It amazes me what we allow other people to do to us. I suppose it is an evolutionary trait that we seek leadership. Wolves have an alpha leader who is the only wolf allowed to mate, and this makes sense because they are predators; the cubs produced must be best genetics possible for the survival of the pack.
But the wolves favourite meal, the caribou, don't have a rigid leader/follower structure. They survive by breeding great numbers and rely on a strict seasonal existence; they migrate to here in the summer, and there in the winter led by those who have lived long enough to understand the cycle. But they are prey.
So humans cannot label ourselves as predators any more. We have successfully domesticated the animals we consume. So why are we still in this predatory hierarchical structure? It seems we are caught between two evolutionary paths; we reproduce in great numbers like the caribou which aids in our survival, but still are in an hierarchical structure of the predators. It's a paradox.
And to me, the key lies with this Russian soldier. Here he is young/healthy, full of life, newly married, has a 2yo boy and both partners want more kids. The future looks fantastic. Yet this leader comes along and demands that he uproots himself from his idyllic life, leaves his wife and newborn son, goes into battle with a mission that he has no personal stake in, told to kill other human beings, seeks out others who want to kill him, and ultimately is killed thus denying himself all the future joys, his son a father, and his wife of a partner and more kids.
Where is the sense of all this? There can only be two choices; either this is the perfect evolutionary path for a successful 'intelligent' evolved species, or we have lost ourselves along the way. Either way, however, is that we have enslaved ourselves. Is enslavement the perfect evolutionary path? It seems so because I can't believe we have just lost our way. Ever since humans attained the sufficient brainpower to change our environment, we have enslaved others. We have enslaved animals to pull our carts and provide their meat, and then enslaved other humans to attain our own goals.
Now Nietzsche will have a field day about this question. In his 'On the Genealogy of Morals' he blames religion, specifically Christianity. Through religion, mankind has ceded their own personal responsibility of creating their own good life, to a deity who dispenses the justice for them. It creates a sense of powerlessness among mankind where they are to accept enslavement with the promise of a good life after death, and the eternal torment of the oppressors. The religions were/are the vehicles of enslavement.
All I know, is that this Russian soldier felt compelled by some force to take himself out of an idyllic life in order to die miserably and alone in some cold muddy foxhole.
