Question of the day: what is more ethical to give your life for - for an idea or for the territory?

Political scientist Dmitry Nekrasov expressed a very curious and logically perfectly flawless point of view on the military conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh:

“It seems that they kill less in Karabakh now, so I will write what I have wanted for a long time.

1. In the last couple of weeks, in several places I have seen references to Armenians who specially came from France / Russia / USA to fight for their native land (there were probably similar Azerbaijanis, but they were not told about them in my feed). Well, like people live in a normal country, everything is fine with them, but they went to defend something there, risking their lives. And the tone of the story about these people ranged from respect to admiration.

But when people from all over the world drove en masse to fight for ISIS (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation), for some reason, they did not talk about them in this way. Although from the point of view of any common sense and formal logic, people who are ready to die for some system of values and morality (no matter which one) deserve much more respect than people who are ready to die (on either side of the conflict) for a meaningless sparsely populated and poor piece territory. In general, for any piece of territory.

OK in a certain perverted picture of the world, territory and morality can be recognized as equally meaningless entities. However, even in this case, there is at least no difference between the ISIS fighters and those who went to defend some territory that for absurd reasons is considered “theirs”.

However, the secular religion prevailing in Russia sees this difference. Even at the level of opposition-liberal circles.

2. At the same time, both sides of the conflict and observers accused each other of using mercenaries. Well, like mercenaries are fu-fu-fu fighting not for ISIS (sorry Armenia / Azerbaijan), but stupidly for money.

But wait. From a common sense point of view, mercenaries are the healthiest elements of observed madness. People are dying not because of the greed of mercenaries, but because of the mass of ordinary people who for some reason care about a meaningless piece of territory. Precisely the townsfolk, because politicians in the modern world only respond to public demand (use it). And the senseless deaths are really to blame for the masses of ordinary people who respect / admire those who came to defend their native land.

“It is more important for them where it is more important for them to break mines, where the borders will pass,

old people rule the world, only they can't sleep at night…

The menacing account of the conquered miles will erase the yellowed nail,

old people rule the world, they just can't cope with sleep"

This whole picture of the world about old people is beautiful, but very outdated. In today's reality, there are fewer and fewer representatives of the elites who really believe in something and are ready to sacrifice something for the sake of this belief. Today even dictatorships are responding to the demand of the common people. Such an era. In extreme cases, they try to form this request, but it is the request that is primary. Blood is on the hands of those who care about Islam or territory, and not those who came to cut down the dough. (It doesn't matter if they are from Syria or from Tula to PMC Wagner)

Death is on the conscience of those who care about meaningless abstractions. And the mercenaries in comparison with them are a model of morality and common sense.

3. In the city of Lucerne, about whose surroundings Leo Tolstoy said that “perhaps this is the most picturesque place in the world” (and here I agree with the count 100%), a lion is carved on a rock in memory of the Swiss who died during the French Revolution, defending Louis XVI. Karamzin, visiting Lucerne, spoke about this monument in the spirit that "a strange monument to people who died for the sake of a foreign tsar and foreign fatherland".

And these are the words of the mullah, who is preparing suicide bombers, in front of the monument to the killed policemen. After all, a suicide bomber sacrifices himself for the sake of Allah and the reconstruction of the world for the better, and the police work stupidly for money. Low selfish people.

Karamzin, who for reasons I do not understand is considered a liberal, was in fact the most important (and therefore most harmful) priest of the Russian religion of the borderline. It was he who first wrote "History of the Russian State" as a history of sovereigns and borders, in which a good sovereign was the one who expanded the empire, and not the one with whom people lived well. This tradition, through the Klyuchevskaya and other non-volodovyhs, sits in every student in the Russian / Soviet school.

And this tradition is no different from the education of a suicide bomber who is ready to kill and die for the sake of Allah. (As I said, from the point of view of formal logic, killing and dying for the sake of Allah (value system) is much more ethical than killing and dying for the sake of where the boundaries will be). And in this tradition we are all brought up, and therefore we praise the heroes defending the earth, stubbornly refusing to see their absolute identity with the Islamists and terrorists we condemn..."