My Experience With Social Control

by Levi Simmons

As a former soldier I have been subject to huge amounts of social control. During my service nearly every aspect of my life was in some way affected by my choice of work. I had a drill sergeant once describe it thus  “This is an alternative lifestyle, being gay or straight you still have control over your life, here I have control over your life.” There was a distinct degradation ceremony once I arrived at basic training, which is a part of TRADOC or the army's training and indoctrination corps. The moment my bus arrived at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri, we were greeted by the drill sergeants who were wearing their distinctive hats, and screaming profanities and ordering us to move and line up. We were escorted to out bunks and all of our personal items were confiscated. We were then issued new clothing as well as “every thing we would need” while in Basic Training. This was followed by being g divided away from the females in the group, being stripped, deloused, and having our heads shaved. We were then formed into a line and a barber shaved all of the male recruits heads. After this we were allowed to eat. The rest of the day consisted of physical exercise as well as running followed by organizing all of our gear in a uniform manner as instructed by the Drill Sargent.

While in training we were not allowed to use any personal electronics, no phones or music. And we were not allowed to consume alcohol or smoke. We were under constant observation being escorted by a Sargent everywhere we went and we were not allowed to speak to any of our “superiors” unless we were spoken to. It is all a grand scheme or re socialization and social control. Part of the design is creating a constant high stress environment, the idea is that if someone is going to crack mentally it is better they do it in a controlled environment. When I entered the military sleep deprivation was a common technique used to keep stress levels high. We would be woken up at random hours throughout the night and made to do strenuous physical exercise. The idea here was to break up the night so that you never got more than three hours of consecutive sleep. Our morning started out with Physical Training, followed by breakfast which we were given 15 minutes to eat. Then we did our training activity for the day. Midway through training we were allowed another 15 minute break to eat lunch. The 15 minute period included the time it took for you to march into the facility and get the food on your plate. Then once lunch was over we continued training until we had accomplished whatever our goal for the day was, we were marched back to dinner, we ate in the a fore mentioned manner and were then marched back to the barracks and given 10 minutes to shower, after showering we performed maintenance on the barracks for 2 hours and then it was lights out and we were ordered to bed.

Most days followed a very similar pattern, except Sunday in which you were allowed 1 hour to use a phone and after that you were allowed to either clean the barracks for the rest of the day or attend religious services. Religion became extremely popular. While doing field exercises you were expected to follow all mission orders and sleep was a rarity. During the first day of the exercise my tent was the target of a teargas attack, as everything was saturated with CS, a chemical which burns soft tissue and irritates the lungs all of my gear was soaked in it. I spent the remainder of the exercise only using my gear to shave and sleeping with a gas mask on. I did not sleep for the following three days.

Once basic training had ended we had four suicide attempts and ,one girl in a coma, and one successful suicide. The rest of us were graduated and sent to our next job specific training  As the training progresses you are rewarded with more small freedoms, which after having all freedoms taken away are very well needed. Once you graduate you are no longer seen as a recruit you are referred to by your rank and allowed have some small amounts of autonomy.

The amount of social control used is necessary to re socialize a person into a soldier. You are taught that the individual is useless without the team and that the mission comes above all other things. This is absolutely necessary before putting people into a dangerous combat environment, as certain natural human instincts and reactions can be the difference between life and death. Once you are accepted as a soldier, you are never truly free to do what you want, there is always an amount of control and supervision.

The purpose of social control is to minimize the amount of undesired actions within a group. It can also be used to control the actions of a population. We are faced with different social controls every day from the laws we live by to the regulations at our job. These are used to maximize personal safety at the cost of personal liberty. Social Control is used by most major businesses as well as all branches of the military and police. The police themselves being an instrument of controlling the populace.