Thousands of youngsters have joined the army since October 7 — and it is illegal to refuse. Sofia Orr is likely to become the first woman since then to be jailed for refusing military service, but believes it is ‘wrong to take children and make them into soldiers’
    • tillimarleen@feddit.de
      276·
      11 months ago

      I think you are on the right track with your ideals of the world, but I also guess you kinda know that this is not how states operate. Of course there are different types of states, but if you think of democracies, they are also not service providers to their citizens. On the contrary. Democratic states are the abstraction of all the private interests of their citizens. This is what they protect and advance. What arises out of that is that occasionally these interests will suggest a war is what the nation desires.

        • tillimarleen@feddit.de
          6·
          11 months ago

          yes, I also don‘t believe in the nation‘s interest, yet it somehow pretty brutally exists. Something‘s got to grow, somethings got to give.

            • tillimarleen@feddit.de
              5·
              11 months ago

              At first you got to have a good analysis of how society and the economy works. Unfortunately this already is a tricky thing, because not everybody agrees.

                • NuclearDolphin@lemmy.ml
                  2·
                  11 months ago

                  I think the point they are trying to hint at is that it makes sense to try and understand the emergent forces that culminate in events as horrific as war.

                  You may “not believe in national interests” but something closely resembling that is a force governing social behavior.

                  So while it is important to pass moral judgements on these phenomena, you will be more effective at doing so if you can abstractly evaluate them absent moral judgement. Just as you couldn’t coherently understand an ecology if you cannot accept obligate predators as a concept because of the moral implications of predation.

                  We will all differ in our moral and strategic assessments, but we all cohabit the same world, in which we can all recognize common truths arising from nature.

      • ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml
        41·
        11 months ago

        What arises out of that is that occasionally these interests will suggest a war is what the nation desires.

        I think its pretty wrong to suggest wars happen as a bottom up democratic, abstracted process rather than by the upper class imposing it on us.

      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 months ago

        Democratic states are the abstraction of all the private interests of their citizens.

        I am not sure what this means, can you clarify a bit?

        • tillimarleen@feddit.de
          21·
          11 months ago

          A democratic state allows its citizens to pursue their private interests. This is only possible though if this is happening in a legal framework, so that the private interests of one citizen don‘t infringe upon the ones of another. The outcome of this consideration then is the abstraction (the specific applied to the universal) of the free will of the citizens. We call it freedom and justice. Others call it the free market.

    • TheYang@lemmy.world
      1810·
      11 months ago

      You largely can choose the provider of this service, but they will also choose you (or not).
      And you can not refrain from the service while being in the community of those that don’t refrain. In practice there are (nearly) no places where the community as a whole chooses to refrain.

      If you’re in a country with compulsory military service, make yourself interesting for other countries and leave.

    • peto (he/him)@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      11 months ago

      Eh… Close, but they are also a concentration social power (and fundamentally deferred violence), and rights only really exist in the context of social power. You can try and establish your own personal sovereignty but you can be sure that any state that cares to will test that. Sometimes the most you can do is accept that it is able to imprison you or go down fighting, and if you are committed to pacifism the latter is a harder option.

    • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.mlEnglish
      31·
      11 months ago

      No don’t like this. Countries aren’t corporations. Last time we tried that it was called fascism.