Grossman, Dave. _On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society_. Rev. ed. New York: Open Road Media, 2014. --- After World War 2, US Army Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall worked with a team of historians to interview thousands of soldiers from more than 400 infantry companies in Europe and the Pacific, soon after they had been in close combat with German or Japanese troops. > The results were consistently the same: only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in  combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. Those  who would not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they  were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get  ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges. > The notion that the only alternatives to conflict are fight or flight is embedded in our culture, and our educational institutions have done little to challenge it. The traditional American military policy raises it to the level of a law of nature.  —Richard Heckler,  In Search of the Warrior Spirit --- Breadcrumbs: Rutger Bregman's Humankind [[Reference Notes/The God of the Left Hemisphere]]