{"id":56322,"date":"2023-01-26T01:00:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=56322"},"modified":"2023-01-25T09:54:30","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T14:54:30","slug":"qotd-non-commissioned-officers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/01\/26\/qotd-non-commissioned-officers\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Non-commissioned officers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“Deltas”, the “socio-sexual hierarchy” spergs inform us, are the good soldiers, the go-along-to-get-along types who know their place in an organization and \u2014 crucially \u2014 derive their sense of self worth from excelling in it.<\/p>\n

Your ideal “delta” is something like a lifer noncom in a non-pozzed military. Back in the days, I’m told, new recruits and civilians used to call crusty old gunny sergeants “sir”, to which the gunny would reply “Don’t call me ‘sir’, I work for a living!” That’s<\/em> the attitude. Those guys with all the stripes on their sleeves aren’t officers because they lack “command presence”; they’re not officers because they don’t want<\/em> to be officers. They know themselves, and, crucially, they know where they best fit into the organization’s overall mission. “Get in where you fit in” is, in a very real sense, their identity.<\/p>\n

Examples of that kind of guy are tougher to find in the historical literature, which is why we need to develop, and pump up, the archetype<\/em>. […] the ideal is the centurion<\/em>, the backbone of Marcus Aurelius’ army. A soldier, a Stoic, a leader … but one who knows, and values, his place in the organization above all things.<\/p>\n

Severian, “Be a Centurion!”, Rotten Chestnuts<\/em>, 2020-04-07.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Deltas”, the “socio-sexual hierarchy” spergs inform us, are the good soldiers, the go-along-to-get-along types who know their place in an organization and \u2014 crucially \u2014 derive their sense of self worth from excelling in it. Your ideal “delta” is something like a lifer noncom in a non-pozzed military. Back in the days, I’m told, new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,41],"tags":[31,572,139,1343,1462],"class_list":["post-56322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","tag-army","tag-leadership","tag-psychology","tag-romanempire","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-eEq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56322"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79559,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56322\/revisions\/79559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}