We leave aside the real life complication of battalions and depots. We suppose the regiment to be a whole, something that lives and breathes more or less as a single entity.
We try here to develop the analogy that the Devils are the body and the Colonel is the soul. The soul being the combination of the free will and consciousness; sometimes thought to be a gift from God and it is certain that you do not get the one without the other. So in this regiment, we have body and soul. An analogy which I am sure has been developed many times before, although I cannot, just presently, put my finger on an example, apart from the inverted version which often crops up in Shakespeare, with the body standing for the kingdom and the head for the king. The proper organisation of the parts into a whole which is pleasing to God. Also a variation on the rather discredited story of the homunculus. Or the deus ex machina.
Quite often other people refer to the regiment as the Colonel. The Colonel does this and the Colonel is going to do that. The Colonel personifies the regiment.
But the Colonel is also human. He does need to sleep, to get his seven hours or so a night. The regiment, however, as a whole, does not sleep. The regiment is up and running 24 by 7. Sometimes important things go down when the Colonel is asleep, before his orderly has been able to wake him up (we have no lady colonels in this world). The Colonel knows nothing of these important things at the time; the Colonel is unconscious and the regiment has not had the benefit of his free will. Life – perhaps in the form of a raid on the next battalion’s drink cupboard – had to go on.
We note in passing that sometimes the Colonel talks in his sleep, but he has left strict instructions that nobody should take any notice of what he then says.
In the morning, he wakes up, and along with his regiment he is hungry. But he can express his hunger in words because he can read and write. He writes out an order to go and raid the next battalion’s food cupboard and gives the order to his adjutant. So this time we have an action which is both conscious and willed.
There are radios in this world and the Colonel is kept informed of the progress of the raid. There is, so as to speak, interoceptic feedback about the remaining supplies of ammunition, proprioceptric feedback about the company which is pinned down in the communications trench and exteroceptric feedback about the five hundred yard advance of the enemy fusiliers, all of which goes to bolster his consciousness and sense of agency. But it is all a bit of a fraud really; the raid has taken on a life of its own, even though he is now awake, and he is rather deluding himself when he thinks that he is in command.
But, to be fair, sometimes he is. Sometimes, when the going gets a bit rough, he gets down there and takes charge in person. He puts the mettle and the fire back into his regiment which, having faltered, gets stuck back in. Perhaps he stands at the back of the firing line, steadying it with his calm and measured commands. On these days, he does earn his oats.
Then there is delegation. He might order the regiment to march, but that marching order has to be translated by others into detailed orders for all the various components of the regiment. Breakfast has to be cooked before the off. Billets have to be prepared for the night to come. Companies have to set off at 15 minute intervals so as not to get in each other’s way or to block the roads and junctions. Military police are needed to look after those junctions. In the same sort of way, I might decide to go for a catch at a cricket match, perhaps giving myself an order, as it were, without attempting to control the detail of the action, the complicated and dynamically modified movement, once I have made the decision.
Sometimes the order will be countermanded. Perhaps with the lead companies only being pulled back in the nick of time.
Sometimes the Colonel will issue an order, but there is not all that much free will about it. The regiment is about to mutiny and he needs to get the rum into the mess tins before it does. Or there might be orders from on high. Sometimes the free will of the Colonel is superseded by the free will of the General. The analogy can take this alright.
Sometimes something will go wrong. Maybe the captain who looks after the 4th company is no good and has to be replaced. The analogy, perhaps, of some kind of transplant. Or a sergeant of the 7th company is too rough on his men and needs to be sent on a training course. The analogy, perhaps, of going to the physiotherapist about a bad ankle. Getting lost in smoke and mirrors, perhaps the Colonel himself needs a spot of psychoanalysis. But the analogy breaks down when the Colonel is posted after his three year tour, in that we cannot, as yet anyway, transplant brains.
From all of which we can deduce that consciousness and free will, like regiments, are complicated things.
PS 1: with apologies to the family of Lieutenant Colonel John Cameron.
PS 2: I remember now, Monday morning. This post is pretty much the same as reference 1; an armed service version of that civil service one. Which is OK, but I would have felt much better about it had I remembered the first while posting the second. Perhaps we are getting to the point where I need a personal assistant or an editor to keep me on the straight and narrow.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/an-analogy.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment