Soldiering and the the Rites of Passage

Sinan Caya

Volume 16 Issue 6

Global Journal of Human-Social Science

Armed forces are kept by the states for purposes of defense. Despite various claims, armies never become redundant. The need for protection of the boundaries, even though, a seemingly “old-fashioned” idea, is always there as a sheer reality to reckon with; for any given country. Being exposed to aggression is a sad probability, which may occur suddenly and hit the fate of any nation. A lot of philosophical sentences about the lacking of human reasoning in soldierly ways have also been uttered. Now, a soldier differs from a civilian and the transformation of the latter being into the former one is a radical social metamorphosis, including moral and physical factors. From an anthropological viewpoint, it is a full initiation ritual or passage rite. This fact alone renders all martial activities entirely rational and compatible with logic.