Imagine That

I'm happy to live in a neighborhood where kids can play outside on sunny days without adult supervision.

I wonder if they use their imaginations and pretend things as we did when I was a kid, but I certainly don't want to be nosy and spy on them.

Today's kids are using I-phones and pads so much of the time they don't have much opportunity to use their own minds to create possibilities.

And most of them are constantly under adult supervision so they stop pretending at a much younger age than my generation did.

I grew up just after World War II and, if people returning from military service had PTSD we never heard about it. I personally knew some airmen who had served in the Korean War, and my mother worked at Hamilton Air Force Base as Civilian Personel so I met quite a few other military people. They all seemed perfectly normal, though some might have hidden their trauma.

I wonder if part of the reason some war veterans have PTSD today is because they were used to shooting and killing people all the time with their computer games and didn't realize how different the real thing would be.

I wish kids could just go out to play and pretend for a few hours every day without the use of technology.

Controversial Post

I normally blog about words (language,) books, and kids so this post is off topic. Sorry about that.

I recently talked to someone whose family member was recently released from the military and is looking for work. The logical sort of job for him would be as a police officer or fire-fighter because of his experience.

Probably lots of people in similar positions have also sought, and often gotten, jobs in law enforcement.

And it's not unlikely that many them have PTSD.

Lately we've been seeing a lot of news about police violence toward minority people.  Racial bigotry is still prevalent and that's terrible.

But I wonder if the officers who did such things might have PTSD and be reverting to their training in the military in a subconscious way.

Thousands - and even hundreds - of years ago prejudice was a survival instinct because when someone saw people who looked different it was likely those people were coming to take over their territory.

Today bigotry is no longer helpful and it's extremely harmful, but I wonder if people who have been in situations like wars where the "different" people are the enemy have somehow had that survival instinct revived.

Are people with PTSD more likely to be bigots?

If so, should the government provide some sort of training for people leaving the service to help them get over it?

Those are just questions, statements. It can be a very controversial topic and I'm interested in what you think about it.