himself back into position for a promotion, which encourages a sense of responsibility.
This was a great move by the Sergeant Major, but it only affects potential behavior and not the thoughts that underlie behavior. The soldier now has a promising and responsible path forward, but his pessimistic interpretive grid may kick in and tell him that because of the conspiracy of circumstances around him, it is a hopeless endeavor. As a result, he may quit before he ever starts. Ideally, this soldier will learn to dispute his thoughts (i.e., other soldiers are getting promoted) and begin to change his interpretive grid. Until he does this, others can help dispute his thoughts. That is why I will try to search him out and help him with the NCO Creed. If he tries to feed me the BS that he is feeding himself, I can quickly put it down.
Third, as thoughts lie behind behaviors, so beliefs lie behind thoughts. It is not enough to change thought patterns is the reference point is still me. This is a point I made with my activist friend. For him, society seemed to revolve around "civil rights" (i.e., so-called marriage "equality"), and his conversations would always come back to this issue. I finally asked him what his purpose in life would be in a country where such rights are in no way possible, where survival is perhaps the main goal of day-to-day living?
He couldn't fathom that possibility. We live in a world of realities, not ideals, and the reality is that if someone I love dies, even if I have altered my thought patterns to recognize that there is much more to life than death, that death will pierce me down to the very core of my basic beliefs. There is no making optimistic lemonade from death's lemons. If I am my own reference point for meaning, then the tragedy of a loved one's death will be devastating and total.
But if my life and my happiness is not ultimate, then such tragedies lose their full extent of their potency. If God's glory is ultimate, then I can pray that He be glorified in and through such tragedies. If His saving purposes for His people by grace through faith in Christ is ultimate, then I can grieve with hope. If His providence rule is ultimate over human affairs, I can entrust any circumstance to His holy, wise, and powerful plan as it unfolds in this world.
It is easy to see another's self-destructive lifestyle and read it merely as a behavior problem. But there is a complex psychology behind behavior that centers around our thoughts. It might then be easy to read those thoughts as the core barrier or enabler with regard to well-being. But thoughts always arise from beliefs, and if those beliefs are faulty, the whole psychology enterprise becomes a tower of cards, awaiting their fall. New behaviors need new thinking and new thinking requires a new heart. If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation--the old has gone, the new has come.
