It’s no accident that the military targets adolescent males for recruitment. Physically mature yet mentally immature, when narcissism is highest and worldly experience is low, when “invincibility” is curbed by a strong (childhood) neediness to be forgiven by, and to impress, a strong father-figure.

But military tactics go a lot deeper. There are over 100 billion neurons in the brain constantly refining new pathways. Adolescence is a time when outside “stressors” reshape the prefrontal cortex, stressors that incline them to “high excitement and low effort” stimuli. And that can involve anything from drugs to violent video games (“video game brain”), from sex and power to celebrity status, to the romance of “hero worship.”

The brain is highly impressionable. But "impressionable" doesn’t simply mean being “easily persuaded.” It means being vulnerable to hard-wiring new circuits and creating neural pathways that last forever. To military recruiters, it’s a process of stopping the brain from developing naturally and being rewired for a world of control and submission, conflict and violence, the “romance” of war, heroism and martyrdom.

“Wired for war” is a loaded phrase. It means not just where “manliness” is equated with facing down danger, but a much deeper predisposition to “controlling” life in general – because life is dangerous and untrustworthy. This normally translates to a very rigid (“conservative”) approach to life, religion, society, politics, marriage and parenthood.

The Reverend Emmanuel Charles McCarthy gave the analogy of the early 4th century (Augustine period) of Christianity when new Christians were forced through “purgation rites” as a rite of passage for inclusion. The military training process was (unknowingly) used then: shutting down empathic pathways and starting new ones that went against the grain of natural development. Referring to then and now, McCarthy described it “from being Christ-like in the world to being extremely un-Christ-like.”

Experts call it “the priming of neurons” - refining neural pathways of the young and impressionable. In this manner teens are “primed” by way of violent video games with “paramilitary” themes. These games get the process started early, conditioning neurons several years before recruiters begin reading student records (violating privacy rights), weeding out likely candidates and approaching them at home, by mail, or at school (sometimes without parental knowledge) – then filling their brains with stories of “high excitement and low (mental) effort.”

The long-term consequences can be devastating. Violence is not just contagious, it dominates a young man’s decision-making process the rest of his life. What’s called “dominative power” (using fear and intimidation to get what one wants) continues on through marriage and parenthood. It becomes the ruling principle in “value clarification skills” and “conflict resolution skills” which becomes a multi-generational syndrome passed on to their children.

But ask the military if it cares. So entrenched in its “song of the sword,” war as “the father of all things,” that anything like neuroscience becomes just another weapon with which to exploit the unknowing. “Follow your left” when marching (the “receptive” side for right-handed people) is just a start to another neurological imprint - necessary in a world fraught with danger and evil.

But the worst tragedy of all is the indelible scarring this has on our young who, if left alone, would most likely follow their natural instincts, more natural “pathways” of higher consciousness and learning.