MILITARY ETHICAL META-KNOWLEDGE AND INDOOR TEAM BUILDING GAMES. FROM PROMISE TO PRAXIS

Abstract

Contemporary asymmetric warfare raises challenges that can be best described as volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA). These features translate into a conundrum for both the forces involved in multinational theatres of operations, and for academics, researchers, educators and trainers in charge of finding novel means of approaching the needs of the military human resource both domestically and during deployment periods. One specific requirement of the military when deployed is to act in accordance with their code of values, but to also show consideration for other cultures, attitudes and behaviors. Nonetheless, these requirements may more often than clash. Consequently, this paper is built on the assumption that: asymmetric warfare requires a new set of approaches in terms of military education and training that should involve a change in the learning paradigm of cadets and adult officers so they can measure up to the features of this type of warfare. Therefore, its aim is to propose a possible new framework through which one’s own ethical otherness may be discovered and reflected upon in a novel and, we dare say, a challenging manner for the military field and for the didactics of military ethics.

Keywords

• Ethical meta-knowledge
• team building games
• asymmetric warfare
• military ethics