Give and Take

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Give and Take

CS: The army is not Tumblr.
me: Certainly not.
me: Really, I appreciate that about it, though there are a lot of things about the Army I wish I could change.
me: The Army forced me to learn to accept people who think very differently from me.
me: And to appreciate them for their better traits.
me: On tumblr, I could just surround myself with people who feel the same way I do, and that's true to a slightly lesser extent in civilian life. But in the military, it's not like that at all.
CS: That's it, people seem so set on compartmentalizing themselves they seem completely offended by the idea of give and take to deal with others.
me: Yeah.
me: When i worked in the ER - I mean, it's an institution of advanced medicine. Science is its backbone. But, possibly because it is both Texas and an American military institution, many of my coworkers (military doctors and civilian nurses) were very religious people.
me: And I found there was a lot of cognitive dissonance in that. How can you both not believe in evolution, or believe that the Earth is only 5-7,000 years old if your entire livelihood depends on the intact truth of science?
me: How can you be smart enough that you made it through medical school and still think the flat tax is a good idea?
me: But all in all, those things were small factors. In civilian life they might've seemed like a big deal, and on tumblr it would be like oh no, I can't have ar elationship with that person, they're dumbfucks.
me: But really, they were good doctors, great nurses, and everybody gets really angry about child abuse cases.
me: Everybody thinks a story about a guy on PCP who breaks free and takes a shit on one of the Team Center computers is hilarious.
me: Pretty much everyone likes coffee and can appreciate a good drawing.