Perceptual distortions in combat

I posted over at Science in My Fiction today -- more detail on perceptual distortions reported by people who have been in combat situations.

This is related to a popular post about panic back in February -- well, it gets a lot of panic-related Google search hits, at least.

This also ties into the O entry from the A to Z Challenge: On Killing, and my attempts to understand institutionalized killing. Or at least the rationalizing that goes into it, and what the men who are doing it need from those around them in order to handle it psychologically.

I mean, it helps that I could build a society where the main religion is not pacifistic by nature (so that an OK for violence has to be tacked on, as with Christianity) and there is both a justification for and an expectation of certain levels of violence at both a personal and a societal level. And there isn't the mental dissonance of a universal love thy neighbor message. Though how much impact that message has can be hard to judge...

Let's stop before this turns into a ramble about societal structures that permit violence. I'll try to save that for a real blog post.