While getting his graduate degree in psychology, David Grossman (On Killing) fulfilled his practicum requirement by serving as a junior high school counselor:
I worked in group sessions with many troubled young men, and one thing they consistently wanted from me was help in getting their way with the adults — parents, teachers, and others — whom they saw as “the enemy” on their adolescent battlefields. I told them that I knew a way to increase their “charisma,” a “charm spell” that was guaranteed to increase the probability of having things go their way by 10 to 20 percent or more.
They were eager, they were excited. “Charm spells” and “charisma” were terms from Dungeons and Dragons-type role-playing and video games, and they wanted to learn this piece of psychological magic. The trick is, I told them, to appropriately use the magic words “please, sir, and ma’am.”
A few were excited and convinced by these mercenary and manipulative application of the old “magic word,” but most were disgusted. They would never do such a thing. They could never debase themselves in such a weak and cowardly manner. Their self-esteem, their image, was so weak that they could not permit themselves to say these hateful words of appeasement. They wanted the “enemy” to submit before the superior force of their will power, but they did not have sufficient will to use the means available to them. The only method they could conceive of using was some form of physical posturing or brute strength: to out-yell, out-pout, or out-hit their opponents. But in this as in all human interactions, the victory goes most often not to the strong, nor to the swift, but to the sly.
We must never underestimate the power of the desire to maintain one’s self-image. In the case of these children (and of many adults), it prevents them from using simple courtesy as a social stratagem. In combat, the desire not to be seen as a coward in the eyes of others is the single most powerful motivating force on the battlefield, a force sufficient to overcome the instinct for self-preservation and make men face certain death without wavering. But, in addition to sustaining men on the battlefield, the demands of the self-image also have a long history of constraining combatants.
A friend of mine was the sponsor for a visiting Central African officer who was attending the U.S. Army’s Infantry Officer Advance Course. This experienced, intelligent, and articulate African officer almost failed the tactics portion of the course because he could not and would not devise any plan nor select any answers that involved a flank or rear attack. To even imagine doing so would be profoundly dishonorable and was simply unthinkable.
It is easy to feel superior to such an officer today, but he is only an obvious aspect of a long heritage. From the ancient Greeks, who preferred “manly” face-to-face combat and refused to use projectile weapons, to the French, who were offended and shocked that the Germans refused to meet them in honorable World War I-style combat and came around their Maginot line, history is full of sacrifices made on the altar of the “warrior” self-image. Today that legacy of self-inflicted constraint can be seen in the resistance to the use of maneuver concepts.