In defense of the intangibles, of traditions and rituals
I'm all in favor of professional competence, of training that is useful to the mission at hand, and especially of not wasting people's time.
That being said, I would argue in favor of traditions and rituals. There probably needs to be a proper balance achieved in their use, but that is the case with anything.
In a defense establishment run amok with technology as the answer to everything in war, these intangibles are a brake. As long as we remember that wars are not won by the most advanced gadgets and widgets, by he who throws the most money at the problem, we stand half a chance of succeeding at the endeavor that is war. Such things as tradition and ritual remind us that there is more to war than technology, that there is an art to the craft.
How many of you have attended the funeral of a service member killed in the line of duty recently? Do I need to say more?
At the end of the day, human beings are not robots. They do not perform well simply because they practice, or they are competent. They do not willingly sacrifice their lives because they are good professionals.
Perhaps I am biased from more than a decade of close observation of the Marine Corps and Marines. That being said, I believe I am not far off the mark in positing that it is an organization that succeeds based on more than mere competence.
Today my husband had to do something, had to see something that nobody ever should. The sort of thing that can break a person's spirit, that can make a person doubt everything he is doing. When he got back to his room, when he needed something to reassure himself of what he was doing, he popped in the dvd of the recent PBS program, "The Marines," that I had sent to him.* This is what he wrote:
"After today I had to watch the Marines video again. I know that the particularities and gritty details of it suck, but I still do really believe in the organization. I couldn't keep going everyday if I didn't."
You don't get to that point on training alone. It requires something more, something akin to faith. Faith itself is an intangible. And it is built on a foundation of other intangibles, like rituals and traditions.
Let us have enough training, _and_ enough parading.
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*Aside from the entertainment value for him and his team, I thought it might come in handy in their training mission. This use had never occurred to me.