BECOMING A SOLDIER IS TO BECOME A DIFFERENT HUMAN TYPE

Of fundamental importance to personal Joy / Heaven in this life is to realize that we have available to us the option of not one, as our culture would have us believe, but two profoundly OPPOSITE states of mind:

1. Selfishness
2. Brotherliness / Otherishness

It has just struck me that there is an institution that consistantly and relyably CONVERTS individuals during the course of one's enlistment from Selfishness to Brotherliness (Brotherliness of an important sort). THE U.S. MILITARY does this.

The points here are that:

1. The choice of Otherishness is one that anyone can make as we see in the choice made by millions in the military;
2. Otherishness (the READINESS to give one's life for others) is profoundly opposite to Selfisnness as we can clearly see in this mass military "conversion" that ;
3. WAR, such intensity of commitment, trumps any alternative through its overwhelming Joyfulness / Purpose / Meaning. From movies, imagination and personal knowledge we can see that there was no price that could get Ryan to leave the war (Saving Private Ryan.)