Impedimenta
Why we fail to act appropriately in dangerous situations
Impedimenta: Latin plural meaning baggage, luggage, items which impede movement
Everyone with even a passing acquaintance of warfare knows the saying, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Western military personnel stress not individual elements of a plan but rather the overall goal; the means whereby to achieve it will vary wildly depending on how things unfold.
Flexibility is essential, and flexibility means being able to drop one’s preconceptions, hopes, and routine behaviors in order to adapt to whatever happens to be the present — and often unwelcome — reality.
While Western military personnel are drilled in this way of thinking and operating, civilians are accustomed to predictable patterns of life. Thanks to the almost-eight-decades of peace in Europe, and thanks to the material abundance delivered by capitalism combined with semi-free markets, ordinary people are conditioned to feel that life will always carry on much as it has always done, the odd hiccup here and there notwithstanding.
For most people the worst thing they can imagine is losing their phone or not finding their favorite brand of junk food on the supermarket shelves.
