How war has influenced ancient, classical and medieval societies

[Rhyfelwyr]

War has always been socially exploitative, economically devastating, psychologically traumatizing, physically brutal - we can admire those who endured it, but we should never advocate it for its own merits. You were always far more likely to be a pitchfork-armed peasant than a knight in shining armour.

I would be opposed to non-wartime conscription on other grounds as well - most notably the idea that the state could ever have the power over us to force us into such a thing.

Still, for all that, I think we are living in an increasingly vapid society, and I can understand why people long for the discipline and camaraderie of conscription. Tyler Durden's speech comes to mind:

an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy **** we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very ****** off.

I think his comment that "we're a generation of men raised by women" is true as well. People are suppressed. When I see people, they look scared, timid, unsure - our interactions are all so fake and superficial and 99.9% of people try to play along with this game, playing by its rules, trying to get their little place on societies ladder. They want to become confident by getting people's approval by playing by the rules, yet the paradox is that is you play by other peoples' rules then right away you are making yourself a follower, you are making yourself submissive, you are demonstrating your inadequacy. If I see somebody wearing fancy clothes with their hair all styled up, then that says to me right away that they are weak, that they need attention, that they submit themselves to group norms. True self-confidence is almost non-existent these days. People that come across as confident generally derive all that confidence from their relationships to other people, it is something external to them that they can absorb, rather than coming from an internal self-assurance - take away the source of their confidence and they fall apart.

The thing is, I got so isolated, so far out the loop, that I have come to transcend all these things. I went from being the tiny quiet kid to the guy who always gets elected to speak for the group. I didn't look up to any role-models, I didn't build a friendship group, or develop skills or improve myself as a person; there was no 'healthy' solution - I just stopped caring. I threw off all the baggage and when you do that you can see yourself clearly - it's like people tell me, I know what I'm about.

Maybe the solution to the OP is that we need to stop looking to role-models, and start getting ourselves together.