Shutting off

As many of you may know, I just finished my three year mandatory service in the idf.
I was never one to get along with my country's more right winged tended policies and the concept of war in general, I'm not saying that I disagree with my country or don't believe in what it's army's trying to do, but i'm also not trying to open a political debate here.
As I said, the army was always a problem to me. And me and my friends always said that for some people, in order to survive there you had to "shut yourself down", not dumb yourself, but simply disregard what you think is the proper way in which things should work. Now I'm not talking about real moral dilemmas like having a pregnant woman in labor at a checkpoint but not being able to let her through cause she does not have a proper "visa" or anything like that. I never encountered any of those dilemmas, thankfully, as I served, even though I was technically a fighter, in the back, mainly in the center of the country doing relatively nothing.
The problems I'm talking about are much more mundane, like being unable to take orders from your superior officer cause he's a dick, getting completely crushed by the fact that you just got a ticket from an MP(military police-they are responsible for the proper appearance and behavior of soldiers) for having your hair slightly longer than permitted(roughly half an inch) and knowing that you'd get court marshaled for it and probably end up staying over a month in some stingy base for no fucking reason.
And I'm not even getting into boot camp which were probably some of the worse 4 months in my life, where you couldn't even take a piss without asking for permission and you'd lose a weekend pass at home for leaving your gun in your tent for like 5 minutes. 
I'm not questioning the necessity of these things, or even the logic, I can get that, but it's still hard to live like this for 3 whole years, so if your not really cut out from the right stuff for this sort of thing- you "shut yourself off", cause it's the only way to survive.
And I don't have a lot of experience but I believe that most people working in a capitalist society getting yelled at by their bosses, getting preached to by their wives, husbands,boyfriends and girlfriends, feeling empty because they're not who they think they should be, these people feel the same. so they too "turn themselves off" and do what they're told without questioning it, morally, logically or spiritually.
And I wonder, what kind of effect does this have on a human? Does it Change you? Did it damage you irreparably? And is it possible to turn back to the person your were 3 years ago?
Please give me your honest opinion on this...

-Written on my iPhone
P.s.
This was written at 3am while not being struck with insomnia, so don't hold any typos or other grammatical errors against me =].