Do you have to sell your brain to be a soldier (or to work for the government)?

Our greatest human resource is brainpower - yet the paradox of the military is that the construct they work within is based upon a form of discipline which is inherently and actively hostile to an independent cast of mind.

For the most part, if you are a creative and original soldier, the system will either hammer you into conformity at an early stage, or else cut off your chances of promotion much beyond O5 or O6 – Lieutenant-Colonel or Colonel. As a consequence we get, mainly in the officer corps, what is known as the ‘Military Mindset’ – intellectually limited, careerist (in the case of some), conservative, conformist, predictable – albeit, more often than not, though certainly not always, physically brave – though morally timid.

As they say, and it is an observable fact, most officers will put their lives on the line way before they will risk their careers. Moral courage is a rare thing in the military if only because it is rarely rewarded and almost invariably punished.

The Military Mindset is no small problem because it means, in effect, that we have an intellectually limited military which is operating way below the human potential which would normally be represented by the large numbers of people that are contained within the military. Further, natural selection takes place before most people join the military. Truly creative thinkers steer clear because they cannot stand the thought of living without intellectual freedom. Conversely, unimaginative types naturally tend to gravitate towards the reassurance of a military structure. Either way, the military neither attracts nor encourages the intellectually brightest.

The Military Mindset exists because the military are addicted to a particularly rigid form of hierarchical discipline that was originally developed to cope with large numbers of almost completely un-educated soldiers – and which, I would argue, is no longer appropriate for today. In fact, even the Romans had trouble with it when they had to deal with unconventional warfare. This is not to say that the military do not need discipline – all human endeavor is shaped by discipline to some extent or other – but more that the military’s existing form of rigid, zero fault, hierarchical discipline needs to be modified significantly to the point where authority is delegated to the lowest level possible and rules are more of a guide than a cage.

The US has a particular problem with the Military Mindset both because it now makes such extensive use of military retirees as consultants (people who have been already been conditioned to be as conformist as the serving military) and because the Federal Government is nearly as hierarchical, rigid and bureaucratic as the military.

Rigid minds are at least as great as great a threat to National Security as terrorism – and, probably a great deal more so.