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Let's talk about standards-based culture versus culture-based standards. If you graduated high school before 2002 or so (Oregon Trail generation) and joined the Army, you joined into a standards-based culture. However you used to do things was replaced with Army. 1/? https://twitter.com/CampfireCaptain/status/1308767063155015689
From training you went to someplace far away from home, disconnected from what came before, and surrounded by other Army people. So doing Army things the Army way becomes the culture in and of itself. Does it work? Kind of! For many people, it provides structure and community. 2/
For the nefarious, the military structure provides a more effective means of covering their wickedness, because so long as I salute and starch, I don't just blend in, I look like an exemplary Soldier, no one would believe I would rape someone! Just look at that haircut! 3/
One problem of multi-generational senior leaders is this standards based culture is theirs to their bones. They were raised by it. Thus they miss the confluence taking place between those for whom the Army is a culture replacement and those for whom it's a culture pause. 4/
Thanks to the Internet, military service is no longer a severance from the people a Soldier surrounded themselves with before they raised their right hand. They go to Basic Training, they get their phone back, and they pick up where they left off. Their culture remains. 5/
For some, that means the culture of discipline, integrity, etc doesn't change but is reinforced. But if your culture was toxic, you don't have to leave it behind anymore. Now you just have a structure to hide behind better. 6/
Until the military embraces recognition of how we build a culture that believes itself superior because of how we treat people, how we cope, how we help each other survive, we'll stagger from blow to blow like a punch-drunk boxer, believing they can win. 7/
We are not only more uniform inspection from a better culture. We are a change in culture away from better standards. That culture has to be how people are treated, until the villain sticks out like a sore thumb. 8/8 for now
We are not going to fix this with higher standards of activity or behavior. One, the Army's already established that it provides effective cover for the terrible people in your unit. More Army won't cause them to suddenly confess their crimes. 9/?
If we're going to fix this, it would require every unit to operate in a way that invites scrutiny and holds themselves, and each other, to demand excellence and renounce dishonorable behavior. The result of that culture was a very different pattern of behavior. 10/
Me and my battle buddy, while on the AITPSG trail, wouldn't dream of letting each other go out in front of our formations without checking to make sure we looked like professionals. Blousings, laces, something in your teeth. A checklist didn't drive us, the culture did. 11/
PSGs who didn't demand that of themselves and others, who didn't invite scrutiny, who were casual with who had their phone # or how they talked to trainees, became easy to identify, because they were counter to the culture we had built. 12/
My point is, we have to build a culture that paints that as part of the drive and demand for excellence, and that it's a culture that looks after each other over matters great & small. My favorite Saint is St. Martin of Tours, who severed his cloak to clothe a beggar. 13/
I think of how his troops saw him, If he regarded his badge of office as something he would cut in two to clothe a nobody, how much more would he do for his Soldiers? That's the kind of leader I want to be, and the kind of culture I want. 14/14 before I make a fool of myself
ADDENDUM: When I say that the Army sends you someplace and you developed an individual institutional culture (Army Germany is very different from Army JBLM) the invasion of personal culture means that those without an existing support structure just get lost. 15/14
A ton of the loneliness and isolation young Soldiers are dealing with is part of what drives them towards toxic subcultures is that those cultures are recruiting, and they're recruiting harder and better than Army culture is doing. 16/14
