On Military

[daniel j lavender]

On Military
Daniel J. Lavender

War is not a racket. Military is a racket. It doesn't matter if there is warfare; the point is money and energy are wasted on military formation and killing machines. Honor and integrity are bestowed upon animality. True honor, true integrity should be associated with things like sharing, productive activities like home construction. Money and energy should be channeled into those activities. Cooperation rather than competition should be championed. Those activities, those approaches should be honored and exalted, not the aforementioned wasteful, mindless nonsense.

In theory military defends a populace from invasion or intrusion. In practice military is a global cabal extorting the world populace through threat of violence.

For centuries ignorant and violent boneheads, with assistance from the corrupt and domineering global power structure, have convinced the masses to relinquish hard-earned money to fund brainless barbarism, fruitless competition and resource-depleting war around the world. Not only have they convinced the masses to capitulate to this, or perhaps more accurately bullied them into accepting this, they have simultaneously persuaded them into honoring and glorifying it.

Military attacks and exploits a populace long before ever protecting it; soldiers, military systems require taxes, they require funds to subsist, funds they coercively extract from the populace through threat of punishment.

A military first plunders its own people and then, with stolen resources and support from just enough dupes to bolster morale, sets off for other lands to further levy its burden.

Barbarians, soldiers, troops aim their weapons at themselves; their preparation is in fear and anticipation of their own absurdity.

The vast majority of soldiers fight not for some ultimate political agenda or moral cause but rather their own personal motives as most of the time soldiers are in the dark, completely unaware of the actual political machinations at play. They are ignorant of the true agendas so they could not possibly be fighting for any purpose other than their own which is channeled to the advantage of the affluent.

Soldiers cannot secure your freedom as they cannot secure their own; they are shackled to the bidding of their masters.

Soldiers do not fight or die for freedom. Soldiers fight and die for laws and systems. In fact their adherence to systems, their desire to uphold laws is the very reason they obediently perish in battle. These death sacrifices are then used to compel citizens' obedience to law. Law ensuring the liberty to die for law. Law sustaining an uneven system of hierarchy and dominance in which many possess little and few possess much.

The missiles, the nukes are pointed at the other side to control, to distract the barbarians, to keep them in check, to provide them an enemy, an excuse to organize so they won't brutalize their own.

The powerful, the affluent, those in the supposed responsible, admirable positions of power around the world could take to the airwaves today, they could all promote a message of peace, of unity, they could begin to dissolve weapons installments and military activity around the world now. But they do not. They continue. They continue to memorialize and celebrate war, to reward war sacrifices, to cling to medieval methods.

The powerful, the affluent do not seek to eliminate violence or conflict; they seek to channel it to their favor.

Conflict is certainly profitable for the ownership class, for the administrators, for the elite. It generates money for corporations and banks. But conflict also thins the global population leaving more resources for the victors. And the victors are always the owners, the administrators, the global elite, those with enough wealth and administrative clout to avoid the tragedies of the battlefield altogether. It's analogous to the National Football League. The players, the soldiers, fight tooth and nail on the battlefield for survival while the owners, the global elite, watch comfortably from their cozy air-conditioned booths. Law, law enforcement acts as the referee keeping players within the confines of the legal arena so players' actions are somewhat coherent and beneficial to those in power. If the owners convinced the players not to compete would they make any money? Would they even have a league?

Nation-states, administrations build themselves up as administrators befriend each other. These administrative cohorts leave their subordinates in conflict, agitating them into further development: "The Russians, the Chinese are developing better technology and may invade and conquer!" While on the other side of the globe "The Americans are developing better technology and may invade and conquer!" The results are economic and technological bursts on all sides, people frantically constructing more, generating more revenue and providing advanced technologies for the ownership class. Essentially the subordinates are immersed in labor and conflict. That labor and conflict ultimately sustains and benefits the administrative, higher classes. After all are kings, are presidents, are industrial leaders dying on the frontlines of battle? Are they laboring in the factories and fields?

Boneheads will use the fact destruction exists as an excuse to sustain their weaponized rackets. There is already enough destruction about the world in the form of extreme and damaging weather, accident, drought and disease.

Enlisting in the military makes you an instant hero to the fearful and ignorant, an instant tool to the powerful and imperial.

[Gary Childress]

I believe most in the militaries of the world practice religion of one sort or another. If they knew how unbelievably brief and temporary their lives were, then maybe they wouldn't go around killing each other.

[commonsense]

Daniel,

Strong words. On what do you base your opinions about what should be and what is?

[promethean75]

"Soldiers cannot secure your freedom as they cannot secure their own; they are shackled to the bidding of their masters. Soldiers do not fight or die for freedom. Soldiers fight and die for laws and systems."

This sympathy should only be extended to those who are forced to make a decision to either dodge a draft or not.

The rest of em join the military on purpose and stay in there for a steady paycheck and an education. So if they get into trouble, that's they fault for joinin the fuckin army, you feel me?

[commonsense]

"Soldiers cannot secure your freedom as they cannot secure their own; they are shackled to the bidding of their masters. Soldiers do not fight or die for freedom. Soldiers fight and die for laws and systems."

This sympathy should only be extended to those who are forced to make a decision to either dodge a draft or not.

The rest of em join the military on purpose and stay in there for a steady paycheck and an education. So if they get into trouble, that's they fault for joinin the fuckin army, you feel me?

There’s another possibility: enlisting to avoid being drafted into combat. I enlisted so that I could choose to be a Preventative Medicine Specialist. Sadly, I didn’t get my choice.

[DPMartin]

I believe most in the militaries of the world practice religion of one sort or another. If they knew how unbelievably brief and temporary their lives were, then maybe they wouldn't go around killing each other.

would that include china who is basically an atheist nation, or Russia during the cold war before the iron curtain fell it was also a atheist nation.

[promethean75]

"enlisting to avoid being drafted into combat. I enlisted so that I could choose to be a Preventative Medicine Specialist."

This is as ingenious as it is ironic. Logically speaking, you stand a far better chance of avoiding actual combat by purposely joining the military and getting into something that keeps you out of the combat zone, than you would if you didn't join the military and got drafted during a war.

[godelian]

Violence is rife across the biological world.

The mating season and its male-on-male violence is one of the most widespread mate selection systems in place in the animal kingdom. In my intuition, the mating season is also the true origin and the true nature of war: a gang of men attacking another gang of men in order to confiscate their maidens.

The Rape of the Sabine Women (Latin: Sabīnae raptae Classical Latin: [saˈbiː.nae̯ ˈrap.t̪ae̯]), also known as the Abduction of the Sabine Women or the Kidnapping of the Sabine Women, was an incident in Roman mythology in which the men of Rome committed a mass abduction of young women from the other cities in the region.

I think that it is also the reason who so many men, especially young men, have always loved to go to war. I think that it harks back to deeply-rooted instincts.

If war is indeed a biological instinct, it should indeed not be a surprise if it is not particularly hard to recruit young men for war.

Even if we managed to take away all other reasons for organized violence, such as the need for resources, we would still be stuck with this one.

With the institution of marriage, we actually do have a civilizing system with which we can avoid much of the violence of the human mating season, i.e. war. However, the marriage system is certainly not perfect. If for the one or the other reason the marriage system collapses, we can expect chaos to sooner or later erupt, and the principle of the mating season to take over again, through internal war, i.e. civil war. In my opinion, a society where the marriage rate keeps falling and the divorce rate keeps rising will eventually descend into violent chaos.

None of our civilizing veneers work perfectly. On the contrary, all our civilizing hacks are merely iron wire and duct tape on top of the real biological reality, which is dangerously violent.