It's About Killing

 It’s about killing. 

It’s not about workouts. 

It’s not about times on the range. 

It’s not about corporate leadership summits. 

It’s about killing. 

Men who practice the warrior’s craft in peacetime often mistake the purpose. The purpose is killing. Ending your opponent's life before he ends yours. There are many pieces to achieving this, many capabilities to train. The purpose of all of them is to become more efficient at killing. Peace obscures this. 

It is not possible to be constantly at war, and training cannot involve killing. Nor does it always need to suggest or simulate violence, either. The tools at the disposal of warriors are vast. Many capabilities, especially in current conflict, are required to be effective on the battlefield. It is the task of the individual, supported by organization and team culture, to remember the greater purpose: closing with and destroying the enemy. 

Climbing and land navigation training assist in meeting and out-maneuvering the enemy, communications allows coordination in movement, logistics supplies the necessary tools of death, exercise hardens the body for the demands of the ultimate contest, shooting training ensures that upon meeting the enemy men are capable of overcoming them with greater skill. This is all directed at the total defeat of the enemy, they are not ends in themselves. 

Peace allows both the individual and organization to forget this, as those with practical experience slowly leave. Instead individuals become enamored by ego, and attach their sense of worth to superiority over their teammates or their image, and organizations obsess over ideas thought up behind desks. 

Competition between teammates is good. It drives improvement and fuels the desire for excellence. When superiority over teammates becomes the fuel of the ego the warrior has forgotten his trade and who his allies are. The healthy expression of competition embodied in the Greek agon is lost and replaced by petty status games over insignificant details. The pursuit of one-upmanship distorts the picture of the final goal and leads to hyper-specialization to achieve an edge over men who you should love as a brother and encourage to improve through competition. It is a small soul that is imperiled by the success of friends. 

Some attach their ego to images, to ideas of being cool and badass. These are byproducts of confident professionalism and competence, not pathways to it. To be, not to seem. The effort expended in maintaining appearances is better spent in honing abilities. He who does more, is worth more. 

To a warrior the ultimate goal must always be supreme, superiority to your enemy in the craft of war, leading to the domination and complete subjugation of the foe. Many skills make up this craft and none is primary to another but all are subordinate to the goal. Killing. A warrior’s trade is death.