|
Im from country that had Mandatory Military for a long time.
I think it should be done in war time only and maybe 4 years after the war. There are so many things that can make you THE MAN (But well do we really want to be all alfa wolfs ?) and you dont have to waste 2 years in army. I think that science is much more important right now.
But is it too late to go for mandatory military system when there is war already all over the place ? NO ! We have pro army and its all we need. as long as we dont find stargates
|
On April 03 2013 15:15 white_horse wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 14:23 EngrishTeacher wrote:
I'm all for a mandatory enlistment time of no longer than 1 year for both sexes.
At worst, a year of service will beat the living shit out of every ounce of laziness out of you, make you a LOT more fit, and probably get you into the habbit of following a good routine.
Totally needed for today's young people, myself included. Agreed, partly the reason why mandatory service can be a good thing. It's honestly what you make of the experience (which is true for pretty much everything else too). It's important to maintain a sense of civic duty, and even more important to keep the civilian-military relationship as strong as possible, because that will only leave the country better off. Also, isn't the answer to OP obvious? If you live in a country with a high threat of invasion (ie israel or south korea), it only makes sense to have mandatory service for people in those places. Generalizing mandatory service to be "bad" is pretty ignorant, and that unfortunately seems to be the attitude a lot of people in the thread seem to have. If your country isn't located in a dangerous place and has mandatory service, that is a debate that you should be having with others in your country.
Civic duty, don't make me laugh. The only think mandatory military service did in my country was complete disdain for military. Here members of military are consider "green-brains", meaning complete idiots. I am not saying that mandatory military service did that as most professional members of military everywhere are exactly that. But it made it pretty clear to people as everyone had direct experience with them through the conscription.
I see absolutely no point in wasting 1+ years of my life following orders of some idiot with love for power. Want to strenghten civic duty, fix corruption, fix public services,.... that will make people feel that they actually have civic duty.
|
On April 03 2013 13:12 Ljas wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 13:09 achan1058 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 03 2013 13:08 Ljas wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 12:57 TJ31 wrote:
Like I posted already, 2 good friends of mine consider 1 year in the military as a complete and unpleasant waste of time. Having served alongside people who considered it a waste of time, I can say it's usually a disposition not gained from the active service, but one they had from the beginning. It's a waste of time if you're not willing to make it anything more. The same can be said about any other hobby/profession. What if we are to force everyone to take 2 years of programming courses because being a programmer is useful nowadays? Finland can't afford a professional army, so I feel you don't have much of a point there.
Much poorer countries can afford it easily, so no, he has a point.
|
On April 03 2013 12:38 Mithhaike wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 10:34 Ghostcom wrote:On April 03 2013 10:12 Reason wrote:On April 03 2013 07:21 Enchanted wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. Mandatory one year ? That's insane. Why is that insane? On April 03 2013 07:26 Glurkenspurk wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'm a pacifist. I refuse to blindly take killing orders from old white people so I can gain some sort of bullshit "mental discipline." I'd rather spend time in a prison cell than ever do anything to support or work for the military. Forcing me into it isn't going to change that. Who said anything about killing orders? You think military training involves murder? On April 03 2013 07:27 Acritter wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'd rather it be some kind of public service that may or may not be military. I still think only volunteers should go to the front lines (outside of some incomparable crisis, which hasn't happened in a long time for first-world countries), but public service would help break down social barriers and form a more united public. We don't need more soldiers, but we certainly need more public good. For the US, at least. I agree, only those who want to go to the front lines should go, that's what I posted. Public service could be a regular activity in the process also. There seems to be a degree of confusion over my suggestion. Military training does not involve killing people or going to the front lines =/ Military training however is a complete waste of time within the modern society. You are advocating that everyone should be forced to waste a year of their life, trudging around in the mud, doing mundane pointless tasks playing an adult version of boyscouts out of some misconceived perception that it will actually benefit society through "improved physical fitness and mental discipline" (whatever mental discipline is supposed to mean? Mindlessly following orders?). Society will benefit more from having everyone take an extra year of education than crawling in mud and generally people do not like being forced to do stuff. The conscription-based army is an archaic institution in the western part of the world which can really only be abolished too late. You are speaking from ignorance. I am from one of the few countries in the world that has forced conscription (2years full time+ 10+years on standby). Yes this is years of my life taken from me by law that I cant get back, but the benefits we get from it is intangible. There's the friends & buddies that i make during my NS life, there's the life experience of doing military things that civilian wont get to do. How could you quantify our time spent in service of our nations as playing an adult version of boyscouts. If you have no idea what is it like in a military life, please do not speak up like you know what we do.
Then make it voluntary so people like you can join and others do not. How can you quantify how big of a waste of time it is for people who do not share your subjective criteria.
|
On April 03 2013 12:22 Microsloth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 10:34 Ghostcom wrote:On April 03 2013 10:12 Reason wrote:On April 03 2013 07:21 Enchanted wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. Mandatory one year ? That's insane. Why is that insane? On April 03 2013 07:26 Glurkenspurk wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'm a pacifist. I refuse to blindly take killing orders from old white people so I can gain some sort of bullshit "mental discipline." I'd rather spend time in a prison cell than ever do anything to support or work for the military. Forcing me into it isn't going to change that. Who said anything about killing orders? You think military training involves murder? On April 03 2013 07:27 Acritter wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'd rather it be some kind of public service that may or may not be military. I still think only volunteers should go to the front lines (outside of some incomparable crisis, which hasn't happened in a long time for first-world countries), but public service would help break down social barriers and form a more united public. We don't need more soldiers, but we certainly need more public good. For the US, at least. I agree, only those who want to go to the front lines should go, that's what I posted. Public service could be a regular activity in the process also. There seems to be a degree of confusion over my suggestion. Military training does not involve killing people or going to the front lines =/ Military training however is a complete waste of time within the modern society. You are advocating that everyone should be forced to waste a year of their life, trudging around in the mud, doing mundane pointless tasks playing an adult version of boyscouts out of some misconceived perception that it will actually benefit society through "improved physical fitness and mental discipline" (whatever mental discipline is supposed to mean? Mindlessly following orders?). Society will benefit more from having everyone take an extra year of education than crawling in mud and generally people do not like being forced to do stuff. The conscription-based army is an archaic institution in the western part of the world which can really only be abolished too late. I'm pretty much insulted by this statement, and I'm sure any other serving member of a military would be as well. "waste a year of their life, trudging around in the mud, doing mundane pointless tasks playing an adult version of boyscouts out of some misconceived perception that it will actually benefit society through "improved physical fitness and mental discipline"" ^^ I'm a member of the Royal Canadian Navy. I've successfully completed Basic Training. It took 14 weeks. I believe everyone would benefit from taking this training. It's not an adult version of boy scouts, nor is it a bunch of crawling around in the mud. We do not mindlessly follow orders. We're trained to think rationally for ourselves, and only in very extreme cases would we be ordered into harms way, or to kill someone. Your misguided, ignorant view of what military's do seems like it's based on what you see in movies, specifically American military movies. You mention conscription based armies ar part of an archaic western society? I'm sure you've heard of South Korea since you're here on TL. I understand this is the internet and everyone is entitled to their opinion, and they generally choose to have very extreme opinions since there's no accountability for what they say, but your gross generalization of military members is a bit much. I'm from Canada. We're not forced to join, and we rarely speak out against other countries, but I'll be god damned if someone's gonna shit all over the forces and say we're a bunch of adult boy scouts. You have no idea what you're talking about. Discipline benefits us all. Without it, we're just a bunch of lazy fucks. Some people are born with it, others need to learn it, some never do. Eh?
There is discipline and than there is military discipline. The latter is not a positive value.
|
fun fact: in germany, members of the armed forces are more likely to have weight problems than the general public. this is because the military consists mostly of people with a lower education who are less likely to think about their eating habits and because the military is there to fight, kill and get shot. if there isnt anything to fight you just got thousands of guys sitting on their asses doing nothing but wasting money. this is also the reason why the military helps in cases of natural disasters. they got the manpower to send hundreds of people to the scene and do basic stuff you do not need any special skills for whatsoever.
to stay on topic:
i see MMS as pretty useless. it does not matter if it is a forced time in the military or forced time in civil service. the nature of forced labour (thats what it is) is that you have people do things they are neither trained nor motivated for and just try to circumvent as much work as possible. with young adults there is the advantage that they often are not sure what they want to do with their lives and they are eager to learn and try new things. this is why the german civil service (8 month in a charitable organization) worked and why the idea to have unemployed people do the same things got dismissed rather quickly.
but after all there is nothing to be gained from a year of forced labour. people argue you learn self discipline, to deal with (stupid) people or respect authorities. but i would say you learn the first anyway once you go to university or start working and the third is just plain terrible to learn. we dont need people respect some random guys because they hold a certain position, we need people who question authorities and make them reevaluate their actions and beliefs at all times.
|
I think it is rather simple. If there are reasons to believe that your country could suddenly be attacked by another nation, e.g, Ethiopia, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel then you probably want to have compulsory military service. If this is not the case then you probably don´t need it.
About the people saying that you learn nothing during military service... I think you did something wrong.
I did military service for 15 months in a recon platoon. Sure some days were literary the worst days of my life. I do however recognize that I would never have gotten a similar experience anywhere else. You learn discipline, to master your emotions,function under extreme conditions and work in groups although everything is turned to shit. People that have not undergone military training fail in most of these aspects and I saw it happen a lot initially during my military training.
Thought I would illustrate this with the first time I had a "forest week". We were supposed to raise a tent camp. When we started we had been walking no stop with full gear for about 30 hours without any food or sleep. It was around 2-3 degree Celsius and the rain was pouring down, the time was about 21:00. The place where we were supposed to raise our camp was slowly turning into a swamp and within an hour it was pitch black. Twice we started to raise the camp and twice our lieutenant told us that we failed so bad at raising the camp we had to take down everything and start from scratch. When the time was 02:00 our lieutenant told us to start over for a third time and by now there was a lot of cold anger in the air.
The morale was smashed, people were crying, sitting apathetically in the swamp waiting for the sun to come up and one guy started to jab with his knife when his group chief tried to give him an order. At 03:30 we had managed to raise 2 out of 5 tents, because people lost all the equipment as they were completely fatigued and things vanished in the darkness or just sank down in the swamp. We went into the tents and slept 40 guys in tents that were meant for about ~15 people. At 05:30 we got orders to raise the camp. I was fucking tired, cold, soaked, hungry and every muscle in my body was hurting. By now I also had salt crystals forming in my skin which makes it feel like someone is twisting your skin every time you bend something. To say that it sucked to grab my gear at 06:00 and start doing another 30km forest terrain walk is an understatement to what I felt then.
So what is the point of this? The point is to make you hard and master of your emotions. The situation was turned to shit because our platoon failed and everyone paid for it. Everyone was so tired, cold and hungry that they could no longer control their emotions. People acted egoistically, the morale fails and thereafter everything else. People see the cost of failing as a group and realized it is not an option. You become harder physically and mentally and you learn to work together no matter what happens. In a matter of a few weeks the difference in the state of minds and efficiency of the platoon was staggering.
If nothing else, I learned that morale and ethics is only as strong as your emotional control. Saying that you should be generous, nice and loving when living a comfortable first world life is easy. Doing it when things are turned to shit is quite another matter. Many people change when reality turns to shit. For myself I am normally relatively quiet guy, a bit like Morrow, but that night I was fucking mad. I told a guy to help me dig a hole for the foundation of the tent and when he just wandered of I grabbed him and punched him in the face. Told him I would smash him down the swamp if didn’t help me raise this fucking tent.
So I say you learn a lot of things about people, the world and yourself doing military service that you most probably will never know otherwise. Also I went from a skinny guy on 67 kg (182cm) to 84 kg in two months, which is a bonus ^^
|
On April 03 2013 20:14 4ZakeN87 wrote:
I think it is rather simple. If there are reasons to believe that your country could suddenly be attacked by another nation, e.g, Ethiopia, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel then you probably want to have compulsory military service. If this is not the case then you probably don´t need it.
About the people saying that you learn nothing during military service... I think you did something wrong.
I did military service for 15 months in a recon platoon. Sure some days were literary the worst days of my life. I do however recognize that I would never have gotten a similar experience anywhere else. You learn discipline, to master your emotions,function under extreme conditions and work in groups although everything is turned to shit. People that have not undergone military training fail in most of these aspects and I saw it happen a lot initially during my military training.
Thought I would illustrate this with the first time I had a "forest week". We were supposed to raise a tent camp. When we started we had been walking no stop with full gear for about 30 hours without any food or sleep. It was around 2-3 degree Celsius and the rain was pouring down, the time was about 21:00. The place where we were supposed to raise our camp was slowly turning into a swamp and within an hour it was pitch black. Twice we started to raise the camp and twice our lieutenant told us that we failed so bad at raising the camp we had to take down everything and start from scratch. When the time was 02:00 our lieutenant told us to start over for a third time and by now there was a lot of cold anger in the air.
The morale was smashed, people were crying, sitting apathetically in the swamp waiting for the sun to come up and one guy started to jab with his knife when his group chief tried to give him an order. At 03:30 we had managed to raise 2 out of 5 tents, because people lost all the equipment as they were completely fatigued and things vanished in the darkness or just sank down in the swamp. We went into the tents and slept 40 guys in tents that were meant for about ~15 people. At 05:30 we got orders to raise the camp. I was fucking tired, cold, soaked, hungry and every muscle in my body was hurting. By now I also had salt crystals forming in my skin which makes it feel like someone is twisting your skin every time you bend something. To say that it sucked to grab my gear at 06:00 and start doing another 30km forest terrain walk is an understatement to what I felt then.
So what is the point of this? The point is to make you hard and master of your emotions. The situation was turned to shit because our platoon failed and everyone paid for it. Everyone was so tired, cold and hungry that they could no longer control their emotions. People acted egoistically, the morale fails and thereafter everything else. People see the cost of failing as a group and realized it is not an option. You become harder physically and mentally and you learn to work together no matter what happens. In a matter of a few weeks the difference in the state of minds and efficiency of the platoon was staggering.
If nothing else, I learned that morale and ethics is only as strong as your emotional control. Saying that you should be generous, nice and loving when living a comfortable first world life is easy. Doing it when things are turned to shit is quite another matter. Many people change when reality turns to shit. For myself I am normally relatively quiet guy, a bit like Morrow, but that night I was fucking mad. I told a guy to help me dig a hole for the foundation of the tent and when he just wandered of I grabbed him and punched him in the face. Told him I would smash him down the swamp if didn’t help me raise this fucking tent.
So I say you learn a lot of things about people, the world and yourself doing military service that you most probably will never know otherwise. Also I went from a skinny guy on 67 kg (182cm) to 84 kg in two months, which is a bonus ^^
It is not that you learn nothing, it is the question whether it is worth it and if your time cannot be spent in better ways.
|
On April 03 2013 18:32 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 12:22 Microsloth wrote:On April 03 2013 10:34 Ghostcom wrote:On April 03 2013 10:12 Reason wrote:On April 03 2013 07:21 Enchanted wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. Mandatory one year ? That's insane. Why is that insane? On April 03 2013 07:26 Glurkenspurk wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'm a pacifist. I refuse to blindly take killing orders from old white people so I can gain some sort of bullshit "mental discipline." I'd rather spend time in a prison cell than ever do anything to support or work for the military. Forcing me into it isn't going to change that. Who said anything about killing orders? You think military training involves murder? On April 03 2013 07:27 Acritter wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'd rather it be some kind of public service that may or may not be military. I still think only volunteers should go to the front lines (outside of some incomparable crisis, which hasn't happened in a long time for first-world countries), but public service would help break down social barriers and form a more united public. We don't need more soldiers, but we certainly need more public good. For the US, at least. I agree, only those who want to go to the front lines should go, that's what I posted. Public service could be a regular activity in the process also. There seems to be a degree of confusion over my suggestion. Military training does not involve killing people or going to the front lines =/ Military training however is a complete waste of time within the modern society. You are advocating that everyone should be forced to waste a year of their life, trudging around in the mud, doing mundane pointless tasks playing an adult version of boyscouts out of some misconceived perception that it will actually benefit society through "improved physical fitness and mental discipline" (whatever mental discipline is supposed to mean? Mindlessly following orders?). Society will benefit more from having everyone take an extra year of education than crawling in mud and generally people do not like being forced to do stuff. The conscription-based army is an archaic institution in the western part of the world which can really only be abolished too late. I'm pretty much insulted by this statement, and I'm sure any other serving member of a military would be as well. "waste a year of their life, trudging around in the mud, doing mundane pointless tasks playing an adult version of boyscouts out of some misconceived perception that it will actually benefit society through "improved physical fitness and mental discipline"" ^^ I'm a member of the Royal Canadian Navy. I've successfully completed Basic Training. It took 14 weeks. I believe everyone would benefit from taking this training. It's not an adult version of boy scouts, nor is it a bunch of crawling around in the mud. We do not mindlessly follow orders. We're trained to think rationally for ourselves, and only in very extreme cases would we be ordered into harms way, or to kill someone. Your misguided, ignorant view of what military's do seems like it's based on what you see in movies, specifically American military movies. You mention conscription based armies ar part of an archaic western society? I'm sure you've heard of South Korea since you're here on TL. I understand this is the internet and everyone is entitled to their opinion, and they generally choose to have very extreme opinions since there's no accountability for what they say, but your gross generalization of military members is a bit much. I'm from Canada. We're not forced to join, and we rarely speak out against other countries, but I'll be god damned if someone's gonna shit all over the forces and say we're a bunch of adult boy scouts. You have no idea what you're talking about. Discipline benefits us all. Without it, we're just a bunch of lazy fucks. Some people are born with it, others need to learn it, some never do. Eh? There is discipline and than there is military discipline. The latter is not a positive value.
I was lazy as hell in high school, I had talent for learning but didnt bother to put in the effort. 1 month into military training I wondered how the hell I could ever thought school was "hard". High school is life on easy mode compared to military service.
Now I am PhD in microbiology and I give my military training a lot of credit for that. It gives you perspective and discipline.
I watched many people that was at least around my level dropping out of University before completing a bachelor cause they couldn't focus on the task given to them.
|
sounds more like abussive shit without achieving any usefull skill at all :|
|
I was sad to see that still no-one has answered the question I posed earier in this thread, could someone please explain how being in a potential war situation makes it OK to force the unwilling in to a military organisation to be ready to fight for something theyre not willing to fight for? If the way things are is worth protecting, people will protect it without you arbitrarily deciding you get to control someone's life for a period.
In addition, even many of the supporters of forced involvement with a military organisation agree that it's not beneficial for everyone...so why force it on everyone? Offer an incentive and those who will benefit from it will still probably make use of it.
On April 03 2013 13:16 Thieving Magpie wrote:
But seriously though, would people be as against government service if it was outside the military?
Say when they are 18 they need to serve as a congressional staff in order for the people of a country to know how their country is run. Or what if it is mandatory 6 months of being an intern at wall-street. Or 6 months/year at wherever in order to serve your country.
Is the problem against national service or is the problem against war?
I would have less of a problem with it if it wasn't a military organisation. I still think it is unfair to simply decide the country gets to own a person for a while, and it certainly shouldn't be in otherwise paid positions (such as the wall street example). If I'd been forced to spend time assisting the elderly for 6 months or something in the community, contrary to joining a military organisation, I wouldn't have such vehement opposition.
|
On April 03 2013 20:25 4ZakeN87 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 18:32 mcc wrote:On April 03 2013 12:22 Microsloth wrote:On April 03 2013 10:34 Ghostcom wrote:On April 03 2013 10:12 Reason wrote:On April 03 2013 07:21 Enchanted wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. Mandatory one year ? That's insane. Why is that insane? On April 03 2013 07:26 Glurkenspurk wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'm a pacifist. I refuse to blindly take killing orders from old white people so I can gain some sort of bullshit "mental discipline." I'd rather spend time in a prison cell than ever do anything to support or work for the military. Forcing me into it isn't going to change that. Who said anything about killing orders? You think military training involves murder? On April 03 2013 07:27 Acritter wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'd rather it be some kind of public service that may or may not be military. I still think only volunteers should go to the front lines (outside of some incomparable crisis, which hasn't happened in a long time for first-world countries), but public service would help break down social barriers and form a more united public. We don't need more soldiers, but we certainly need more public good. For the US, at least. I agree, only those who want to go to the front lines should go, that's what I posted. Public service could be a regular activity in the process also. There seems to be a degree of confusion over my suggestion. Military training does not involve killing people or going to the front lines =/ Military training however is a complete waste of time within the modern society. You are advocating that everyone should be forced to waste a year of their life, trudging around in the mud, doing mundane pointless tasks playing an adult version of boyscouts out of some misconceived perception that it will actually benefit society through "improved physical fitness and mental discipline" (whatever mental discipline is supposed to mean? Mindlessly following orders?). Society will benefit more from having everyone take an extra year of education than crawling in mud and generally people do not like being forced to do stuff. The conscription-based army is an archaic institution in the western part of the world which can really only be abolished too late. I'm pretty much insulted by this statement, and I'm sure any other serving member of a military would be as well. "waste a year of their life, trudging around in the mud, doing mundane pointless tasks playing an adult version of boyscouts out of some misconceived perception that it will actually benefit society through "improved physical fitness and mental discipline"" ^^ I'm a member of the Royal Canadian Navy. I've successfully completed Basic Training. It took 14 weeks. I believe everyone would benefit from taking this training. It's not an adult version of boy scouts, nor is it a bunch of crawling around in the mud. We do not mindlessly follow orders. We're trained to think rationally for ourselves, and only in very extreme cases would we be ordered into harms way, or to kill someone. Your misguided, ignorant view of what military's do seems like it's based on what you see in movies, specifically American military movies. You mention conscription based armies ar part of an archaic western society? I'm sure you've heard of South Korea since you're here on TL. I understand this is the internet and everyone is entitled to their opinion, and they generally choose to have very extreme opinions since there's no accountability for what they say, but your gross generalization of military members is a bit much. I'm from Canada. We're not forced to join, and we rarely speak out against other countries, but I'll be god damned if someone's gonna shit all over the forces and say we're a bunch of adult boy scouts. You have no idea what you're talking about. Discipline benefits us all. Without it, we're just a bunch of lazy fucks. Some people are born with it, others need to learn it, some never do. Eh? There is discipline and than there is military discipline. The latter is not a positive value. I was lazy as hell in high school, I had talent for learning but didnt bother to put in the effort. 1 month into military training I wondered how the hell I could ever thought school was "hard". High school is life on easy mode compared to military service. Now I am PhD in microbiology and I give my military training a lot of credit for that. It gives you perspective and discipline. I watched many people that was at least around my level dropping out of University before completing a bachelor cause they couldn't focus on the task given to them.
Most People don't need go through some kind of military discipline to get through their studies. I wouldn't generalize your case.
I agree with my fellow tl-er who wrote that if the country has any reasonable chance of being attacked, then mandatory service is probably the way to go. Otherwise, a professional army seems a lot more productive.
|
Unless its war time, or like people are saying you live in a country that the threat of war is almost always there then no, i don't think mandatory is needed
|
On April 03 2013 20:38 Iyerbeth wrote:
I was sad to see that still no-one has answered the question I posed earier in this thread, could someone please explain how being in a potential war situation makes it OK to force the unwilling in to a military organisation to be ready to fight for something theyre not willing to fight for? If the way things are is worth protecting, people will protect it without you arbitrarily deciding you get to control someone's life for a period.
I think that in that kind of situation, youd probably want to be trained for war, don't you think?
|
On April 03 2013 20:25 4ZakeN87 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 18:32 mcc wrote:On April 03 2013 12:22 Microsloth wrote:On April 03 2013 10:34 Ghostcom wrote:On April 03 2013 10:12 Reason wrote:On April 03 2013 07:21 Enchanted wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. Mandatory one year ? That's insane. Why is that insane? On April 03 2013 07:26 Glurkenspurk wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'm a pacifist. I refuse to blindly take killing orders from old white people so I can gain some sort of bullshit "mental discipline." I'd rather spend time in a prison cell than ever do anything to support or work for the military. Forcing me into it isn't going to change that. Who said anything about killing orders? You think military training involves murder? On April 03 2013 07:27 Acritter wrote:On April 03 2013 07:05 Reason wrote:
I think every citizen should be forced to spend 1 year in military training with no strings attached.
Mental discipline and physical fitness are always going to benefit a population.
These people cannot be conscripted, you just hopefully have a nation of more productive and united citizens.
I would assume a greater number of people would decide to continue in the military after having experienced it too, and also those who decide otherwise can change their minds if the country is ever in dire need.
I'd suggest after finishing high school/formal education and immediately before college/university would be a good time to do this. I'd rather it be some kind of public service that may or may not be military. I still think only volunteers should go to the front lines (outside of some incomparable crisis, which hasn't happened in a long time for first-world countries), but public service would help break down social barriers and form a more united public. We don't need more soldiers, but we certainly need more public good. For the US, at least. I agree, only those who want to go to the front lines should go, that's what I posted. Public service could be a regular activity in the process also. There seems to be a degree of confusion over my suggestion. Military training does not involve killing people or going to the front lines =/ Military training however is a complete waste of time within the modern society. You are advocating that everyone should be forced to waste a year of their life, trudging around in the mud, doing mundane pointless tasks playing an adult version of boyscouts out of some misconceived perception that it will actually benefit society through "improved physical fitness and mental discipline" (whatever mental discipline is supposed to mean? Mindlessly following orders?). Society will benefit more from having everyone take an extra year of education than crawling in mud and generally people do not like being forced to do stuff. The conscription-based army is an archaic institution in the western part of the world which can really only be abolished too late. I'm pretty much insulted by this statement, and I'm sure any other serving member of a military would be as well. "waste a year of their life, trudging around in the mud, doing mundane pointless tasks playing an adult version of boyscouts out of some misconceived perception that it will actually benefit society through "improved physical fitness and mental discipline"" ^^ I'm a member of the Royal Canadian Navy. I've successfully completed Basic Training. It took 14 weeks. I believe everyone would benefit from taking this training. It's not an adult version of boy scouts, nor is it a bunch of crawling around in the mud. We do not mindlessly follow orders. We're trained to think rationally for ourselves, and only in very extreme cases would we be ordered into harms way, or to kill someone. Your misguided, ignorant view of what military's do seems like it's based on what you see in movies, specifically American military movies. You mention conscription based armies ar part of an archaic western society? I'm sure you've heard of South Korea since you're here on TL. I understand this is the internet and everyone is entitled to their opinion, and they generally choose to have very extreme opinions since there's no accountability for what they say, but your gross generalization of military members is a bit much. I'm from Canada. We're not forced to join, and we rarely speak out against other countries, but I'll be god damned if someone's gonna shit all over the forces and say we're a bunch of adult boy scouts. You have no idea what you're talking about. Discipline benefits us all. Without it, we're just a bunch of lazy fucks. Some people are born with it, others need to learn it, some never do. Eh? There is discipline and than there is military discipline. The latter is not a positive value. I was lazy as hell in high school, I had talent for learning but didnt bother to put in the effort. 1 month into military training I wondered how the hell I could ever thought school was "hard". High school is life on easy mode compared to military service. Now I am PhD in microbiology and I give my military training a lot of credit for that. It gives you perspective and discipline. I watched many people that was at least around my level dropping out of University before completing a bachelor cause they couldn't focus on the task given to them.
And I know (second hand) people that went to military training and are terrible and lazy bums. But also I saw people lazy as hell in high school that had terrible grades that are now working as top specialists in many different fields and neither of them went through military training. All of them just grew up, funny how that process actually happens without any military training. Some do, some don't , some do later. Personal anecdotes and introspection are terrible basis for public policy. Personal anecdotes mean nothing and introspection is about as unreliable as it goes considering how people consistently lie to themselves and are unable to uncover their actual motivations. Which is not surprising considering those decisions and motives are well hidden from consciousness we are just post factum creating conscious rationalizations. How do you actually know that without that military training you would not be in the same position ? Due to post factum rationalization.
|
norwegian airforce conscript reporting.
i enjoyed my time.
i have never had better mates than my roomies, i have never done more stupid stuff and gotten away with it. i have never been a more agressive driver than in our munitions/countermeasures car. (entire trunk full of flares, time to attempt to take a 360 on a slightly icy taxyway) i have never been in better physical shape, i have never been more virile (the women were called field mattresses, and for good reason) i have never been more drunk than when a bunch of us went to prague. i have never had more time to play starcraft, with a good conscience. i have never been more immersed in a pretend game than during our urban warfare training. i have never regreted taking a year, to have the time of my life.
the norwegian airforce is a paid, year long summercamp.
|
On April 03 2013 20:44 Douillos wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 20:38 Iyerbeth wrote:
I was sad to see that still no-one has answered the question I posed earier in this thread, could someone please explain how being in a potential war situation makes it OK to force the unwilling in to a military organisation to be ready to fight for something theyre not willing to fight for? If the way things are is worth protecting, people will protect it without you arbitrarily deciding you get to control someone's life for a period.
I think that in that kind of situation, youd probably want to be trained for war, don't you think?
I wouldn't, since I wouldn't go out and fight*. If people were inclined to do so, then I imagine thy will have already elected to go and get training. The important thing should be to ensure that those who elect to aren't penalised in any way for the time they lose, not to force everyone in to it so everyone is penalised.
Edit: * Except in the case of a threat from a neo-nazi government or something similar, where I would elect to get trained if it were available. Fortunately that seems unlikely in the near future. I would still stand against anyone being forced to though.
|
On April 03 2013 20:58 Iyerbeth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 20:44 Douillos wrote:On April 03 2013 20:38 Iyerbeth wrote:
I was sad to see that still no-one has answered the question I posed earier in this thread, could someone please explain how being in a potential war situation makes it OK to force the unwilling in to a military organisation to be ready to fight for something theyre not willing to fight for? If the way things are is worth protecting, people will protect it without you arbitrarily deciding you get to control someone's life for a period.
I think that in that kind of situation, youd probably want to be trained for war, don't you think? I wouldn't, since I wouldn't go out and fight*. If people were inclined to do so, then I imagine thy will have already elected to go and get training. The important thing should be to ensure that those who elect to aren't penalised in any way for the time they lose, not to force everyone in to it so everyone is penalised. Edit: * Except in the case of a threat from a neo-nazi government or something similar, where I would elect to get trained if it were available. Fortunately that seems unlikely in the near future. I would still stand against anyone being forced to though.
Never know till youre actually in the situation tbh.
|
On April 03 2013 20:37 hfglgg wrote:
sounds more like abussive shit without achieving any usefull skill at all :|
I have been there and done that. The primary useful skill in civil society you learn is first aid and some random housekeeping stuff.
Most of the rest of the useful skills are distributed almost randomly. Many get a drivers license for trucks, some get mini truck certificates, some get basic nurse courses. A lot of people get some useful civil abilities out of it, but the basic problem is that they have little say in what they get! Military service has changed here from a test of your limits to a normal job. I was never completely at my limits while serving and I know that the later rules have made it even easier to pass whatever they throw at you!
When it comes to conscription I don't think anyone really needs it. The army has more than enough volunteers and very few gets anything really unique and useful for their future out of it unless they really want to make a career out of it. Here, conscription is part of the constitution, making it impossible to completely remove. Most parties have accepted a "temporary suspension" to remove the conscription as a workaround, but well, the conservative right (DPP) holds the constitution sacred so that noone can change it and with their surge after gay marriage being legalized, they are closing in on 20% and therefore a 100% chance of blocking any changes to the constitution...
|
On April 03 2013 18:22 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 13:12 Ljas wrote:On April 03 2013 13:09 achan1058 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 03 2013 13:08 Ljas wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 12:57 TJ31 wrote:
Like I posted already, 2 good friends of mine consider 1 year in the military as a complete and unpleasant waste of time. Having served alongside people who considered it a waste of time, I can say it's usually a disposition not gained from the active service, but one they had from the beginning. It's a waste of time if you're not willing to make it anything more. The same can be said about any other hobby/profession. What if we are to force everyone to take 2 years of programming courses because being a programmer is useful nowadays? Finland can't afford a professional army, so I feel you don't have much of a point there. Much poorer countries can afford it easily, so no, he has a point.
And how many of those countries have a 1324km border with Russia? It's been well studied in Finland that a mandatory enlistment is the only way (other than NATO membership) to uphold a "credible defence", which is the official finnish defence doctrine.
It's not about winning a war, it's not about stopping an attack. It's about making sure the attacking nation takes so much damage it's not worth it. People here seem to believe it doesn't matter how many men you have because technology decides who wins. That's completely wrong.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
