Well, perhaps bizarrely, i am also 21 and i also considered joining the Navy about a month ago. I was walking home after abysmally failing to get a job and i started thinking about an advert i saw for a job in the navy. I thought about 'the republic' by Plato, the republican ideal (although i live in a constitutional monarchy), serving the state that has protected me and enabled me to live in liberty (fat lot of good thats done me) and so on. I have also always harboured a certain recessive patriotic streak and a childish yearning for the military.
I decided that i would do it, i would join the navy.
Then after a minute i recalled that i totally disagreed with Platos vision of a militarist republic, and i remembered that the essential purpose of the military (British, American and French at least) is to be willing and able to kill foreign people youve never met, at the behest of politicians and generals you dont really know, for political or geo-strategic reasons you dont really understand/care about/agree with.
Even if you dont pull the trigger youre part of a war machine. Perhaps -some- wars are truly just and some causes righteous, but it would be just my luck to get tangled up in the least just, least righteous, dirtiest war there is going. And really, i dont actually want to kill people, or be involved in doing so at all. Wars are tragic and i tend to think there are better ways of achieving things. Plus i think the navy would actually be quite boring.
And so i decided i would rather join an international aid agency or learn some martial arts or something. And hence im not in the navy.
If you are willing to:
* do things you totally disagree with (yet are still -probably- legal) as part of the apparatus of the state
* get stuck in a situation you cant even attempt to control
* and if you're at the sharp end you're willing to personally end someones life (or otherwise play a small part in a vast organisation geared towards extreme physical violence)
then by all means consider the Navy.
In reality im sure it would be quite an uneventful job and you're statistically very unlikely to actually die in combat(unless you join the infantry/marines and go to Iraq) but it was the principle that got to me.
There are simply better ways of providing a service to society and definitely better jobs to get for people with DP.
I decided that i would do it, i would join the navy.
Then after a minute i recalled that i totally disagreed with Platos vision of a militarist republic, and i remembered that the essential purpose of the military (British, American and French at least) is to be willing and able to kill foreign people youve never met, at the behest of politicians and generals you dont really know, for political or geo-strategic reasons you dont really understand/care about/agree with.
Even if you dont pull the trigger youre part of a war machine. Perhaps -some- wars are truly just and some causes righteous, but it would be just my luck to get tangled up in the least just, least righteous, dirtiest war there is going. And really, i dont actually want to kill people, or be involved in doing so at all. Wars are tragic and i tend to think there are better ways of achieving things. Plus i think the navy would actually be quite boring.
And so i decided i would rather join an international aid agency or learn some martial arts or something. And hence im not in the navy.
If you are willing to:
* do things you totally disagree with (yet are still -probably- legal) as part of the apparatus of the state
* get stuck in a situation you cant even attempt to control
* and if you're at the sharp end you're willing to personally end someones life (or otherwise play a small part in a vast organisation geared towards extreme physical violence)
then by all means consider the Navy.
In reality im sure it would be quite an uneventful job and you're statistically very unlikely to actually die in combat(unless you join the infantry/marines and go to Iraq) but it was the principle that got to me.
There are simply better ways of providing a service to society and definitely better jobs to get for people with DP.
