Fighting Against Your Beliefs

Is it better to die fighting for your beliefs or to sit patiently waiting for an opportunity to induce change? http://www.buzzle.com/articles/philosophical-questions-about-society-that-will-make-you-think.html

They fought for their beliefs. They fought and died. They fought for what they believed they were fighting for, but what did they actually fight for?Those poor idealists gave their life for some political conflict that was probably desperately short of idealism.

Politics is a cynical business, a ruthless struggle for power that honest individuals had better stay away from. And in normal times most of them do stay away leaving the politicians to their own filth. But sometimes, when politics gets so nasty that it even spills over into a real and bloody war, the idealists are willing to join the fighting. Why do they believe that violence and murder is an activity more worthy of their participation?

It may be better for an idealist to lose a war, for then at least he doesn’t lose his ideals. If the war is lost, no one knows for sure what is lost and one can still think they fought for a better world. But a victorious war is brutally revealing. Now the winners can realize that brave new world they had promised and for which so many had died. But what happens? The gruesome violence is followed by fierce politicking and whatever the outcome it will not be what anyone had wanted.

Look at any war in history and compare the outcome with what was promised before the war and the discrepancy is likely to be large. The communist utopia never materialized, the liberated colonies continued to be exploited.

At any time bitter veterans have probably looked back and asked: Was this really what we fought for?

They thought they fought for their beliefs, but they fought for something else. We shouldn’t make the same mistake.