If, for example, society sees fit to deprive me of my right to security (for instance, perhaps it deigns to throw me in jail if I defend myself against a home invasion), then society doesn't get to demand I give my life for its security.
In this way, it is society that has broken the contract with me, releasing me of my obligations to defend it. Most people who claim "duty and obligation to society" conveniently forget this is possible. By accident, I'm sure.
> You can have multiple duties and they can conflict.
There's a very strong impulse in American society to say that, no matter what situation you find yourself in, there must be a path out of it that doesn't involve doing anything wrong.
If you start with that premise, it's easy to prove that it's impossible to have conflicting duties.
I think this viewpoint is insane, but it's common anyway.
How much raising of the typical pleb draftee do you think is done by the politician declaring the war? Society is just a collection of people. Even if there is some original debt from being raised that forms a binding contract with a minor that never consented to it, which I don't take on face, it's hard to imagine how politicians declaring a draft trump the senior shareholders of that contract (the family that did the bulk of the raising).
In any case I would hope we would reject the notion that you can become a slave and made to die for the state because you allegedly owe them for something they did for you before you were old enough to even wittingly object or agree to it.
Drafting people to fight in pointless overseas wars is a blatant violation of the social contract and the people who made those decisions should be hung. That doesn't mean you don't have a natural duty to defend the society that supported your very existence.
We all collectively move. Unless you have a massive amount of unmovable property to lose, that you're willing to die for, going to get torn to pieces by a drone seems like a stupid idea. Even if I'm the reason we win the war, my mom and dad probably won't be too happy receiving me in an urn with a complimentary food voucher. We can get a new house, No need to die over its bombed remains.
Of course you can. You are an adult. Your actions and perceptions define what kind of a person you are though. If you perceive your 2 year old son as your forced obligation you are a slave and other things as well. And it's by choice.
Your definition of choice is not really what I'm talking about then. I'm discussing natural obligations that have make society work. Of course you always have a choice to not fulfill your obligation and society always has a choice to cast you out, like when you don't feed your 2 year old.
There are no natural obligations. Societies don't require them to function. Sum of correct choices people take for themselves is always a stronger foundation for society than any "natural" obligations. Obligations are narrative fiction. Choices, laws and enforcement is what's real.
This is the same argument that utilitarians use to argue about how we don't have to define morals because everything is taken care of by a utilitarian calculus. The problem with that view is, even if you can define what correct for any choice (which you can't, lets be honest), you end up with a trillion parameter equation for arriving to that conclusion which makes the discussion worthless. So of course we have to rely on general truths and narratives to drive society forward, that's what your ancestors did using religion and tradition.
Couldn't I say that if you perceive fairly-operated, defensive war conscription to be a forced obligation that you are also several pejoratives? By choice.
