We found that, far from there being a universal combatant, distinctions between soldiers and warriors are both significant for the present and important for understanding the past. Last time we took a look at the social place of people involved in war. In investigating this question, we are using Steven Pressfield’s recent video series as our foil, since it is a more completely explained expression of this idea and one should always try to debate the stronger form of the opposing argument.
This is the second part of a three part ( I, IIa, IIb, III) discussion of the idea of a ‘universal warrior’ – the assumption that there is a transcendent sameness about either the experience of war or ‘warrior values’ which might provide some sort of fundamental truth for understanding war, either in the past or present, or else a useful blueprint for current life more generally.