Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II

This small book(let) prepared for American servicemen stationed in Iraq during the Second World War is in its own way a masterpiece. The \”voice\” in which it is written is friendly and easy to understand and it is informative without being condescending. Individuals writing training manuals for governments and institutions today would do well to study this (among other manuals and booklets released during the war) for tips on how to write clear and useful instructions without descending into jargon and writing down to one\’s audience.

Reading it gives one insight into what was considered normal among American servicemen in 1943. For example, its readers are admonished not to \”show race prejudice\” because the Iraqis \”draw very little color line,\” and soldiers are advised not to approach women on the streets not only to avoid offending Iraqis but also because that is not where the prostitutes could be found. The underlying presumption is that the men reading the booklet do draw more than a little color line and will attempt to locate prostitutes.

But the book also can surprise with its determined resistance to what is now called \”mission creep\” and cultural colonialism:

Sure, there are differences…But what of it? You aren\’t going to Iraq to change the Iraqis. Just the opposite. We are fighting this war to preserve the principle of \”live and let live.\” (5)

Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl writes in the modern day introduction

I wish that I had read it before beginning my own yearlong tour of Al Anbar in late 2003!

and I imagine that many of the pundits I hear every day on television would do well to read it before next they share they thoughts on the US involvement in Iraq.

It is short and aimed at someone with no more than a high school education so I think that they could manage it.

Some questions crossed my mind the other day as I watched the coverage of teabaggers at a rally. At almost every rally there was at least one person festooned with teabags. \’Do these people think that the tea thrown into Boston Harbor in 1773 was packaged in tea bags?\’ \’Do they think that the tea the Founding Fathers drank was brewed using tea bags?\’ and \’Do they think that tea bags are historically associated with conservatism?\’

As comic and irrelevant as those questions might seem to be they help to identify some of the misconceptions and misunderstandings that befall many in the teabag movement.

First, \’Do these people think that the tea thrown into Boston Harbor in 1773 was packaged in tea bags?\’

No, it wasn\’t (and more on that below.) I ask the question because I am fairly sure that many of the people in the movement (many of whom are decorating their hats and caps with teabags) have no clear idea of what happened at (or caused) the original Boston Tea Party. Yes chests of tea were thrown into the Boston Harbor. Yes, the destruction of the tea was part of a larger action to protest taxation without representation. But much of the anger about the Tea Act of 1773 was that it was passed in part to support what we would now call a large multinational corporation (the East India Company) by allowing it to charge less for tea than its local (to Boston) competitors who were smuggling tea into the colonies.

If any group today did what the \”tea partiers\” did in 1773–trespass on private property and destroy merchandise and goods for the purpose of making a political statement against the government–they would be labelled terrorists.

Second, \’Do they think that the tea the Founding Fathers drank was brewed using tea bags?\’

The rhetoric of the modern \”teabaggers\” is often that of originalism and constitutional essentialism yet there was at the time not a particularly strong association between that act of rebellion with the larger project of colonial independence. Indeed many of the early histories of the American Revolution played down or ignored what was then called \”the act of the destruction of the tea\” since it had been violence aimed at private property not the installation of an oppressing government. Given the laudatory rhetoric about corporations, capitalism and private property of many modern day teabaggers one wonders if they realize they are lionizing an attack on the very things they appear to hold most dear.

Third, \’Do they think that tea bags are historically associated with conservatism?\’

If the tea baggers wish to associate themselves with the \”old days\” and \”old ways\” it would better serve them to sprinkle themselves with loose tea leaves. The brewing of tea with tea bags is a quite recent custom. The tea bag is the accidental creation of an American tea merchant who, about 100 years ago, sent out samples of his tea leaves in silk sachets which some recipients thought were to be used for the brewing of tea. It took some time for the practice of using tea bags become wide spread (especially in England) and even today many tea snobs consider tea brewed from bags rather than loose leaves to be of inferior quality. Indeed they argue that the use of tea bags is yet another sign of the modern day devaluing of the things that matter and the turning away from the manners and beliefs of our forefathers.

In short, the history of the tea bag and the act of the destruction of the tea suggests that the tea bag itself is a symbol of much that the teabaggers despise and the teabaggers\’ ignorance of the real history and meaning of the tea bag and the act of the destruction of the teat make the tea bag a perfect symbol of all the modern day teabag party stands for.

Writing a \”good\” book introduction is a difficult thing–not least because of the fact that readers do not agree among themselves on exactly what it is they are looking for in an introduction. Some readers are looking for information about the life and career(s) of the author(s) while others are hoping that the introduction will place the book into a larger context. Some readers think that the larger context the book should be placed into is that of the author(s) thematic and stylistic growth (and perhaps decline.) Other readers think that books should be placed within the context of the time and culture in which they were initially written and/or published. Yet other readers would prefer that books were placed within the context of other books written/published at the same time and/or same genre.

I, myself, am open to many types of introduction. However no reader should stumble across spoilers in an introduction. If the writer of the introduction cannot discuss the book without spoilers then they, or the editors, should do the reader the courtesy of marking them plainly and unmistakably.

And yes, I did just have that happen to me. I curled up in a chair with a book I had not read before and glancing at the introduction hoping for insight into the placement of this book in the development of the author\’s style and choice of topic(s) I came across a massive spoiler. Yes, I will forge on and read the book but (warning to any editor who happens to come across this entry) I have made a note of the author of the introduction, will avoid reading any by the same author and will, if possible, avoid buying editions that include introductions by that author.

Avoiding spoilers and/or clearly marking them is an act of respect to the reader.

I have been reading (and rereading) quite a bit of E. F. Benson lately. Benson is probably best known today for the novels about Miss Mapp and Emmeline Lucas [1] published between 1920 and 1939 and later bundled together and published in omnibus form in 1977 as Make Way for Lucia. Benson\’s writing styles (for he had more than one) and the things about which he wrote (he had several distinct subjects of interest) were extremely popular during his lifetime but subsequent to his death and the end of the Second World War his books fell out of print.

Benson\’s fortunes revived in the 1970s as many of his books began once again to be available in print however it is likely that many know Benson (and his characters Mapp and Lucia) more from the BBC Mapp and Lucia series than from the novels themselves. I did not see that television adaptation before I first started to read Benson. I chanced on a description of one of the Mapp and Lucia books in a critical review of another book I had been reading and I tracked down a copy of the The Worshipful Lucia in the local library. I soon began to hunt down every Benson book I could find. Since most were out of print I either found old battered Benson books in used bookstores and I downloaded those that were now in the public domain from online sources.

Yesterday I was trying to trace the origin of a theme (and style of writing) that I had noticed in Benson\’s writing as early as 1912 (Mrs. Ames) and in full flower by 1929 (Paying Guests). I wondered if there were hints of that theme in his earliest books so I pulled out my copy of Dodo: A Detail of the Day first published 1893 and first read by me in a battered old copy I no longer own. My current copy is one of three Dodo novels published together 1986 in Dodo: An Omnibus with…..as the cover proclaims…..a \”New Introduction by Prunella Scales.\” \’Oh,\’ I thought, \’I hadn\’t realized that Scales had been a Benson aficionado before she was cast as Miss Mapp in the BBC series.\’ The second sentence of the introduction disabused me of that notion

I had read very few of his books before 1984, when I swallowed all the Lucia novels at once while preparing to attempt Miss Mapp in a television serial.

Scales was not familiar with any of the Dodo books before she was asked to write the introduction to the omnibus. The introduction itself is competently written but has as much depth and insight as one would expect from a high school student\’s \”treatment\” of an author. It doesn\’t help me as a reader to understand the world of the book, it doesn\’t help me as reader to understand Benson as a writer, and it doesn\’t really help the reader to place Dodo into the context of its time.

I understand why someone at The Hogarth Press decided to ask Scales to write the introduction since the BBC production of Make Way for Lucia did much to revive Benson\’s popularity. Scales was Miss Mapp for many people who had not read the books previous to their television adaptation. One can imagine the logic \”people associate Scales with Benson so if we get her name on a Benson book it will help to sell the book.\” That may even have worked. However, that decision distresses me for two reasons.

First, I do not begrudge Scales the right to have opinions about the Dodo books but I wish that they had spent the money instead on a less famous but better qualified person who could have written informedly and usefully about the book(s) and the author. No reader who knows Benson only from the BBC adaptation and is not used to reading books written in the latter years of the 19th century is going to find Dodo an easy book to read. Putting Scales name on the cover may have sold more copies of the Dodo omnibus but only, I fear, at the cost of readers who never \”got\” the books and never bought another Benson (from The Hogart Press or any other publisher.)

Second, even in the few pages of the introduction Scales convinced me that she misunderstands Benson in much the same way as many writers of his time (and his subjects of interest) are misunderstood by people who come across them without the appropriate context. Scales writes of Benson:

one must not be too frivolous about this dear, gentle, funny writer, with his romantic cynicism and demure extravagance, his faultless ear and wicked tongue

and I watch Scales\’ (in my opinion dreadfully misconceived) performance of Miss Mapp and can only think how little she understands Benson. Benson could be icy, insightful, cynical and cruel. He had seen some of the horrors of life. He was for some time mayor of Rye (the \’real world\’ Tilling.) He was the son of an Archbishop of Chanterbury and the sibling of writers and intellectuals. None of his generation of the family married and had children. His parents had a famously \”chilly\” marriage and once widowed his mother lived the rest of her life with a woman friend. Underneath the glittering surface of Benson\’s books one can often glimpse the emptiness and hopelessness of the lives of his characters.

So, the answer to \”why Scales\” is–a short-sighted marketing scheme that did nothing to build a readership that would continue to buy Benson\’s less famous books and that helped to perpetuate a facile understanding of his best selling books.

[1] Queen Lucia (1920), Miss Mapp (1922), Lucia in London (1927), Mapp and Lucia (1931), Lucia\’s Progress aka The Worshipful Lucia (1935) and Trouble for Lucia (1939) &#8617

Last night I heard the news that Steve Jobs had died just a few minutes after apple.com posted the announcement on their website. His death was not unexpected but I was still struck by it. For me, as for many other people who grew up in a world without personal computers and who were involved (in a far more tangential way than Jobs) in their development and popularization, this man I never met was vividly real to me. I am very aware of the impact that Jobs had on the development of much of the technology we now depend in the western world.

Almost as soon as Jobs\’ death was officially announced the responses poured in from people who ranged from customers, to co-workers to politicians. His death was not a surprise and I imagine that many of the formal responses to the announcement had been drafted weeks ago when it became clear that his health had taken a turn for the worse.

One of the constant claims/statements/arguments across the many expressions of sympathy was that virtually everyone in the world had been touched by Jobs. And that claim led to me think \”how\” and ask \”for the better?\” I have no doubt that the lives of those in the Horn of Africa, in Darfur and in Myanmar have been touched by the information revolution if we stretch \”touched\” to include \”the individuals who hound the poor and prey on the weak have been known to use new technologies in order to perpetuate their power.\” I have no doubt that the lives of those in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq have been touched by the computer revolution if we stretch \”touched\” to include \”they are now being killed in ways that would not have been possible without the computer revolution.\” And it is important to remember that not everyone who has been more directly \”touched\” by Jobs and Apple would describe the result as \”for the better.\” The workers in Taiwan who committed suicide after enduring the working conditions in IPhone assembly plants would probably not have characterized they way in which their lives were \”touched\” as for the better.

I am not arguing that Jobs was a bad person. However I do think that we should take care not to universalize from the nature of his impact on the lives of comparatively privileged people to the impact it had on humanity in general. I do know that Jobs was a charismatic individual who could sweep a room of tech reporters off their metaphorical feet. I don\’t know that Jobs ever sat down and thought about what his wealth could do beyond \”make more money\” and \”create more gadgets that he would like to play with.\”

Bill Gates was never Steve Jobs equal in terms of charisma. One seldom hears of Gates \”wowing\” a room of reporters. And Microsoft in its time has resorted to some extremely questionable business practices. But so too did Apple. Bill Gates has spent over a decade giving away much of the money that he made while he, too, was changing the world. We have not heard of Jobs doing anything similar.

Today there are people in the world who are safer, less hungry, healthier, more educated and have more hope for the future because Bill Gates has decided to work almost as hard at giving away his money as he once worked at making it.

Steve Jobs made life more fun, interesting and easier for that portion of the world that already enjoyed the most privilege and the greatest likelihood of having safe, interesting and comfortable lives. It would be nice to find out that Jobs decided that in death he would attempt to compete with Gates on the field of philanthropy just as in life he competed with Gates on the field of technology.

Ontario goes to the polls tomorrow (October 6th.)

It seems like such a small thing to do. Someday between the 9 in the morning and 9 at night I will wander over with my notice of registration and draw an X through the circle next to one of the local candidate\’s name.

Like most of the elections in which I have taken part the person I will vote for has little chance of winning. But it is still very important for me to mark my ballot. I read the local newspaper, I talk to other people on my street and in my neighbourhood and I do some research to find out the relative strengths of the different parties in my riding. I rank the local candidates from those I think are very bad for my community, my province or my country to those which are think are best. Then I have to sit down and work out the likelihoods. If \’VeryWorst\’ is leading \’NotMyFavouriteButAcceptable\’ by a small margin then I will vote for NMFBA (hoping to help keep VW from winning.) If one of the parties enjoys a comfortable margin locally then I like to sit down and take a good look at the minor parties in my riding. And sometimes I vote for one of those parties not because I agree with everything in their platform but because I think that they are talking about things which are very important and offering solutions and suggestions which should be among those seriously considered.

Canadian political parties can grow very quickly. Take, for example, the Bloc Québécois. That party began in 1990 as disaffected members of both the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals joined together informally. In 1993 (the next federal election) the Bloc won the second largest number of seats and became the official opposition. Because political parties such as the Bloc and Reform (which was born in the 1980s and by 1997 had replaced the Bloc as the official opposition) can grow so quickly there is room for new ideas and new conversations in Canadian politics. If the old parties won\’t talk about the things we care about then we just go out and form new parties that will.

Both the sense of power this gives to voters and the way in which the growth of new parties allows for new ideas to take root hit me today as I sit and watch the CNN coverage of the occupation of Wall Street. Few reporters talk to the protestors and most of the reports I listen to are interviews of the old regulars–the talking heads who I could have seen and heard anytime in the last two decades. One can imagine the logic of those of those who handed out the assignments and who edited together the news reports. After all, they must be thinking, what choice will the protestors have when next they vote? Everyone to the left of whatever point will be the \”center\” at that moment will have the choice of voting for a Democrat or strengthening the Republicans by not voting at all. Everyone to the right of whatever point will be the \”center\” at the moment will have the choice of voting for a Republican or strengthening the Democrats by not voting at all. The greatest degree of freedom in voting will be during the nomination processes but even then the voters will have a severely limited range of ideologies among which to choose and the barriers for entry into the \”serious\” nomination race will be high. Those who give aid and comfort to some portion of the monied and active elements of the kyriarchy will be given the money and the access to the media necessary to run a serious campaign. Those who do not, will not.

When it is members and functionaries of the kyriarchy who decide the candidates you get to chose between then no matter the tally the outcome is the same:

Meet the new boss
same as the old boss[1]

[1] The Who, Won\’t get fooled again.

I have time machines in my library. They work like magical one-way windows for when I gaze into them I can see and listen to people from times past yet they cannot see or hear me. Some, I think, suspect that people from the future might occasionally look in on them and so they are on what they feel to be their \”best\” behaviour. It is interesting and informative to see what they consider \”best\” behaviour.\” Other people from the past seem either to be totally unaware or totally unconcerned that people from the future might pass through every once and a while.

In 1943 the Special Service Division of the Army Service Forces, United States Army prepared a booklet Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq. In 2007 The University of Chicago press recently reprinted a facsimile of the original with an added foreword written by Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl. Nagl served in Iraq from September 2003 to September of the following year. He has high praise for much of it \”I wish I had read it before beginning my own yearlong tour (v)\” although he also points out:

there are also tips in the 1943 Short Guide that absolutely would not see the light of day in the politically correct world of today. None of the men serving there need to be told, \”Don\’t make a pass at any Moslem women or there will be trouble.\” But the guide continues with more advice that caused my jaw to drop; \”Anyway, it won\’t get you anywhere. Prostitutes do not walk the streets but live in special quarters of the cities.\” If service members today do need this guidance, I can absolutely guarantee that they won\’t get it from an official War Department publication! (xi)

Two other pieces of advice stood out to this reader:

Be kind and considerate to servants. The Iraqis consider all people equal. (29)

Note that the soldiers are not told to be kind and considerate to servants because it was right to do so. Nor were they told that they should be kind and considerate to servants because it would make the United States look good. Nor does the booklet say \”The Iraqis, like us, consider all people equal.\” The Iraqi attitude/belief that all people are equal is put forward as just another one of their cultural quirks about which servicemen should be forewarned.

Avoid any expression of race prejudice. The people draw very little color line. (29)

The American Army was at the time this booklet was issued a segregated institution. One can deduce that the troops for whom this booklet was published were overwhelmingly white, male and at least nominally Christian. They weren\’t admonished not to \”feel\” race prejudice, just to avoid expressing it. And they were to do so not because it was right or reflected well on the United States but because having \”very little color line\” was just another one of those strange Iraqi quirks.

These two points stand out because of the clear line against religious proselytizing and prejudice in the same booklet.

You probably belong to a church at home, and you know how you would feel towards anyone who insulted or desecrated your church. The Moslems feel just the same way, perhaps even more strongly. In fact, their feeling about their religion is pretty much the same as ours toward our religion, although more intense. If anything, we should respect the Moslems the more for the intensity of their devotion.(12)

So, in 1943 the authors of this handbook felt that the ordinary American serviceman was more able to feel fellowship and empathy with Moslems on matters of religion that they were about matters of racial and social equality.

Which tells us just as much about the America of 1943 as it does of the Iraq of the same year.

I have time machines in my library. They work like magical one-way windows for when I gaze into them I can see and listen to people from times past yet they cannot see or hear me. Some, I think, suspect that people from the future might occasionally look in on them and so they are on what they feel to be their \”best\” behaviour. It is interesting and informative to see what they consider \”best\” behaviour.\” Other people from the past seem either to be totally unaware or totally unconcerned that people from the future might pass through every once and a while.

The other day I pulled out one of these time machines [1] only to find myself gazing at the life of two middle-aged men in London, England in the early 1920s. How different was their life than would be the lives of two similar men today.

First, they (Mr. Beaumont and Mr. Bradley) do no work and yet they are neither poverty stricken nor immensely wealthy. Apparently at that time there was a goodly number of people similarly situated. They may have worked for some time \”in the City\” but many of them had never worked, would never work and had lived their entire life on the income of investments bequeathed to them by aunts and uncles. [2]

Second, they have servants. At least one of whom \’lives in.\’ As the story opens they are faced with the disastrous news that their housekeeper, Mrs. Nicholson, is leaving them to get married. Mrs. Nicholson has been the mainstay of their comfort but in addition to her they also employ a gardener and \”a girl\” who comes in every day.

Third, not only do they do no cooking or cleaning or working they also do no shopping for the gardener grows and picks the vegetables and Mrs. Nicholson orders in the rest of their food as well as their wine and other household supplies.

Fourth, there is no suggestion that the relationship of the two men is sexual or even homosocial. They are just friends who find it convenient to pool their resources in order to have a well-ordered and comfortable home.

Fifth, it is considered not unusual that absent a women (wife or housekeeper) two men are unable to adequately see to the supervision of the servants.

Sixth, that when Mrs. Glover (Mr. Beaumont\’s sister) arrives she brings her maid with her and the two of them naturally take over the care of the household.

Seventh, the original readers of the story find it amusing but not beyond belief that Mr. Bradley would propose to the widowed Mrs. Glover in order to have a permanent replacement for Mrs. Nicholson.

Finally, two well off men living in the London of that time did not already have electricity in their home. Of course as the story begins they have no need of it since they had human beings to do all the work. Mrs. Nicholson got up before them, lit the fires, warmed the house, shopped almost daily, mended their clothes, supervised the washing of their clothes, planned their meals and cooked their meals. Someone (housekeeper, girl or gardener) weeded for them, dusted for them, made their beds, lit their candles, swept their floors and heated their water. When the men finally decide to get their house \”electrified\” it is not to make life easier for their servants but rather to save money and increase their comfort by replacing servants with the electrical equipment.

[T]hey had completely made up their minds, and having ascertained that every labour-saving device in stock could be installed in their house in three weeks, they dismissed the entire household with a month\’s wages instead of a month\’s warning, and moved across to the admirable hotel, where in comfort, they could superintend the refitting of their home. (68)

The devices were not \”labour-saving\” in the sense that they made the labour of the servants easier for the servants. The devices were \”labour-saving\” in the sense that the bachelors would no longer have to hire someone to do the labour.

What the one-way glass showed me was a world in which it was somewhat less \”suspect\” for men to live together in order to pool their financial aspects than it is today. It also showed me a world in which men value women (be they wives or housekeepers) more for their ability to ensure the men\’s physical comfort than for anything else. And it showed me a world in which \”labour-saving\” meant a way to replace someone who worked for a living with a machine.

In other words, less had changed than one might have thought.

---

[1] \”The Hapless Bachelors\” in Benson, E. Desirable residences and other stories. Oxford England New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Originally published March 1921 in Pearson\’s Magazine &#8617

[2] I want to wave at them and warn them–this way of life will soon end. Taxation, inflation and the desire of servants to be paid wages large enough to allow them to house and feed a family will soon eat away your comfortable incomes.&#8617

Over the weekend I have been working on reviews of books by two writers, E. F. Benson and Barbara Pym, and it struck me how difficult it is to untangle the writer from the profession of writing. Pym and Benson both wrote for money. That is in no way a criticism of either as a writer it is simply a statement of fact. Bills had to be paid and so they wrote in order to get money to pay the bills. Pym, whose books were initially successful experienced more than a decade during which publishers simply declined to accept her work on the grounds that it was \”dated\” and \”out of style.\” It was only when literary critics embraced her as a great novelist that she was once again able to publish her books. E. F. Benson had a much longer, less lauded and on some level more successful career as a popular writer. His first (anonymous) publication was in 1888 and his last books were published in 1940.

Pym\’s enforced hiatus from publication and Benson\’s prolific career indicate that for a writer to have a successful career they need more than talent. They also need the luck to be good at writing in the style that publishers are looking for. For the writer who wishes to be constantly in print it helps if they, like Benson, have mastered more than one style, more than one genre, have a social network that includes publishers, have entree to the society/world that people want to read about and are good at pitching (or willing to pitch) the focus of their writing at the sweet spot of the buying public.

It is difficult to assess Benson as a writer, especially when one is reviewing the many short stories he wrote. Benson\’s stories seem to be carefully tailored to suit the particular magazines in which they finally found a home. The writer who is mawkish in one story will be acerbic in another. The writer who is lyrical in one story will be terse in another. Yet there are some things I feel very certain of–that Benson had a keener eye for the self-deceptions of the class to which he was born than many of his contemporaries, that he was a consummate professional for whom writing was craft as well as a profession, that he, unlike many of his class (and many who aspired to become members of that class) believed that servants were human beings with feelings that mattered but that like so many others he found the stories of those human beings not interesting enough to write books about.

I don\’t know if Pym was unwilling or unable to change her writing to suit the changing desires of publishers. I do know that her books are full of keen insights about the relationships between men and women, the relationships between members of the middle and the working classes, the changing role the Church of England played in the life the ordinary person and the ways in which academics interacted with each other. Perhaps Pym was unwilling to change her voice and views enough to make her palatable to the editors who were turning her down. Perhaps Pym didn\’t think that the stories she wanted to tell could be told in any other way.

In the end I am left with only the evidence that I can gather from reading what each author wrote. I personally wish that Pym had been able to publish more for I have greatly enjoyed the ones I have read. I wonder if Benson had not had to keep an eye on the desires of the reading public if he would have written more the books and stories I most enjoy–or less.

In the end I am glad that Pym wrote as much as she did and the Benson wrote so much that I enjoy.

The article on npr.org Why The Trip Home Seems To Go By Faster has all the superficial appearance of hard science and empiricism. But there is a problem with it. A big problem. One which I suspect exists only in the writing up the information and not with those who are doing the studies the article described.

\”Why people who always find the trip back shorter feel that way\” doesn\’t make as good a headline. However it probably would have avoided the plethora of comments that either said \”I always find the trip back longer\” or \”sometimes the trip back feels shorter and sometimes it feels longer.\”

One of the tricks to not falling for faux-empiricism (or bad science writing) is to look for sentences like this at the beginning of the second paragraph:

People will often feel a return trip took less time than the same outbound journey, even though it didn\’t.

\”Will often\” has no quantifiable meaning. If that sentence had read \”some people always feel\” then the writer could proceed to discuss studies that focus on those some people who always feel. If that sentence had read \”people sometimes feel\” then the writer could proceed to discuss studies that focused on what made the difference between the times the people felt one way and the times they felt another.

As the article is written the one thing I do know about the study it discusses is that if I really want to know what behaviours or experiences it is premised on I will have to find a copy of the original.

Just another (minor) example of bad science writing — or rather bad writing about science.