Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…The moment I left the military, there was this sense of loss because I was born in a military hospital. I’d gone to West Point at 17. And in a moment, in an instant, I was no longer a soldier. I couldn’t identify myself as a soldier. I didn’t feel at home, suddenly, among soldiers. So what I’ve done is, I’ve tried to replicate that. We joke about it, but soon after I retired, we started a company, and it’s got 85 people now. Essentially, when people asked me why I did it, I said, “Because I want to be part of something. I want to be part of a team. I wanted a place to go around people that I really liked and admired.” It’s got young people and middle people and some old people. I can do enough self-analysis to know that I was trying to recreate the comradeship part of my military experience. It’s largely been successful, so I’ve really enjoyed that. I get many of the same satisfactions that I got in the military relationship. It made me realize that what I loved about being a soldier was less about carrying a weapon and being a soldier than it was about being a part of a team. If we think about the post–World War II era, and to some extent after the Korean War, Vietnam War, you have a significant percentage of American males having been through that camaraderie, but also a pretty high degree of traumatic stress. That’s not the case anymore. It’s a much smaller minority. How do you think that changed our nation in the ’50s and ’60s that so many men had that background? I think it was positive because one, so many people were veterans or have been involved heavily in war sacrifices that nobody felt they could pound their chest and say, “I served and therefore, I’m special.” Everybody thought, “That was a responsibility, and I met my responsibility.” I think it was very good. Also, even though there was trauma involved, everybody went through some trauma through that period. Instead of feeling or being viewed as victims, everybody viewed it as we, as a group, went through this. I think that was very positive. Now that we’ve got a very small percentage of Americans, a couple of things happen. One is, Americans who didn’t serve feel a bit guilty, and they look from the outside and they say, “Thank you for your service,” and they try to be nice. But also, the danger is that people who did serve start to feel self-righteous. “I served and therefore, I must be more patriotic. I must be something more than other people.” Neither of those things are really healthy. We all have a responsibility to society and each other. I think we’ve got to view it as common requirements as common. I would argue that our failure against COVID-19 is a failure to view public health as in the common defense. That’s one of the challenges that’s come out of this.…

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