Rytius Records (Substack Edition), Ch. 12
Chapter 12. Warrior and War
12. Warrior and War
What kind of man enlists and fights in war, and then re-enlists and fights again? What kind of man devotes his life to a prince? Such devotion is an incommutable death sentence with an unknown time and place of execution. This man, this warrior, is different from the kind of man who risks his life in larceny. A warrior may act identically to a bandit, but a warrior requires something that no racket can provide. A warrior requires to kill with honor for meaning. There have been many attempts by various gangs of villains and assorted lowlifes to rationalize their outlawry, and they say too much. Stories told in films, plays and books have sought to understand these creatures, when there is really nothing to understand. The best story was that of “family” among the mafiosi of the oldentimes northeastern and middle-western parts of the United States, but that is clearly a lie, because fear destroys the criminal’s family first. They can no longer believe that he will provide for their future and they must consider that he will turn out to be a burden and a liability. The crook is a useless person who, for one reason or another, has found no way to achieve a life of meaning. Their actions have no meaning, and the form of their lives is such that meaning is not even approached. They play a deadly game for pathetic stakes, and they must lose. Incarceration is a loss from which there is no recovery, and for which there is no just compensation, because nothing can be done in prison that cannot be done in the world. Death merely confirms what his family feared all along.
The warrior acts in accordance with the strategic vision of the state, as elaborated by the prince he serves. The warrior thereby serves the strength of the state and the authority of the sovereign.
But this gets us no closer to the essential truth of war nor to the essence of the warrior. Neither does the contradiction between the honorable act of the warrior and the disreputable act of the criminal, though they be the same act.
The truth of war is that it is only possible because the warrior exists. The warrior exists because there is a line in the heart of every man that when crossed demands a response. This is the line of ultimate concern, and it triggers ultimate response, as variable as those concerns and responses may be, from man to man. The warrior is the man who can move that line himself, so that his very soul will cry out at matters as abstract as the placement of a vehicle on a bridge, the change of personnel at an embassy, or the look in the eye of a man in a crowd.
This is not the same as the degenerate who kills a man for reckless eyeballing or for scuffing his shoes. That man is not in control even of his own emotions, let alone the subtle mechanisms of the heart and soul that produce them. Moreover, the warrior is one who is comfortable negotiating—and renegotiating—the placement of that line according to his born or bred sense of honor. That balancing act is his spiritual practice. That is his prayer. The warrior may give his entire life and being to his prince, but consider the strength such service requires. What is it? It is the stuff of massacres, unmarked graves, poison gas, smallpox blankets, lynchings, and pogroms. It is also the stuff of mutinies and revolutions.
Warriors can change their minds.