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Moderator Guidelines
Killing people is wrong.
But you have only a couple of choices when someone wrong shows up to kill you.
Give in and let them take you over, maybe they kill you
Put up a fight, possibly killing them, possibly killing you
The military is necessarily bad because humans are necessarily bad. If everyone could just train to defend themselves and agree not to use the military on it's own citizens, it would be a closer to neutral
Humans are not necessarily bad. Working together in tough times is what made humans evolutionary wise superior and still does. It is power that makes humans bad. And more power even more so. Or how some English Lord put it:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
you almost got it. Power does not corrupt. Power attracts narcissists and psychopaths. Those people have been corrupt before. There are hierarchies all over the place where people higher up have authoritative control over the people (or even other beings) below them and the vast majority of those do not abuse this power hierarchy. Those people that do are mentally ill. It is just the higher you look the more likely you’ll find a mentally deranged narcissist because those are the people that really are into that shit and thus exert the effort to get there. For everybody else it is not worth it.
We can't seem to break free of those evolutionary ties that we have to out-compete each other. There are lots of great people, but we're still at that tipping point where some bullshit makes one county chain-reaction genocide another country.
humans have fought wars for longer than our recorded history, you can't blame it all on fools seeking concepts of power. hell, we were fighting back when we were still apes swinging from trees.
Tell that to the people of Ukraine...
People of Ukraine know better than most that killing is bad and war is bad
Except your forgetting the final part of the quote. But please, feel free to tell the members of Ukraine's military " they're evil" 🙄
That's actually now what the final quote is. The military is an evil institution. The members are not necessarily. Like, in Ukraine case, people are defending their country from invading genocidal force. That's not evil, quite noble even. The concept of military however is.
Yeah, this!
itt: people justifying why their institution of mass murder is actually good
To protect from that other persons institution of mass murder. OBV.
Violence literally just creates more violence.
Like this stupid pointless fucking Iraq war. Even if dumbfuck somehow "wins", which its clear will never happen, do they not realize all the destruction done by the US is just going to create yet another ISIS/Al Queda/whatever style terrorist organization as retatiation?
Then it'll be "oh boy, gotta kill more brown people in the desert!"
Wash, rinse, repeat...
I mean self-defense is not bad. US is just not defending itself from anyone.
I wonder where all of those pacifist countries went...
A nonviolent state is an oxymoron
Based an anarchist-pilled.
Joining a military that aggresses other nations? Yeah, spot on. Joining a military to defend your line on the ground against people you see as fellow earthlings? Still a fair take. Joining a military to defend against people who want you dead because of how you were born? That's where this starts to unravel. That kind of stuff sadly exists in this world.
When I was young people around me told me that the further west on the map country is, the wealthiest and more free people live there without any conflict bothering them. With USA (the west-most country on map) as a shiny utopia with everyone peacefully living there being rich and free.
When I was a teen and my country joined EU I saw countless young adults emigrate west, seeking wealth and freedom beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Terrorists and oppressive regimes waged war in the eastern lands.
When I am an adult, the supposed peacekeeper of the world is waging wars to protect pedophiles. Former empire where sun never sets is trying to outlaw being young and sell their citizens data to highest bidder. And EU is bi-yearly trying to pass universal invigilation act.
I feel like my moral compass never really changed, it's just the world around me that changed beyond recognition. I worry how it will be when I get old, if I even get to live to old age.
Hang in there, buddy, it's rough but we are all in this together.
What about defensive wars, though? Occupations are often quite brutal, as well.
A very privileged opinion from a person sheltered by the harsh realities of human nature and the universe in general. Revel in your ignorance.
The responses to this post have kinda proven its point. Even when self defense is necessary, killing people is bad, war is bad, and the military is evil. Violence will never be a favorable thing, even if it is unavoidable, and it is never something we can take lightly or promote as a banal part of life. The only way we should consider violence in our daily life is to reaffirm why we need to toil to make society fair and just. Minimizing the drivers of conflict is more effective at stopping it than people want to accept.
Injustice being inevitable is not an excuse to sneer at those who want to combat it. The moment you accept it as immutable is the moment that you start to perpetuate it.
I'm not gonna fault an american for an opinion like that, but if you're involved with european leftists who are too busy virtue signalling to adopt any pragmatic defense policy positions, you get a real appreciation for the nuance.
What's even more wild is to ask a religious leader for a religion that says "don't kill people" about how killing people in a war isn't a sin. I was only a child when I saw one of my peers ask a priest this. The mental gymnastics the priest was trying to pull was blatantly obvious to me, even as a kid.
It all makes perfect sense when you realize that the "don't kill people" part only meant "don't kill fellow tribesmen". Non-tribesmen were 100% fair game. The God of that religion commanded multiple genocides against other tribes.
You run into the same problems with said religion and slavery. The whole "it was different and more indentured servitude than chattel slavery" was only for inside the tribe. Chattel slavery was explicitly allowed for the non-tribesman.
Modern religious leaders may be uncomfortable with this and have to perform some Olympic level mental gymnastics, but that is just because ethics and values have changed slightly in 2000 or so years.
So many absurd things that I was told "you'll understand/agree when you're older" that turned out to just be boomer copium.
No, I don't hate taxes (the opposite). No, I'm not more conservative (the opposite).