Psychology of War

01/27/2024

Today, January 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This day is not just an academic or a political exercise. It remains about human lives and human families. Families like mine, who continue to feel the ripple effects of our ancestors' trauma, even now. And although the Holocaust is unique, it rhymes with every other genocide there ever was or ever will be.

It bears our constant awareness that the same sociocultural and neurocognitive pressures that led to the Holocaust continue to rear their ugly heads around the world, at home in this country, in our own lives, and in our own minds.

If there is a single lesson to distill, it is this: You and the human tendency to genocide are. not. separate. things.

As WH Auden said, "Evil is unspectacular and always human, shares our bed and eats at our table."

03/23/2021

Sending love and support to all our Boulder family tonight.

11/19/2020

09/15/2020

Greetings team - flagging this virtual book launch September 22 @ 1300 ET. Free registration.

Hope you are all safe and healthy.

Join us for a discussion of David Barno and Nora Bensahel's Adaptation Under Fire from the BTG-Oxford University Press book series!

07/22/2020

Team! Hope you are all well and safe in these uncertain times. Psyc of war comes up for me daily, still, as do you all.

If you find yourself with some time on your hands, consider registering for one or more of these online seminars by the US Institute for Peace. They are free of charge during the COVID crisis. Their office is right across the street from mine at the Dept of State. They do amazing work. Hopefully you can take this and magnify it through your contact network.

Much love to all, Dr. Giles

The Academy’s online courses and in-person courses, workshops and trainings are available through a variety of learning models, covering a range of issue areas and providing various certificates. No matter what you do or how experienced you may be, if you are committed to building peace and resolv...

02/23/2020

A great read that lays out the truths of battle.

Elite athletes have benefited from performance psychology for decades, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the U.S. military started to realize that it could be used to enhance battlefield performance, too.

08/27/2018

In Le**os, Greece, young refugees cope with a growing mental health crisis.

07/12/2018

12/05/2017

Fascinating to think about. Might dehumanization and idolatry be two sides of the same coin?

Developmental psychologist Paul Bloom recently published an article in The New Yorker about dehumanisation. He argued – drawing on research from many subfields in philosophy, psychology, anthropology and sociology – that the way we often think about things like slavery, genocide and misogyny is ...

04/25/2017

Thoughts?...

https://www.facebook.com/david.fowler.581187/posts/10210522418635217

Drone pilots and intelligence analysts who work with them may not be in physical danger themselves but "no doubt are war fighters" who experience psychological stress, says the Air Force.

02/20/2017

Local colleges bridging divides...

Love to all!

The United States Air Force Academy is working with Naropa University to start building bridges over possible stereotypes that we may believe about each other. It would seem that our two cultures a…

07/14/2016

https://www.facebook.com/TaskandPurpose/posts/1018014358246538