The Soldier and his destination

What makes any job valuable is the satisfaction gained while completing it. What makes any knowledge important is what it materializes in life. Indeed, the pleasure and satisfaction obtained while performing it is what which elevates any occupation to greatness. Man wishes to see what he learned and trained for getting realized. This is what binds knowledge to life.

The one exception to this is in military science and its training. The amount of research which is done in this field worldwide is huge. Worldwide, men get trained in this much more than in any other field. At the same time, all sensible people wish that an opportunity to use this knowledge never arises. It becomes a science which is different from, alienated from, life. Perhaps something that extinguishes the vigor of life.

The artificiality of military life is much deeper and wider than that in a modern industrial society. In both, men work for the benefit of someone or something else. Like racehorses. But while in a city, you may actually see this ’someone/something’ once in a while even if by accident, in military life the tragedy is that it will always remain unseen.

A soldier hopes that he never reaches his destination, making his profession mentally the most artificial. There is no better example of the alienated man that Erich Fromm describes than the military man. A military man hopes that he never gets a chance to use the knowledge he has accumulated. Because, using the knowledge is destroying the thing on which the knowledge is used on.