Of course, I'm getting ahead of myself in making the kinds of comments I did in my last post, and there's a lot more to be said about each of the things mentioned, but it'll all come together eventually.
I started the laundry and watered the garden a bit. It's too hot out this time of day to do much in the garden though. I've been cutting back the cucumber and squash plants for various problems, like some kind of green worm that seems to be not only eating the leaves but also possibly trying to set up cocoons. I think I really need to cut back a lot and see if there is any chance of getting any produce out of these, but I wouldn't be surprised at this point if I ended out having to give up altogether on those two vegetables. I have other seeds I could try, though.
But back to our text...
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"In their writings, World War I generals told young officers to make personal acquaintance with all the men in their company. They should know them all by name so the soldiers would not feel that they were unimportant to the Army. Officers should try to know the men's personal problems, such as homesickness, or family problems to create an impression that the officer is interested in the soldiers and that he will try to take care of them. This concern will benefit the officer because he will be able to locate any morale depressants quickly, such as problems with the company mess. The soldiers will do more for an officer who looks out for their welfare.
Professional paternalists are not particularly lenient...
Professional paternalism is an elitist style of leadership that is based on a clear class separation between officers and enlisted men, just as parents feel justified in telling their children how to behave." (p. 60)
This is interesting too. I think that it's possible that this was a part of the leadership style in Vienna. There definitely was this whole caring atmosphere there and the leadership did evidence this kind of behavior (I even have some written documentation from said leadership that could be seen in this light; I took at least one of these that way even at the time, which was about 6 months after I'd returned home from Vienna.
Also, if I can change gears here, I think this could help me in understanding some of the sexist things I was talking about in an earlier post about not being taken seriously.
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"Discipline (meaning here willing obedience) should not be based on the club. Officers should understand that soldiers fight and do not run away in spite of their fear of the enemy because they are afraid of losing each other's respect. The main control over soldiers, then, is the result of pressures from peers, not superiors, as least in a unit with high esprit de corps..." (p. 61)
So the glue that holds everything together (the cause of obedience) in these instances peer pressure. There was some peer pressure in Vienna, but it felt like it was more in the bigger areas like being like "everyone else" (not literally everyone, but by far the majority) in attending the English-speaking church. It felt to me that a lot of things I experienced in Vienna, originated in a top-down manner. It even felt like some of the competitive issues, where I felt like I was being pitted against someone else, was probably fed from above, for whatever reason. They could have done this for several reasons, including: 1) to increase my sense of ambiguity in the organization or 2) to make me feel more vulnerable in and less needed by the organization. Perhaps this is similar to in the Army, though, as it seems very possible or even likely that there too it was or could have been social engineered from above.
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"The question that emerges from this early analysis is: How does a military officer create this very important esprit de corps? The soldier's intense desire for a sense of pride initially can be built up as a result of the humiliations in basic training and is used as a basis for creating esprit de corps. Here is one instance in which coercive techniques may support paternalistic techniques." (p. 61)
So let's get this straight: the army tears the new soldier apart to create a tabula rasa which allows the army to then recreate what the person wants the soldier to be, which results, at least in part, in esprit de corps.
Personal psychology in the service of group psychology in the hands of an evil master-mind. The "evil" part, of course, depends on how you look at it.
So, basically, after going through this great personal transformation (which happens conveniently for a whole cohort all together), results in individuals identifying very closely with others who've been through the same basic experiences, and having developed the same basic values (more or less) in the process. And by this time the feeling of being different than those in the civilian world after going through all that personal and collective trauma, results in the soldier doing what most people do, namely, relate to those most similar to themselves, which in this case, is other soldiers.
In Vienna it would have been other missionaries, instead of soldiers, and there wasn't a cohort going through it together (at least the initial socialization / boot camp), but other than that how I'm re-phrasing it seems like it would be a good fit for the Vienna mission.
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"The object was to create in each man an automatic response to orders and a sense of acting in concert with other men. The fact that actual movements and activities on a drill field were irrelevant to the confusion of a battlefield was seen as not being as important as the habit of acting in concert without thinking." (p. 61)
The parts here about needing an "automatic response" and I'm not sure that acting "without thinking" was exactly what was wanted or in play. I think being unquestioning, especially in any of the major or most fundamental issues, would apply better to Vienna. But maybe the differences (between "without thinking" and "unquestioning") are only a matter of looking at it from a different angle; I'm not sure. But I feel more comfortable with my wording vis a vis the Vienna situation.
I'd also change the wording of the part about "acting in concert with other men" to be more along the lines of "functioning within our norms and customs." As such, once the rules of the game were (apparently) internalized then one could function as part of the group, and since it was a pretty closed system, there was, I think little room for deviation from the group norms, and the result could be something akin to "acting in concert with other men."
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"Symbols and ceremonies were specifically designed to promote discipline and morale among troups... intended to inspire a feeling of group pride and expressed in perfect teamwork and instant response." (p. 61).
These kinds of things are, I think, almost run of the mill in the corporate world, for example, and in and of themselves, I don't think there's anything wrong with these things, and I don't think I was ever bothered or concerned about them while I was in Vienna, either. But these are also more akin to "high culture", which I did accept in Vienna.
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"In discussing out non-commissioned officers (NCOs) were given some leadership opportunities, the author says that "oversupervision is to be avoided because it slackens initiative and morale." (p. 63)
Although I wasn't in a position comparable to NCOs, I must say that I don't remember ever feeling like I was over-supervised, in the sense of a boss breathing down your shoulders.
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"Paternalism is not an 'ours is not to reason why' kind of doctrine. It is based on a notion of human nature that assumes that people are more motivated when they understand why they are told to do something." (p. 65)
Here's a situation where I think it was worse in Vienna. Because of the "security" concerns and the resultant segmentation of knowledge, you couldn't always be told "why" and it would be possible that "whys" that were provided could at times have been misleading. In this sense, Vienna was more like a spy agency, I think than the military.
Maybe the leadership style I experienced, then had only some superficial resemblance to the paternalism style of leadership, at lest how this author defines paternalism.
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"Clearly an officer who adjusts the manner in which he gives commands shows the importance of knowing the personality of the subordinate and the atmosphere of the unit." (p. 66)
I can't recall any examples of adjusting how commands/instructions/etc. were given in Vienna. So this might help me understand something else I've felt in my experience in Vienna and then later, and which I've become possibly over-sensitive about; namely, that in not treating me as a unique individual I balk and a big defense shield goes up inside me. Vienna was the first time I think I experienced it, and most certainly the first time so strongly and for so long, but it was also present in my dealings with my first employers in Russia and by the time I got to my doctoral studies I had zero tolerance for this kind of thing, so if I was going to be pushed into a mold (becoming a professor) that I didn't want, I wasn't going to have anything to do with it, so out the door I went. If they would have listened to me, in my doctoral studies, if they would have helped me try to reach MY professional goals, I would have stuck it out. Why they didn't do that, I don't know. All I know is by that time I had zero tolerance for that kind of thing and my dad understood my leaving the program to be evidence that I didn't "trust anyone" (his words). With the help of this text, I'd rephrase it to be I didn't "trust anyone who won't treat me like an individual, but who insists on forcing me into a mold, for whatever reason." I'm talking of important things, not like "Should I go to the movie or the beach?" If someone I was with (a friend or whoever) insisted on going to the movie, I'd probably go along (as long as it wasn't, say, a horror movie). That's no big deal.
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My first load of laundry has finished, it's almost 2:30, I haven't had lunch or taken my lunch meds yet, and I still haven't finished one chapter! But I've got to stop now to take care of these other things.
~ Meg
