Army Lessons: Might Makes Right, Camaraderie Humor & Sacrifice Crucible into Adulthood - E430

Jeremy reflects on his teenage military experience in the Singapore army across two years: 1. might makes right 2. camaraderie humor and 3. sacrifice as a crucible into adulthood. He details the transition from the implicit social norms of school into the military, where he learned that laws which codify right and wrong are actually backed by the use of force. He shares the camaraderie built through shared hardships and the deep humor by fellow soldiers. Arduous challenges pushed him beyond his self-imposed physical and mental limits. He also grew to respect those willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives in service to the greater good, like veterans, firemen and good samaritans.

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(02:07) Jeremy Au:

When I was 18 to 20 years old, I spent two years in the Singapore military as a conscript soldier. Today, as a middle-aged adult, I have an annual commitment to train with the Singapore military for up to two weeks a year. In fact, I've just recently returned from training in the army camp.

Friends often ask me about what I learned from the military and I want to share the three major themes that resonate with me today.

Growing up as a child in a middle-class household meant that I grew up with a lot of social customs and niceties and traditions and conventions. When you disagree with somebody, you tell them that you disagree with them, and then you would often have a debate or argument or some kind of reasoning that explained why perhaps you were right and they were wrong.

The school that I went to as a teenager was an all-boys school that had been founded by a missionary. As a result, there was an explicit and implicit understanding that, yes there were disagreements, there were debates, but we were to use our words, we were supposed to use logic and reasoning to debate and that morality was decided by spirituality, ethics, and a common understanding of the social customs that, underwrote our disagreements.

In other words, it was okay to disagree with someone. It was okay to debate or shout at them or be shouted at, but if you were to push them or beat them up because you were losing the argument, then that was a big social no-no and then you would be penalized by the school, by the discipline master.

As a student, I had joined in debate training and some competitions. A lot of that reasoning often appealed to ethics, what is the right thing for a human person to do, and also an understanding of the legal systems, and appeal to a higher authority.

(03:42) Jeremy Au:

As a result, it was an eye-opener when I joined the military. What I learned is that might makes right. In other words, those who are in power or those who have superior strength can impose their will and determine what is considered right. Power and strength are the primary factors to determine what is considered justifiable.

In other words, those with the ability to enforce the decisions can decide what is considered fair or moral.

(04:05) Jeremy Au:

What I learned is that the purpose of a military is war. Now, it could be either for defense or attack or a mixture of both. Fundamentally, it is the inability of two countries to come to a mutual agreement and there is no higher authority that both parties want to be part of. And so, they decide to contest and fight each other based on the strength of their arms.

When the fighting begins, the stronger military wins over time. External observers can often conflate. Inside the army, I realize that people often have conflated strength with morality. It is true that if your soldiers in the military believe that they're fighting something that is just and justified, then their morale will be higher and they're more likely to win in a war against another military that does not believe because, at some level, their rationale for the war is weaker and does not fully align with the human soul and the understanding of what is right or wrong.

That is why politicians and policymakers and generals work very hard to explain why if we go to war it will be for a good reason, a moral one, and that if we are at war, then we are at war for a good purpose.

I remember running a standard obstacle course in all my gear. I was exhausted. I was tired. I wanted to give up. And they shot to the shouting like, Hey, the enemy is here. They're taking your land. They're taking your house. They're taking your loved ones. And of course, in retrospect, it's kind of hilarious because as a teenage boy who was 18 years old, I had no land, no house, no woman. There was no way that I had any of these things, and of course, there was no enemy either. However, it was very effective and inspirational and I remember, running harder and faster because, yeah, I started feeling anger, righteous anger against this unknown, invisible enemy. I think that source of anger was a very deep source of strength because you get angry when somebody violates justice or your self-interest when somebody is doing something wrong and violates your understanding of what is decent for whatever reason it is.

However, victory also allows you to rewrite history. The stronger you are, the more likely people are going to say that you are right. And after you succeed in a military conflict, then you get to decide who are the winners and who are the losers. There's all kinds of variations of this logic. If you're a soldier in the military and you believe that you're gonna lose, then you're more likely to say that, hey, my cause wasn't just. I'm not fighting because I don't want to and I shouldn't fight this war.

So when I was in the military I felt the circularity of human reasons and logic that became very clear, especially when I exited the military. When I became a civilian again, I would be part of these conversations about law systems and how people have to obey the law and so forth.

(06:36) Jeremy Au:

What I learned is that law is a codification of what is supposed to be right or wrong in that society. Embedded inside the law is an implicit understanding of whether the law can be broken or not. If you follow the law, then you should get carrots. If you don't follow the law and break it, then you should get a stick. If a person murders somebody else, then the law has to have the ability to capture the person, put them through a trial, and then sentence them to punishment. If the law doesn't have the military and police power, or the right of use of force, then it cannot enforce that judgment.

I know. Maybe some of you are like, okay, that's pretty obvious, right? I mean, people rewrite rules a lot of the time. If you're in power, you get to rewrite the rules. If you are a king, you get to rewrite the Constitution. There's all kinds of different approaches to might and right in this world. I'm just sharing that it was A rude awakening for myself.

(07:24) Jeremy Au:

The second theme is about camaraderie. When I joined the military, when I was 18 years old, I was bummed out because my female peers were getting to go to university and moving on with their life. At the same time, I quickly found out that the army is a really funny place. I actually enjoyed my time in the military. The army really builds a very deep sense of mutual bonds with other soldiers because everyone is in the same difficult situation.

We experience the same crazy physical and emotional stress in the system and we're all going through it for the first time. As young soldiers, we were asked to do crazy things that we didn't think were possible for ourselves. We would march for a whole day. We have an army backpack and our food and our water in the jungle. And then, we would just be navigating in the middle of the night and just doing all kinds of crazy things. I had to slide my way down a muddy slope in the middle of a monsoon storm. We were shooting guns and handling live ammunition, and explosives. So we're all in the same situation, pushing ourselves to the limit and we were often exhausted and stressed and we really bonded as peers during that time.

Some of the time, I remember laughing a lot during my army days because everybody has such a dark sense of humor in order to cope with these difficult situations.

We would joke about boredom. We would joke about stress. I remember another soldier who had a very unique mindset. As conscripts, we were paid a very small allowance. In the mornings when he woke up in the bed next to me, he would stretch and yawn, and then he would probably say, hey, I earned a few dollars in my sleep last night. He had basically taken our allowance and divided by the days in a month and divided by the hours, and so he said, hey, with these eight hours of sleep, I earned a couple of dollars. I remember that later in the week we had to do a really intense sprint with all of our army equipment again, through the standard obstacle course.

And at the end of that whole process which was about 20 minutes, back to back, we were sweating, we were panting, we're exhausted and drained. And then he'd be like, Oh, that wasn't worth it. I only earned like 2 cents. To me, I found it hilarious because, he was quantifying sleep as work, and he was also quantifying our sprints as not worth it because he wasn't earning that much.

(09:21) Jeremy Au:

From that experience, I learned that making a strong team isn't necessarily about making sure that everybody has an amazing, great time. Actually it's important to have some level of pressure, some level of mission. Then during these times the humor, and the bonds will emerge and allow the team to come together.

The third theme is the adulthood crucible or sacrifice. As a young 18-year-old, it was only in the army that I realized that I had lived a very comfortable life as a middle-class student. I had always grown up in a comfortable bed. I worked hard to sleep seven hours a night. Then all of a sudden, I was being asked to really push beyond my physical limits in terms of long marches and going through strict discipline and high-pressure situations and harsh weather conditions. I was really being asked to really build out my mental toughness and resilience because I didn't even know that I had these limits and then I beat them and then suddenly I realized that my limit was way higher than I thought it had been.

I remember the test in order to achieve the combat skills badge. We were tested in terrain navigation, first aid, and weaponry, like our rifles and, landmines. The hardest part of the test was the 32-kilometer march. We had to carry our rifle, our field pack, our ammunition load, our life jacket. We had to cross the water obstacles and after that we had to go shooting at a rifle range afterwards. So it was just an exhausting day.

If you had asked me as a secondary school student whether I would ever be able to do this, I would have definitely told you no. However, because I was with my comrades, and we had been training for it, and we had heard that so many other people had already achieved it we managed to find the strength to keep moving. Those hardships really became the crucible for me to become an adult. The part that most resonated with me about this crucible of hardship as well was the understanding of sacrifice. Being a soldier is not just about carrying stuff, managing a battle plan, carrying weapons, shooting them, handling explosives, those are all part of the job's responsibility.

The core of a soldier is being ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, which is that of your own life. For me, that was a crazy realization. I would be happy to sacrifice $10 in order for a really good meal back then. I would be happy to trade one night's sleep in order to push a project through. It's a crazy feeling to know that if a war came, you would probably sacrifice your own life. Of course, I wasn't going to sacrifice my life for a bowl of fishball noodles or chicken rice. It just meant that even though we were in peacetime, even though we were training, if a war did come, then I was probably going to fight and potentially die.

(11:47) Jeremy Au:

Coming to grips with the potential of sacrificing yourself in order to protect your family, your loved ones, your country. It's a very large emotion. It's larger than myself. And it changed my perspective forever. Today, as a dad of two young daughters who are four years old and two years old, it makes me appreciate every moment of my relationship with them. When you realize that you can take away somebody else's life with your gun, it makes you realize how valuable life is. The knowledge that my own life is fragile and can be taken away by somebody else with a gun also makes me value peace and value my relationships with my family and friends.

At the end of the day, nobody wants to die. Nobody wants to die for a bad reason. What I realized in the army was that I was willing to die for the right reason: to protect my children, to protect my family, to protect my community. This experience made me really respect those who make the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives, whether they are first responders, or firemen, or soldiers, or good samaritans.

It has also made me understand how sweet it is to live in a country at peace. In retrospect, that crucible of sacrifice made me an adult.

In conclusion, the army taught me that, first of all, might makes right, two, true camaraderie, and three, the adulthood crucible of sacrifice. I personally have taken these lessons and applied them to business, to team leadership, and my own personal growth as a human being.