Get Out of the Black

“Going Internal” or “Being in the Black” are an informal term used in the USMC when a marine stops paying attention to things and people around him due to him being internally overwhelmed. It is a worrying situation as a marine “in the black” prevents the marine from responding and reacting properly to the situation at hand. This internalization can be caused by a lot of things (e.g. self pity, exhaustion, lost motivation) but much of the time it is linked to being the marine being put in a high-stress high-complexity environment that leads to thought paralysis.

Internalization is bad. There is a lot wrong with the assumption that self-reflection and trying to understand the world through thought is always a productive endeavor. Trying to understand ourselves from introspection often leads to dead ends as our unconscious world (where many of our drives, thoughts, and feelings come from) is not available to us through thought. Trying to understand the external world through thought is even more foolhardy we have even less access to understanding the motivations that drive other people; we are also limited by communication and information access. Thinking about your own internal motivations and the motivations of others will likely make you more insecure of yourself and suspicious of others than accomplishing anything useful.

Ourselves and the world don’t make any sense and the more we think about ourselves and the world the further away we get. Its best then to not think too much on things that don’t have an answer and to instead focus on tasks and goals at hand. By going through the motions the world becomes clear. The world is often understood best by participation and trial and error: not thought.