Air University Review, May-June 1968

The Air Force Man and
The Cultural Value Gap

Lieutenant Colonel Robert H. Drumm

Air Force personnel left over from World War II and the Korean War view with alarm the values and attitudes of younger officers and airmen of the Vietnam era. This article attempts to provide insight which may assist the reader to gain understanding of this “emerging generation.”

The current cultural value gap between older and younger Air Force men is not new and is not restricted to the military. Similar gaps have been occurring for centuries. However, past military generations did not encounter the sharp technological and cultural change, in a short period of time, experienced by the current younger generation of officers and airmen. Because of the slow technological and cultural maturation from one generation to another, past changes were difficult to perceive. Traditionally any disparity in values, if recognized at all, was attributed to a struggle between generations for influence and independence.1

If this condition has been around since early civilization, why is it so remarkable today? I do not believe it is a matter of whether change has or has not occurred; it is more of an accelerated change during a short time frame compared to the rather slow change of the past.

Accelerating knowledge and technology are major contributing factors. As one author so aptly put it, “It is small wonder that the world’s information, which is doubling with each generation, has grown far beyond the capacity of any individual to comprehend it all.”2

This acceleration has provided technical breakthroughs resulting in more and better production of higher-quality goods at a lower cost. The production output and its resulting profits are distributed to more and more people.

Just what does this have to do with the dramatically shifting personal values of office and airmen in the late 1960s? A partial answer may be seen in the genesis of our cultural value system in the United States. The values dominant during the first century and a half of American history were formed within an agricultural economy based on a demand for more goods than could be supplied. The population was largely made up of pioneers and immigrants. It was widely scattered small communities. In those days the military man lived from payday to payday, looking forward to minimum comforts and basic necessities.

These conditions, which to a large extent no longer exist, formed group perceptual patterns and values which were considered acceptable behavior of the day. Civil, military and moral law were based upon this accept able behavior. The majority of the population supported these laws, and they became the cultural guide for a given period.

Today, material goods are supplied in such large quantities that our economic system basically no longer supports the scarcity theory.3 A military man’s pay, like that of his civilian counterpart, is determined by pressures of an affluent society.

The problem of developing an individual identity under such conditions is overwhelming. An insidious kind of value gap has developed between those values which the younger man can identify with and measure himself by and the opportunities and challenges available to him for achieving this identity. The disparity has generated large numbers of individuals who struggle to develop a fee commitment to something worthwhile and to the achievement of self-worth.4 In this contemporary mode, competition for the basic necessities of life is de-emphasized.

For centuries the achievement motive driving the military and civilian man was to gain sufficient wealth, power, or position to secure desirable material goods that historically were in short supply. The higher the achievement, the more an individual could accumulate scarce items that were not readily available to everyone. Values based on this concept generated perceptual sets and thought patterns such as “To work is good and to work even harder is better.”—The Protestant Ethic.5

In today’s social/cultural environment, two distinct sets of value and appear to be operating: traditional values emergent values. Traditional values, those which are subscribed to by older officers and NCO’s and which developed during the scarce-commodity/scattered-population era, are “Puritan morality,” “work success ethic,” “achievement orientation,” and “rugged individuality.” In contrast, the younger officers and airmen lean toward emergent values, which appear to be “moral relativism,” sociability,” “immediate gratification,” and “group conformity.”6

When conflicting views are held by older and younger military men, their ability to communicate is greatly restricted. In addition, their desire to cooperate toward a common purpose is sidetracked by the communication conflict.

This gap between today’s older and younger military generations appears to be greater than at any other time in civilized history. One set of factors causing on the personal/social needs of the contemporary military man. These needs, as set forth by Maslow and others, are:

1. Physiological (thirst, hunger, sex, etc.)
2. Safety (security, health, etc,)
3. Social (identification, affection, etc.)
4. Egoistic (prestige, success, self-respect, etc,)
5. Self-fulfillment (desire for personal growth, self-actualization, etc.)7

Traditionally these needs are presented in a hierarchy. Figure 1 depicts this hierarchy and indicates the relative importance (value) of these needs.8 Under this concept, physiological needs are basic, and self-fulfillment needs (which are never completely satisfied) are the highest and not important until lower needs are satisfied. According to McGregor, “Man is a wanting animal—as soon as one of his needs is satisfied, another takes its place in an unending process from birth to death.” He also says, “A satisfied need is not a motivator of behavior.”9

Figure 1. Psychosocial needs hierarchy format indicating degree of importance ( value) to older generation  

Figure 1. Psychosocial needs hierarchy format indicating degree of importance ( value) to older generation

  

With the cultural change from scarcity of goods to plenty and sociological advances which provide the same relative availability of goods to nonachievers and achievers alike to satisfy lower needs (i.e., welfare programs to provide food, clothing, medical care, and other basic needs), this pattern of psychosocial needs may change structurally. (Figure 2)

Figure 2. Psychosocial needs hierarchy format when the lower needs are satisfied , depicting needs that are possibly important to middle or transitional generation

  

Figure 2. Psychosocial needs hierarchy format when the lower needs are satisfied , depicting needs that are possibly important to middle or transitional generation

  

If the apparent value gap continues to expand, the hierarchy of needs influencing the future military man may eventually form a pattern of diminishing lower needs and expanding higher needs. (Figure 3) Under this hypothesis, man would devote more and more energy to ego satisfaction and self-fulfillment: the emerging ethic. If overwhelming emphasis is placed on higher needs and they are then thwarted, the new crop of young officers and airmen may revert to behavior that is irrational compared to the military standard of the day. External needs compensations would then emerge similar to such civilian compensations as the “hippy” movement, drugs, and bizarre dress (at least when viewed from the norm). Although the younger military generation may be heading toward the upper level of the needs configuration, the factors causing this change may also have an effect upon the older military generation. The older generation (people over 35 years of age), because of strides made toward the good life, may be receiving needs satisfaction approximating the configuration shown in Figure 4.10

 

Figure 3. Psychosocial needs hierarchy format when the satisfaction of lower needs is guaranteed for the most part by the social structure to the emerging generation

  

Figure 3. Psychosocial needs hierarchy format when the satisfaction of lower needs is guaranteed for the most part by the social structure to the emerging generation

  

 

Figure 4. Psychosocial needs hierarchy modification of older generation due to gains made toward the good life

  

Figure 4. Psychosocial needs hierarchy modification of older generation due to gains made toward the good life

  

The cultural value gap is also reflected in current philosophical systems. Emerging existentialistic philosophy, similar to the emerging change in contemporary military man’s needs hierarchy, is also saturated with the individual’s intense awareness of his egoistic and self-fulfillment needs. It is loaded with the individual’s subjective view of reality.11

Some contemporary writers interpret emerging existentialism in the form of assumptions, which may be useful in understanding the emerging military man’s views. These assumptions are:

1. The individual is responsible for his own actions.

2. Man must regard his fellow men as objects of value and as part of his own concern.

3. Man exists in a world of reality.

4. A meaningful life must remove as much threat from reality as possible, both physical and psychological.

5. Every person has his own heredity and has had experience unique to himself.

6. Man behaves in terms of his own subjective views of reality, not according to some externally defined objective reality.

7. Man cannot be classified as “good” or “evil” by nature.

8. Man reacts as a total organism to any situation.12

Where does all this discussion lead? It appears that the current upheaval is generating a new culture that is evolving ahead of its time.

Before 1970 over fifty percent of the U.S. population will be under twenty-five years of age. This fact indicates that our young Air Force will get even younger. The attitudes, perceptual sets, morals, and commitments of this younger majority demand to be understood. A bridge of understanding across the generation and cultural value gap is imperative to our future military posture. The older military generation’s needs and attitudes contrast with those of a younger military generation who know only an affluent society, a growing welfare state, and a rapidly accelerating technology.  Whether we like it or not, this younger group will inherit the Air Force.

The main effort to reconcile this value gap is the responsibility of the older Air Force generation who form today’s leaders. This older generation must realize that emancipation from tradition requires additional foresight on their part to anticipate the consequences likely to flow from change. It is the responsibility of this leadership to encourage creativity and at the same time maintain restraints on immature, short-term desires to the extent necessary to assure the rights of others and to conduct the important day-to-day tasks of the functional military establishment.

This is not a hopeless or unreasonable task for Air Force senior officers and noncommissioned officers. After all, the younger generation when faced with today’s overwhelming situation, like their forefathers, appear to be just as frightened as they were by life itself—or inebriated by its sudden discovery.

Warfare Systems School

Notes

1. Donald H. Blocher, Development Counseling (New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1966), p, 117.

2. Robert W. Sarnoff, “Communications: The Knowledge Industry,” Commencement Address delivered at Washburn University of Topeka, 5 June 1966, Vital Speeches of the Day, XXXII, 21 (15 August 1966),671.

3. Blocher, p. 118.

4, John R. Seely, Jr., “Guidance and the Youth Culture,” Personal Guidance Journal, 1962, No. 41, pp. 302-10.

5. Luther structured this as: the valuation of the fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume. From Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (3d impression; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), p. 80. Cf. Ecclesiastes 3:22, The Jerusalem Bible (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966), p. 982.

6. George D. Spindler, “Education in the Transforming American Culture,” in Blocher, p. 119.

7. Norman R. F. Maier, Psychology in Industry (3d edition; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), p. 418.

8. Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), pp. 80-106. Cf. Charles D. McDermid, “How Money Motivates Men,” from Business Horizons, Winter 1960, pp, 94-100, in Max D. Richards and William A. Nielander, Readings in Management (2d edition; Globe, Arizona: Southwestern Monuments Assn., 1963), pp. 409-10.

9. Douglas M. McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1960), p. 36.

10. Officer Motivation Study—New View, Hq United States Air Force, Assistant Chief of Staff, Studies and Analysis, Vol. II, reprint, 1 April 1967, p. A-62.

11. Blocher, p. 21.

12. C. E. Beck, Philosophical Foundation of Guidance (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963). The author draws assumptions from existential philosophy of what he calls developmental counseling. Blocher, p. 20.

Contributor

Lieutenant Colonel Robert H. Drumm (M.S., Jackson College) is Chief, Behavioral Science in Management Division, Professional Personnel Management Course, Warfare Systems School, Air University. Other assignments have been in Korea, 1948; Guam, 1949; Personnel Planning, Hq Air Training Command, 1953-56; Hawaii, 1956-59; Aerospace Medical Division, AFSC, Brooks AFB, Texas, 1959-64; and Flight Test Center, Edwards AFB, California, from 1965 until his current assignment. Colonel Drumm is a graduate of the Defense Management Systems Course of the Naval Postgraduate School and the Air War College Seminar Program. He lectures extensively on behavioral science and management theory.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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