What is patriotism? What is nationhood? Do our children have any idea what it would mean to be at war?
Recently in the newspapers, we were informed that the likelihood of volunteers for military service to come from Gen Z is highly unlikely — something like 12% were interested.
War is horrible. And so I certainly don’t advocate sending my son — nor anyone else’s child for that matter — off to battle. And yet, if no one will serve, a nation without an army is vulnerable, isn’t it?
Does it matter? I’m not looking to get political here. Rather, I’m just sharing what has come up on recent news: the idea of military service is no longer of interest to our young.
Why not? It may be because children have seen enough violence on the media to know it isn’t something they actually want to experience first hand. Maybe they aren’t interested in protecting their country. Some opinion polls suggest youth today prefer communism to democracy, and if that’s the case, in their view, they’d not have anything worth defending. Or finally, maybe it is because young people today only think about themselves, and not what is of benefit to society as a whole.
I don’t know why young people don’t want to fight in a war. It seems like a sensible point of view. But looking deeper, it does raise a concern that if no one wants to defend our society, it does leave us vulnerable to lose it.