What Combat Shooters Can Teach Us About Usefulness

Or the difference between specialists and generalists

Lion Close Up by Xavier Ortega

My mission here is what the Stoics called ἄσκησις, which means practice or training. No matter the subject, the principles are always the same – those of Stoicism.

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There exists a rulebook for Frogmen. I recently reread Rule #56 in this trove of knuckle-dragger wisdom, which goes as follows: “Understand the difference between a combat shooter and a target shooter.”

When I first read this, my young Neanderthal mind thought the meaning self-evident: those who master shooting for a mission have many skills whereas those who master shooting for a range have but one. I thought it was a simple binary. Its universal meaning, however, is the conflict between two modes of living that lie within each of us: that of the generalist and of the specialist.

What then is the difference between the combat shooter and the target shooter? What is the Stoic thread? Let us start with its most obvious meaning and then pull back the layers.

A sniper is one of the many types of combat shooter, and one of the many skills of the sniper is to stalk the enemy. An example: a sniper candidate low crawls through high grass beneath one of the many orange and yellow leaf covered beech trees dotting the field. He uses the slight undulations of the plain to mask his movements from his target. One of the cloth tassels of his ghillie suit gets caught on a twig as he inches his way forward on his stomach. “How many times,” he mutters to himself, his whispered curses eventually fading into silence. All patience lost, he yanks the arm of his ghillie to dislodge it from the tree, only to witness the tree quiver from root to crown and launch a dozen vultures into the sky. Four hundred meters away, the target – a sniper instructor – places his binoculars down and quietly says, “Numskull.” He writes fail next to the candidates name.

What exactly does failure mean in this case? It wasn’t merely a failure to remain unnoticed by the instructor. It was a failure to realize that his ghillie getting caught was not an obstacle, but an opportunity to practice self-control; it was a failure to compartmentalize a moment of irritation for the sake of the mission; it was a failure to take his wrath in his hands and breathe with it until the madness passes, and he is once more just a man crawling through the grass with a higher purpose.  

It is by failing across a broad spectrum of human experience, again and again, that we make progress in the three τόποι, or disciplines, of Epictetus – desire, action, and judgment – and it is through the three τόποι that we grow and become useful.

Armed with the fruits of failure, what then will happen when we throw a little energy-sapping heat in the combat shooters way? He will say, “Bring it on.” Cold? “Bring it on.” What about when his beats per minute are pushing 180? Or when rocket propelled grenades start shattering nearby boulders into razor sharp splinters? Or when the wind plays tricks on his bullet as it shifts direction and speed and dances through valleys and across chasms? He will say, “Bring it on.” Even degraded states of mind bordering on insanity – chronic sleep deprivation, illness, stress, hallucinogens – are met in the same way.

The target shooter may truthfully say that, “The combat shooter is a jack of all trades and master of none. He is nowhere near as good as I am at accuracy and precision.” The safety and security of the range allows him to control every variable, but does it teach him how to control his breath under duress? What about anger? Or terror? Or hope? Or woe is me? How will he respond when his untested thoughts meet reality and result in a broken femur, a backstabbing friend, or an assault on his character? Or when he is called a numskull and feels the cold hand of failure? How does he know?

It seems then that safety and security preclude growth, while danger and repercussions foster it. The combat shooter has to endure many trials before he can find the “Bring it on” beneath the burden, just as the Buddha had to endure many trials to find the “Om” beneath the fig tree. Both pressure tested themselves across a broad swath of human activity. Both leaned into failure. I’m not sure it’s possible to learn how to say “Bring it on” or “Om” in any other way.

So much for the first level analysis of Rule #56.

We are designed by nature to be useful to others, not just as shooters, but as human beings; not just as specialists, but as generalists. This is the deeper meaning that I failed to grasp. Specialization fools us into thinking we’re more knowledgeable, wise, and useful than we actually are. Once the specialist sets foot outside his domain, he is in foreign waters and he won’t know how to swim. One of the greatest benefits of the generalist mode of life is that we are constantly kneecapped by our own weaknesses and limitations.

What says the specialist? “But I don’t need to train myself like a combat shooter, a generalist, or a Renaissance Human. All I need to do is shoot well, or teach well, or such-and-such well.” How can this be the case when we are subject to the laws of nature? Illness, injury, and death will find us. Others will depend on us. Hardship will find us whether we want it to or not. A time will come when we realize that we were not given this body and that which animates the spongy matter within our skull – perhaps the greatest gift of the universe – to say “This isn’t fair, why does the universe hate me?” when the world cares nothing for our specialness, but to spread our arms and say, “Bring it on.”

In the context of the finitude of life, what then is the value of a trophy, diploma, or letters after our name? Does the lion in the circus – matted, depressed, and broken-souled – brag about the show name on the placard above his cage? What if it is some grand name like The King of the Savanna? What does the lion care for any of this? Through training he is now a specialist: a ball-balancer. Yet by nature he was a generalist: a lion. He wouldn’t give a damn about that worthless placard. All he wants is to do is go home and live as nature intended, free from cages and labels, fighting like a savage for those he loves, blood and drool and pain and love and all of the rest of it.

All we are is what is left when we realize that the trophy and bit of parchment paper are not even our own – all that belongs to us is what we desire, how we act, and how well we command the voices of our inner discourse. Why then build ourselves a cage? Why walk around with a little placard?

The sliver-life leaves us dependent on those more versed in reality than we are. We become liabilities as opposed to assets. For my part, I think those working the power lines, manning the floors of the hospice, or tilling the fields are the true lovers-of-wisdom – philosophers of the ancient school – than any specialist, unless at some point in their past the specialists were poor, or blue collar, or grunts, or gazed into the abyss one too many times.

Generalists are reminded of their mortality, that their actions are as apes that breathe and die, that there is a line between life and death, and it is a thin line at that. They may not return from the stalk, or power line, or hospice, or crop. Just so with the Stoic. Each goodbye is therefore treated as the last goodbye. Each chance for some small moment of nobility is more compelling to act on. Each fig leads to a sense of gratitude for the earth for producing such flawless perfection: its velvety flesh, its agreeable shape, its ancient scent, its satisfying weight in the palm. Each moment may be seen as a world of attention, of calm, and of the purest awareness of what is within our control and what is not within our control.

It is up to us to place the combat shooter self before the target shooter self. If we listen to Epictetus, all that matters is that we make the attempt. What happens after is not up to us.

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