Some people, including myself, sometimes wish they were born into a different time in history, maybe like 50 years ago, or 200 years ago, something like that, because our mindsets are not fit for the current era of hypersensitivity, need for fame, extreme wokeness, etc. I consider which decade I would have thrived in, and then pretty quickly I come back to reality and realize, I would be terrible in any other time in history, this time is the only one that has the best medical technology in the world, vaccines produced faster than any time period in the world, better electricity, indoor plumbing, and best technology than any other time in the world (unless we travel further in to the future, which is much more difficult to envision). Yup, I would probably have died of diseases or been murdered by a hostile warring tribe by now in any other century (MAYBE not the 1990's, I would like liked to maybe experience that decade as an adult just to see what all the excitement was about).
Also, in any other time in history, I would have most likely had to serve in the army, or some other branch of the armed forces, as in the history of the world almost every single civilization has required their men to enlist and fight, often using some sort of draft or other conscription systems. The U.S. was embroiled in tons of wars in the 1900's, including 2 WORLD wars, and if my parents had stayed in China it didn't get much better; they had a civil war and opium wars, wars against their neighbors like Japan, etc. I am definitely not fit for the army; very few men in my generation are. Instead of fighting on the battlefields we fight on our internet browsers. Instead of waking up at 5AM in the morning for roll call we roll out of bed at 10AM in the morning to log in to a work meeting on Zoom. In fact, I went to play chess today, a board game played on a pretend battlefield where I get to trade pieces and sacrifice assets as if I were a supreme commander, without any risk to myself. I believe "soft" is the term nowadays that describes me and my generation. Men probably have it the easiest compared to any other time in history: women still have to be the ones giving birth to children AND in many cases raise the children and act as the caregivers, while men increasingly have stopped being the sole breadwinner anymore. Men even go to college at a much lower rate than women do now.
I didn't mean for this post to be a "Men's guilt" outpouring; my point was to count my lucky stars that I didn't have to serve in the armed forces, but also to wonder if armed forces are needed any more. They seem to serve the same role as nuclear weapons: to keep other countries honest and prevent them from attacking our country. Sure there are plenty of wars going on right now that require armies (Exhibit A= Ukraine and Russia for 1.3 years now), but it seems a pity that our society still allows hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people to die for what is pretty much just.....global politics. I read a stat that of NATO's 31 member countries, the only country that doesn't have a military is Iceland. (Other countries around the world like Japan also don't have militaries). Seems like a real drag (defense spending is the No.1 item on the U.S. government's budget) on finances to keep spending so much on military, and it's a prisoner's dilemma, a mug's game, whatever you want to call it: The bigger other countries' militias are, the larger we have to make ours to counteract and keep the balance so we don't get a losing position. It all seems so wasteful, a waste of life, waste of money, waste of time, when we have the Internet and all this technology; we just can't invent something to solve the human need to go to war, to assert power. Obviously, the counterargument is that if we don't have a military, we can't stop evil dictators around the world like Saddam Hussein, and that is true that military exists to serve as leverage against just a few bad actors. Will we ever be able to get rid of militaries altogether? Probably not, just psychologically if the whole world was devoid of militias, there would surely be somebody to exploit that and build a military force to take over. Where there are humans, there are armies.
Out of the 6 branches of the US military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marines, and the most recent, Space Force) which one would I be, if needed? Well I don't do well on boats and I don't like flying in weird areas, so I guess I'll take the good old Army and dry land... I'd hopefully just volunteer to be tactical "office job" of the military that doesn't go on the battlefield, just use my language ability to help in the control room? Anything like that available?
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