Most people are decent and not capable of hurting each
other. These people are the sheep. We probably don’t like to think
of ourselves as sheep, but I suspect there might be an element of
truth in this. And the vet who told the story says he means nothing
negative by calling them sheep, “To me it is like the pretty, blue
robin’s egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into
something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard
blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other warriors are like that
shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into
something wonderful.”
A much smaller percentage of the population has
a capacity for violence. People who have this capacity and little
to no empathy for others become vicious criminals. These are
the wolves. But what about those who have a capacity for
violence and a deep love for others? These are the sheepdogs,
and their job is to protect the sheep from the wolves. Some are
military or police officers who use their capacity for aggression
to protect others.
This idea can, of course, be a slippery slope. It’s also very
easy to excuse violence by justifying it as protection. But whatever
you feel about the police and the military or your personal beliefs
on the politics of this metaphor, it resonates very deeply with
soldiers, police officers, and some first responders. Anton is
a perfect example. When he left the military he got a job at the
VA specifically to help address this issue. “One of the reasons I went
to counseling school and one of the reasons I do what I do in my
private practice is because when I came back from the war, every
one of the counselors they had at the VA, was in my mind, a sheep.
They’re trying to treat me like I was a sheep and I was like, ‘I’m
a sheepdog. I don’t need my hypervigilance as you call it, to go
away, because that’s the skill I have that keeps me alive when I’m in
combat.’” And for some sheepdogs they are constantly in combat.
On the lookout for the wolves among us.
Interestingly, Anton is now helping vets do just that. “A lot
of what I do is help them [returning vets] define what their flock
looks like. If you can’t be in the military anymore, what can you do
to still feed that inner protector that you have, and then what can
you do to still feed that need for some sort of action, some sort of
activity that challenges your skillset.”
What kinds of flocks do these people find? What activities
challenge their skill set? As you might imagine, it ranges. Some go167 / Super Power or Super ProblemDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:43, subject to the Cambridge