I want to apologize first, as this is kind of a rant, but to me it involves a lot of the polls that are currently in question right now. This rant uses the movie “The Day after Tomorrow” for examples. Now this is nothing against the movie, but I feel it portrays me feelings about some of the Poll questions very well. If you have not seen this movie, I’m not sure how well my rant will be understood, but I will attempt to make it understandable without it.
To start with, the question of Leadership Training, Communication, Emotional Control, and Psychological First Aid. In the movie, one of the main Characters, Sam, son of the other Main Character, is informed by his dad that a killer storm is inbound and the best thing to do is hunker down, stay warm and wait for help. When the storm breaks for a little bit, a local cop starts organizing the group to move out and head south. Sam is unable to convince everyone to stay because he shows a lack of confidence, and an inability to articulate a good reason to stay there and not leave. Whereas the Cop, a figure of authority, already had the ear of the people, was able to convince people easier to leave.
Now how does this involve the above courses? First, let’s look at Leadership. If more people had experience with Leadership/Management training, then there would be less Sheeple. When it comes down to it, there are to types of people, the leaders and the lead. While having everyone trying to take charge would be a bad thing, having people who are not defaulted to being lead would be a good thing. Unfortunately it is ingrained into our society to no question authority, to follow those in charge without question, and thus we have Sheeple. People, who mindlessly follow another, like a sheep. Had they the ability to think for themselves, they would have listen to Sam take about how bad the storm was, and how much worse it was going to get, and hunkered down. Instead they went out and froze to death only a few miles away. The cop, if he was a true leader, would have realized how bad it was when so few people awoke from their rest stop and headed back, if not even before they took the rest stop, he would have been looking out for those he led, instead of worrying about looking foolish.
Better Communication would have helped Sam to convey just how bad it was, how bad it was going to get, and why they really needed to stay there. In the movie he was a smart kid, supposedly on the trivia team, simply because of a girl. He was intelligent, but I’m not sure I would say smart.
Knowing some king of Psychological First Aid, would have helped everyone out, by helping to calm those people who were panicking and allowing them to make a better decision about what was going on with the storm. To a point this was showed when Sam got soaked from calling his dad, and when his girlfriend started getting delirious from a bad cut on her leg. This with a combination of Emotional Control was needed to asses the situation, push his personal feelings out of the way, decide on a course of action, and get the job done, and save her.
To me this movie show one of the biggest reasons for not only a Knight, but a Jedi to have a wide range of training, because you never know what situation you might find your self in. For the question of martial art requirement, in the movie, they had to defend themselves from a pack of starving dogs that had reverted to their wild nature due to hunger. This hits home for me simply because recently, in the town I live in, we have had numerous dog pack attacks, how these have been traced to a few local homeless camps that have dogs, but do not control them or feed them very well, so they are just borderline feral. Knowing some form of self defense would,
1. Make you more aware of your surroundings.
2. Give you a better chance to fend them off.
3. Protect yourself and those around you.
