“And what are you finding out?”
“I don’t know. It’s strange. Sometimes I imagine each country is represented by a person. This person has the character and attitude of the country he represents. At least its attitude on the international stage. If all of these people were at a party or gathering, you would have a crowd that I am not sure I would want to be with. You would have a lot of manic, conniving characters most of whom would be trying to find a get-rich-quick scheme of some kind. And they would all be lying to each other to try to get there. It would be such a weird, absurd gathering. Sometimes I imagine all of these things happening while these people are formally dressed in suits.”
Tom sat back, smiled and started nodding.
“No but it’s true,” she continued, smiling with him, “where I grew up, we were taught certain things — respect your neighbors, find something you can do for others, and be tolerant. Can you imagine that I grew on those ideals and am now helping drive one of the characters in that circus-party? What’s more strange is that I’m not sure what the purpose of the party is. What? Each character is trying to find a way to get the others to obey him? Figuring that out has been my adventure.”
“The thing about that circus party that makes it more strange is that if you don’t play along, you will lose. Whatever the game is.”
“This reminds me of something I read recently. I was reading the book Heart of Darkness and —”
“That’s a coincidence. I was just about to reread it.”
Jiyeon laughed. “I guess we are telepathic. But there’s a line or two in it that resonated with me: ‘Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself.’ So that’s my story. Ten years later, I’m still happy I’m out here on my own, despite the strange world I’ve found myself in.”
Tom paused for a moment. He felt relaxed while looking into Jiyeon’s quiet eyes. He watched Jiyeon take a delicate sip of her drink before he said, “what’s your family saying now? Are they proud?”
“They are. But they also don’t really know what I do. I’m sure you have it the same way where you can’t talk about much.” She was smiling at their circumstance.
“If everyone knew exactly what we were doing, there would not be any intrigue and nobody would be interested. So I’d say because we can’t talk about it, people around us want to know everything we do. I think if the former were not true, the latter wouldn’t be either. It’s a bit of a paradox.”
“I get that feeling too.” Jiyeon smiled and looked at ease.
“How do you like living in Seoul?”
“I like it. It’s a busy place, so even walking down the street you feel like you’re in the middle of action. That’s different than what I was used to growing up.”
“Do you ever try to get away- for a weekend or anything like that?”
“Yes, I do sometimes. But mostly I just stay in the city. What about you? Where do you live?”
“I live in DC. It’s not as busy as this town.”
“How long have you been with your group at the CIA?”
“It’s been a good number of years now. But before this job, I was in the military, so it has really been one long stretch of doing similar work.”
“How long of a stretch?”
“I joined the Navy right after college. So this has been my life’s work.”
“Yes, I remember, we were briefed that you used to be a SEAL. That’s a special ops group right?”
“Yes — It’s the equivalent of your country’s White Tiger battalion.”
“Oh — wow.” Jiyeon took a sip of her drink.
White Tiger was closer to the equivalent of the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta. White Tiger was the South Korean Army’s land-based counter-terror unit. Tom heard that Delta had trained with them from time to time, but when he was at DEVGRU, they had never trained with White Tiger.
“Why did you join the military and the SEALs?”
Tom looked at the wall at the far side of the restaurant. He seemed like he was looking into a safe he had locked in his mind. “It was an escape.”
“Were you in trouble?”
“Not in that way.” Tom’s eyes were half shut as he looked just past Jiyeon. She looked at him like one looks at a large scar. She leaned forward, wanting to hear a secret. But her sensitivity took over and she adjusted the direction of her questions.
“Have you had a lot of missions like this one?” She asked like a kid.
“This one is not out of the ordinary. I’ve had quite a few where I was alone in unfriendly places,” Tom said matter-of-factly with his head angled slightly to the side.
“How do you keep so calm about it?”
“It’s really just conditioning.”
“You mean like fitness? Like strength and conditioning?”
“No, like operant conditioning. Or classical conditioning.”
“So you’re like one of Pavlov’s dog’s?” Jiyeon said with a half-laugh, “Is that it?”
Jiyeon is smart, Tom thought. He had studied Ivan Pavlov in a psychology course in college. But he had really understood Pavlov only when joining the SEAL teams. Ivan Pavlov was a Russian scientist who lived from the mid 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. He conducted a famous experiment with dogs in the early 20th century. He would serve the dogs their meal and at the same time ring a bell. As the meal was being presented to the dogs, they would start to salivate in anticipation of the food. After several repetitions, the dogs learned that when they heard the bell, it meant that food was about to be served. Eventually, just ringing the bell, without showing them any food, caused the dogs to salivate. The dogs had been classically conditioned. Operant conditioning was similar except that it was a behavior that was being conditioned, not a bodily response.
“In a way, yes,” Tom responded, “A lot of our behaviors can be explained by Pavlov’s dogs. Not everything we do — we are rational human beings after all — but a lot of our biases, likes, dislikes, and attitudes can be explained by classical conditioning and operant conditioning. And the SEALs take that and use it.”
“How? How do you do it?”
“Well, in training, anytime someone loses at something — whether it is a boat race or a beach run, he is punished with a painful number of pushups or some other physical activity”
“But not everyone can win — only one person or group can win a race.”
“That’s true, but that’s exactly the thing. The point is not to make you a fast boat racer. The point is to condition you that failure at something will lead to a lot of pain. I watched one boat crew do 200 pushups once after placing fourth in a boat race. Those guys never came in that far behind again. The instructors were conditioning that group’s behavior, their attitude to win.”
“Oh God”
“But they condition you with rewards too. If a team works hard in the exercises and wins boat races, the instructors give the team a break and praise them. And they condition several things with positive and negative reinforcement, not just winning. They condition into each SEAL a teamwork mentality, a ‘can-do’ attitude, and self-confidence. So after the training, you have a group of people left who simply will do anything to accomplish a task. For them it feels wrong to think something can’t be done. That’s operant conditioning at work.”
“And so you think this applies to everyday life?”
Tom took a sip of his drink. He was having Four Roses bourbon, neat.
“More than that,” he answered “I think it has an impact on world events more than people think.”
“That’s because of the biases and dislikes you were saying right?”
“Well you guys deal with it every day. When I imagine the people in North Korea, from birth they have been told that everything bad that has happened to them is because of the United States. The people there are starving, and they’re told it’s because of an American blockade. People there are dying from disease at a higher rate than most other places because of a lack of medicines or medical knowhow. Their families are told it’s because of the US. As kids they are told that Americans came and tortured babies during the war. So from a young age, people have all of these strong negative emotions — fear, anger, disgust and are conditioned to associate that with America. It’s no wonder when you see them on TV why they look so hateful. They have been classically conditioned.”