Yes, there is certainly a kind of altruistic motivation too, but it doesn’t really explain why individuals seem to be eager to defend their country.
It’s basic Golden Rule stuff. Sure, the army maybe would win without me. But if everyone thought that way and was a freerider, no one would go fight in the army, and the war would be lost. People feel responsible, they feel guilty, they feel ashamed, they have a sense of duty and of what’s right.
You know who else was a young hot-blooded male? All those Russian men who booked it as soon as the invasion started just so they could escape conscription. Russia mostly ended up needing to conscript and press-gang people into fighting its stupid pointless war, because unlike Ukrainians, these men could see clear as day that they had absolutely no good reason to risk their life, and they didn’t give a shit if their country lost.
You realize over a million people in the U.S. practice competitive MMA, right? Say ~0.25% of those people are interested in mortal combat. There’s your arena.
0.25% of 1 million is 2500 people. Hardly a massive social problem that needs addressing with an escape valve. Having a ban on death matches is necessary to prevent people who do NOT crave the battlefield from being variously socially or economically pressured in risking (and losing) their life, as it used to be. If this means that 2500 MMA fighters are a bit frustrated by the impossibility to engage openly and legally in deadly combat on live TV as their berserker hearts would wish, well, tough luck. It’s not even that they can’t do that anyway privately—they just need to be willing to risk jail besides their life.
It’s basic Golden Rule stuff. Sure, the army maybe would win without me. But if everyone thought that way and was a freerider, no one would go fight in the army, and the war would be lost. People feel responsible, they feel guilty, they feel ashamed, they have a sense of duty and of what’s right.
You know who else was a young hot-blooded male? All those Russian men who booked it as soon as the invasion started just so they could escape conscription. Russia mostly ended up needing to conscript and press-gang people into fighting its stupid pointless war, because unlike Ukrainians, these men could see clear as day that they had absolutely no good reason to risk their life, and they didn’t give a shit if their country lost.
0.25% of 1 million is 2500 people. Hardly a massive social problem that needs addressing with an escape valve. Having a ban on death matches is necessary to prevent people who do NOT crave the battlefield from being variously socially or economically pressured in risking (and losing) their life, as it used to be. If this means that 2500 MMA fighters are a bit frustrated by the impossibility to engage openly and legally in deadly combat on live TV as their berserker hearts would wish, well, tough luck. It’s not even that they can’t do that anyway privately—they just need to be willing to risk jail besides their life.