What's the difference between a soldier, an assassin, and a mercenary?

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Aramike

This argument is heavily flawed. When using "better", we've been referring to the morality of an approach, not it's effectiveness. By that argument, yes, peaceful protest is the "best" approach.

But if you want to discuss the effectiveness, there will surely be times when violence would be more likely to be effective.

Assuming you believe your cause to be morally right, effectiveness and
morality are very much interlinked.

You can't be good ineffectually and still claim you have been good.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Letum

Assuming you believe your cause to be morally right, effectiveness and
morality are very much interlinked.

You can't be good ineffectually and still claim you have been good.

I'm not sure this holds water.

Let's examine an example: say you were looking to overthrow a despot. As agreed upon earlier, a peaceful attempt at doing so would be the better option, and is used first. It fails. Next, the NON-"better" option, a violent revolution, is tried and succeeds.

Now going back to your statement:

If the best possible approach failed, why would any less better approaches
succeeded?

So, we are left with one of two possibilities:

1 - "Better" does not equate to effectiveness, or;
2 - The non-violent approach is not always "better".

This goes back to this statement that you made (and I agree with):

That would make the peaceful approach the best possible approach of
the two.

Considering that this statement isn't qualified by the results but rather the behavior itself, effectiveness is irrelevent.

[Skybird]

War and peace are two totally different states of the human world, and both have very different sets of morality, with only partial overlaps. What is moral in one, may be immoral in the other. You can't use morals of peace to judge a state of war and to decide what you need to do next in that war. Morals of war obviously cannot be used to describe a state of peace, and would even destroy it.

Where this is not understood, only confusion results. Sometimes self-tormenting, existential confusion, leading to depression, mental suffering, self-destruction and suicide.

To keep that effectiveness-thing into perspective a bit.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Skybird

War and peace are two totally different states of the human world, and both have very different sets of morality, with only partial overlaps.

I couldn't more strongly disagree with this. Again, where is the crossover from one to the other? When one man attacks? Two? Three? A hundred? A thousand? Must they be acting in the name of a government? A religion? Is it simply a case of when your government declares war? In which case, your statement would mean that you'd change your morals from one predefined set to another because someone else says that, in their opinion, the state of the world you now live in has changed?

Boiling it down to the simplest form, at what point does a disagreement between two individuals become a "war" in miniature? When a fist is raised, or after it has struck? When a weapon is pulled? When it is aimed? Fired? What if these things are threatened verbally first?

There are no such lines and any you try to draw can be picked apart a thousand times. We live in one reality, not two or three or more.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

I couldn't more strongly disagree with this. Again, where is the crossover from one to the other? When one man attacks? Two? Three? A hundred? A thousand? Must they be acting in the name of a government? A religion? Is it simply a case of when your government declares war? In which case, your statement would mean that you'd change your morals from one predefined set to another because someone else says that, in their opinion, the state of the world you now live in has changed?

If you ever will walk a place of war, you will know where the crossover is immediately. You will not even need somebody explaing it to you, you will realise it all by yourself.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Skybird

To me the price for that symbolic message has been far too high. The creeping capitalism has caused more change in China, than the massacre. It also has no huge meaning to the inner side of Chinese society, and is made a big thing of only in foreign nations. when the government seals off the square on birthday of the massacre, most Chinse seem to think of that as a natural thing.

There's a lot of unqualified statements in your post (not all of which I have quoted).

I didn't know they sealed off the square, but I would say that if the events in the square are no big deal to the Chinese then why seal off the square? Besides, I've seen recent interviews which indicate that the events of 1989 are, today, a highly taboo subject in China among the current generation of Chinese teenagers. An interviewer showed Chinese students those famous photos of the student before the tank. They all looked blank. One whispered "1989" under his breath, and the others all looked away from him. The interviewer then asked them whether they knew what the photos were about, and they turned to the interviewer and gave answers like "No idea, some sort of military parade or something? I don't know." None of them asked the boy what he meant by "1989" and the boy himself claimed he had no idea what was being depicted in the photos.

For an event to be so well known (by children who were not then alive) and yet still taboo after 20 years suggests to me that it has had a fairly profound impact on that culture. It's certainly not "no big deal" as you make out.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Skybird

If you ever will walk a place of war, you will know where the crossover is immediately. You will not even need somebody explaing it to you, you will realise it all by yourself.

Perhaps you're right! But if that ever happens, I might need someone to explain to me where my "change morality now" button is.

[Letum]

SB appears to me to follow a principle of "total war" in which he justifies any
act, however despicable, in the name of military advantage; the slaughter
of countless millions for a inch of ground.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

Perhaps you're right! But if that ever happens, I might need someone to explain to me where my "change morality now" button is.

That's kind of exactly how it works. Hence, the point that although certain things may be distasteful, that doesn't make them immoral.

Morality (and more poignantly, ethics), has always been subject to context. The absolute deontologist will contend that what is wrong will always be wrong. Unfortunately for him, though, the human experience puts a strain on this argument as he will undoubtedly find kill-or-be-killed to be an unresolvable paradox.

Good and evil must be a choice - not the default state. So if one is put into a position with where the only choices are to commit what the absolutist considers to be "evil", it would become the default state. The reason this doesn't work is due to the fact that the words themselves MUST define a specific state, otherwise they'd have no meaning other than "is". As such, let's say Bob has to kill a man to prevent him from killing Bob's wife. If Bob allows his wife to be killed, that could be considered an evil act. If Bob kills the person who threatens his wife, that could also be considered evil. As such, describing Bob's state as evil really describes nothing more than "Bob is".

The only way to resolve this paradox is to define evil by putting it in context. That means, what is evil at one state does not neccessarily make it evil in another.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Letum

SB appears to me to follow a principle of "total war" in which he justifies any
act, however despicable, in the name of military advantage; the slaughter
of countless millions for a inch of ground.

That's not at all what he's doing. He's making the argument that perspective regulates morality - he's not defining morality itself.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Aramike

The only way to resolve this paradox is to define evil by putting it in context. That means, what is evil at one state does not neccessarily make it evil in another.

That is far from the only way.
I'm not one to defend any deontological approach, but it could be argued that
an evil is always equally evil, but that selecting it over a greater evil is a
good thing to do.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Aramike

That's not at all what he's doing. He's making the argument that perspective regulates morality - he's not defining morality itself.

I would be surprised if SB disagrees with me. He certainly hasn't on this point
in past discussions.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Good and evil must be a choice - not the default state. So if one is put into a position with where the only choices are to commit what the absolutist considers to be "evil", it would become the default state. The reason this doesn't work is due to the fact that the words themselves MUST define a specific state, otherwise they'd have no meaning other than "is". As such, let's say Bob has to kill a man to prevent him from killing Bob's wife. If Bob allows his wife to be killed, that could be considered an evil act. If Bob kills the person who threatens his wife, that could also be considered evil. As such, describing Bob's state as evil really describes nothing more than "Bob is".

The only way to resolve this paradox is to define evil by putting it in context. That means, what is evil at one state does not neccessarily make it evil in another.

You've made a mistake. The point of view that "if Bob does kill the man, that is evil" is one point of view. The point of view that "if Bob does not kill the man, that is evil" is another point of view. There is only a paradox for those who would claim to support both points of view.

[Captain Vlad]

My own personal take on the original question of this thread...

Soldier: A person who serves in a military or paramilitary organization organized by the government of a government entity, is given military training by that organization, and is expected to fight or engage in other combat-related tasks on behalf of that government.

Mercenary: A person, generally one who is, used to be, or has similar skills to a soldier who will act as a soldier for paid compensation.

Assassin: A person who kills or attempts to kill a specific individual for some 'higher' purpose, generally a cause or profit.

Note that things like ideology and loyalty to ones country don't come into play in my definition of 'mercenary' or 'soldier'.

There have been plenty of mercenaries who would really only fight for specific customers, but for whatever reasons did not chose to be involved with that nation's actual military on an official basis. There have also been plenty of mercenaries who were attracted to certain causes, such as the large number of foreign volunteers who fought for both sides in the Spanish Civil War.

As for soldiers...sure, many soldiers have a deep sense of patriotism, but others may have joined up for financial benefit, or to see the world, or because they were drafted. Patriotism is an individual thing, not a defining quality for anyone in a military uniform.

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

I'm afraid this is not a joke. It's something I've been puzzling over for some time.

Assassin
Mercenary
Soldier

Assassin has a cloaking device, dagger, sapper, gun (ambassador or normal) and disquise kit.

Mercenary has a sniper rifle, Kukri knife, and an smg

Soldier has a rocket luancher, shovel and shotty.

I won't go into the scout, engie, heavy, demoman, pyro, or heavy