Ukraine men try to escape the war, and we sentence them to death.
I try not to avoid news about the current Russia war with Ukraine but some of it really makes me angry. I see a lot of gore videos from both sides, soldiers dying horrible deaths during drone hits or artillery shelling.
This morning, though, I read the news, which made me really angry. Apparently some Ukrainian men tried to escape hell of war and flee to Hungary and Romania [11]. Sadly they were captured by border security, and now they will either be sent to front or sentenced to a couple of years in prison.
I have been aware of similar situations for a long time, but I also know a lot of Ukrainian men who escaped. They don’t want to die for their country and for look for shelter inside EU.
When the war started, I worked at TomTom, and it was a huge news. At the time, I worked on traffic moderation software.
What we found peculiar was that right after Russia invaded Ukraine, we could see huge traffic, completely marked red in direction of West. At this time, a quarter of the Ukrainian population fled the country, leaving all they had behind [12]. From what I see during that time 90% of those who fled were women and children [12].
Why do women and children suddenly have a higher life value than men, and how did it all start? How did we manage to create this abomination of draft service [1] that sentences males to death?
I’ll explain all of this in this post.
Why there are wars?
Before I start digging into why we need to die for politicians greed, I’ll briefly explain the origins of war. I think it’s worth knowing when it all started. Do other animals have wars? Why are only males sentenced to horrible deaths? All of this will be explained in the following chapter.
What is a war? We all know its consequences, but how do we define war?
Figure 1. By Diebold Schilling the Younger, upload by sidonius 13:36, 21 March 2008 (UTC) - Alfred A. Schmid (Hg.): Die Schweizer Bilderchronik des Luzerners Diebold Schilling. Sonderausgabe des Kommentarbandes zum Faksimile der Handschrift S. 23 fol. in der Zentralbibliothek Luzern. Ex Libris, Zürich 1981., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1069877
To get a definition of it, I checked Wikipedia.
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. [6]
or which I found a bit better
A war (a "war event") is an occurrence of purposive and lethal violence among two or more social groups pursuing conflicting political goals that results in fatalities, with at least one belligerent group organized under the command of authoritative leadership [13]
So as we can see, the war is a conflict between some entities that causes destruction and is characterized by extreme violence. This definition is definitely self-explanatory, but what’s the actual origin of war? What causes wars to happen and why only males are sentenced to die there.
To answer this question, we need to read deeper into various sources.
The earliest date of war seems to be defined as early as 13,400 years ago [2]. Apparently, during that period, there was some war in Sudan, where archeologists found cemeteries full of skeletons with injuries, which suggest they were taken during a conflict that involved around 100 people. We don’t know much about this particular war, but there are others that seem to be better described. Some things seem to be certain, though. When wealth and land possession increased, the weapons for warfare became better and better. [9] Archeologists seem to find improved versions of axes and maces that were clearly built to kill humans and not improve hunting techniques.
So the origin of war seems to be blurry. Probably we will never know why we started wars, but other of my questions seem to be answerable. Why do only men go to war?
I’ll share some of the answers to this question that I found.
First is a claim made by Alberto Micheletti, a Ph.D. researcher in the University’s School of Biology [14]. Apparently he did some mathematical analysis and concluded that:
Our study shows that these differences are not needed to explain why women generally don’t go to war. We found that the more one sex participates in warfare, the less the other sex is incentivised to do so. Over time, this leads to only one sex fighting in battle.
following that
It all depends on what behaviours were dominant in ancestral human populations. An initial male-bias in participation in war would have encouraged more men to fight – eventually leading to male-only war parties."
Ultimately it could all be down to chance. Had women been more aggressive at the time when war first evolved, they could have been the warring sex. This is observed in other species: for example, in spotted hyenas, only females attack other packs. But, in our own species, this was not the case.
If you read his paper, you will find sources for the claim that wars were exclusively performed by men [3]. His team managed to get quite some sources on that:
Other researcher [10] looked for answers in chimpanzees societies and masculinity.
Male chimpanzees are not born to kill, but with a combination of human disturbance, social organization, and personality, they sometimes do.
Structurally ramified through a social division of labor, and Superstructurally encoded as expectations of masculinity, all impressed upon human nature evolved for plasticity.
So to conclude, there is no single reason why men are fighting in wars and women are not allowed to do so. It looks like at some point it was stated that’s how the world should be run, and there is no clear evidence why wars are reserved only for men.
for example, in spotted hyenas, only females attack other packs. But, in our own species, this was not the case. [3]
Looking at other species where females are the most aggressive, we can see that maybe it’s just a construct that, by long time of natural selection, got established, and now we men pay the price of it.
Issues of patriotism and nationalism
So it’s not super clear why men go to war and females stay at home. Since it’s already established and we stick to it maybe let’s focus on how to not have wars at all so males do not have to die.
Personally, when I think about wars between countries, there is always a sense of patriotism and nationalism associated with them. What are those two:
Why do I think both are harmful and stupid. Here, I, as an author, will describe why I’m not patriotic and nationalistic.
When you think about love, devotion, and a and a sense of attachment, you don’t immediately think about country, right? If you do, you probably won’t like what I’ll write next.
When I think about these things, there is one thing in common. They are all not dictated by others. I don’t know if you can pick who you love, but for sure, you cannot be forced to love someone.
Looking at nationalism and patriotism, love for the country where you were born seems like something dictated by randomness. You don’t pick where you will be born, so how can you love such an artificial construct as a country or state? I mean, some people for sure do love their country, but I simply don’t. I also think there are more people who feel the same.
Propaganda
Patriotism and nationalism are great tools to manipulate people to die for a country. If you think about your loved ones, you are probably willing to die for them.
Now manipulating this patriotic love via propaganda that mentions: Our country was attacked, and without you, men and women will die. Take a weapon and die for your beloved country and family. seems pretty bad to me. This suggests that there is no other way than to fight for your country. When a draft happens, you get a weapon and get shipped to a fight.
Putting feelings of love and belongingness to a country results in the belief that it’s natural to fight for your country.
I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe we should fight for artificial values we have been taught to believe in since primary school. There are literally state institutions and ways to teach you patriotic values [15]. Your country does that through literature, music, sporting events, and simply putting patriotic behaviors as villain values.
Imagine if someone taught you since you were young to love someone you have no attachment to. That’s what I felt about Poland when I was younger.
For modern warfare human life does not matter
| This chapter has a lot of images that might contain gore, deaths, and violence. If you are sensitive to such, please skip this chapter. I really wanted to show what modern combat looks like for every woman, child, and man in Europe who might not know how horrible modern warfare is. |
Now let’s say that the war happens in Europe and we males are demanded to show our patriotic values by killing others. We pick up our guns, dress up moro trousers, and go to the front, just as our ancestors did before people invented drones with fucking granades.
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Yes, so the 21st century war does not look like a commercial promise. I live in the Netherlands now where Youtube shows me advertisements of happy young soldiers smiling and cheering. War is fucking dirty, horrifying, and deadly.
Since humans developed kamikaze drones, Himars like rockets and artillery, your life on the front is simply meaningless. With the right amount of drones and artillery, you can win any war, and I think Russia is now going for it as Europe stopped supplying the only fucking type of ammunition that matters in this war. Drones and high-tech artillery.
Europe sentenced Ukrainian pacifists to death.
This chapter is about asylum seekers and European countries stances on the Ukraine draft.
There are many cases where people wanted to run away from the war but were kidnapped by border security in Ukraine. [4] [11] and I don’t see any response from the European Union. They simply allow this to happen, as such practices are internal Ukrainian laws.
Do you feel safe with such measures? If so, I would like to share this source, which shows that Germany plans to reintroduce similar-style military service [5].
To conclude this chapter, if you manage to escape Ukrainian help, there is a chance that you will be granted asylum in Europe, but if you get caught by Ukrainian forces, you will either go to jail or be sent to the front.
I oppose dying for any country
I’m a pacifist. I believe that countries should have no borders. I’m not a patriot, nationalist, or fascist, and I oppose dying for any country.
They are all artificial for me, and as long as I have water to drink and food to eat, I can live in any system there is.
Conclusion
We don’t know the origins of wars, but it’s a fact that men are the ones who have been mainly sent to fight through the centuries. There seems to be no reason for that, and as with many things in this world, it’s just the way it is.
When it comes to my view on the current war, I think Europe failed Ukrainians, and it’s something that I think we’ve all seen coming. A similar thing happened to Poland in 1939. Politicians greed and care for individual countries cause the mass deaths of Ukrainian soldiers, who now don’t have enough ammunition to defend themselves.
The main photo in this blog post is a default photo I use in my blog. It was taken in Kiev before the war. I’m not even sure if this place sill exist…
Sources
[1] “The Draft.” [Online]. Available: https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/conscription.
[2] “Earliest known war was a repeated conflict in Sudan 13,400 years ago.” [Online]. Available: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2278870-earliest-known-war-was-a-repeated-conflict-in-sudan-13400-years-ago/.
[3] “Why war is a man’s game \textbar Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.” Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.0975.
[4] “Ukrainian draft dodgers brutally beaten during detention.” Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/274152754/ukrainian-draft-dodgers-brutally-beaten-during-detention.
[5] “Germany debates reintroducing military conscription – DW – 02/03/2023.” Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-debates-reintroducing-military-conscription/a-64601831.
[6] “War,” Wikipedia. Mar. 17, 2024, Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=War&oldid=1214142907.
[7] “Patriotism,” Wikipedia. Mar. 02, 2024, Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Patriotism&oldid=1211360261.
[8] “Nationalism,” Wikipedia. Mar. 13, 2024, Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nationalism&oldid=1213467014.
[9] C. Barrett, “The Origins of War.” Apr. 09, 2018, Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.historynet.com/the-origins-of-war/.
[10] R. B. Ferguson, “Masculinity and War,” Current Anthropology, vol. 62, no. S23, pp. S108–S120, Feb. 2021, doi: 10.1086/711622.
[11] U. (@karakam@mastodon.social) News, “‘DPSU detained two people who planned to sneak into Hungary using children’s life jackets to cross the Tisza River. They each paid 1000….” Mar. 16, 2024, Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://mastodon.social/@karakam/112107124974509920.
[12] G. Ramsay, “A quarter of Ukrainians have fled their homes. Here’s where they’ve gone.” Mar. 21, 2022, Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/21/europe/ukraine-russia-conflict-10-million-refugees-intl/index.html.
[14] C. Tudhope and U. of S. Andrews, “Why war is a man’s game.” Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-war-game.html.
[15] P. watson, “Country First: How Patriotism Is Expressed Around the World.” May 26, 2021, Accessed: Mar. 17, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://theninthworld.com/country-first-how-patriotism-is-expressed-around-the-world/.