Hard Contact Chapter 1: You are a soldier and you don't have to pray for better life

[mamuzzy]

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Clone troopers—and especially Republic commandos—just got on with the job. That was their sole purpose. And they were lucky, their training sergeant had told them; outside, in the ordinary world, every being from every species in the galaxy fretted about their purpose in life, searching for meaning. A clone didn’t need to. Clones knew. They had been perfected for their role, and doubt need never trouble them.

Darman had never known what doubt was until now. No amount of training had prepared him for this.

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Darman had absolute confidence that he was one of the best special ops soldiers ever created. He was undistracted by the everyday concerns of raising a family and making a living, things that his instructors said he was lucky never to know.

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I collected some snippets in what spirit Kal raised his cadets according to this section of the Chapter. 

 

It made me wonder when you were created with an exact purpose, you don't stop and question that how else it could have been. When you were born with an assigned role, and they provide you everything that can achieve that goal, it can gives a certain comfort. Humans need comfort and safety and there is safety in stability and when there is someone who tell you what should you do. As much as people wants to be individual and being in control of their lives, the opposite is also true: there is safety in giving out control to someone else. 

Military is actually - and sadly - a safe place for people who can’t make decisions for themselves or they don't know how to use the freedom they have, because they were never taught to be their own person.  

Kal basically explained things what they couldn't get and made the cadets believe that they don't need family, money, and stuff normal people in normal society have, because yearning for such thing would only distract them. Also, Kal kept telling them that their life is actually one normal people are yearning for: Clones know what to do, Clones know what is their purpose, Clones know their end. Everything is settled for them without figuring out the hows.
 

I actually made a parody of Kal’s teachings. :D For legal reasons this is a joke I made it out of pure affection. I love Kal Skirata more than anything. Kal is a crybaby when it's about the clones and how they are treated poorly and he tried to make this life easier for them: even if it means brainwashing them to believe that nothing awaits for them in the Galaxy, just war. I totall think the projected his own shitty life into them too. Kal had no family waiting for him, and given that his children denied him during the time of his duty on Kamino, it became even more a reality for him too. Just as much the clones didn't have anything outside... Kal didn't have it either. 

This man is so compassionate and yet so fucked up. I love him. 
 

Comments

[ithillia]

I really love these parts of the book (and Kal's personal wisdom-trove HAHAHAHAHA), and YEAH sometime it would be VERY tempting to exchange the midlife crisis and the existential dread for something solid and fix cornerstone /guiding light in your life.
I kinda also think that Kal told the commandos this to give them something to latch on when they first will realize actually how bad hands they were dealt and cannot deal with the other reality - what the natborn's like him have. So to survive this coping period when their life and the outside world clashes, they will at least have a deep insight on the bad sides of having free will to choose freely.