What is a Warrior?

[emberleo]

The question has come up in my environment, stimulating some fascinating discussion that I would like to expand.

What does the word "Warrior" signify to you?

My point of reference isn't actually a warrior role at all, I admit.

Comments

[siderea]

It seems obvious to me that, as we say in computerland, the "warrior" operator is overloaded, i.e. it has several exclusive but coexisting contextually discriminated meanings.

So, yes, a warrior is one who wages war. There is an important sense in which means solely those who bear arms in a physical way to advance the cause of their people.

Archetypically, the Warrior is He Who Acts. It is executive function, it is to "squarely push the logic of a fact// to its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act". I recommend the books King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Moore and Gillette, and The Awakened Warrior by Fields. The latter is an anthology of essays that investigate exactly some of these conflicts and conundrums.

[emberleo]

You're quoting Kipling's Female of the Species, yes? I almost referenced that in my original post. Heh.

Yeah, I agree with you that there is a problem where the word has way too many meanings.

Thank you very much for book recommendations! I value your opinions on references, in particular.

--Ember--

[siderea]

Oh, I didn't say that was a problem, heh. ;)

[emberleo]

*laughs* Fair enough.

--Ember--

[emberleo]

Hmm, you definitely interpret the word very differently than I do. But that's the whole point of asking, eh?

--Ember--

[rhylar]

Warrior, to me, is someone who has warfare as their reason for being. Soldiers go to war for their nation, but when the reason for war goes away, they go home to their family, and find another job. Warriors go home to their family to rest up before returning to war

[emberleo]

So is there another word more appropriate to the general category of "one who deliberately learns the arts of combative interaction"?

It seems to me that there are historical examples of people whose jobs were to be ready to defend their people at any time, who were considered "warriors" by their cultures, like knights, perhaps, or Samurai?

--Ember--

[rhylar]

I guess it would depend on why you are learning those arts.

recreational/spiritual development: (Martial) Artist

to earn a living or to protect someone: mercenary/soldier

because war is the only time that you feel alive: warrior

knights/samurai could be either artists, soldiers, or warriors.

another indicator (to me) is what do you do when you are getting too old to fight...

Artist: technique beats strength, practice more.
soldier: retire to farming
warrior: blaze of glory, baby!

[emberleo]

I'm giggling at those last three lines.

Hmm, so what you're saying is there *isn't* a general term.

I think I'm approaching from a different angle. Rather than personal motivation, I'm thinking in terms of a kind of community scenario.

What do I all the people who, when the shit hits the fan, are *qualified* to take up arms in the defense of the community. I know many more will do so to the best of their ability, but many folks are pre-trained for it whether that was their motivation or not. What do I call the folks in this category? They're not soldiers until they're called. They're not warriors or mercenaries or whatever, per se, unless they chose those motivations. But they're all trained to be useful in this area, and are thus potential resources to their communities as such. What's that called?

--Ember--

[songcoyote]

Nothing like a hard question for a Monday morning :)

I've always been uncomfortable with the concept of warrior, in no small part because of my upbringing (Quaker / Conscientious Objector). Although I've not taken the definition of warrior quite so far as smallship1 has I have somewhat similar feelings.

I think for me "warrior" is a mantle to be worn in times of need, especially when uncomfortable things must be done. It's a cloak of need and sometimes of desperation: fighting is not, in my mind, the best first response except in most dire need. Thus, people who wear the mantle on an ongoing, regular, or committed basis make me very nervous at best.

Not all soldiers are warriors. Not all healers are not warriors. I have had times in my life where I have called on that Aspect, and the results have always left me thinking for long periods afterward. I am very fortunate in that I have never killed a human; I'm not sure what that would do to my self-image. I have regularly killed animals for eating, but this is not being a warrior, it is

[emberleo]

It doesn't seem rambling to me. It makes sense.

Despite how it may seem from what is written above, I was also raised by conscientious objectors. I wasn't raised Quaker, but it seems we are descended from them, so perhaps that explains it in part.

I'm surely not a warmonger, and don't even consider myself a warrior at all either. All of my understanding of when it is acceptable to use force are in very extreme situations of self-defense that I sincerely hope never, ever come up.

--Ember--

[emberleo]

One thing I will say, though, is that the more deeply involved in my spirituality I become, the less I understand there being some kind of dramatic difference in value between humans, plants, and animals, in terms of life. Life is life. Death is death. Too much life leads to too much death when resources (humans being one kind of resource, mind you) go out of balance. It's not worse, to me, in general, to kill a human or an animal than it is to kill a tree, and it's not better to make room for more life in general than it is to keep balance. Life is not more valuable in my eyes than death. Admittedly, I prefer my own life, and the lives of those I care for, to our deaths, but that's a bias. For us to live, other beings are by definition dying and being killed

[emberleo]

I agree with most of this, and especially with the resources and population control observations.

One thing I am noticing is that what folks seem to be describing as a "warrior" is closer to how I would use the word "warmonger". There is, to me, a difference between a person whose job it is to handle wars that arise, to defend people, to lead them in times of violence, and a person who wants the fight, stirs shit up, and prefers violence to other modes of conflict resolution.

--Ember--