The raison d’être of the state appears both clear and noble. The core of the social contract is simple: we acknowledge our individual vulnerability and agree to obey a central authority in exchange for the protection of our lives and property. In other words, the first commandment of the state is “the preservation of its citizens’ lives.”
However, this logic twists into a chilling paradox the moment it confronts the reality of ‘war.’ The state invokes the very pretext of protecting its citizens to hand a rifle to a ‘citizen’—now called a soldier—and orders them to charge into enemy fire. While rhetorically labeled as “national defense,” in practice, it is often a death sentence issued by the protector itself.
Here, we face a moral bankruptcy of the highest order: How is it logically possible for an entity created to protect life to command its members to surrender that very life?
1. Gaslighting via “Sacred Sacrifice”
The state deifies the soldier, draping them in uniforms and pinning medals on their chests. Yet, on the cold battlefield, they are reduced to ‘strategic assets’ or ‘disposables’ used to achieve the state’s objectives. The flowery prose of “noble sacrifice for the motherland” is the most powerful psychological tool ever devised to justify the state’s anti-moral act of pushing its citizens into an abyss.
If a soldier truly remains a ‘citizen’ worthy of protection, the state should prioritize their survival above any grand cause. But in war, a soldier’s life becomes a ‘chip’ on a political poker table. The moment thousands of young lives are dismissed as “strategic retreats” or the “price of victory,” the state negates its own reason for existence. It sacrifices the ‘living, breathing citizen’ next to us to save an abstract, bodiless concept called ‘the collective.’
2. The Monster Where the Means Devour the End
The state constantly injects a sense of utilitarian fear: the claim that “without the sacrifice of soldiers, the state falls, and if the state falls, more citizens suffer.” On the surface, this sounds like rational arithmetic—that sacrificing one to save a hundred is ‘justice.’
However, an individual life is an absolute value that cannot be replaced. The state is merely a ‘means’ designed to protect the life and happiness of the individual. Is it rational to destroy the ‘end’ (human life) to preserve the ‘means’ (the state system)? We have so deified the system that we mistakenly believe it is a transcendent entity superior to human life. The state is not a monster that thrives on the blood of its people. If a state must constantly demand the death of its members to sustain its own existence, that system is morally bankrupt and has no right to exist.
3. The Grand Illusion of “Voluntary Obedience”
The most tragic aspect is that those heading to the battlefield have no meaningful ‘right to refuse.’ Conscription is an obvious force, but even volunteer systems push individuals toward war through economic necessity or social pressure labeled as ‘patriotism.’ The moment war breaks out, the state sheds its mask as a protector and turns into a predator. Any citizen who disobeys is branded a ‘traitor’ and punished.
If the price of the state’s promise to protect your life is the state’s right to forcibly seize your life when it chooses, that is not a contract—it is a ‘slave deed.’
We live with our most precious right—life—mortgaged to the state, blinded by the sweet promise of “protection.” War is simply the moment the state forecloses on that mortgage, and we have long ignored this illogical violence by beautifying it as ‘patriotism.’
The state must now be honest: “We are not protecting you; we are using you to protect Us (the system).”
Unless we refuse to be cogs in the state’s gargantuan machinery and boldly declare that “my life is not the property of the state,” we can never be truly free. We must now ask the fundamental question to that arrogant power:
“For whom does the state exist, and does it truly have the right to demand your death in exchange?”