Yeah, I'm completely out of tune with people who have to have music playing constantly in the background of their lives. That's a lot of people but there we are. I find now & again is much better.

One of the most interesting stories I heard about Vietnam, interesting from the pov of human nature & how loyalty works that is, pretty grim as you say otherwise, so I'll leave out the gory details, was what happened when 100 or so marines got cut off & besieged without food & water for 5 days on a hilltop.

The army sent helicopters to rescue them, but the pilots kept on bottling out at the last moment because it was too dangerous. Every now & then one of them would get shot down on the way back. The guys on the hillside cheered when that happened & cursed the pilots, not the NVA.

Counter intuitive you might say.

Finally, 2 helicopters made it, but they were from the marine corps not the army, & one of them contained an unarmed general in an immaculate uniform, who went to the highest & most exposed point on the hill, without a helmet & with a telephone to each ear. He had a bodyguard of 15 men around him who stood with rifles pointed towards the totally fucked up men waiting to be rescued, saying 'stand back from the general'.

Then he called in the airforce to provide distraction & got everyone out in marine corps helicopters which didn't turn back.

The guy who told me this said that if that general had then told them he wanted to be the King of New York & would they back him by force of arms, then they would've done so without question.

I'm getting interested in ideas around cultural evolution these days, though it's a topic frowned on by the strictly scientific Darwinists.  Loyalty for its own sake is a big thing with the remaining premies it seems to me, maybe the only thing, I don't know.

Here's some music for you to dip into. Seeing as you're a man who's gone down to the sea, you might like to contemplate the picture that goes with it. At first sight it appears to be 3 strange alien figures in an apocalyptic landscape, but closer inspection reveals 2 well dressed ladies watching boats set sail, with an old man in a broken down unfashionable hat behind.

On even closer inspection, they aren't setting sail, they're coming back.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this so I'll leave it there.
  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1uvYdW8MSk