And if he didn’t?
Ok, no problems there except quite frankly Larose doesn’t seem like somone who would be shamed into doing just about anything.
I think that this thread would be more interesting if you threw in the consequence that the state would only give you your freedom upon the condition that you stopped opposing them.
That’s true lol. But he was military so maybe I can trick him.
Than I would fight for whichever side I thought would allow me to do what I wanted the most.
Interesting twist, but I was just curious if and why folks would/would not hold to their goals, rather than if they valued freedom over a state.
Why fight at all? You said you are important to yourself, so why put yourself in danger?
LOL
Good point, and it was fairly obvious that they would be killed… so maybe I would just wait and join Houston’s army instead.
But why do even that? If you want to be free of Mexico all you need to do is split. Move to some place else and presto! Freedom, without having to put yourself at risk for it.
I guess it would depend on how much I liked living in Mexico
What, you are such an accomplished soldier your presence/absence is going to decide the war? You can always come back if Houston wins. So what further excuse do you have not to split?
If all the potential soldiers thought like that, there would be no army to resist the Mexicans.
What’s it to you though? You only care about yourself, right?
Yep. But if I value a free self, rather than an oppressed self, I might find it worth fighting for.
If you value your self then don’t you value living a better quality of life?
Sure. Is this directed at me?
We’ve come full circle, but I think along the way you skipped something and aren’t telling the whole story. But I am not going to press you on it.
I don’t think there is such a thing as warring for your own sake. Maybe if we are talking about a person defending his property. But in most conflicts where it is not about something immediately tangible but about something as abstract as freedom - no chance. There are few freedoms that can be gained by warring and risking debilitating injury, but can not be gained by running away and exploiting loopholes. And there are no freedoms that are worth risk getting crippled or killed if you are going to be the only beneficiary of them if you win. A person doesn’t fight for himself. War is much too terrible for this and the costs far too great to ever be able to make it worth wile. Fighting in a war only ever makes sense as charity. Fighting for something other than yourself. When people draw a line in the sand and put on a grim face it has nothing to do with them personally any more. Them folks in Alamo didn’t refuse to consider slipping away at night because they valued a free self. Had they valued a free self they would have been off to live in a log cabin in Wyoming in a heartbeat.
Yes. If you value a better quality of life then why don’t you desire the inherently more stable and better off system? Furthermore exactly how free are you when you can consider your entire home to be a little patch of earth that isn’t enslaved and the rest of earth to be enslaved? Don’t you want to expand your possibilities for freedom as well?
Question - might it be possible, starting from the egoist position, to bootstrap your way out of it? Such as, granting the egoist starting point, what if it can be shown that a higher quality of life is enjoyed by making yourself care about others?
Value is always subjective.