Because of my choice of pacifism, I choose to avoid laser tag games, although they give me pleasure and happy "adrenaline rush". I also use self-automation and relying on subconscious guidance when playing volleyball and solving science and other problems.
My upbringing and military training in Russia imprinted much on my psyche. Luckily my training was short: only 6 weeks. I was in technical defense training, so no combat was involved. We were only taught how to use personal chemical protection equipment. The Soviet officers justifiable were afraid to give weapons to the soldiers knowing that first thing some soldiers will do is to shoot most hated officers. So during the only shooting practice, our familiar nasty officers chose to stay away from soldiers and we were instructed by unfamiliar officers.
At the training camp, officers were pretty nasty to us and the training was mostly negative: we were deprived of sleep, food, connections to civilized life, exposed to excessive heat, our dignity was violated, and activities were intentionally senseless and offensive to our common sense. For example, we were waken up at random times at night and forced to run couple miles with our bladders full. This felt both painful and abusing.
I found it tough to adapt to this environment, although I was quite inventive. I also have got in much trouble for my alternative behavior. Since I tended not to blend into the crowd (more by nature and less by choice), the officers picked me out and I was under more control and pressure than others. As a result of the heat, poor food and hygiene, I ended up sick with a nasty stomach infection. Since I mistrusted military medicine, I secretly disposed the medications for a while. This came out to be unwise and I was becoming more and more sick. Only after couple weeks of constantly getting worse, I found in one of the books in a book cabinet of the military hospital that the medications were actually correct, and only after that, started taking them and recovered. So, much of my military training I spent sick sitting over a dirty toilet bowl. This imprinted much on my already developed disagreement with MIC.
In the hospital, I played a flute while lying on the bed. I rarely spoke to others, but nonetheless was a witness as couple of soldiers escaped from the hospital to become illegals. At the time (1984), it seemed like a suicide, but, as perestroika soon started, I realized that deserters might have been right. They likely were able to escape the claws of mind control and exploitation by MIC and become free and successful people. I felt very much empathically aligned with the deserters, I wished to be free too, but was not as desperate as them. They were to serve 1.5 more years and I was to be free in few days. A huge trauma for me was leaving my wife and not visually seeing any women at all. We actually have not seen civilization and women for the whole time of the training except one couple moments when we were transported on a covered track via a local town and could peak at the free world via holes in the fabric cover. To me, being trapped in the military training was traumatic. From the experience of military training I learned the ways MIC traumatizes souls and makes people better controlled.
Some of the simple things became automatic in us. One of them is marching - a military style of walking. The purpose of marching is for decorative purposes and programming soldiers to obey orders without hesitation. Not long ago, after I have been in America for quite a while, I was riding an elevator. This was a somewhat unusual elevator - with two opposing sets of doors. So when a chime sounded from behind, I and another gentleman, an elderly American, synchronously turned 180 degrees in a distinctive military style. He joked: "They trained us well, didn't they?" "They did indeed" answered I.
This case illustrates that some of the subconscious programs stay there even though we are unaware of them. They are quite stable and some of them are common among quite different human cultures.
MIC = military-industrial complex