"It may sound terrible, but I often say that the military saved me from a conventional life in the United States and I've never really thanked them for it, because I haven't exactly been pro-military in my work"
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There is a quiet, almost mischievous confession embedded in Lifton's line: the institution he spent much of his career interrogating is also the one that gave him an exit ramp from a predictable American script. The “It may sound terrible” isn’t just politeness; it’s a preemptive strike against the moral accounting his audience might demand. Gratitude toward the military can read as complicity, especially coming from a psychologist known for scrutinizing war’s psychic machinery. He admits the personal dividend while refusing the easy redemption of a thank-you.
The phrase “saved me from a conventional life” does a lot of work. Lifton isn’t praising militarism; he’s acknowledging how the draft-era military functioned as a violent kind of social mobility program, pushing certain lives into contact with extremity, mortality, and the state’s power. For a young clinician, that proximity becomes formative material: less a career boost than an existential rerouting. The subtext is uncomfortable and honest: critique is sometimes born from access, and access is often granted by the very systems one later opposes.
His final clause is the tell: “because I haven’t exactly been pro-military in my work.” The hedge (“exactly”) keeps him from caricature. Lifton’s stance isn’t anti-soldier; it’s anti-romance about what institutions do to people and what people do under institutional pressure. The line captures a distinctly American tension: we want dissent to be pure, untainted by benefit. Lifton’s point is that lived experience is messier - and that messiness is where serious moral psychology starts.
The phrase “saved me from a conventional life” does a lot of work. Lifton isn’t praising militarism; he’s acknowledging how the draft-era military functioned as a violent kind of social mobility program, pushing certain lives into contact with extremity, mortality, and the state’s power. For a young clinician, that proximity becomes formative material: less a career boost than an existential rerouting. The subtext is uncomfortable and honest: critique is sometimes born from access, and access is often granted by the very systems one later opposes.
His final clause is the tell: “because I haven’t exactly been pro-military in my work.” The hedge (“exactly”) keeps him from caricature. Lifton’s stance isn’t anti-soldier; it’s anti-romance about what institutions do to people and what people do under institutional pressure. The line captures a distinctly American tension: we want dissent to be pure, untainted by benefit. Lifton’s point is that lived experience is messier - and that messiness is where serious moral psychology starts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Military & Soldier |
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