Fundamentally I disagree it is impossible for human empathy and imagination to at least partly understand the pain and feelings of others, without directly going through the experience. Otherwise I doubt even rudimentary notions of right and wrong would have ever arisen.
Empathy and imagination are not easy, but to call them impossible serves to mystify the human condition. It also lets people off the hook of trying to understand others: you can't, so why bother? It provides a magic excuse for anyone's actions, including their voluntary choices, since their feelings are so impenetrable that we have no right to judge.
But to be honest about my own attitude, the truth is I don't care all that much "what it's like to be a soldier," being taken up more with old-fashioned questions of agency and responsibility. Thanks to soldiers I know I didn't have either grandfather, and a lot of other relatives I would have liked to meet.
I'm definitely not the one to feel empathy for soldiers who volunteered (whether in ignorance or out of a misguided sense of "patriotism") to take orders like machines and take part in the invasions and genocides of an openly criminal, terrorist government. I find this culture's near-exclusive focus on their pain and suffering, often coming from people who do not even try to estimate the vastly higher number of people they killed, to be perverse and self-serving.
By the same token as your statements, why can't you admit the following revisions of your first few statements -- and give the actual victims of your military's crimes the primacy they deserve?
Revisions
"Only a victim of the soldier can understand what she goes through. That's the point."
"Only a family who's lost a loved one to invading soldiers can know what it's like to lose a loved one to invading soldiers."
"Only a family who's had a member murdered understands what it's like to have a family member murdered."
As for the rest, I'll quote directly:
"Only a person who's been through college knows what it's like to go through college."
This is complete bullshit. I hadn't been through college and then I was, and I had a very good idea what it was like, both before and after. I've met people who didn't go to college who nevertheless had an excellent idea of what it's like.
"Only a guy who's spun out his Mustang at 120 miles an hour on an icy bridge and almost flipped it over the guard rail knows what it's like to drive a Mustang at 120 miles an hour on an icy bridge and almost flip it over the guard rail."
Mustang driver, eh? Does an accident in a different car qualify? This is nonsense -- sorry. This involves basic physical experiences we all can in fact very easily imagine. Pretty much all of us have at various points fallen, hit ourselves, been on very fast vehicles, seen or felt them slip on ice, been in minor or major accidents, seen footage of actual accidents, seen big things fall and crash, been on roller coasters, experienced shock and blackouts due to shock, etc. etc. These experiences allow us to construct a very vivid imagination of such scenarios. I don't know what it's like to take off for the moon in a rocket, but I sure as hell know what your car accident would be like. Even the part about doing something incredibly stupid and suicidal and macho (sorry, that's what you describe), and romanticizing it after the fact as something cool (sorry, that's the subtext readable in your words).
Basically if you follow what you're saying it ends up at us having no language of common concepts and no reason to bother communicating whatsoever. Yet you're still trying to make a point here to others. These views provoke me sufficiently to give you a very long and serious answer. I expect you to read it seriously.
"Only a parent who's lost a child to SIDS knows what it's like to lose a child to SIDS."
No. And you're denying that the parent who has lost a child to SIDS can know what it's like for the Iraqi mother who lost her baby to a different cause, like the criminal bombing of the American military. This notion conveniently lets everyone off the hook, and yet you still think it important to claim a special place for the suffering of the soldier.
"Fucking hell, people. It's not dismissive of anyone else's pain and suffering to recognize the pain and suffering of one person."
Nope. However, it is also not dismissive to understand who is the aggressor, who is the victim, and what is the crime. Soldiers of an invasion can also suffer. So?
"Why do you all think is so fucking complicated?"
It's not. It will go down in history very clearly, and the first charge will read something like this: criminal government sent naive (and not-so-naive) young people to use overwhelming technology against civilians on the other side of the planet, where it had no business, on behalf of imperialist aims, with predictable murder of these civilians and great suffering -- 99.9% of which took place inside the invaded nation.
Put yourself in their shoes. You might aim yours more accurately.
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