Your body is made of start dust that has existed for about fourteen billion years. The history of the universe is the history of how you were born. You’re the universe incarnate. Your body is made of trillions of atoms that form billions of molecules that form millions of cells that form a network of interconnected tissues and organs that all add up to create a walking, talking, seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling, thinking, dreaming, loving, learning, hurting, glowing, reproducing organic machine. The blueprints of your body are incomprehensibly elegant. To say that you’re intelligently designed is an understatement. I don’t know if there’s a God or not, but it looks like a lot of love, attention, and genius went into the design and creation of every living thing in the universe, including you.
Try to imagine what the universe was like before the big bang when the universe was nothing more than something that could have existed. At that first moment, what were the odds that almost fourteen billion years later one small pile of atoms that had been dancing and swimming across the cosmos would coagulate into an inconceivably elegantly designed organic bipedal supercomputer that is self-aware and thinks it’s you? My guess would be the odds of that happening are either one in infinity or zero. I don’t know why we exist or what the meaning of life is, but the rarity and brevity of life sure seem to point to the conclusion that life is inconceivably important… including yours.
If you ever get to doubting your importance, go climb a mountain and watch the sunset and the stars come out. Stand in the cold night air and gape at the oceans of atoms in the night sky swirling through eternity. That’s the universe that gave birth to you, and that’s what you are. You’re a shining, cosmic miracle living in possibly the grandest, most elegant, albeit dangerous, playground that could possibly exist.
Nothing you can ever do or not do will change how important you are. Everyone has their own reasons why they doubt their self-worth, and many of those reasons seem to have merit. We all fall short of our potential, and we all do things we regret. We all hurt people, sometimes very badly. We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of. Even when we think we’re doing everything right, sometimes the world just keeps beating us down until we’ve spent so much time on our belly that we feel like an animal.
The irony of that is, we are all animals. We’re pretty clever monkeys, but we’re more primitive than we tend to admit. Our brains may be cosmic supercomputers, but they don’t have enough storage space to begin to comprehend an iota of the knowledge out there. Since we weren’t born with an instruction book we don’t even know what we’re supposed to be learning anyway. We’re all so lost we don’t even know how lost we are, and that’s how we’ll spend the rest of our lives. The silver lining in the existential despair of existence is that we’re all doing amazingly well under the circumstances. We all deserve a pat on the back for being able to function in society at all. Also, our failures and imperfections were inevitable. You shouldn’t get any madder at yourself or anyone else for screwing up than you would a two-year-old.
Life hurts bad, and it hurts often. Then, at the end of it all, we lose everything. Some of the pain we endure is unjust, but all of the pain we endure is the cost of living. Fortunately for you, even though on one level you’re nothing more than a monkey lost in a storm, you’re also still an intelligent, autonomous, bipedal cosmic supercomputer. You might not be the smartest, fastest, strongest, most beautiful, most successful monkey, but you’re still one of the rarest, most powerful forces in the universe. Your five senses, thumbs, and legs effectively give you superpowers, and the more you learn the more superpowers you can have. As long as you’re breathing, there’s something you can do to find and enact solutions to your problems. You have the power to change your environment. You just need to use your superpowers and never ever, ever quit.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, but help is out there. In fact, you already have more help than you can imagine. It’s important to bear in mind that the universe itself has already spent almost 14 billion years giving birth to you, and it’s still helping the trillions of atoms in your body operate in perfect unison. The gears of the universe are always spinning inside of us, around us and to the farthest corners of the cosmos. The universe is always doing something for you.
Before you were even born, generations of human beings toiled in the mud to keep your bloodline alive. People have fought and died for you. People have devoted their lives to understanding the universe so your generation will be less lost than theirs. You weren’t born in the mud because your generation is being held up by the accomplishments and sacrifices of every generation before you. You’ve been given so many gifts unconditionally by your ancestors that you should feel grateful to the point of feeling indebted.
On the other hand, your ancestors also did a lot of selfish, hurtful things that make life suck. The religious, political and economic systems they handed down to your generation are woefully flawed and cause immeasurable suffering. Even though there are members of your own generation who want to maintain the status quo and keep profiting from the problems in your life, there are millions of people out there willing to be your ally if you just reach out to them. There are some people you’re going to be compatible with, and there are some people you aren’t. If you’re surrounded by people who treat you with indignity and make you feel like a subhuman freak, you need to reach out on the internet and find a tribe you fit into. I guarantee you, it’s out there somewhere.
If your mental health is so low that you’re contemplating suicide, you should reach out to a suicide hotline, an online suicide hotline, support group, forum and/or professional therapist. Those resources are out there. Help is out there waiting for you, and seeking help isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of wisdom.
Sometimes suicide seems like the only solution to your problems, but it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and if you haven’t already sought help then suicide isn’t really your last resort. You still have multiple options before even considering that. If you’re willing to give up everything you have to escape your problems via suicide then there shouldn’t be anything holding you back from sacrificing everything in the pursuit of improving your life via paying for therapy, spending time at support groups, moving to a more peaceful place or traveling the world.
Why make even more sacrifices to stay alive in a world that can be so cold? Because your life is bigger than your pain. Any support group will tell you life gets better, and the harder and smarter you work the better it gets. You might not get everything you want out of life. You may never see Rome or Paris or the Aurora Borealis, but the entire universe is littered with potential awesome experiences. The most rewarding experiences out there are the ones you have with the people you love, and those people are out there either right in front of you or just around the corner. Even if they’re on the other side of the planet, you can still reach them if you’re crafty and tenacious enough.
The more positive opportunities you seize and the more positive experiences you have the more they’ll shape you into a stronger, wiser, more complete person. The better of a person you become the better of a life you’ll experience. As long as you can grow, your life can become more joyful and fulfilling.
Even if your life turns out to be nothing more than a cosmic accident and your existence is ultimately meaningless, you can still shine in the brief time you have before you die anyway. You don’t have to climb a mountain to find that. You’re already a miracle experiencing a miracle. You can feel that anytime anywhere. All you have to do is let go of your worries and just be.
Yes, there are problems in this world that we can’t just ignore in an oblivious haze of naïve optimism. But if there are problems in your life that you can fix then you should fix them and not worry about them. If there are problems in your life that you can’t fix you should accept them and not worry about them. Either way, there’s no point in enduring life’s problems if we don’t take time to stop and bask in the positive aspects of life as often as possible. That’s what makes life grand. That’s what makes life worth living. That’s why you’re lucky to be alive and why you shouldn’t cut short the priceless, brief opportunity you’ve been given.
Imagine if after you died you had to stand in front of God and/or everyone who has ever died before you and explain why you were so indifferent to (or enthusiastic about) the suffering of your fellow man. Then, after you explained yourself you had to stand with your ancestors and listen to the apologies of everyone else who died after you. What excuses do you think we’d get most tired of hearing? And if we had to apologize for bullying, exploiting and manipulating each other as well, which excuses for those kinds of behaviors do you think we’d get tired of hearing the quickest?
Part of me wants to believe we live in a just universe and that there’s some kind of fairness in death, but it would be entirely fair to force us all to stand around and shake our heads at ourselves until the universe blinks out of existence. So as it stands, the theoretical, unprovable possibility that the universe is fair terrifies me, and even if there isn’t any kind of afterlife at all, the survival of humanity still depends on us not hurting each other. Either way, we should all be asking ourselves what went wrong? What’s going wrong? Why do we keep hurting each other?
If you want to understand why people hurt each other, you can start by listening to everyone’s excuses and looking for common denominators. If you do that, the first thing you’ll notice is that humans are experts at making excuses. Everyone who hurts anyone has a reason why they believe they’re doing the right thing, but no matter how solid our reasons sound, they always overlook one simple detail that trumps our excuses: the value of human life.
If we truly appreciated the value every human being brings to the universe, then we’d never hurt one. We’d go out of our way to make sure everybody had enough of everything without needing to be ordered or guilt tripped. We certainly wouldn’t hold other people down and take what little they’ve got.
Based on the evidence I see around me, I don’t think the disconnect between how valuable life is and how valuable we treat life comes from the fact that we’re too dumb to understand how valuable life is. Based on the evidence I see around me, I think we’re just too dumb to teach it to our children. In fact, we’ve been systematically indoctrinating children (the future hope of humanity) to believe in mythologies in which human sacrifices have to be made to atone for humanity’s innate despicableness. Of course people are going to act crazy when you give them that kind of moral compass.
You don’t need a book or a prophet to tell you how valuable life is. Just go spend a night camping on a safe beach far away from the city lights. Spend a few good hours staring at the stars and soaking up the enormity and beauty of the universe. You won’t find a catchphrase written in your native language up there that describes in bureaucratic detail why life is valuable and how it should be treated. You’ll just see the universe laid bare outside the warped lens of your ancestor’s culture.
As you’re staring up at the sky imagine floating in outer space among the stars looking back down at the earth. From that vantage point, you can easily see that life is a treasure 14.6 billion years in the making, and it doesn’t matter which words you use to describe it. If you can simply look up and see the truth of that then how can go back to work and yell at another living, breathing human being about how the most important thing they can be doing with their life right now is turning in paperwork and if they don’t turn it in on time they’re going to get in so much trouble it’s going to set back their entire future as punishment for being such a criminally substandard human being? How could you rob poor people? How could you inflate half-truths to justify going to war?
If you can’t see why it’s wrong to hurt other people then you’re not spending enough time looking at the stars. When you see other people being mean you can be certain they’re not evaluating the value of life from the cosmic perspective.
There are religions which teach that you were born lost, impure, unworthy, unchosen and in need of salvation. The cure to your fatal disease is to accept and follow the set of beliefs and behaviors outlined in whichever book informed you of your inadequacy. In return for your loyalty, you’re promised that after you die you’ll be spared from a torturous eternal fate you supposedly deserve and get to spend eternity in a vaguely defined paradise.
If you accept this explanation of life, then the path before you will be simple. You just have to keep believing in what you were told and keep following the rules. You can pretty much just relax and wind down the clock on autopilot, and you’ll never have to worry about figuring out the answers to any of life’s big questions yourself. This makes religion sound appealing, but the benefits don’t actually outweigh the cost, because all of the religions humans have invented are simply human inventions. They’re all mythology.
Facing the fact that religion is mythology is terrifying for believers for several profound reasons. First, it means you’ve been lied to and used by the person you thought was your savior, which is too emotionally traumatic for many believers to even consider. Worse than that though, when you lose your religion, you lose your purpose in life and your moral compass. Life is existentially depressing and hopeless if you’re not living with purpose, and it’s confusing if you don’t have a compass. Since you still need answers to life’s questions, if you don’t have a religious book to look them up in, that means you’re responsible for figuring them all out for yourself.
We all know we’re not prophets or Einsteins. We know we don’t have the intelligence or authority to figure out the ultimate meaning of life. This means after you figure out that religion is wrong, you can’t just trade in all your wrong answers for all the right answers. You just lose you’re moral compass and spend the rest of your life lost.
A lot of theists would rather live a comfortable lie than face a lifetime of being lost, not just because it’s scary, but because they view being lost as a sign of weakness, a character flaw that needs to be stamped out. The cold, hard reality of the world we live in, is that we’re born lost, and we’re destined to wander the universe lost until we die. We’ll all face death not knowing what happens afterward or if our actions mattered. Once you accept that, you can cope with the situation sanely. But denying the reality of the situation only cripples your ability to cope with it, and that’s the definition of insanity.
Believing in mythology is like trying to hike across America using a maritime chart of the Indian Ocean for directions. Plus, you’re stuck with a traveling companion who forces you to act the way Indian fishermen acted 2000 years ago, and he constantly tells you that you’re not good enough. Accepting you’re lost and looking at the universe from an honest, scientific perspective, is like hiking around America with a wilderness survival guide with Sherlock Holmes as your traveling companion.
If you’re losing faith in mythology, and you’re worried about what to do with your life after you throw away your map of the Indian Ocean, just climb to the top of a mountain, and look down at the forests and fields below. Not one single tree, flower, or blade of grass is stressing about what to do with their life. They’re just drinking in the universe and reaching for the skies. If you were to look at yourself, standing on top of a mountain, eye-level with the clouds, you’d realize you’re already doing the exact same thing, and it’ll make you feel so alive, the last thing on your mind will be death.
Of course, you can’t spend their whole life meditating on a mountaintop, but why would you want to when there are so many other experiences to be had, problems to be solved and wonderful people to be met? Frankly, you were going to spend your whole life chasing experiences anyway, whether you claim to believe in religion or not. You can just do it more effectively when you’re not blinded, gagged and crippled by fictional, mythological beliefs.
You can look at the mystery of life as an eternal curse, or you can look at it as an endless opportunity. The universe might not look as scary if you focused on how amazing it is. Maybe we’re not even really lost. Maybe we’re already home, or maybe this is what it’s like to leave the nest. Maybe what we’re supposed to be doing is using the tools we were given to fulfill our potential and not just sit around on our knees talking to ourselves and beating ourselves up for failing to live up to the moral standards of primitive cultures.
If you’re searching for perspective in life, go camping on a mountain on a clear summer night. At midnight, put on a warm coat and look at the sky. Everything you can see from a mountaintop, in fact, everything in the universe you can see, feel, smell, touch and hear is made from combining 118 different atoms in different combinations. The reason you can make such a diverse universe out of so few building blocks is because they’re so ingeniously designed. Atoms behave so logically that you can arrange them in a chart and predict how they’ll interact with other elements based on where they are on the chart. The inventor of the Periodic Table of Elements was even able to predict the existence and nature of yet unknown elements because nature is so mathematically logical.
Not only are the building blocks of reality logical, they’re resilient. Every atom everywhere obeys the rules of the universe all the time; so far the universe has operated like clockwork flawlessly for about 13.8 billion years. It’s also grown so huge there’s not even a number for how big it is. But no matter how old or spread thin the universe becomes, atoms still follow the same inherent, unwritten rules everywhere, all the time.
If you take any atom in the universe and break it apart you’ll find it’s made up of smaller pieces that behave according to their own set of rules, and the product of their actions becomes the behavior of the atom at large. Those subatomic particles are made up of even smaller pieces that follow their own set of unwritten rules. The rules of subatomic physics are too complex for most humans to understand, and even our brightest scientific minds still don’t completely understand what’s happening at the bottom of reality. At this point, scientists have broken atoms down so far that the pieces just look like invisible forces and mathematics. Until they can find more concrete answers, we’re left to wonder how and why we live in a universe made of math.
Even if we don’t understand the grand design, we can still marvel at it. And its most breathtakingly genius feature is the existence of life. It’s odd enough that such an elegant universe would exist in the first place, let alone possess the capacity to convert inorganic matter into self-replicating DNA automatically.
What makes the existence of life even more surprising is how complex its design is. Consider that your body is made up of countless atoms joined together to form molecules, which behave according to their own set of logical, purpose-driven, unwritten rules. Molecules are designed to combine and form living cells. There are about a trillion cells in your body that consume food, produce energy and poop while performing some function your body needs to live.
The precision and speed at which the cells of the human body operate at is cosmic. To simply lift your arm over your head, your body has to send an electrical impulse down a conductive fiber to your arm muscles, which are made of millions of fibers the size of hairs. The electrical signal tells the muscle fibers to inject themselves with calcium, which causes billions of smaller components within each strand to contract. They stay contracted until the brain sends a signal to the muscle to flood its cells with potassium, which blocks the muscle’s ability to hold its grip. All those billions of events happen in a fraction of a second.
As impressive as it is that the human body can move so efficiently using such an involved process, that doesn’t scratch the surface of our anatomy’s complexity. The cells in our bodies follow unique rules to form tissues, which follow their own set of rules and combine to form organs, which interact elegantly with other organs. Together, they create a self-replicating, self-healing, self-aware, problem-solving, bi-pedal, autonomous supercomputer with a stable skeletal structure and strong muscles that lives on a giant rock spinning around a giant fireball in an endless vacuum.
If you’re impressed by the design of the human body, you should be equally weirded out by it, because the programming instructions that run all of the body’s functions are stored in your DNA, which is made out of atoms, which arranged themselves to form DNA by themselves. The universe arranged itself into DNA and is running programming instructions in your brain. That means the universe is literally your copilot.
Your body is more than just a machine. It’s a mother, father, son, daughter, employee, citizen, lover, believer, dreamer, worrier, champion, loser, etc. This is how we tend to think of ourselves, but on the grand scale of things, our bodies are ultimately tiny globs of atoms jostling in a sea of atoms. If doctors dissected you, all they would find are atoms. They wouldn’t be able to find you.
Your memory, identity, skills, emotional scars, motivations and everything else that defines you as a person is the product of chemicals and electricity churning away in your brain, a glob of inanimate matter behaving animatedly. Somehow it all comes together to form something that exists between the lines. Somehow the brain produces a ghost in the machine that can will your body to speak the words, “I think. Therefore, I am.”
Not only do you know you exist, but you can distinguish yourself from other piles of atoms. You can interact with other atoms, and they’ll respond to your existence. Other people can also acknowledge, remember and interact with you, further reaffirming the reality of your existence.
So here you are, built on math and grown from stardust, living for a short time with the ability to comprehend your own existence, knowing you’re going to die someday relatively soon. At that time, all the atoms in your body that held your consciousness together will unravel themselves from each other and spill back into general circulation. The brevity of life might make existence seem futile, but the amount of power and work that went into creating the universe and the life within it suggests there may be value to it. You may be an underpaid employee, a rejected lover, an overworked parent, or unappreciated artist, but first, you’re a cosmic miracle/mystery.
The big question is, what do we do with this surreal life we’ve got? If nothing else, we should all be standing around looking at our hands saying, “Whoa,” because reality is amazing.
In order to explain the value of life, we need to start from the very beginning, which was about 14.7 billion years ago when all the matter and energy in the universe was compacted into an infinitely dense point in space called a singularity.
There’s a lot we don’t yet know about the singularity. We don’t know why it was there or how it got there. We don’t know whether it had existed forever or if it appeared out of nothing in a specific instant in time. For that matter, we don’t know if time or space existed back then in the same way we experience it today. There are theories that it probably didn’t. All we’ve been able to reasonably deduce is that the singularity was there, and in an instant an unknown catalyst caused it, and possibly time and space, to expand to cosmic proportions. This event is commonly known as “The Big Bang,” but “The Big Expansion” is more accurate.
During the early phase of the expansion, all the matter in the universe was too hot and energized for atoms to hold themselves together, much less bond with other atoms to form the 118 elements that makeup all the matter we’ve found in the universe today. After 150 million years of expanding and thinning, the explosion thinned and dispersed enough energy for the atoms were stable enough to bond together into elements.
The first celestial bodies to form were massive clouds of hydrogen gas, and within those clouds arose the conditions necessary to give birth to stars. Within those stars arose the conditions necessary to give birth to planets and black holes. As the universe became more diverse in composition it, created more diverse conditions to produce more diverse elements. The continued expansion, cooling, and pooling of matter and energy in the universe resulted in a never-ending redesigning of the physical universe that eventually created the conditions necessary for life to exist.
About 9.6 billion years after the Big Expansion, which would be 5.1 billion years ago, the Milky Way galaxy formed. About 5 billion years ago some of the remnants of a supernova within the Milky Way began to cool off and form into the planet, Earth. About 3.5 billion years ago life appeared on Earth. After that, life evolved in complexity for about 2 billion, eight hundred fifty million years before simple, multi-celled organisms appeared.
After that, evolution sped up rapidly. In about the same amount of time it took for life to evolve into multi-celled organisms, their descendants evolve into millions of elaborate species of plants, animals, fungus, bacteria, etc. including dinosaurs that towered up to 43 feet tall.
About six hundred forty-nine million nine-hundred thousand years after the dinosaurs went extinct, a small, furry mammal evolved into the first homo sapien. After that, humans evolved for about 90,000 years before our cultural history began. From there, it took us about 10,000 years to go from writing on clay tablets to surfing the internet.
Now, with all of that information in mind, go outside the city on a cloudless night and take some time to stare up at the night sky. Think about everything that’s happened in the past 14.7 billion years that led to you standing there staring back up towards your cosmic birthplace.
If one particle had been missing during the first second of the Big Expansion, it could have shifted galaxies, and you wouldn’t be here today. If one more or one less star between the big bang and where Earth is today had or hadn’t exploded or imploded you wouldn’t be here today. If the earth was only a few miles closer or farther away from the sun you wouldn’t be here today. If one more or one less asteroid had hit the earth you wouldn’t be here today. If one more or one less extinction level event hadn’t occurred you wouldn’t be here today. If there had been one more or one less rainfall you wouldn’t be here today. If one animal had or hadn’t eaten one of your countless ancestors you wouldn’t be here today. If one animal hadn’t eaten one of the predators trying to eat one of your countless ancestors you wouldn’t be here today. If any two of your ancestors hadn’t met and copulated on the day they did you wouldn’t be here today. Each of your female ancestors was born with between 200,000 and 400,000 potential eggs in her uterus though only several hundred of them matured into eggs. Each of your male ancestors produced about 5 billion sperm in their lives. When you were conceived, there was between 40 to 600 million other sperm that could have gestated the egg your mother provided instead of the one that created you. Only one combination of sperm and eggs in each generation could have led to your creation.
What are the odds that you’d be here today? For all practical purposes, there’s a 1 in infinity chance. Imagine all the potential beings who would have gotten the chance to exist had things turned out differently. Imagine how they would scream in the darkness with jealousy that you received this coveted chance and they didn’t. Some people might call that destiny.
Even if it was a matter of pure chance that you, specifically, should be alive, it’s no accident that the universe or life exists. There was a reason The Big Expansion happened and life emerged on earth. We don’t know what that reason is, but everything happens as a result of cause and effect. If there was a cause there was a reason, even if that reason was purely scientific. If there was a reason, then there was a purpose. If there was a purpose, then there is value in the life of any creature capable of fulfilling that purpose.
Unfortunately, you weren’t born with a price tag on your toe. So you can only deduce how valuable your life is, but there’s evidence of your value in how much work went into creating you. Remember, it didn’t take 9 months to create you. It took 14.7 billion years. The matter in your body today was present at The Big Expansion. It has traveled the length of the universe. Galaxies rose and fell around you in the great cosmic tidal wave that brought about the conditions necessary for you to be born. The matter in your body used to be in a star. It might have been part of a dinosaur. You might have been in a glass of water drunk by your favorite historical figure.
Spending your entire life on this familiar planet, it’s easy to take yourself for granted while perceiving the beautiful nebulas and globular clusters in the sky as miraculous celestial bodies, but look at earth from their point of view. You’re a celestial body too. In fact, you’re even more amazing than the most beautiful astronomical phenomenon. The fact that you, a sentient being, aware of your own existence and capable of self-determination, arose from inanimate matter is as miraculous as The Big Expansion its self.
The contradictory nature of your existence raises some more penetrating questions. We don’t know why the universe exists at all, but we know that the physical universe is meticulously, mathematically, and consistently designed and behaves according to fixed, unwavering rules. Why and how is it that these rules exist? How is it that those rules allowed for the sublimation of living creatures whose bodies are meticulously, mathematically, and consistently designed? Why is heredity mathematically predictable? Chance isn’t predictable. So evolution must not be entirely the product of chance. If that’s true then what else could it be the product of?
It’s been theorized the universe could have been designed by some form of intelligence. There’s no conclusive evidence to back this theory up, but it’s not entirely without precedent. After all, we ourselves are intelligent beings who arose from inanimate matter. And in a universe where you can’t get something from nothing it would explain where our intelligence came from. Granted, that still leaves the issue of where the creator came from. Maybe the creator existed forever. Of course, if it did, then maybe the universe existed forever as well, but if that were the case then the universe wouldn’t have needed a creator to create it since it was always there.
If there was logical intent behind your creation then your life has an extra source of value. You’re valuable to the one who went through 14.7 billion years of deliberate, calculated work creating you. Regardless of whether or not your parents were the only intelligent beings responsible for bringing you to life, there still aren’t words to fully describe how cosmically epic in scale your existence is.
Yet for all the work and purpose that went into bringing you here, you’ll only have a handful of decades to be a witness to your self and all of creation. In a universe where time appears to be infinite, you’ll take a finite number of breaths. You’ll speak a finite number of words. You’ll see a finite number of blades of grass. You’ll meet a finite number of people. Every moment of your life that ticks by was the only chance in all of eternity for you to experience that moment. That makes every moment of your life (no matter how mundane it may seem) infinitely rare and thus infinitely valuable. That makes every moment of your life the most valuable moment of your life. Those moments are only infinitely valuable because you are.
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Why: An Agnostic Perspective on the Meaning of Life: This book is the result of obsessing over the meaning of life for ten years. It asks what the meaning of life would be depending on whether or not there is a God or an afterlife, and it comes to the conclusion that regardless of which scenario is true the end result is that we have an opportunity and a responsibility to achieve self-actualization and make the most out of life. Then it provides food for thought on how to do that.
Philosophies Of The Wise Sloth: A collection of essays from this site about life, death, God, the universe, ethics, personal growth, and happiness.
The Bible is Mythology: A collection of essays from The Wise Sloth blog about how Christianity is mythology and does more harm than good in society.
Why You Should Not Join The U.S. Military: A collection of essays from The Wise Sloth blog about the United States military. The central argument is that the military is a cult that violates the troops’ basic human rights.
The Rotten Apple Interactive Adventure Book: A choose your own adventure book about a real hostel in New Zealand that helps backpackers find work in the local fruit industry. In the story you stay at the Rotten Apple Backpacker Hostel in Hastings, New Zealand for several months. Links within the book allow you to choose how the story unfolds by making decisions, such as what size room to stay in, where to work, where to hang out, and who to sleep with. The story takes you to real places around Hastings and has you do things that real people do there. Embedded within the text are links that connect you with more information about those places and activities.
The Last Transcript: A psychological thriller about life after the zombie apocalypse written in the form of a transcript of a Skype conversation. Several years after the zombie apocalypse, 9 survivors trapped in different safe houses around the world share a Skype call on Thanksgiving. Not all of them survive. The story is also a script for a super low budget movie or play.
An Old Man From Jersey Explains Life: A 67 page comic about an eccentric old man sitting on his porch steps explaining life to a little boy. It’s basically a summary of one of my other books, “Why: An Agnostic Perspective on the Meaning of Life.” This comic delves into complex philosophical concepts in a lighthearted way that’s easy to understand but will still make you think.
Occupy LOL Street: Volume 1: 140-page collection of six dark, surreal comics about three cats who get involved in the Occupy LOL Street protests in Zucchini park and try to find solutions to America’s problems.
Two Conservative Ladies script: A script for a very dark humored, cynical play or stand-up comedy act in which two conservative ladies stand around and talk about American politics and conservative values. It’s a scathing analysis of conservative American culture.
State of the Union Volume 1: 75 pages of poignant, slightly dark and surreal political comics previously posted on The Wise Sloth website.
State of the Union Volume 2: 88 pages of poignant, slightly dark and surreal political comics previously posted on The Wise Sloth website.
Monk and Punk: Book 1: A very dark, crude comic book about a monk who gets kicked out of his monastery and teams up with an alcoholic punk to pull of a get-rich-quick scheme involving assembly line pulp fiction writing with the goal of building their own monastery. The story is also a business plan, and it comes with a free formula plot template.
Monk and Punk: Book 2: Following the events of book 1, Monk and Punk adapt their plans to build a monastery after a series of disasters and end up building a hollow, floating island with a concrete hull that they use as a sustainable houseboat to live on and operate their growing independent publishing house out of. Oh, and there’s narwhals.
Note: I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.
“Hero” is a strong word. The label of “hero” comes with a prestigious amount of respect and privilege. It’s only fair that anyone who claims hero-status should have to give full account of why they deserve to hold the title of hero not just to the civilians they expect to be praised by but to the true heroes who can give full account of their hero status lest any false heroes minimize their sacrifices and accomplishments.
The current culture in America has indiscriminately lumped every member of its military into the hero category with no consideration for achievement or distinction for degrees. This is unfair to the civilian population and all true military heroes for several reasons.
1: Not every troop enlists out of patriotism.
Yes, there are many individuals who enlisted because they genuinely wanted to serve their country, be all they can be and selflessly sacrifice themselves for their fellow man. These individuals’ noble intentions put them in the running for hero status, and it’s not fair to give mercenaries equal standing as them.
There are troops who joined the military because they were enticed by an early retirement, free education, travel opportunities, partying, a lucrative and secure pay check, socialized health care for them and their family and all the other practical benefits that come along with being in the military. Some troops even joined as an alternative to prison. Anyone who joined the military for what they could get out of it is a mercenary by degrees.
Granted, they knew there was a chance of death in the line of duty, but every trucker accepts that same risk in their job to deliver goods to consumers across the nation. The big difference between a regular trucker and a mercenary is the mercenary accepts the certainty that they’ll be responsible for killing other human beings (directly or indirectly). If you’d join Murder Incorporated for what you can get out of it, you’ve got a big task ahead of you to explain how that doesn’t make you the opposite of a hero.
2: Not every troop sees combat.
Regardless of why you joined the military, let’s suppose you spend 20 years processing administrative paperwork in a cubicle at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Let’s suppose the closest you come to a combat zone is Ali Al Salem Air Force Base in Kuwait, where you gained 10 pounds from eating stake, lobster, and ice cream bars and returned home with an extra $5000 in separation and hazardous duty pay even though the closest you came to combat was playing paintball in downtown Kuwait City. Would you really tell a Marine (who has done 5 tours in Iraq and lost half his friends in combat) that you’re a hero on the same level as them? No. Hell, no.
Well, if you wouldn’t tell a combat infantry Marine you’re just as much of a hero as them, then don’t tell civilians you’re a combat infantry Marine-level hero, because by my calculations processing paperwork in San Antonio for 20 years doesn’t make you any more of a hero than the taxpayers who paid that Marine’s paycheck.
3: Doing something you’re forced to isn’t brave
Regardless of how close you came to the battlefield, what would happen if you refused to support the mission? Technically, the UCMJ gives the military the right to execute its own troops for going AWOL during a time of war. Granted, in this day and age the negative press that would generate almost guarantees that won’t happen. What will happen though is you’ll go to jail for a few months and then get kicked out of the military with no benefits… but you will get a dishonorable discharge that’s designed to almost guarantee you’ll never be able to earn a living wage again for the rest of your life. This means every soldier is constantly faced with two choices: Support the mission and possibly die on the battlefield or don’t support the mission and face certain destitution by your own leaders.
This means it would require as much of a sacrifice, if not more, to conscientiously object to the mission as it would to support the mission. This means it’s theoretically possible to continue to support a mission you disagree with out of cowardice. This doesn’t mean all troops are cowards. It just illustrates how important it is to make the distinction that not all troops are automatically heroes so as not to lump the hypocritical cowards in with the troops who do genuinely continue to serve out of courage and selflessness.
It also raises an uncomfortable point. The mere existence of the dishonorable discharge will always cast a shadow of doubt on the heroism of any soldier. I don’t say that to be spiteful, at least, not to the troops. I say that to encourage discussion about whether or not the dishonorable discharge should exist at all. Is it just that the military expects civilians to embrace every troop as selfless heroes, but the military itself holds a gun to every troop’s head and orders them to dance or die? Is it mentally healthy to be comfortable with this?
4: Nobody who fights for an oppressive government is a hero
Some troops do willingly fight on the battlefield selflessly and die in the line of combat. Some even willingly and consciously sacrifice their lives in order to save the lives of their fellow soldiers. As taboo as it is to question the heroism of these martyrs, it’s imperative to do so in order to fully validate their heroism.
Consider this. Soldiers died selflessly fighting for Hitler, Ho Chi Mihn, Stalin and Pol Pot. If we made it a rule that any soldier who dies in the line of duty is automatically a hero then we owe every fallen Nazi and kamikaze pilot full hero honors on par with every American soldier who died in the Korean War, the Vietnam War or the Iraq War.
If that doesn’t sound reasonable then we have to ask ourselves if reason ever played a role in our decision to call our soldiers heroes or are we really just saying that any time one of our troops dies they become a hero and anytime anyone else’s troops die, they’re just the bad guy getting what they deserve? If that’s what we’re doing then the only determining factor in who becomes a hero is who wins the war, and that cheapens every hero’s death everywhere.
Even if a man dies in battle, he still needs to pass 2 more tests before he’s granted full hero status. The first question we have to ask is how their unit behaved. Did they maim or kill any civilians? Did they harass and bully civilians? Did they engage their enemy with unnecessary cruelty? Did they torture? Did they kill for sport? Did they use their victims’ skulls as ashtrays? Did they commit any war crimes? Did they break the Geneva Convention?
There is an American War Crimes Museum in Vietnam. It contains pictures of American soldiers committing war crimes. Some of those Americans in those pictures died in the line of combat and received medals. Why should they get a free pass to the hall of heroes? They wouldn’t if they had Nazi flags on their shoulders instead of American flags. But the Nazis killed 6 million Jews and invaded other countries though. Well, America is responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis and has sent troops to as many, if not more countries than Germany. I’m not saying America is the same as Nazi Germany. I’m saying we need to have a measured conversation about America’s military actions without whitewashing over every uncomfortable fact with euphoric propaganda.
This brings me to the second question we have to ask about our fallen soldiers before we write them into the history books as divine heroes, and that is the righteousness of the wars they fight. No matter how valiantly and selflessly any Nazi soldier fought and died, they won’t be remembered as heroes by most of the world because the war they supported was unjust. The American government tells its civilians and soldiers that every war it fights is just, but every single government that has ever gone to war has always told everyone that their actions were just. Therefore, you can never take any government’s reasons for going to war at face value. When a government gives you the reasons why they’re going to war, that’s your cue to question those reasons relentlessly….and that takes courage.
Look at the war in Iraq. Many Americans have lost their lives there. The surviving soldiers spit venom at any civilian who questions the Iraq war, but is it really the civilians who deserve to have their integrity questioned? Any American soldier who expects to be regarded as a hero or at least expects to be exempt from criticism needs to objectively analyze for themselves why America invaded Iraq.
If you look past the propaganda and look at the hard facts you’ll find…nothing. George Bush claimed America had to invade Iraq because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction even though America knew Saddam didn’t have nuclear capability, and the only chemical weapons Saddam had were the ones America sold him. America knew Saddam had used those weapons on civilians years before America used those war crimes as justification to hang him. When it came to light that Saddam didn’t have the weapons of mass destruction General Colin Powell claimed, then George Bush changed his story and said America went into Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. Years later, the Iraqi people still have their roads blockaded by American troops. So which reason did America go to war? Journalists, Nobel Prize winners, politicians, soldiers, and citizens have been arguing for years about why America went to war in Iraq because there’s no clear answer.
100,000 people dead require a clear cut answer, which the American government has yet to produce. I can’t yield unquestioning trust to a government that can’t give a solid account for why it’s killed so many people and spent so much of its taxpayers’ hard-earned money. Nor can I endorse hero status on soldiers who are killing for a cause with no clear justification. Nor can I exempt soldiers from criticism if I can’t determine with certainty that the cause they serve is just. Nor should you, nor should the troops themselves.
I can’t support the troops if the troops cannot give me a full account of what they’re fighting for. This isn’t disrespectful, arrogant, impudent or ungrateful. This is completely reasonable and justified. In response to everything said here I know that many troops (as well as family members, friends, and supporters of the troops) will respond by saying, “The troops protect your freedoms….” as if that fact justifies everything they’ve done and exempts them from all criticism.
To this I would say, what about the Iraqi’s freedom to travel? What about their freedom from search and seizure? What about their freedom from torture? America backs the Palestinian holocaust, which the rest of the world would step in and end, was it not for America’s military. Even back in America, civilians don’t have the freedom to marry whomever they want. Americans don’t have the freedom of privacy. Our phones are wiretapped. Our genitals are groped at airports. You can’t buy certain books without your name appearing on a CIA or FBI blacklist. Peace activists are put on the TSA terrorist list and lose the freedom to fly. The American government has given itself the right to take anyone in the world to secret prisons to be tortured and denied the right to a fair, public trial. Americans don’t have the freedom to buy alcohol except in limited times and places. Americans don’t have the right to grow medical marijuana.
The troops claim they protect Americans’ freedoms yet America has more people in prison than any other country in the world. Americans don’t have the freedom to choose how their taxes or spent. Americans don’t have the freedom to dispose of a president with a 30% approval rating or a Congress with a 12% approval rating. Americans aren’t protected from predatory financial practices. American women don’t even have the same freedom to take off their shirt that American men have. How can you the American military supports and guarantees Americans’ freedom when it’s illegal for half the population to take their shirt off?
You can even bring the issue closer to home. The enlisted troops of the military themselves are literally slaves who are exploited and subjugated by the military caste system. The troops are made up of American civilians. Therefore the American government is enslaving civilians and justifying it by using the UCMJ as a loophole around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If the American government can enslave 1% of its population and systematically and brazenly brainwash those slaves to belligerently defend their own subjugation then why should I feel safe in America? The American government reserves the right to draft able-bodied men into slavery at any time as long as it claims there’s a need for it, and we’ve seen how reliable its reasons for going to war are.
I’m not impressed by a soldier’s ability to follow orders without questioning them. I’m not impressed by a soldiers’ willingness to die for a cause they don’t understand. I’m not impressed by the freedoms soldiers willingly surrender to men with a track record of authorizing human rights abuses and lying about it. I’m not impressed by how belligerently you tell me I’m ungrateful. I’m impressed by people who question their answers. I’m impressed by people who stand up to injustice in their own house. I’m impressed by troops who refuse to serve politicians who torture whistleblowers.
Note: I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.
Many American civilians don’t fully understand that military service members fall under a completely separate legal jurisdiction than civilians. This legal code is known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The existence of the UCMJ isn’t necessarily a sinister thing. In a lot of ways, pointing out that civilians and troops fall under different legal codes is like saying people who work for McDonalds and people who work for Burger King have different employee handbooks. The military is a bureaucratic institution that exists to accomplish a specific purpose just like the United States Post Office. Neither could operate without some kind of guidelines that outline the operating procedures for how they accomplish their purpose.
This sounds reasonable on paper, but the UCMJ redefines the basic human rights of the people who fall under its jurisdiction in ways that are considered unethical and unconstitutional. It’s literally illegal to treat civilians the same way troops are treated under the UCMJ. Here are five ways the UCMJ treats the troops unethically:
1. Bad Conduct and Dishonorable Discharges
There’s effectively no difference between a bad conduct/dishonorable discharge and a felony conviction. No other place of employment has the ability to punish dissenting employees with prison time and felony convictions for not obeying their boss at work. However, the military reserves this right because the UCMJ gives it that right, which is like saying the Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true.
Just like how the Bible causes its followers to carry around the burden of the threat of Hell in their minds every time they commit the most innocent, victimless sin, the troops carry around the burden of the threat of a dishonorable discharge with them all the time, everywhere they go. This is tolerable if you don’t think about it, but once you realize that the rest of your life will be unceremoniously destroyed if you decide not to do a jumping jack when you’re ordered to or you decide not to button up your shirt when you’re ordered to and persist in refusing to do so after repeated orders you’ll come to realize that your life isn’t your own, and your personhood isn’t important to the military. You’re a slave whose worth is measured by your willingness to conform, and you’ll be unceremoniously thrown out onto the street and made an example out of the moment it’s convenient for the military.
You can find ways to justify this, but it’s a legal fact that McDonald’s couldn’t do this to its employees because that would be grossly unethical. So let’s be clear that in justifying the existence of bad conduct/dishonorable discharges we are in effect justifying second-class citizenship for the troops; they have less protection under the law and can be treated worse than other people and we’re fine with this.
2. Institutionalized Victimhood/Subjugation
Imagine if you had to salute teachers, police officers, doctors or politicians any time you pass them in the street. Imagine if you had to address everyone who gets paid more than you as “Sir or Ma’am.” Imagine if you had to deliver these gestures of submission to people you don’t work with and don’t know. Or imagine if you had to offer these gestures of submission to individuals who you knew for a fact were dumber than you and had less moral character than you.
Now imagine if I told you that you had to salute all these people and address them with a superior title because you respected them….well, that and the fact that if you don’t then you’ll be demoted, fired, go to jail and/or receive a felony conviction on your permanent employment record that you can’t hide from future prospective employers….but the fear of permanent destitution isn’t why you salute them. You salute them because you respect them…even if you don’t know them or you know for a fact that one of those individuals is a scum bag.
What if I told you that you had to respect these people because they were white, or older than you, or joined the company before you or went to school a little longer than you? In a world where “all men are created equal” does it matter what reason someone tells you to subjugate yourself to another person, especially when the order to subjugate yourself comes with the threat of destitution?
Mandatory gestures of subjugation are reprehensible and illegal in every walk of life except the military, and in that case, insult is added to injury by training the troops to glorify participation in their own subjugation. Military training teaches you that the way to be the perfect human is to be the perfect victim or abuser, depending on which side of the caste system your rank places you in relation to the human being standing in front of you.
Again, I understand that there are reasons for the military caste system and for saluting, but those reasons merely justify the exact same level of institutionalized victimhood and subjugation that was imposed on Negro slaves before the Emancipation Proclamation.
Just like with Negro slavery, many honest, well-intentioned people used similar reasons to justify the institutionalized victimhood and subjugation of those slaves, and the worst part is that from one narrow point of view they were right. If you ignore the inherent value of human beings and only look at the well-being of a nation from the standpoint of its economic and political strength, then a caste system looks justifiable. So feel free to argue that the troops need to or deserve to be held to a lower standard of ethical treatment than the civilian population. Just understand that when you do that, saying “Support the Troops” is as meaningful as saying “Support the Slaves.”
3. Inhumane Training Methods
Have you ever wondered why police officers, firemen, lawyers, CEOs or politicians don’t go through military basic training? After all, the commercials say that military training will turn you into a superhuman. If military basic training is such a powerful tool for raising human beings to their full potential then why doesn’t everyone or at least the most powerful people in the world go through basic training?
The answer is because military training doesn’t raise you to your full potential. It uses time-tested brainwashing techniques to break you down mentally and replace your values and beliefs with those that will ensure you shut down your capacity to reason and question. It indoctrinates you to willfully subjugate yourself to external control and kill without question.
Public and private organizations alike regularly produce literature condemning the training techniques used in military basic training. However, these techniques are only condemned when cults use them, not when the military does. I strongly urge you to put this claim to the test. Go look in any brainwashing textbook, and compare those methods to military basic training. Military basic training is copied word-for-word from brainwashing textbooks. This isn’t a subjective opinion you can disagree with for your own subjective reasons. This is a cut-and-dry, verifiable fact.
Another way you can put this theory to the test is to set up your own basic training camp. Hire ex-basic training instructors to train a group of psychology students using the exact same training manuals and techniques used in military basic training. Then invite the American Psychological Association to monitor your training program for any ethical violations. Your experiment would be shut down before it finished if not before it started.
This raises the question, why the double standards? Why have we taken one group of people and exempted them from the same protections we guarantee everyone else? And does it even matter if there’s a reason? What’s our freedom worth if it’s bought with the blood of slaves and can be taken away from us by our own government with the flick of a pen? Are we even worth protecting if we agree to strip our fellow man of their humanity?
4. Pushing the Limits of Contractual Obligation
We justify exempting troops from the same rights and protections every other human being is entitled to because the troops signed a contract and took an oath. Actually, this statement is only half true. In the case of a draft the troops don’t have a choice. They have to take the oath or go to jail. In that case, the government gets to throw all the rights and protections guaranteed by the constitution out the window at its own discretion. In other words, the government can suspend the constitution at will like it did in the Vietnam War (or as the Vietnamese call it, The American War) when there was zero threat to the American public and the troops were sent in (many against their will) to protect American business’s access to the South East Asian economy against the will of the majority of the Vietnamese (and all of the Cambodian) people…but I digress.
The draft sets a precedent that the government can throw out the constitution at will and it doesn’t need airtight justification to do so. It can also throw out the constitution if it can get a person to sign a piece of paper waiving their rights. Before you start screaming, “The troops knew what they were getting into before they signed up!” go visit a military recruiter and tell them you want to sign up for the military. They’ll put a piece of paper and a pen in front of you and pressure you to sign it as fast as possible.
If you ask them the hard questions about the U.C.M.J. they’ll make excuses and dodge the subjects. They’ll reassure you everything is on the level and promise you anything they can to get you to sign that paper so they can meet their recruitment quota. They’ll even flat out lie to you. Any honest basic training instructor will tell you that military recruiters are synonymous with dishonesty.
To military apologists this is all just nit-picking; the bottom line is the troops signed a contract that’s more legally binding than the constitution or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I suppose, from a purely technical standpoint that’s legally valid. But if that’s the case then what the hell are we doing here? If I can just give you a $3,000 kicker bonus and promise to pay for your pregnant wife’s upcoming hospital bills (that you can’t afford because you work for McDonald’s) in exchange for all your civil liberties then why have civil liberties in the first place? The issue here isn’t whether or not it’s illegal to strip human beings of their civil liberties. The question is whether or not it should be legal. The answer is no. It shouldn’t, because as the military says, “A threat to liberty anywhere is a threat to liberty everywhere.”
5. Loss of civil liberties
Many of the laws in the UCMJ are inoffensive and inarguable. For example, Article 128 of the UCMJ deals with assault. Of course, we don’t want people assaulting each other. Article 120 deals with rape, and that’s great too. Nobody should be raped. So I agree with that, but the fact that there are some reasonable lines in the UCMJ doesn’t prove that they’re all reasonable, practical or just. Look at Articles 133 and 134, which say,
“Any commissioned officer, cadet, or midshipman who is convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.” and “Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special, or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court.“
If those statements sound borderline meaningless, that’s because they are. They were designed as catchall laws to allow the military to incriminate and punish the troops for any reason it subjectively decides. Michelle Manhart was discharged for posing nude in Playboy magazine because it brought discredit on the military. Others have been reprimanded and discharged for moonlighting as strippers even though they kept their daytime job in the military a secret. You’ll go to jail and/or get a dishonorable discharge for publicly speaking your mind about morally questionable things your employer (who won’t let you quit) is doing. You can be demoted at work for cussing at a minor at a grocery store.
You might not have a problem with this, but let’s just be clear about the precedent we’re setting here. The military enforces subjective cultural taboos, and retains broad discretion in its ability to destroy the lives of its service members for not conforming to the military’s narrow perception of morality. Imagine if you were a member of a church, and your pastor found out you cheated on your wife. Then he told your boss and you got demoted at work. Imagine if you got fired at work for marching in a gay pride parade over the weekend. Imagine if you were sentenced to life in prison for whistle-blowing human rights abuses committed by your employer. Would that be fair? Would that be just? No, but that’s everyday life for the troops. The human beings are so un-free that they’re subject to laws that basically say anything you do can be illegal if your boss wants it to. That’s literally the opposite of freedom. That’s totalitarian control over the life of a human being, and there’s no dignity in that.
All of the extraordinary rules/regulations in the UCMJ are supposedly justified because they ensure good order and discipline, but never forget that this good order and discipline comes at the cost of respect for human dignity and equality. These measures aren’t necessary to maintain good order and discipline in the civilian population because civilian employers don’t have the same mission as the military. The military’s mission is to kill people and blow things up without asking why.
This is an unnatural mission that human instincts, common sense, and reason-based morality cannot accept. As a result, the military must use invasive techniques to break its members’ minds and bind them in an unnatural psychological state against their will if/when necessary. If the military can’t break the mind of a troop it will tattoo “failure to conform” on their forehead and throw them in the gutter and make an example of them to scare the remaining troops into submission. To the military, the perfect hero is the perfect slave, and all their benefits and perks are just golden handcuffs. Putting bigger golden handcuffs on the slaves is a hollow way to support them. Refusing to allow open, honest discussion about what the troops are dying/killing for is a hollow way to support them. If you really, truly care about the troops, the best way you can support them is to end the UCMJ and give the troops their rights, their dignity and their freedom back.
I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.
I separated because I realized nine things about the military that would have kept me from joining in the first place if I had known them in 1999. None of these reasons are derogatory towards the troops. All of these reasons have to do with how the military treats the troops unethically. The purpose of this essay isn’t to defame servicemen and women. The purpose is to raise awareness of how the military system treats its own.
Whether you agree or disagree with me, I encourage you to leave a comment. I don’t censor people who disagree with me, but comments that include personal attacks or insults will be deleted.
1. The military is a death cult that brainwashes you.
The military is painstakingly designed around the cult model, and the two biggest red flags are its unethical indoctrination process and totalitarian, pyramid-shaped caste system. Other warning signs include the use of an inside language, in-group symbols, rituals, in-group socializing, constantly telling you that the military is your family, convincing you that military history is your history and other tactics that convince you to base your identity and purpose in life primarily on the military. Individually, these practices aren’t necessarily sinister, but the military goes to extreme lengths to use every trick in the book every day to convince its members to base their identity on the in-group and devote their life to it. That’s what cults do, and the military does it better than anyone.
Again, I’m not saying this to attack the troops. I’m not saying, “You suck because you’re a brainwashed slave in a cult.” I’m bringing this up to raise objection to the military using unethical brainwashing techniques on its troops. This is a human rights violation on a mass scale, and the only reason the military isn’t shut down by the police for operating a death cult is because the military operates outside the law.
There’s no country in the world that wants to take away America’s freedoms. The only people in the world taking away Americans’ freedoms are the very leaders every active duty soldier swears an oath of allegiance to. The American government took away Americans’ freedoms every year I served in the military. Americans lost freedoms every year I was stationed overseas, and anyone who enlists today will be able to say the same thing after they separate.
America is no longer the land of the free, and it’s also not a representative democracy. It’s a corportocracy controlled by the rich, for the rich. America doesn’t even defend democracy abroad. It’s the only country actively toppling democracies. Look it up. That’s not a conspiracy. It’s common knowledge.
If you join the United States military, you won’t fight for truth, justice or freedom. You’ll fight for a government that crushes public dissent and locks up more people than any other country in the world in a for-profit prison system that uses inmates as slave labor. You won’t fight for peace. You’ll fight for a country that commits human rights violations, spies on its own citizens and locks up whistle blowers, while protecting war criminals. You’ll fight for a country that destabilizes weaker countries to allow multinational businesses to fleece them out of their natural resources and outsource jobs to their sweatshops. The American military might fight against terrorism, but it also engages in terrorism and creates more terrorists every time it kills innocent civilians, which is almost every month.
There are no serious foreign threats to America’s way of life. Possibly the biggest threat to the average American’s quality of life is America’s own industrial war complex, which directs billions of tax dollars every year to killing goat herders while America’s schools crumble from lack of funding.
If you support America’s military mission, you won’t make the world a better place. In the end, your noble sacrifices will make the world a worse place, but don’t take my word for it. If you want to know what America’s military stands for, ask the good people of Diego Garcia.
3. The military cares about you the same way a slave owner cares about his slaves.
The military will convince you to love it so much you’ll get military tattoos, wear military-themed civilian clothing and yell at anyone who criticizes the military, but it doesn’t return that loyalty. Sure, troops are given a lot of perks and bonuses, but like all other cults, the pampering stops the second you start questioning the organization.
If you don’t drink the Koolaid, you’ll get thrown out in the streets for “failure to conform.” If you breach the military’s puritanical code of ethics, it won’t hesitate to throw the book at you as hard as possible to make an example of you. After you separate, you’ll get some veteran benefits, which sound good on paper, yet, but a veteran commits suicide literally every day, and most of America’s homeless population are veterans. The problem isn’t just that the military abandons their veterans. Active duty junior enlisted troops are twice as likely to become alcoholics and heavy smokers during their first enlistment than their civilian peers. These statistics wouldn’t exist unles there were something terribly wrong with the system.
The problem is, the military doesn’t see troops as humans beings. They’re just social security numbers with expiration dates. If the military cared about about troops on a personal level, it wouldn’t strip away their rights and arbitrarily segregated them into a totalitarian caste system.
The military may be full of good people, but the system is soulless. It asks you to give everything and expect nothing. Yet it will turn against you, abandon you, and use you at its mildest convenience.
4. You will lose almost all of your civil rights.
You’ll lose your freedom of speech and the right to assemble.
You’ll lose the right to work at, or even enter businesses the military disagrees with.
You won’t be able to quit your job when you’ve reached the point where you hate it or disagree with it.
Your home life will affect your work life. You can be demoted or even lose your job for legal trouble you get into on your private time.
You can be demoted at work and criminally punished for cheating on your spouse.
There’s a legal limit to the type and amount of tattoos and piercings you can have.
You can’t wear clothing on base that isn’t PG-13.
You can even get charged with destruction of government property for getting a sunburn on your day off.
You can theoretically go to jail for not doing a jumping jack, not buttoning your shirt, talking back to your boss, quitting your job, not taking your hat off when you go inside, walking on the grass, or not saluting the flag.
Article 134 or the Uniform Code of Military Justice says anything can be considered against the law; someone in your chain of command just has to say whatever you did was bad, and that makes it officially against the rules:
“Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special, or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court.“
You’ll lose many more rights listed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice that nobody will go out of their way to tell you about until after you’ve signed your soul away, but if you ever complain, you’ll be told, “You knew exactly what you were getting into when you signed up.”
Individually, some of these points may seem trivial to you, but when you add them all up, the end result is the government owns you completely. If you only want to do whatever the government allows you to, then you might not notice losing your freedom and dignity. If you value your rights and freedoms, it will drive you crazy knowing your leaders are holding a metaphorical gun to your head 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and forcing you to accept being treated like second-class citizen.
Once you realize you’re not fighting for anyone else’s freedoms except the robber barons who own your corrupt politicians, the cost/benefit analysis of giving up your rights to a death cult that doesn’t care about you ceases to add up.
5. You will live in a caste system where your worth as a human being is determined by rank.
When you go through basic training you’ll be told that upon graduation you’ll become an adult. In fact, you’ll become more than an adult. You’ll become a member of the most elite echelon of society, and your maturity and responsibility will make you superior to the petty, selfish, undisciplined civilian herd.
However, the reality of life in the military doesn’t reflect the propaganda you’ll be fed in basic training. The reality of your day to day life is comparable to what you experienced in high school. Everyone in the ranks between E-1 to E-4 are treated like children. The ranks of E-5 and E-6 are treated like teachers, and E-7 to E-9 are treated like school administrators.
When you wear the bottom four ranks, superiors will look down on you, talk down to you, bully you, and rub their rank in your face. You’ll be made to do menial chores and the bulk of the work. You’ll be punished severely for any and every infraction possible, and you’ll even be punished for things you didn’t do wrong. You’ll have very little recourse to fight this because your worth is based on your rank, and your rank is that of a slave.
When you reach the middle tier ranks, you’ll finally be treated like a human being. Your job will mainly involve training the lower ranks and managing paperwork. You’ll be less accountable for your actions and will have comfortable leeway to bend the rules.
When you reach the top tiers of the enlisted pyramid, you’ll become a figurehead. You’ll spend most of your days doing paperwork and giving speeches. Since there are very few people above you to hold you accountable, and all of those people are in your club, you’ll be almost unaccountable for your actions and will have to seriously screw up to get in real trouble.
The power dynamic between the officer corps and the enlisted corps is comparable to slave owners and slaves. The slave owners are treated like gods and literally dine on golden plates under golden chandeliers. They have total power over the lower class and can destroy their underlings’ lives with the snap of a finger. They’re trained to believe in their superiority and wear their arrogance on their sleeves. They’re less accountable for their actions. They’ll get in far less trouble for committing the same crimes as enlisted troops, if they get in trouble at all. Being an officer is a very good life to have… and a very immoral one. It is an obsolete class structure that degrades the value of the lives of the human beings who wear enlisted ranks and directly contradicts the idea of human equality.
This is a strange way to live, but other than being degrading to the lowest ranking troops, it might not seem like a compelling reason not to join the military. What new recruits need to be aware of is that after you’ve been indoctrinated to base your identity on your rank, that indoctrination doesn’t always go away after you leave the military. If you spend 4 years as a low ranking enlisted troop and then separate, you’re likely to go back out into the real world with a subservient mindset. But If you spend 4 years as an officer and then separate, you’re likely to go back out into the real world believing the human population is divided into those who deserve to be obeyed/served and those who deserve to obey/serve, and you’re one of the gods among men who deserve to be obeyed and served. These delusions of grandeur may feel empowering, but it’s indoctrinated insanity. Leaders who think this way tend to act more like dictators than mentors.
Theoretically, veterans are supposed to get preference when applying for federal jobs. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don’t. In the public sector, military experience can sometimes hurt your chances of getting hired because many civilians see veterans as dumb grunts with PTSD.
You won’t get much, if any, VA medical help unless you were injured while in the military or you retired through the military. Even then, the VA system is famous for being a nightmare. Don’t take my word for it. Visit a VA hospital before you join the military and see what you’re signing up for.
You can retire in 20 years, but a large portion of troops’ paychecks are itemized as housing pay, cost of living adjustments and other side-benefits they don’t pay taxes on. This looks great at the time, but the military bases retirement pay on taxable income. For enlisted troops, this is only enough to live well on in the Philippines.
The MGI Bill has finally become usable, and it’s a really good deal. The VA will also vouch for the down payment on your house, which is a really, really good deal. But no matter how good the monetary benefits of joining the military are, you’re still spending blood money.
7. Life in the military sucks…but don’t take my word for it.
8. Military culture is devolving into a maniacally politically correct, anal-retentive bureaucratic snowflake office Hell.
I’ll explain what life is like in the Air Force, and you can just subtract a few degrees for each of the other branches: Cussing at all is frowned up, and in a lot of offices it’s banned. The only kind of music you can listen to at work are Pop and Christian. You can’t make crude jokes. You can be court-martialed for sexual harassment for saying the word, “vagina.” You can’t smoke anywhere but at isolated, designated smoking areas, and you can’t smoke at all on some bases. You can’t put your hands in your pockets. You can’t walk and talk on your cell phone. You can’t walk on the grass. You have to wear standard-issue reflective clothing when walking at night. You’ll get yelled at for wearing any article of civilian clothing on base that you wouldn’t wear to church. You generally have to act like Ned Flanders or you’ll get yelled at for being unprofessional… and you can theoretically go to jail and have the rest of your life destroyed with a dishonorable discharge if you don’t conform quietly.
There is some validity to some of these rules, but when you add all of them up (and the many others not mentioned) and continue to make more and more rules that force everyone to act like a neutered youth pastors, you create an environment that’s less like the adventure advertised on recruiting commercials and more like the embodiment of everything the movie “Office Space” was satirizing. I’m just saying, life in the military isn’t the grand summer camp dream-adventure recruitment posters advertise it to be. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare.
People who can’t conform to life in a soulless system end up leaving the military willingly or unwillingly. Those who act the most whitewashed and sanitized rise to the top. So that’s who you work for, and that’s who you work with. That’s the environment you eat, sleep and breathe in. If the puritanical lifestyle appeals to you, and you don’t mind being complicit in the deaths of hundreds of civilians every year, then join the Air Force.
9. You’ll be indoctrinated with battered person syndrome.
“When Battered Person Syndrome (BPS) manifests as PTSD, it consists of the following symptoms: (a) re-experiencing the battering as if it were recurring even when it is not, (b) attempts to avoid the psychological impact of battering by avoiding activities, people, and emotions, (c) hyperarousal or hypervigilance, (d) disrupted interpersonal relationships, (e) body image distortion or other somatic concerns, and (f) sexuality and intimacy issues.
Additionally, repeated cycles of violence and reconciliation can result in the following beliefs and attitudes:
The abused thinks that the violence was his or her fault.
The abused has an inability to place the responsibility for the violence elsewhere.
The abused fears for his/her life and/or the lives of his/her children (if present).
The abused has an irrational belief that the abuser is omnipresent and omniscient.
The syndrome develops in response to a three-stage cycle found in domestic violence situations. First, tension builds in the relationship. Second, the abusive partner releases tension via violence while blaming the victim for having caused the violence. Third, the violent partner makes gestures of contrition. However, the partner does not find solutions to avoid another phase of tension building and release so the cycle repeats. The repetition of the violence despite the abuser’s attempts to “make nice” results in the abused partner feeling at fault for not preventing a repeat cycle of violence. However, since the victim is not at fault and the violence is internally driven by the abuser’s need to control, this self-blame results in feelings of helplessness rather than empowerment. The feeling of being both responsible for and helpless to stop the violence leads in turn to depression and passivity. This learned depression and passivity makes it difficult for the abused partner to marshal the resources and support system needed to leave.” (Source: Wikipedia)
This is how the military conditions you to see the world. The military no longer physically beats the troops, but it can accomplish the same result without leaving a physical mark by yelling, threatening, publicly shaming, imprisoning you, giving you additional duties, and paperwork. If all else fails, they can send you to remedial military training to reinforce your “military bearing,” which is an unambiguous form of brainwashing used by cults to re-orientate their victim’s identity on the in-group.
The end result is you’ll feel guilty for breaking meaningless rules, and you’ll attack anyone else you see breaking meaningless rules. And anytime anyone criticizes your masters or their agenda; you’ll defend them to the death oblivious to the fact that you’re defending your abuser and attacking anyone who tries to free you from the people who have manipulated you into celebrating and defending your own oppression.
My responses to common criticisms of this post:
1. The military is not a cult! I served in the military and never knew anyone who was brainwashed!
No Scientologist ever met a Scientologist who was brainwashed either. There’s no point arguing whether or not the military is a cult without referencing a checklist of cult practices. Read any book on cults and brainwashing techniques. The more you know about cults, brainwashing techniques and military culture, customs and courtesies, the more obvious it will be that the military is deliberately designed using every mind control technique used by cults.
2. You were in the Air Force and never saw combat. So you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You can say I’m not a hero because I never saw combat, and I won’t argue with that. But my role in the military has no bearing on whether or not the military is a cult. It has no bearing on the fact that the United States government has consistently eliminated more and more rights of its citizens, spied on on its citizens, persecuted whistleblowers, knowingly killed civilians and committed deliberate war crimes and crimes against humanity. These are all facts that can be verified by anyone, even people who never served in the military or saw combat at all.
3. You were probably just a dirtbag Airman who wasn’t cut out for the military, and that’s why you’re bitter and wrong about everything.
I was a student leader (green rope) in tech school. I received many awards and squadron coins. I was told on many occasions that I was “a credit to myself and the United States Air Force.” I was frequently put in leadership positions above my pay grade. I wasn’t the most gung-ho super troop, but I was a model troop. So if you’re going to base the truth of my words on the quality of my character, then you should believe what I have to say about the United States military. But you don’t have to take my word on anything. Do your own research, and you’ll find everything I’ve said here is true, and it still would be even if I was a dirt bag Airman.
I didn’t reverse engineer my conclusions from bitter emotions. I came out of basic training bursting with esprit de corpse and kept it long enough to reenlist. I only very reluctantly gave up my faith in the military after seven years of seeing evidence that contradicted my beliefs. This post isn’t a hit-piece. It’s a eulogy, and its call to action is to respect the troops.
I understand why you’re angry. I’m challenging your most deeply held beliefs. You’re supposed to react by getting defensive and lashing back when that happens. It’s human nature, but you’re also supposed to question your own beliefs. I wouldn’t have so many strong things to say about the military if it had been more self-critical of itself to begin with.
4. All the questionable training methods and rules the military has are necessary because they weed out the weak and prepare the strong for war. At worst, it’s a necessary evil, but it keeps you free. So enjoy your self-righteous freedom to whine on the internet while real men keep you safe.
No sane person would charge a beach under heavy gunfire, but somebody theoretically has to do it. So the military takes sane civilians and reprograms their minds to turn them into zealous, suicidal killers, and it does this using the exact same brainwashing techniques used by death cults. I can accept that it requires extreme training techniques to prepare soldiers for the extreme stresses of war. I can handle that truth and eat that sin if you can admit this is still illegal to do to anyone else, and still unethical, even if the U.S. government does it legally. What I can’t accept is the military lying to recruits, telling them basic training will turn them into self-actualized adults, when it’s specifically designed to break their sanity and take away their identity and free will.
The argument that misleading and brainwashing volunteers is a necessary evil to protect Americans’ freedoms doesn’t apply when the American government keeps taking away its citizens’ freedom and privacy. Worse than that, it keeps passing more laws that make it harder for the poor to have a decent quality of life. If Americans were truly free, they would have the freedom to decide if they want their tax dollars spent on brainwashing soldiers or endless wars, but they don’t have that choice. They have to pay their taxes and fund the industrial war complex or go to jail. If they protest against it, they’ll be spied on, and if their protest is too successful, they’ll go to jail. People are free to criticize the government sometimes in some ways, but journalists who report criminal activity committed by the American government are routinely jailed. That’s not freedom of speech.
The problem isn’t that I don’t understand or appreciate the sacrifices soldiers have made to protect my freedoms. The problem is that my freedoms are being whittled away despite the sacrifices of soldiers. If you support the troops, then you shouldn’t get mad at me for pointing out that the American government is systemically corrupt and manipulates its soldiers into believing they’re defending freedom when they’re really defending corruption. If you support the troops, then get mad at the government that’s making a mockery of its soldiers’ sacrifices.
5. I was in the military, and I enjoyed it. Plus I got paid well and learned valuable job skills. Hence, the military is good.
The fact that you enjoyed the military and got a lot out of it doesn’t change the fact that the military is a cult that treats its own troops in ways that are illegal to treat anyone else. The benefits any troops do get out of the military are still stained with the shame of the rights American citizens have lost and the blood of the civilians the American government has killed. I’ll admit the military isn’t all-bad if you admit it isn’t all-good either.
6. Anyone who criticizes the military is a pussy.
Calling someone you don’t agree with a pussy isn’t an argument. It’s a gut reaction. The topic of how the military industrial complex manipulates and uses the troops is too important to end with a logic-stopping temper tantrum. If there’s any chance anything I said here is true, it deserves serious, soul-searching thought. Refusing to consider opposing points of view isn’t brave or mature, and it doesn’t do the people whose freedoms you think you’re killing and dying for any favors.
The problem here isn’t that I need to stop being a pussy and shut up. At the very least, the problem is that the U.S. military should be more transparent.
7. I can’t believe what a crazy conspiracy theorist the author of this post is. His ideas are unbelievably wacko.
I’ve received a lot of E-mails from veterans and active duty service members thanking me for articulating what they’ve been thinking but couldn’t say, because it’s illegal for them to speak unflatteringly about the military even if it’s true. Either all of these people came up with the same conspiracy theories independently, or they’re not conspiracy theories. They’re the elephant in the room.
8. I’m currently active duty, and my indoctrination has worn off. I’ve seen the military for the death cult it is, and now I’ve lost my esprit de corps and military bearing. I want to get out, but I’m locked in a contract. How do I make it through the rest of my time knowing what I know?
It’s frustrating living in the military, seeing it for what it is. Everywhere you look you, see reminders of the ever-present creepy cult thing they’ve got going on. And the more aware you are of the fact that you’re not fighting for freedom, the more pointless and dirty the whole charade feels. If you think about it too much, quitting in protest starts to seem like the right thing to do, but the only thing that will change is screwing up the rest of your life.
Talking to anyone in your chain of command about these feelings is the second worst thing you can do. All your coworkers have been programmed to react with extreme prejudice when they hear the cult doctrine questioned. Doing so will only frustrate you and your coworkers, which can lead to you being ostracized, criticized, disciplined, dishonorably discharged, and ruining your work references.
You’re a prisoner who needs to cope with being in prison. The best thing you can do is keep your back straight, your mouth shut, and go through the motions on autopilot until the clock winds down. Become a shadow on the wall. Go to your happy place in your mind during work hours, and use your military vocabulary when people talk to you. Be as Zen and as patient as you can, and leave Murder Inc. on good terms.
On a side note, when you go back out into the civilian world, the sergeants you’ve worked for will be your only job references, and 10 years from now, they’re still going to be your job references. Pick your favorite sergeants, and groom them to be your references. Do extra things for them, and stay in contact after you separate. You’ll need to know their new phone number and E-mail address 10 years from now.
Keep up the good fight. If you want to ease your conscience, I suggest finding something productive to do to raise awareness of the moral corruption in the military. It’s not legal for you to speak publicly now, but you can be working on something before you get out. Then you’ll have something fresh to share as soon as you’re free. Alternatively, if you meet troops who see the light, share my blogs with them to help them confirm and articulate their suspicions that something’s not right.
Note: I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.
The American military caste system, particularly its officer corps is an obsolete institution that is incompatible with modern, enlightened values. In order to understand why, you have to look at where it came from.
In the past, the upper class was extremely well-educated, and the poor were mostly illiterate. The job of designing and implementing military strategy naturally fell to the educated upper class, and the job of dying in the mud naturally fell to the illiterate lower class. This division of labor also served as a way to further institutionalize the caste system that separated the upper class from the lower class.
By putting a pin on one human being’s shoulder and a stripe on another human being’s shoulder it gave one human being a visible “right” to order the other like a dog, beat them like a dog and kill them like a dog if they disobeyed their master’s orders. As long as these symbols existed, everyone understood their place in the social hierarchy and accepted it as natural and just.
The industrial revolution and the information age eventually created a middle class to bridge the income gap between the rich and the poor. The higher education system still keeps a glass ceiling over the heads of the poorest of the poor who can’t afford a college degree to open the door to professional work. However, free K-12 public schools, equal access to libraries and all the information on the internet has almost completely bridged the intellectual gap between the rich and the poor.
The constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights have whittled the institutionalized caste system down to a thread. Senior ranking soldiers can no longer legally beat lower-ranking soldiers. All soldiers are guaranteed protection from discrimination based on race, sex or religion under equal opportunity laws. Technically, a soldier can still be executed for disobeying a direct order, but that involves a lengthy legal process, and in order to avoid the bad press, disobedient soldiers are almost guaranteed to just do some jail time followed by a dishonorable discharge.
But the military has side-stepped social progress by inventing the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). This document exists to provide the military with a legal loophole around the basic human rights guaranteed to all of humanity. One of the greatest insults to humanity perpetrated by the UCMJ is the existence of the officer corps.
The injustice of the officer corps is most clearly exemplified in the act of saluting. When an enlisted troop sees an officer (or a general’s staff car) they must put their hand on their head until the officer returns the salute, which gives the enlisted troop permission to take their hand down. On the surface this is innocuous. Officers will even tell you that the reason enlisted troops salute them is out of respect. However, the true purpose of saluting is betrayed by what will happen if an enlisted troop refuses to salute an officer.
If an enlisted troop refuses to salute an officer they’ll get a letter of counseling. If they still refuse to salute an officer they’ll get a letter of reprimand. Then an Article 15. Then a court-martial. Then they’ll lose rank, pay, privilege and ultimately their freedom when they’re sent to jail. When they’re released from military prison they’ll be given a dishonorable discharge that will prevent them from getting a good job for the rest of their life.
Enlisted troops are taught to salute officers out of respect, but failing that, they’re forced to salute officers out of fear. While the rest of the population is guaranteed that their punishment must fit their crime, enlisted troops and lower-ranking officers are denied this right and are forced to symbolically subjugate themselves to any stranger wearing a pin on their shoulder. So make no mistake, the salute isn’t designed to exchange gestures of respect. It’s designed to systematically indoctrinate lower ranking troops to accept their place in the lower social caste that robs them of the dignity supposedly guaranteed to all men.
And the issue goes deeper than dignity. An officer can order enlisted troops to do anything within the limits of the Geneva Convention, and if the enlisted troop refuses they’ll go to jail. For example, if the higher caste orders the lower caste to do jumping jacks and the lower caste refuses they’ll go to jail. On the surface, this might seem innocuous again, but look at what’s really going on here. What do you call someone who has to do whatever another person says upon fear of jail time and destitution? That’s a slave, and even if you think “slave” is too strong a word to describe someone with no freedom, it’s still close enough to the truth to be immoral and unenlightened.
If you’re going to justify the manipulation, exploitation, degradation, and subjugation of another human being, much less an entire group of human beings, you have the responsibility to provide extensive, articulate, air-tight justifications. You can’t wipe away thousands of years of social evolution and human rights with a vague sentence or two such as, “Well, they took an oath.” “They volunteered.” “Good soldiers follow orders.” “You’re an idiot.” or “You have to follow orders to accomplish the mission.”
This is especially true when we’re talking about soldiers who will be ordered to kill other human beings and be killed themselves in the process. This isn’t a game. This isn’t a joke. This is a human’s life we’re putting on trial, and in the case of a military with nuclear weapons, this is the fate of the entire human race we’re talking about. When we’re talking about tangible, perishable human lives, we can’t afford to be lackadaisical in our arguments. If you truly believe that the lower military castes are selflessly sacrificing their lives for the greater good then they, of all people, deserve serious consideration and not just flippant, condescending, reactionary excuses and arguments about semantics.
Honestly, ask yourself if the officer corps and the human rights abuses that come along with it are truly necessary. In the past, the officer corps’ power and their pay was justified by the degree to which their education level and thus their contribution to the mission exceeded that of the enlisted troop. This arrangement held some merit when the average officer held the equivalent of a doctorate degree and the average enlisted troop held the equivalent of a 3rd-grade education, but that justification is obsolete.
Many enlisted troops have a higher level of education than many officers even if they don’t have the certified credentials to prove it, though some do. Even in the cases where officers do have a higher level of education, that fact doesn’t supersede the fact that all humans were created equal. An officer may have gone to 1-4 more years of school and a few months of officer training school, but to presume that gives one human being the inherent right to treat another human being as anything remotely resembling a slave and force them to degrade themselves is absurd.
Civilian doctors can’t treat uneducated patients like that. Public school teachers can’t treat students like that. Politicians can’t treat voters like that. Prison guards can’t even treat rapists like that. Nobody in the world is allowed to treat anyone else with the level of disrespect that officers are allowed and expected to treat enlisted troops with.
After all, why should they be able to? Do a few years of partying in college really fundamentally change the worth of a human being? If so, shouldn’t all of society adopt this practice? If this system is indeed justifiable then shouldn’t we force it on the rest of society? No! It would be inconceivable to force 100% of society to live under an institutionalized caste system that degrades the lower class. It would inconceivable to force even 50% or 30% of the population to live that way. So why is it okay for 1% of the population to live under a dystopian social contract?
What would happen if troops were as free as civilians? What if they could give a two-week notice and quit their job legally? What if they could challenge and disobey their “superiors?” The existing power structure would have you believe the entire military would dissolve into anarchy. Is that really logical though? The United States has an all-volunteer military. Why would people who willingly volunteered to join the military and support its mission turn around at their first base and abandon their jobs? If you think they would, then you’re saying all the troops are cowards. Even civilians who work for the military don’t turn tail and run at the first sign of danger.
The only other exception is if the mission were unjust. If there were a valid reason to conscientiously object to the mission, then any troop with foresight and a sense of justice would leave their military service. This raises the question, what are the chances the government would ever engage in an unjust war or send its troops on unjust missions?
If you’re 100% positive the government would never, ever do that, then why lock the troops into anything remotely resembling slavery? If you believe the government has ever engaged in unjust wars, ordered its troops to do unjust things or will ever do so then you would want the troops to have the freedom to think and act on their own conscience. Preventing them from doing so by brainwashing them and holding a gun to their heads would only guarantee corrupt and/or misguided politicians the ability to call on the world’s most lethal fighting force to serve their corrupted purposes. When you justify the enslavement of the military, you need to understand lucidly that you’re giving a monkey a gun on blind faith.
And understand the irony of saying, “Yes, we must brainwash troops, lock them into a caste system and take away their freedom.” What you’re saying is that we absolutely must mislead, mentally and physically enslave and degrade our fellow human beings into submission…for the sake of protecting our fellow human beings from slavery, abuse, and exploitation. The United States Military failed its mission of protecting people’s freedoms the moment it threw out the Universal Declaration of Human Rights out the window in favor of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Honestly, what are we doing here? What kind of a world are we creating where we’ve justified an oppressive caste system at the taxpayers’ expense to act as unquestioning mercenaries for the rich and powerful? How can we honestly say to ourselves that we “support the troops” when we’ve allowed our brothers and sisters to be swindled out of their basic human rights?
Are we even worth defending when we would so proudly throw our fellow man under the bus like that? What kind of a world are we creating? You can see with your own eyes what kind of a world we’re creating. Go to any American military base in the world and tour the officer’s barracks and clubs. Then tour the enlisted barracks and clubs. You should be horrified by the Soviet-era disparity between the quality of life between the two castes. The officers gorge themselves on luxury in gold-encrusted rooms (paid for by impoverished taxpayers) while the enlisted people shiver in condemned buildings. You will see a world that has existed right under your nose for your entire life that makes “1984” look like a children’s story.
Don’t accept the American military’s actions on blind faith alone. If the military’s actions have truly been just, then go to the all the countries America has exported war to this century. Talk to the people and look at the physical results of the war. Oh, you’ll find people who celebrate the American military, but for every one of those you find you’ll find 1000 corpses, 1000 broken families, 1000 babies with birth defects from discarded military ordinance, 1000 destroyed buildings, 10 sweatshops where American goods are produced and more often than not, a few active American military bases.
Suppose everything I’ve said here is wrong. Suppose the military caste system is excusable despite its indignity. We still need to question its efficiency. We’ve already asked ourselves if we should have absolute faith in the politicians who wield unquestionable control over the military and acknowledged the inherent danger in that.
Now consider this. Think of all the civilians you know with a bachelor’s degree. What if they had absolute, unquestionable authority over the subordinates in their cubicles. How responsibly would they wield their power to silence all opposition to their will by saying, “Shut up and color or I’ll send you to jail.”? Would totalitarian authority improve innovation and efficiency in public or private organizations? Is there any precedent whatsoever to suggest that totalitarian authority has a tendency to inculcate close-minded thinking, abuse of power and impunity from accountability? Yes. Civilian progress would grind to a halt if they adopted the same caste system the United States military uses.
The military is made up of human beings, just like the civilian sector, and the caste system has had predictably detrimental effects in the military. The military sets the standard for fraud, waste, and abuse because it’s run by the officer corps, which is fraud, waste and abuse incarnate.
There’s one final cost to the officer corps itself that we have to acknowledge and accept if we’re to continue to condone its existence much less its celebrity status. Look at the psychological damage it does to officers when they’re allowed to exercise totalitarian authority over other human beings they call their subordinates.
Consider the psychological impact it has on a human being when they’re treated like a god day in and day out for years. This lifestyle will take its toll. The constant reinforcement will indoctrinate the officer himself to truly believe there is something superior about his person, and when this belief is indoctrinated deeply enough he’ll eventually reach a point where this illusion becomes a permanent reality in their own mind.
Then they’ll go through the rest of their life wearing rose-colored glasses. They’ll live in an inescapable false reality in which they play a divine figure walking amongst unclean, incomplete sub-humans, and while this will be enjoyable to the officer, it’s simply not true. That’s literally insanity. The officer corps is institutionalized insanity. I don’t say that to shame officers, I say that to shame the ttaxpayerswho fund the indoctrination of officers and strip them of their sanity.
The Wise Sloth 